Gameshow Mafia (Reroll): Game Over

[chennisden]

I Claim Cop. Let's NL until I get a guilty.

I am a Very Interesting Gunner, VIG for short,

[TemporalLich]

VOTE: Overthrow

best power for D13

[RadiantCowbells]

The balance issue with this setup was more skew than anything: town get a huge power boost every time scum dies, so it's possible for town to get an overwhelming advantage quickly and there's not much scum can do about it, whereas scum can't actually really make major gains at all. The D1 scum lynch was thus hugely helpful for town, and very difficult for scum to recover from (although they managed it!)

This is objectively untrue

Sure, there are a few powers that amplify with lower scum and that largely didn't end up being an issue, but scum never getting nighrkills and essentially having to mislynch 8 people to perfect win was never happening.

# of scum alive doesn't affect the lack of nighrkills. Bussing Fusco didn't give town an advantage, the fact that we never got to kill anyone did

[BrightEyedFish]

bef did u forget who scum was.

See what happens when you start a D1 wagon on me!!!

[chennisden]

lol

[callforjudgement]

@RC: Most of town's "there's no nightikill" powers are fairly weak, though (with the exception of Veto and Vengeful, both of which are very strong, and Dance, which was about average). I think town was notably hurt by having to run through them all early to protect the repicker, and don't think missing a fairly limited number of nightkills was enough to break the setup by itself.

[RadiantCowbells]

Also

You called it a mechanical error that we didn't take the chance of chemist winning the 1v1 with creature which seems really silly

Also would you really call the third thing on the list a breaking strategy if you didn't know who scum is? Kinda seems like an informed player trying to find a way for me to have been cornered

[RadiantCowbells]

Idk how to convince you that this setup is awfully townsided if you haven't already seen it.

[chennisden]

That was BnL but yeah that was completely not a mechanical error.

[Something_Smart]

Things that were problems:

• VETO.
  We completely failed to take the Monty Hall problem into account here, which doubles the odds of the Veto survivors being scum. And between Vengeful and Arena, it's so easy to get rid of them both at once. (Although as an aside: scum misplayed horribly by making Moongrass the gladiator. There was no reason to ever let Creature/Chemist be the targets.)
  
• Reveal + Rank both existing. Rank is just a weaker Reveal, but with one scum left it really isn't weaker. (And Reveal is ALREADY really strong late in the game.)
  
• Call a Friend. It's not worth it to keep the entire dead thread unspoiled for months, and it ended up affecting the game when Dannflor thought Nancy was compromised. Perhaps Treestump should be changed to "Treestump a player who died in the last phase, and then lynch normally."

Things that weren't problems:

• No kill after Coalition. I still maintain that Coalition sucks with more than two scum alive. If it succeeds, town certainly would have won anyway, and if it fails, the information gained is so little that nobody can really adjust their reads in a useful way.
  
• The repicker. I actually really liked the concept. I don't think there was anything wrong with picking all the nightless powers to keep that slot alive, and I liked the trade-off of later use being riskier but more beneficial (of course, it was outed D1 so that didn't come up this game).
  
• Dance. This is strong but it gives scum a lot of latitude in setting things up the way they want. This is a power that feels good for scum, and BNL was right that we need more of those.

Things that probably could stand to be changed:

• Vengeful. It's just weird to have a lynch that you want to lynch town with. Maybe you change it so the lynch target gets a vengekill if they're town, then scum kill either way?
  
• Quiz. Why does this power exist.

[Something_Smart]

idk it shouldve been obvious that at worst this is literally just vanilla mountanious which aint scumsided

Vanilla mountainous is extremely scumsided.

[callforjudgement]

Also

You called it a mechanical error that we didn't take the chance of chemist winning the 1v1 with creature which seems really silly

A 50% chance of scum staying alive is better than a 100% chance of scum dying, especially when the only thing you lose if the 1v1 fails is that one more townie is alive but it's a player who may well be mislynchable anyway.

Also would you really call the third thing on the list a breaking strategy if you didn't know who scum is? Kinda seems like an informed player trying to find a way for me to have been cornered

Yes, I would. The EV is higher than playing normally, which makes it a breaking strategy by definition. Also, I have enough respect for the accuracy of your reads as town to expect it to win above 67% in practice if we pick you as the person who picks the scumread.

For what it's worth, although mbaki thought quite strongly you were scum, I was unsure all game, even right up to the end, and proposed the strategy thinking you were more likely to be town. Put it this way: suppose you get confirmed via Rank (which is what town!you was "expecting" to happen), the game comes down to whether you can pick a target correctly. The breaking strategy leads to the

exact same

result if you're town (i.e. RC gets to pick scum to win), but additionally covers for the case where you're scum.

[callforjudgement]

Vengeful. It's just weird to have a lynch that you want to lynch town with. Maybe you change it so the lynch target gets a vengekill if they're town, then scum kill either way?

I believe the best use in the abstract is not so much to hit town, but to use it on a player who you're paranoid about / want to eliminate from the scumpool but aren't that sure they're scum. If it hits scum, great, you've gained a huge advantage from eliminating a player like that; if it hits town, you're

still

better off than you would be with a normal lynch.

[RadiantCowbells]

Although as an aside: scum misplayed horribly by making Moongrass the gladiator. There was no reason to ever let Creature/Chemist be the targets.)

Still not a misplay.

Chemist would have been a harder mislynch than the other people we needed to mislynch later.

I also needed to not push for too many townies before LyLo, and Creature was for sure losing if I didn't push him to live.

I considered it. It was wrong in the gamestate.

Losing scum is a meaningless heuristic, truly, except as far as 1 of 4 was concerned and we played around it.

[chennisden]

Coalition is completely overpowered.

We were not gonna gamble on arena. Also gave RC credit he used to win. Town knew ONE OF them were scum. Win the 1v1? Creature dies next day.

Vanilla mountanious is NOT scum sided 4 scum of 17 players. There are papers on arxiv which prove that mountanious assuming lynches and nightkill every night is fair when around sqrt n of all players are scum. You guys just expect town to fail whenever possible which isn't really true and besides shouldn't be compensated for.

[chennisden]

This is what the town does.

"oh chemist is town

time to kill creature!"

how is that arena ever a misplay?

[RadiantCowbells]

I mean

It would have been an extremely risky gamble

And given that I needed as much towncred as possible for lylo with w conftown I didn't want to be strongarming town into not lynching creature.

That would have been overreaching

[chennisden]

"I don't think there was anything wrong keeping the IC alive" is something I strongly disagree with. I've seen town get handed so many free wins based off of mechanics rather than play and I hate it

IMO aa soonas the IC is outted we need a way to kill them.

[Something_Smart]

Chennis, because there was nothing saying that they couldn't both be scum. And even after Creature flips scum, the math still dictates that Chemist has to die.

And if you want to argue that Dance proved it, which it didn't because scum should usually pair scum together in my opinion, then the misplay was leaving two Dance partners as Veto leftovers.

[RadiantCowbells]

Nancefloor super favored creature scum over chemist1422

Hard pushing chemist there probably loses us the game
Chemist could be mislynched later but like that would be harder than what we did

[chennisden]

Coalition gives a SHIT TON of info.

[chennisden]

Chennis, because there was nothing saying that they couldn't both be scum. And even after Creature flips scum, the math still dictates that Chemist has to die.

And if you want to argue that Dance proved it, which it didn't because scum should usually pair scum together in my opinion, then the misplay was leaving two Dance partners as Veto leftovers.

We look completely scummy if we push Chemist AFTER Creature THEN he flips town.

[RadiantCowbells]

Dance rly didn't prove anything

You're making determinations of the game using concrete facts as proxies that don't actually add up to what the gamestate actually was.

[Auro]

There are papers on arxiv which prove that mountanious assuming lynches and nightkill every night is fair when around sqrt n of all players are scum.

In theory (EV wise), yes; in practice, townsided I think.

[chennisden]

Dance was supposed to give us late game credit.