Jesus.Spartaculous wrote: ↑Sat May 04, 2024 3:15 amOkay. So I've been working on some research. I decided to go back through the history of Mafia games in which a Mafia player was voted out on the very first day. I threw out ones that didn't quite match ours, like 3-faction games (no Judge Dredd game, for instance) or ones where players got eliminated before the end of the first day (or ones where I was simply confused by what was going on). I stopped after I found 10 instances. The results were rather interesting. First chart:
Screenshot (46).png
The most interesting part of the chart for me is the color-coded part. It shows the order in which (according to the tracker) players joined what ended as the leading wagon. So, in the first row (M86), it looks like a Mafia player started that, and then was followed by six townspeople. Overall, in three of the ten cases, it looks like a Mafia player started the wagon.
But! In all three of those cases, a bit of investigation shows that the wagon was actually started by a townsperson who later left the wagon. So, I didn't see any cases in which the wagon was started by a fellow Mafia.
We also see that in all but one case, bussing happened. We also see that, in the vast majority of the cases, the first Mafia player joined the wagon quite early on. Time for a second chart:
Screenshot (47).png
I wanted to see if members of the leading wagon were more or less likely to be Mafia (than if wagons were randomly assigned). I did this by computing the expected number of Mafia on a wagon of a given size, and comparing that with how many Mafia were actually on the wagon. [Details: the "Expected Mafia on wagon" column is computed by:
([#Mafia - 1] / [#Mafia + #Town - 1]) * [SizeOfWagon]
I assume the players being bussed won't vote for themselves.]
To my surprise, more often than not, there were more Mafia players than expected on that wagon! It seems like Mafia really like bussing to blend in. This genuinely surprised me.
What does this say for our game?
With 3 Mafia who could have voted for Will, 16 voters who might have voted for Will, and 7 votes actually on Will, we would expect 1.3 Mafia to be on the wagon. By my analysis above, I think that this is an underestimate. If I had to bet, I would guess that there are most likely 2 bussers on the Will wagon from Day 1. Moreover, I am thinking that the first Mafia joined the wagon around slot 2 or slot 3 (but the player who started the wagon is town!).
In our game, the order in which players joined the Will wagon were:
1. sweetandcool
2. Bonatogether
3. rdrivera2005
4. kingofthepirates
5. worcej
6. BunnyGo
7. ghug
So, I repeat my read that I think sweetandcool is a town player. On the other hand, Bonatogether and rdrivera2005 are sitting in the slots where the first Mafia player usually joins. rdrivera (if you're reading this, I hope you're doing well in real life) hasn't been put under any pressure, as far as I can tell. Maybe some pressure should be put. If it's Bonatogether, I have to think about what is the likelihood that Will and Bona were bussing each other on Day 1 (I could see Will doing that; I don't know enough about Bona to give a guess).
Anyways, that's my contribution to the exercise for the night. I'm not planning on switching my vote right now - Jamie has made a good practical case for voting LoW. But this is where I am headed now.
##unvote
Regardless of your alignment, I like you very much.