[REVIEW] Open Setup Reviews

[Vi]

It should be pretty easy to pick one between Bugs Bunny and Near-Vanilla - probably Near-Vanilla.

Likewise between 2:2:9 and Masons/Monks, unless you think they're substantially different enough.

FEE and FEETOG can probably be one-or-the-other as well. Having been scum in a F&E game and after doing the math on what it means if your partner gets crosskilled, I'm more in favor of That Other Guy.

I'm surprised that Mafia has won both games of Bad Tweed. Even so, you would think that optimum play in that kind of game would be to No Lynch three times in a row.

The major reason no one has complained about C/9 yet is because in that one game where the RNG threw the two Goons against two Cops and a Doctor, the Doc role went to Rosso Carne, who proceeded to do absolutely nothing with it.

[Hoopla]

I'm surprised that Mafia has won both games of Bad Tweed. Even so, you would think that optimum play in that kind of game would be to No Lynch three times in a row.

I'm not - it's a scumsided setup. You're guaranteed to lynch town D1, as scum can fakeclaim cop to scare town off. And when you only have three mislynches available, two cops aren't going to lynch you three scum before you mislynch twice, especially when scum have a miller/Godfather maker. It probably is optimal to no-lynch D1 and unless someone has a guilty, no-lynch on D2.

I still wouldn't expect town to win more than 40% of the time, though.

[Vi]

I'm surprised that Mafia has won both games of Bad Tweed. Even so, you would think that optimum play in that kind of game would be to No Lynch three times in a row.

I'm not - it's a scumsided setup. You're guaranteed to lynch town D1, as scum can fakeclaim cop to scare town off. And when you only have three mislynches available, two cops are going to lynch you three scum before you mislynch twice, especially when scum have a miller/Godfather maker. It probably is optimal to no-lynch D1 and unless someone has a guilty, no-lynch on D2.

I still wouldn't expect town to win more than 40% of the time, though.

Would adding a player/mislynch help?

[Hoopla]

Maybe, but I think that just reinforces no-lynch D1 (and D2) as the right play, as there's less chance of you losing a Cop.

[Vi]

Maybe, but I think that just reinforces no-lynch D1 (and D2) as the right play, as there's less chance of you losing a Cop.

So bin it?

[Hoopla]

I wouldn't lose sleep over binning Bad Tweed. I think binning C/9 is the right move too.

I also agree with not keeping EVERY 2:2:8/2:2:9 setup we have, as a lot of them are kind of samey.

[Zachrulez]

Not sure how I feel about Bad Tweed as a setup, but having played in one of the games where it was run, I can say a lot of bad town lost a game that was pretty winnable. (And me failing to claim with 2 innocent results because of the tailor aspect and one of those results ultimately getting lynched.)

[Hoopla]

Obviously each player won't play optimally, and real game results will deviate from what you can theoretically expect, but in simple to analyse setups like Bad Tweed, repeated play should eventually yield widely followed optimal strategies for each team. I think no-lynch D1 with minimal discussion, followed by any guilty claims immediately on D2 is optimal. If there is none, hypo-cop the innocent results for insurance against the N2 kill, and no-lynch again. Regardless of what happens, Day 3 should be the day you massclaim and try to PoE as much as you can.

For scum, it is optimal to for the Tailor to target itself on N1 to guarantee it gets to use its action again on N2.

Even if this isn't the

exact

plan town should use (I'm sure you could tweak it for slight benefit), I really can't see sense in playing it without some sort of structured investigating and claiming plan as town. As far as I'm concerned, we can do better with setup design - nobody wants to play games that revolve around optimising claiming and PoE strategies.

[Zachrulez]

It's funny cause in that game I really didn't think much about how to play the setup, I was playing more of a scumhunting game. The one scum we did lynch we actually lynched over suggesting hypocop innocent results. (Which was felt would make it easier to find the actual cop (s) due to scum's inside knowledge.)

[DarthYoshi]

Maf framer is such a swingy role that it, + the 2 cops makes Bad Tweed a really hard setup to balance, but if we can find a way to balance having a framer in an open setup, it'd be nice to keep it around.

Also--I had a small setup in the open thread discussion thread that I hope to run when I /in to the Open queue next (hopefully later this month), and it got nommed, so if y'all want to discuss it here, it'd be sweet. I think I called it "Medical School of Hard Knocks" or something similar:

1 Mafia Rolecop
1 Mafia Goon

1 Town-Aligned Tracker
2 Town-Aligned Armed Compulsive Doctors
4 Vanilla Townies

Special mechanics:

The ACDs are doctors who must protect every night. If their protection is ever successful, they are notified, stripped of their protect power, and given a one-shot vig ability.

The mafia has a factional one-shot strongman ability.

Day start.

[Hoopla]

Can the Role Cop kill and investigate in the same night?

[Max]

Why the Red for Nightlesses (3:8 and 3:3:6)?

[Hoopla]

I think we've had enough 4:8 Nightless games to conclude it's

probably

not balanced. People will point to the EV for the setup, but it's not a relevant factor when you compare it to the EV of other games, as it doesn't operate like a normal game. The dynamic of scum not being able to remove obvious townies hurts them supremely. Couple that with the positive feedback of rewarding the town with an extra mislynch every time they lynch scum, the game gets progressively more difficult for scum the deeper the game goes.

Nightless games beyond a certain size will always suffer these problems, and though you can say "well, scum just needs to look the most townie in the game", it is very difficult to achieve. In a normal game, scum get to eliminate 3-5 of those more townie than them (and still sometimes lose) - it's unrealistic to expect to scum to regularly occupy the towniest slots in the game, in the same way it's unrealistic to expect town to scumhunt super well in a 2:7 mountainous game. You can say "this is what you need to do, and you didn't do it", but it's an unrealistic expectation. There's not enough room for error for town in that game, and there's not enough room for error for scum in this Nightless format.

Scum's best opportunity to win a Nightless game is to get the four mislynches required in a row before town can use connect-the-scum analysis efficiently (and earns extra mislynches). Getting those four mislynches before you lose a scummate is rather difficult in a game with a high density of scum, though.

As for 3:3:6 Nightless, it's probably closer to balanced, although I daresay a lot less fun. I'm not sure if you've played in any games where mods try and be awesome by pumping loads of scum into the game? They lurk and the game stalls, because that's what scum do. The only time it was run it was abandoned - this setup doesn't exactly scream "APPROVE ME"!

[Empking]

Why not just move 4:8 to 4:7 or something like that? It would be a shame to lose what is probably the most important mechanic change from this site.

[Hoopla]

Why not just move 4:8 to 4:7 or something like that? It would be a shame to lose what is probably the most important mechanic change from this site.

It's a good base mechanic for small games, ie; Lovers Mafia and most of the 5-8p games, but it falls apart when its too large. I don't think dropping it to 4:7 is a very good fix - it might solve overall balance by allowing more games to be won by a scumsweep, but it doesn't fix positive feedback issues, and can still trap scum if they lose two or three scum members as it's hard for scum to appear as the most townie player in the game.

[GreyICE]

If scum have lost two or three members and HAVEN'T earned any town cred they deserve their loss.

That being said all nightless setups that size suffer from the same thing - the more scum get lynched, the longer the game goes. 7:4 can be done in 3 lynches, but if one is scum, it takes 5, and then if another one hits scum it takes 7. Third scum? 9. It gets more and more and more painful for the scum and the town.

[DarthYoshi]

Can the Role Cop kill and investigate in the same night?

Yes.

[Hoopla]

Can the Role Cop kill and investigate in the same night?

Yes.

Let me ask you something; do you think a setup with 2 Goons, 3 Innocent Childs and 4 Townies would be balanced?

[Max]

Perhaps a "fix" would be to change the positive feedback so for every scum lynch they get a kill. I know it's technically a very different set-up but nightlesses are special.

The length can be reduced by operating a "quick lynch mechanic" that I've seen old nightlesses use. Number of scum + 1 is a lynch.

[Empking]

None of those are proper Nightless.

[GreyICE]

Yeah well fuck proper, the point is to have a good game.

[Empking]

Yeah well fuck proper, the point is to have a good game.

But Max's ideas weren't really there to get a good game but to rehalibate the nightless mechanic. There's no point trying to rehalibate nightless if you need to gut it to do so.

[Hoopla]

Perhaps a "fix" would be to change the positive feedback so for every scum lynch they get a kill. I know it's technically a very different set-up but nightlesses are special.

We have that setup: No Lynching Town

[Zachrulez]

If scum have lost two or three members and HAVEN'T earned any town cred they deserve their loss.

That being said all nightless setups that size suffer from the same thing - the more scum get lynched, the longer the game goes. 7:4 can be done in 3 lynches, but if one is scum, it takes 5, and then if another one hits scum it takes 7. Third scum? 9. It gets more and more and more painful for the scum and the town.

Hey GreyICE, read this game and suggest to me how you would counter the problem we faced in this game.

You get to lylo, scum lynch, BAM, town gets two more. Happened more than once there.

Edit: Setup's not 8-4 nightless, but I think it illustrates the point all the same.

[DarthYoshi]

Can the Role Cop kill and investigate in the same night?

Yes.

Let me ask you something; do you think a setup with 2 Goons, 3 Innocent Childs and 4 Townies would be balanced?

No. Though that's not this setup.