[REVIEW] Open Setup Reviews

[Shadow Dancer]

Yes, according to EV wiki page science has about 37% town win probability.
I personally think that we should aim to only approve 2-faction-setups with win percantages of (50 +/- 10)% for each faction.
Also SCIENCE is badly designed because an encryptor as power role makes no sense in a two man scum team.
I would start by grouping very similar setups together and then find out which player numbers are required to make a certain setup type balanced, keep those setup variants that are (or make up new ones) and throw out all the rest.

I guess we could all agree on this definition of "balance" : A game is considered balanced when there is no breaking strategies from the start, a reasonable town win probability calculated with basic routine (no more than 60% no less than 40% without 3rd party - no more than 55% with 3rd party) and an interesting mechanic that makes people want to play it (because it's pointless to discuss balance on a game nobody wants to play - like mountainous *cough*)

No. This is not a definition of balance. When a setup is broken it means that one side has an optimal strategy that grants them significantly higher win percentages. A setup can force one-sided strategies on both factions and still be balanced under optimal play of both sides. In that case it's stale but definitely not broken. However this should be avoided, too, because it makes in-game experience rather one-sided and boring (I guess it's OK for micro sized games).
I don't agree on mountaineous. The only problem with any mountaineous setup is that it requires absurdly high numbers of townies to make it balanced.

Firstly, I will gladly play Mountainous. Secondly, ev calculations assume random lynches - town should be able to do better. For a mini-sized game or smaller I would personally think an ev of 40% is right around what you want.

Garbage. This assumes that scum could

not

fare better... Which is obviously wrong and totally disregards the fact that it's the scum faction which starts out with an inherent advantage (that cannot be quantified, however). Also in a mountainous the scum faction corrodes from the bottom (i.e. the weakest player dies first) while town, through the night kill, is also majorly decimated from the top, which automatically leads to an expected endgame with good scum vs. mediocre town.
Are there any mountaineous setups that have been run sufficiently often to provide significant statistics on actual percentages? I predict that they are worse for town than theory based on random lynches predicts.

[Shadow Dancer]

Any set-up wherein scum have a greater inherent advantage would have random lynching as a breaking strategy and are thus problematic (that may be a valid knock against Mountainous, now that I think about it).

That'd be pretty much the short version, yes.

I wouldn't call random lynching a breaking strategy, though. It's just the most boring possible stale strategy.

[Shadow Dancer]

Adding a single power role such as a mafia role blocker would still have the setup as broken if said PR ever dies...

Maybe making some of the docs jailkeepers would help, maybe also giving the mafia a jailkeeper... But the basic problem to me seems to be that too many identical power roles in a game just don't work - and always for basically the same reason. vig - texas justice, circle shot, docs - see here: Circle protect... Same with trackers or watchers obviously... Too many investigation roles are a problem anyway... We had the discussion about mass roleblockers in the setup uggestion thread... I think for something like this to work you need some special mechanic roles that are designed to limit this kind of breaking strats.

[Shadow Dancer]

So with my

Jungle Republic

game (O319) recently finished I wanted to share some thoughts/opinions that came up in the setup discussions around that game.

First of I like the idea with two assymetric scum teams in general and definitely think a setup like that should be in the pool.

The particular game in question played out in an unusual way: It was day 4 and 2:2:2 with the seer and tw of his investigations (both mafia) alive. But mafia decided to not wait for a seer claim and claimed both mafia. After that the seer claimed and was counterclaimed by one of the wolves. Town and mafia lynched correctly, so it was 1:2:2 with confirmed mafia and seer at nightstart, making a 1:1:2 with all roles confirmed inevitable ,and forcing a "happily ever after" draw, had the last wolf not given up and night killed the seer in that situation.
Based on that game and how it played out I think the following issues need to be taken into consideration:

I. Win conditions

If 1:1:1 is considered a mafia win 2:2:1 consequently needs to be added to the list of mafia wins, too. It just makes no sense to declare one kingmaker situation for town a win but not the other.

II. swinginess

I personally don't like hard cop roles. We mostly had a consensus that success for town depends way too much on how long the seer stays alive in the current setup and the games, that have been played with the setup also show a strong tendency towards this dependency. I'd like to see a derivative that uses different, weaker power roles.

III. 12p vs. 13p

No docs and only 1 night kill. So normally 13 players would be a natural choice. However, that would make the game ending in a kingmaker situation for town much more likely which is a bit awkward and in case of a mafia vs. town (nightless) endgame it would not make a difference on priciple. This is mostly a mathematical question and math for that setup is already quite time consuming... Undecided on this point...

IV. lynch majorities

With special attention to the 1:1:2 endgame situation I suggest a mandatory minority lynch rule (i.e. leading waggon is lynched at deadline, even if it lacks absolute majority). That would allow town to force a lynch in that situation and avoid the "happily ever after". However, I am aware that said situation of 1:1:2 with every role being confirmed can only occur as the result of faulty mafia play. On the other hand it might not always be suboptimal for mafia to not claim their roles, for example if town is on the right track and mafia don't see a chance to win they might consider claiming to achieve a draw.
wolf+mafia could still force a no-lynch by both explicitely voting no-lynch (which then would tale priority unless there aren't further modifications to lynch rules) though.

[Shadow Dancer]

(shakes head)

The reason that 1:1:1 is a mafia win is that a pure kingmaker endgame sucks, and also, if mafia didn't win ties, then there's no way a mafia could win if he's the last member of is scumgroup.

2:2:1, though, is quite different. At that point, no one knows who is in what scumgroup for sure, no-lynch isn't an option since that just gives the game to the wolves, and it comes down to an actual game of mafia where each scum group is trying to lynch the other for the win.

...and the lone townie with no chance at all to win still randomly decides the game for any of the other factions, no matter how he votes... Only alternative to circumvent the kingmaker situation altogether is obviously if both scumteams agree to lynch the townie, which the mafia team will avoid at all cost because it results in werewolf win.

So let's say all roles are publicly unknown (only scum partners are confirmed to each other) - It's 2:2:1 or 1:1:1

if town votes for any one else in either situation it's mafia win if they lynch wolf (instantly in 1:1:1 situation, in 2:2:1 via 1:2:0 and 1:1:1 after night kill are both mafia wins) and wolf win if they lynch mafia (instantly in 1:1:1, in 2:2:1 via 2:1:0 or 2:0:1 after nighkill).

if town votes no lynch (or just prevents a lynch by not voting) it's on the wolves to night kill correctly and either win via 1:0:1 / 2:1:1 or lose via 1:1:0 / 2:2:0.

Finally if the townie is lynched it's a wolf-win (1:0:0 or 2:1:0 after night kill).

As you can see both situations play out exactly the same and hence shoult be treated analogously.