Mini Theme 2161: Undertale C Open - Chara's Folly

[Elements]

but even if we fail to fight Chara and hit a townie, the mafia were all forced to avoid the terrible scenario of Chara being fought, so their flip gives us something to work with. i really think we can hit at least

one

mafia in the ensuing fights.

if everyone is looking in the wrong direction for chara this doesn't help at all though

[Chara]

but if we spare today? sure, mafia wants Chara to be spared, but if they feel it won't happen they aren't backed into a corner like that.

Spoiler: desperation. that's what i want.

[Prism]

Night 4 isn't skipped in 4 fight scenario. It's a town loss.

I suspect that "Town wins is two mafia are fought", regardless of which two it is, is a more straightforward way of framing the wincon for 4. I would need to doublecheck

[Prism]

Nevermind I can't read.

[Elements]

Night 4 isn't skipped in 4 fight scenario. It's a town loss.

there's the catch
it is an auto win
but for the mafia

[Chara]

but even if we fail to fight Chara and hit a townie, the mafia were all forced to avoid the terrible scenario of Chara being fought, so their flip gives us something to work with. i really think we can hit at least

one

mafia in the ensuing fights.

if everyone is looking in the wrong direction for chara this doesn't help at all though

that's an if. we can try, can't we? getting any mafia is a victory. hitting town just means we lose the autowin and try for mafia again the next day.

if we spare, we flounder without any real confirmation of how we're doing. we don't have the benefit of an IC this time, Hectic. you left the game temporarily, so i don't know if you remember the frustration of no flips until town finally fought Farkran.

[Prism]

Eh Night 4 is indeed skipped but it doesn't matter because the previous day is 2v3. Maybe we can no spare/no fight but that seems silly. I don't want to think through Chara fight->2 town fights->single spare right now.

[Prism]

I don't think you're counting the vengeful but I'll cut the mech talk short for now

[Chara]

I don't think you're counting the vengeful but I'll cut the mech talk short for now

cut it short? you're right, i didn't take the vengeful into account. we still need to fight a mafia besides Chara.

but that doesn't change my position. it just means fighting Chara isn't quite auto. but we'd need to fight a non-Chara mafia if we failed to hit them day 1, anyways.

so, i still want blood.

[Elements]

this conversation has me confuzzled

[Prism]

so i don't know if you remember the frustration of no flips until town finally fought Farkran.

Speaking of, that game was an excellent example of why the "it's easy to get townreads" assumption is kind of bogus. Without disrespect, Farkran essentially hardclaimed scum at one point (mad at being called bad scum, fine with everyone calling him bad town) but almost all of the town refused to budge on their concrete TR on him. Plus literally the entire game was wrong on you. One game isn't a huge sample size, but you get the idea.

Still took eons to get him voted, even among players that really should have known better because they were insistent on townreading the dumbest stuff.

[Chara]

in other news, i have to TR puppy.

i don't think Prism has done anything AI yet but i do really want them to be town.

[Chara]

so i don't know if you remember the frustration of no flips until town finally fought Farkran.

Speaking of, that game was an excellent example of why the "it's easy to get townreads" assumption is kind of bogus. Without disrespect, Farkran essentially hardclaimed scum at one point (mad at being called bad scum, fine with everyone calling him bad town) but almost all of the town refused to budge on their concrete TR on him. Plus literally the entire game was wrong on you. One game isn't a huge sample size, but you get the idea.

Still took eons to get him voted, even among players that really should have known better because they were insistent on townreading the dumbest stuff.

it wasn't the entire game. Psyche would have had me if we hadn't killed them, and i believe there were others.
but yes, i see your point. it's not as easy to get town as one might think, and i'm particularly weary of players like Elements who, even if they were not being serious, are throwing out townreads left and right.

and the drain of no flips besides scum kills can't be understated.

[CantHateAPuppy]

reading all this, i think the right play is:

fight today
fight or spare tomorrow

fight today gives a chance of hitting chara -> autowin, and even if we hit town we get the chara anyways. that's two flips

if we spare today, we basically have to spare tomorrow too or the chara squirms out. that's two days without flips except nightkills which seems like too much imo. but if we wanted to spare tomorrow, 1-3 spares isn't that different from the 0 spares path (?)

[CantHateAPuppy]

townhunting is powerful, better than scumhunting imo, but we can townhunt inside the fight framework too. even if it's not as fun as doing somtehing different by sparing ( )

but if we're going to spare anyone, it should be me because 1) im town 2) im obvtown

(ok, ok, besides tanner from earlier i also kind of like pooky, i just think there are some good vibes there. i want to like hectic more than i actually do rn tbh)

[Elements]

this is a game
it's meant to be fun
sparing is the more fun path
we should spare

[CantHateAPuppy]

god i wish that was true

[catboi]

Alright well my numbers differ from Hectic's (31% town win for 4 spare) but I still don't think it's optimal and I'm tired of typing a line of 50 fractions into Google that are probably wrong (45%+ w/r for four eliminations is almost certainly wrong) so I'm throwing my computer out the window and calling it a day for now.

someone call me when RVS is over I haven't played that phase in years

HURT: catboi deliberately misleading line is assigning intent that I don't really think is there

No, that's right, it's 31% EV, literally worse than the EV you'd have if we mis-executed 3 times in a row. It's pre-emptively shooting yourself in the foot. Genocide route EV is 47%, and it goes higher if you factor in the ability to spare in a 3v2 endgame scenario, above 50%

I was going to do a fancy table showing all the math but that would take way too much time so instead I'm just gonna post from my excel sheet, feel free to check my work

Pacifism Route:

Genocide Route:

(you might have to open the images in a new tab - forum is resizing them so they're harder to read

arguments about finding town being easier than finding scum are mostly fallacious arguments to probabilty, people just guess town more accurately because most people are town, and this willfully ignores the fact that scum are going to kill people off and you have to be near-perfect in your townreads to win via pacifism. arguments about chara associatives feel willfully disingenuous (you get the same associatives from a day 1 elimination without risk of an instant loss - scum don't want to bus chara)

[catboi]

｜。｀＞Д＜｜ Playing pro-scum isn't my idea of fun.

[Prism]

I am actually blown away that both of those calculations were right on the dot, 46.9% and 31.2%. Guess I should have more faith in myself.

Count me on board with the 1-3 spares.

[Prism]

Excel. So much better than paper and typing fractions into Google.

man's a genius

[Chara]

townhunting is powerful, better than scumhunting imo, but we can townhunt inside the fight framework too.

oh, you're my favourite.

listen. Hectic, Prism, and i played the previous version of this game. Hectic was spared early so he didn't suffer with us. i was scum, so i was suffering for an entirely different reason, but our scumteam was literally leaning on the apathy and frustration that came midgame as town struggled with no elimination flips.

[CantHateAPuppy]

aw, thanks! hi chara, i'm puppy! if you do something cool maybe i'll townread you (do something cool do something cool do something cool)

[Chara]

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

this is a game
it's meant to be fun
sparing is the more fun path
we should spare

10/10