"Don't look too town as scum"

[Ankamius]

I remember calculating it a while back and I had like a 44-46%, somewhere in that range

And I was embarrassed

A sub .500 town win rate even on this site SHOULD be embarrassing for anyone who thinks they're good as town
(I believe I'm at 46% :P - fortunately I'm well ahead of the game in terms of blaming setup/teammates/luck/etc :P )

My playstyle is a bit too different from the norm here to be consistently usable I think

I have a lot (a LOT) of games where I can't get any headway at all and it's the worst feeling.

[mhsmith0]

If I discount my MYLO/LYLO sub ins I'd be .500 as town
If I also discount the setups that were troll-level balancing I'd be over .500 as town
If I also discount the setups where I blame my teammates for the loss I'd basically be undefeated
#NewMath

[mhsmith0]

I have a lot (a LOT) of games where I can't get any headway at all and it's the worst feeling.

idk u well enough to have any advice on how to avoid that feeling, sorry

[Ankamius]

I have a lot (a LOT) of games where I can't get any headway at all and it's the worst feeling.

idk u well enough to have any advice on how to avoid that feeling, sorry :(

I don't think it's fixable without a big meta shift tbh

[Creature]

As for town, I think you'd really want to be the good player scum wants to kill.

I find that my survive/endgame winrate is significantly better than my nightkill winrate.

So yeah, having good town players making long into the game may be one big step to win as town.

If you frequently get endgamed by scum, maybe you might be the bad player scum leaves alive for lategame.

This is exactly why I think read strength is vastly overrated on this site

If you are the only player with good reads, you need to be alive in order to exert your influence on the game enough that town can be pushed onto the right track before scum catch on and kill you.

Town wins when the last scum is killed, so you need to push the game in a direction that will result in every scum being lynched, even if it will take time to do.

Every convincing town victory I've ever taken part in functioned like this. There was always at least one scum that managed to stay hidden while their team collapsed, but it was impossible for town to lose since the game was on a trajectory towards eventually resulting in their death anyways.

Yet whenever I see postgames where town loses, a lot of the complaining is that people didn't have correct reads or went to bat for a scumread that they locked town, etc. etc. when a little bit of inspection beyond that would show that the problem is as simple as town universally ridiculing their reads when they first state them or something similar.

I kinda feel like this is a side effect of the community at large more than just the mafia side, since I feel like this issue only started around 2014 or 2015; at least my 2011 and 2012 games felt a lot different than they have the last few years; the older games focused on reads more since that was the prevailing issue that was losing town games if I remember correctly

Yeah, as someone who's often pointed out as having above than average reads yet being completely ignored during the practice, I can relate to this.

However, another thing I can relate to is that your reads D1 are often more likely to be wrong than your lategame reads. So if you're killed N1, you won't have the chance to fix your reads by adding something new and so it results on either: players ignoring you for your reads being "outdated", or players following your wrong reads.

It doesn't matter whether town simply sheeps the best player or not, everybody needs to actually have a decency when making reads. There gotta have multiple players that pose as a danger to scum so they can't get rid of all them before they solve the game.

[Persivul]

Like fucking creature has 11/8 scum wr

That's baseline

To be competent scum you gotta be far above that

And to be great scum you gotta be far above that.

There's no such thing as a good scum win rate in a vacuum.

I'd have more respect for someone with winrates of 60/60 town/scum, than someone with 30/100.

What about 60/100

Cuz that's what you're bashing me for

A few years ago when I checked you, your scum was 100 but your town was well under 50 (around 30 IIRC). You've either improved your reads, or it's just a fluctuation based on sample.

But really, anyone with a 100 scum rate over enough games is necessarily sacrificing part of their town game, unless that's 100 too.

[Creature]

I don't really think RC is sacrificing her towngame. At worst she can be paranoia lynched, but that's it.

I know plenty of players that are good as scum but atrocious as town, but I don't think RC is one of them.

[Persivul]

I don't really think RC is sacrificing her towngame.

The last game I played with him, I noted he was doing scummy things, and people said

Yeah, but he does scummy things as town too

, and so gave it a pass.

[Ankamius]

As for town, I think you'd really want to be the good player scum wants to kill.

I find that my survive/endgame winrate is significantly better than my nightkill winrate.

So yeah, having good town players making long into the game may be one big step to win as town.

If you frequently get endgamed by scum, maybe you might be the bad player scum leaves alive for lategame.

This is exactly why I think read strength is vastly overrated on this site

If you are the only player with good reads, you need to be alive in order to exert your influence on the game enough that town can be pushed onto the right track before scum catch on and kill you.

Town wins when the last scum is killed, so you need to push the game in a direction that will result in every scum being lynched, even if it will take time to do.

Every convincing town victory I've ever taken part in functioned like this. There was always at least one scum that managed to stay hidden while their team collapsed, but it was impossible for town to lose since the game was on a trajectory towards eventually resulting in their death anyways.

Yet whenever I see postgames where town loses, a lot of the complaining is that people didn't have correct reads or went to bat for a scumread that they locked town, etc. etc. when a little bit of inspection beyond that would show that the problem is as simple as town universally ridiculing their reads when they first state them or something similar.

I kinda feel like this is a side effect of the community at large more than just the mafia side, since I feel like this issue only started around 2014 or 2015; at least my 2011 and 2012 games felt a lot different than they have the last few years; the older games focused on reads more since that was the prevailing issue that was losing town games if I remember correctly

Yeah, as someone who's often pointed out as having above than average reads yet being completely ignored during the practice, I can relate to this.

However, another thing I can relate to is that your reads D1 are often more likely to be wrong than your lategame reads. So if you're killed N1, you won't have the chance to fix your reads by adding something new and so it results on either: players ignoring you for your reads being "outdated", or players following your wrong reads.

It doesn't matter whether town simply sheeps the best player or not, everybody needs to actually have a decency when making reads. There gotta have multiple players that pose as a danger to scum so they can't get rid of all them before they solve the game.

That is true in theory, but I don't think it holds in practice.

I think the problem is that the pool of competent players depletes faster than they can

create

more competent players; once the pool depletes... well, it's very much more difficult to reach a point where your reads can be good since the remaining town are either being just wrong or are being pushed in that direction by scum manipulating them.

It doesn't matter what exactly each player is doing, since as long as their trajectory results in eliminating the scum team or being a threat to it, they have to be taken into account for the scumteams nightkills.

[Ankamius]

Obligatory addendum that I'm referring to okay reads vs good reads vs great reads

Obviously if your read strength is just bad in all your games then you need to work on it, but you can have strong town games with okay reads; as long as you're able to pick out which scumread to push, the accuracy of the rest of your reads at that point matter a lot less.

[mhsmith0]

There's also a lot of validity in being able to develop a sense of when your reads seem really good and when you don't really have good reads
The latter is the kind of spot where you can end up forcing your crappy reads onto the gamestate and driving the game off a cliff, and is definitely a hurdle for a lot of people (even those who have good reads in a lot of games)
The flip side is that if you're TOO willing to compromise then you'll open yourself up to scum talking you off of good reads
As always, it's a balance and often a hard one at that.

[Ankamius]

A lot of that is recognizing how valid your reads are in general though

If you're seeing the same scummy nonsense pile up, they're probably scum. If you're scumreading someone for an offhand comment they made 50 pages ago, you should probably reassess.

[Creature]

There's also a lot of validity in being able to develop a sense of when your reads seem really good and when you don't really have good reads
The latter is the kind of spot where you can end up forcing your crappy reads onto the gamestate and driving the game off a cliff, and is definitely a hurdle for a lot of people (even those who have good reads in a lot of games)
The flip side is that if you're TOO willing to compromise then you'll open yourself up to scum talking you off of good reads
As always, it's a balance and often a hard one at that.

Yeah, Civilization mafia was a pretty good experience for me.

I felt like my reads were way more flexible than most players' (specially the tunnelers), and thus I managed to find scum where other town struggled to. Though, at some point I started secondguessing my townreads and opening a path for scum and the tunnelers to push a mislynch through.

Guess you need to ask if you're being reasonable or just paranoid about being wrong/letting your scumread slip away.

[Nancy Drew 39]

As for town, I think you'd really want to be the good player scum wants to kill.

I find that my survive/endgame winrate is significantly better than my nightkill winrate.

So yeah, having good town players making long into the game may be one big step to win as town.

If you frequently get endgamed by scum, maybe you might be the bad player scum leaves alive for lategame.

This is exactly why I think read strength is vastly overrated on this site

If you are the only player with good reads, you need to be alive in order to exert your influence on the game enough that town can be pushed onto the right track before scum catch on and kill you.

Town wins when the last scum is killed, so you need to push the game in a direction that will result in every scum being lynched, even if it will take time to do.

Every convincing town victory I've ever taken part in functioned like this. There was always at least one scum that managed to stay hidden while their team collapsed, but it was impossible for town to lose since the game was on a trajectory towards eventually resulting in their death anyways.

Yet whenever I see postgames where town loses, a lot of the complaining is that people didn't have correct reads or went to bat for a scumread that they locked town, etc. etc. when a little bit of inspection beyond that would show that the problem is as simple as town universally ridiculing their reads when they first state them or something similar.

I kinda feel like this is a side effect of the community at large more than just the mafia side, since I feel like this issue only started around 2014 or 2015; at least my 2011 and 2012 games felt a lot different than they have the last few years; the older games focused on reads more since that was the prevailing issue that was losing town games if I remember correctly

Town usually loses, when I die early, do to mislynching.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I remember calculating it a while back and I had like a 44-46%, somewhere in that range

And I was embarrassed

A sub .500 town win rate even on this site SHOULD be embarrassing for anyone who thinks they're good as town
(I believe I'm at 46% - fortunately I'm well ahead of the game in terms of blaming setup/teammates/luck/etc )

My playstyle is a bit too different from the norm here to be consistently usable I think

I have a lot (a LOT) of games where I can't get any headway at all and it's the worst feeling.

Yeah, it’s just luck to die early in the games, I’m most into. :/

[Ankamius]

That's probably linked, Nancy

Town that's hyperengaged is a threat to scum

[Nancy Drew 39]

I don't really think RC is sacrificing her towngame. At worst she can be paranoia lynched, but that's it.

I know plenty of players that are good as scum but atrocious as town, but I don't think RC is one of them.

RC has much better than average reads, he’s also really good at pushing those reads. My weakness is the latter. If town listened to me more, they would lose less but I really suck at convincing people.

[Ankamius]

I don't really think RC is sacrificing her towngame. At worst she can be paranoia lynched, but that's it.

I know plenty of players that are good as scum but atrocious as town, but I don't think RC is one of them.

RC has much better than average reads, he’s also really good at pushing those reads. My weakness is the latter. If town listened to me more, they would lose less but I really suck at convincing people. :(

There's a lot of ways to get your way outside of convincing people that your scumreads are scum

Go read through Necromancer again, it's a very good example of this in action

[Nancy Drew 39]

Obligatory addendum that I'm referring to okay reads vs good reads vs great reads

Obviously if your read strength is just bad in all your games then you need to work on it, but you can have strong town games with okay reads; as long as you're able to pick out which scumread to push, the accuracy of the rest of your reads at that point matter a lot less.

I have much better reads than average but I don’t do well at explaining them, so town all too frequently underestimates me, to its detriment. I’m terrible at casing people, especially.

[Nancy Drew 39]

That's probably linked, Nancy

Town that's hyperengaged is a threat to scum

Yeah, true, because when I’m not, I have no clue what’s going on. I’ve actually been frozen as both town and scum. I do the best in games with complex mechanics for some reason. The more traditional the game, the worse I play.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I don't really think RC is sacrificing her towngame. At worst she can be paranoia lynched, but that's it.

I know plenty of players that are good as scum but atrocious as town, but I don't think RC is one of them.

RC has much better than average reads, he’s also really good at pushing those reads. My weakness is the latter. If town listened to me more, they would lose less but I really suck at convincing people.

There's a lot of ways to get your way outside of convincing people that your scumreads are scum

Go read through Necromancer again, it's a very good example of this in action

If you recall, scum bullied me and I sort of flaked. Part of the main reason I can be super aggressive, is to guard against that.

[Ankamius]

Obligatory addendum that I'm referring to okay reads vs good reads vs great reads

Obviously if your read strength is just bad in all your games then you need to work on it, but you can have strong town games with okay reads; as long as you're able to pick out which scumread to push, the accuracy of the rest of your reads at that point matter a lot less.

I have much better reads than average but I don’t do well at explaining them, so town all too frequently underestimates me, to its detriment. I’m terrible at casing people, especially.

Start small and work your way up

Start with people who are scumreading your top scumread but not very much, they'll be easier to convince. Then go to nulls. After that, it should be easy to shift enough people for a lynch.

You can also try to convince the nonentities first or those that aren't super engaged, at least then people will

have

to pay attention to your read.

You can also cockblock the wagons on your townreads and convince enough people that they are town that they have to restructure their reads, which is an opportunity to get another wagon going.

There's a lot of ways to do it, you just need to find one that will work for that specific game.

[Ankamius]

I don't really think RC is sacrificing her towngame. At worst she can be paranoia lynched, but that's it.

I know plenty of players that are good as scum but atrocious as town, but I don't think RC is one of them.

RC has much better than average reads, he’s also really good at pushing those reads. My weakness is the latter. If town listened to me more, they would lose less but I really suck at convincing people. :(

There's a lot of ways to get your way outside of convincing people that your scumreads are scum

Go read through Necromancer again, it's a very good example of this in action

If you recall, scum bullied me and I sort of flaked. Part of the main reason I can be super aggressive, is to guard against that.

I'm referring to day 2, look at how the day started and how the game shifted to an overwhelming town win by the end of the day.

[Creature]

There's a lot of ways to get your way outside of convincing people that your scumreads are scum

Faking guilties on them.

[Ankamius]

There's a lot of ways to get your way outside of convincing people that your scumreads are scum

Faking guilties on them.

If you want people to stop trusting you in the future sure