M1015 - Super Mafioso Bros

[worcej]

I live for this.

*insert MJ popcorn eating meme*

[worcej]

Since I have had a night's sleep and am now un-silenced (thanks, Bo, fair enough), I'd just like to endorse all of drunk Jamie's angry comments.

Hanging lurkers is a legitimate policy and we should actually bloody do it.

I've tried to tell people this several times - look back at old games, there is always a scum in the lurkers

[Jamiet99uk]

Since I have had a night's sleep and am now un-silenced (thanks, Bo, fair enough), I'd just like to endorse all of drunk Jamie's angry comments.

Hanging lurkers is a legitimate policy and we should actually bloody do it.

I've tried to tell people this several times - look back at old games, there is always a scum in the lurkers

Absolutely. I'm 100% serious. I'm actually going to carry out a small review of past games - results later...

[Jamiet99uk]

M1015
D2 lowest three posters
Summit (SCUM)
Rdrivera
Macca (SCUM)

M58
D2 lowest three posters:
BobMcBob (SCUM)
EMC
Rdrivera

(I have omitted SarahK as she basically didn't show up)

M1014
D2 lowest three posters:
MoscowFleet
Goldfinger
Hamilton Brian

M57
D2 lowest three posters:
Chaqa
Hellenic Riot (SCUM)
Therul (SCUM)

M1013
D2 lowest three posters
Rdrivera
EMC
Summit

M56
D2 lowest three posters
JF1981
Flash (SCUM)
BismarckAlive

M1011
D2 lowest three posters
Neph
Damo (SCUM)
Tom Bombadil

M55
D2 lowest three posters
Sarah
Flash
Bismarck

M1010
D2 lowest three posters
Rdrivera
Bo_Sox
Damo (SCUM)

M54
D2 lowest three posters
Bo_Sox
Pjandy
EMC

M53
D2 lowest three posters
Kitsune (SCUM)
Squigs
Xorxes

M1009
D2 lowest three posters
Flavius (SCUM)
EMC
Foodcoats (SCUM)

M52
D2 lowest three posters
Supersition
Rdrivera
Tom Bombadil

M51
D2 lowest three posters
ItsHosuke
KalelChase (SCUM)
Kitsune

M50
D2 lowest three posters
Yuuki
Vecna (SCUM)
Damo

M49
D2 lowest three posters
Kitsune (SCUM)
Tom Bombadil
Yuuki

M48
D2 lowest three posters
EMC
Carambola
ItsHosuke (SCUM)

M47
D2 lowest three posters
ItsHosuke (SCUM)
Dargorygel (SCUM)
Rdrivera

M46
D2 lowest three posters
MoscowFleet
ConnorCompton
Percy Williams

M1007
D2 lowest three posters
MoscowFleet (SCUM)
VashtaNeurotic
Percy Williams

[Hellenic Riot]

Out of interest, why are you doing D2 instead of D1?

[Jamiet99uk]

What I've just posted there is a review of the last 20 games, and for each, a list of the three lowest-posting players on Day Two of the game.

I specifically selected D2 because I noticed that D1 would feature some n00b not showing up at all and having to be replaced out, or someone finding they didn't have time to play and asking to be subbed, which skewed the results somewhat. Whereas by D3, in some games, enough people had died to also skew the sample of the remainder.

That's 20 games and therefore 60 total slots in the "three lowest D2 posters" column.

In those 60 slots, 18 were scum. Thus, 30% of the "three lowest D2 posters", across 20 games, were scum.

In various articles I've read on Mafia setup and balance, it's generally suggested that a Mafia to Town ratio of about 25% is balanced (notwithstanding the impact of powerful roles).

So, in the last 20 games, all other factors being equal, if you'd voted to hang in the three lowest posters D2, you'd have had a 5% better chance of hitting scum, than just voting completely at random.

5% may not be much but it's significant enough for me to remain of the opinion that hanging lurkers early in the game is a totally valid town strategy.

[Jamiet99uk]

Sorry:

*D1 would quite often feature some n00b.....

[Hellenic Riot]

I'll plug into a spreadsheet to give you exact numbers if you like

[flash2015]

Note to self: Make sure you are the fourth lowest poster...

[Hellenic Riot]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing


Aite, I went through and found how many scum were alive D2 for each game (and included 3P's which won at the expense of town as scum, though I was rapid scanning the role descriptions there) to compare how eliminating in the lurkers vs eliminating in the non-lurkers would turn out. Shout out to all you fuckers who ran games which didn't reveal alignment upon death so I had to dig to find God QT's instead of just being able to read it off the Bot

In 13 of the 20 games, there was a better chance of removing a scum if you eliminated within the top 3 D2 Lurkers, so 65% of the time it improved the chances.

However, when averaged across all 20 games, by narrowing your elimination-pool to just the top three D2 lurkers, your overall probability of eliminating scum only increased by 2.98% - And that's including 3P's in there.


So in conclusion: It does seem as if it *might* increase chances, but I'd say that 2.98% is so small as to be insignificant, and in reality scumhunting is still probably better than arbitrary lurker policies... Particularly given that as Flash has pointed out, if the scum know this is going to happen then they'll probably just not lurk.

[Hellenic Riot]

Oh, and for fun I decided to run the numbers of people who appear more than once on the lurker list to see if we could work things out about individuals.

rdrivera & emc are the people who appeared the most times, with 6 and 5 appearances respectively... And both of them were town 100% of the time! Guess you guys need to lurk more as scum

Nobody else appeared more than three times. Out of the people who did appear multiple times, only damo666, Kitsune, and ItsHosuke were scum more than 50% of the times they were on the list.

This is also on the spreadsheet

[Vecna]

spicy

[bo_sox48]

The problem with employing kill-a-lurker as a strategy has little to do with the merits of killing lurkers and a lot more to do with the fact that town generally plays it badly.

Firstly, town loves to pick on a person based exclusively on post count, which is absurd and arbitrary. Town will take player X, with 25 posts across the entire game, and ensure they die before player Y, who has 45 posts across the entire game, even though player X has actually done things of substance and player Y has only feigned interest in doing so. It is very difficult to differentiate between the two, and thus, as is the nature of the game, it allows the scumteam to come in and manipulate who town drives. Once the first lurker that flips turns out to be town, other town players reasonably begin to question their strategy and will not lynch another lurker even when among their next candidates they could find scum. Thus ends your foolproof strategy, one townie fewer.

Secondly, in the event that town avoids the trap of killing the lowest poster (or the perceived least involved player) first and actually targets the right lurker, the scumteam has easy and effortless ways of hanging their hat on the wagon of their teammate without it really having any momentum. It is rare for town to coalesce around lynching lurkers; it's a boring strategy, for one, and it allows for very little independent thought, which townies generally enjoy. Thus, the scumteam says "hey, we'll lynch lurkers," and then are excused from doing anything else of substance while storing up a bunch of towncred later when they just knew that this uninvolved player was scum because of reasons they had days to come up with while everyone else spun their wheels.

Thirdly, the most frequent issue with kill-a-lurker is that PRs get outed this way. PRs are wise to play a lot like mafia and avoid sharing everything. Naturally, they're going to lurk a little bit. If you go off of post counts, you're going to find your PRs just as often as you'll find scum, and I don't think that's a good tradeoff.

Jamie, I encourage you to take this experiment the other way. Look back at the same set of previous games and tell me who among the highest posters was scum. Are the numbers the same? Perhaps you could dig even deeper along with that list and find out who was actually daykilled in each of these games. I would bet that you find the highest posters are killed more than the lowest posters, and I bet that is despite the fact that the highest posters are scum less frequently than the lowest posters.

For me, the best strategy for finding scum is determining someone's motivations for how they play. If they are the highest poster, are they trying to misdirect or are they simply very loudmouthed about what they think? If they are the lowest poster, are they trying to hide, or are they simply uncaring? If they are trying to hide, why are they trying to hide? That is often the most difficult of these questions to answer and why I personally find it difficult to determine who among the low posters is likely the scumteam and who among the low posters is a PR or townie that just isn't outgoing enough. But answering those questions are basically how I craft my gut reads, which, as evidenced by this game, are a lot better than my "HR had to have been the one who killed Vecna" reads.

[kgray]

For me, the best strategy for finding scum is determining someone's motivations for how they play. If they are the highest poster, are they trying to misdirect or are they simply very loudmouthed about what they think? If they are the lowest poster, are they trying to hide, or are they simply uncaring? If they are trying to hide, why are they trying to hide? That is often the most difficult of these questions to answer and why I personally find it difficult to determine who among the low posters is likely the scumteam and who among the low posters is a PR or townie that just isn't outgoing enough. But answering those questions are basically how I craft my gut reads, which, as evidenced by this game, are a lot better than my "HR had to have been the one who killed Vecna" reads.

Just to add to this based on the most recent game (from a skewed perspective, obviously, since I already knew everyone's alignments), I don't think Macca's and summit's post counts were really what was scummy. They both struggled to come up with reads and I think that should have been a lot more incriminating than the number of posts they wrote. Jamie did touch on this with Macca, but that line of thinking didn't seem to take off. Of course, them struggling to come up with reads did result in a lower post count... but that may not always be the case.

Also, sidenote for bo: Vecna was 100% a fearkill. He was literally the last person I wanted with me in the endgame (also nobody scumread him D1), and I was ecstatic to see you assume an "experienced" player had to be the one to kill him.

[worcej]

Also, an important note is lurking does not just mean low post count. For instance, I do not consider rdr to be a lurker normally - he typically always has low post counts, but usually the posts have good substance to them.

Lurker is low post and low content.

[rdrivera2005]

Oh, and for fun I decided to run the numbers of people who appear more than once on the lurker list to see if we could work things out about individuals.

rdrivera & emc are the people who appeared the most times, with 6 and 5 appearances respectively... And both of them were town 100% of the time! Guess you guys need to lurk more as scum

Nobody else appeared more than three times. Out of the people who did appear multiple times, only damo666, Kitsune, and ItsHosuke were scum more than 50% of the times they were on the list.

This is also on the spreadsheet

I always said I am much better as scum...

[rdrivera2005]

Also, an important note is lurking does not just mean low post count. For instance, I do not consider rdr to be a lurker normally - he typically always has low post counts, but usually the posts have good substance to them.

Lurker is low post and low content.

I always say this too.

I agree with Kgray that the difficulty to give reads should have raised an alert on Macca (and Summit). I tunneled HR so hard I let Kgray slip after D2. I guess it was an unresolved Matrix game....

[ghug]

Nobody's considering the active detriment of even town lurkers to town in the numerical assessments. They're hard to read. They rarely do anything useful. Someone not reliably around EoD can turn a KYLO win into a Kylo Ren.

Back in my past life when I was capable of winning sometimes as scum, I always made it a goal to kill off talkative people as much as possible, whether by day kill or night kill.

Lurkers are a pretty solid place to go early, especially if you don't have strong scumreads.

[Jamiet99uk]

Turning back to this game specifically, Summit was consistently both a low poster, and when he did post, the few posts he provided had little content. One of town's main failures in this game was to let him get away with that, more than once. To make matters worse, HR's weird defence of Summit's contributions caused me to strongly scumread HR.

Lately I find HR very scummy as both alignments. HR, you apparently have a serious tendency to exaggerate or post rather hyperbolic statements, even as town, which replicates your scum behaviour when trying to push a mis-kill. The whole "Jamie has not read Summit's posts!" angle being a case in point.

[Hellenic Riot]

Have you considered that the opposite is true, and that I very deliberately replicated my townplay as scum, and that's what now caused you to scumread me?

As for summit, I made one throwaway comment about him which you then hyperfocused in on for days, when the main part of that post had quite clearly been about you not reading my posts properly (something which you admitted you'd been wrong about after re-reading them). I certainly wouldn't characterise it as a 'defence' - merely pointing out that he had scumread Macca, because when you had attacked both of us simultaneously and had clearly not read my posts when doing so, I felt there was a reasonable possibility it meant you hadn't read his either.