Mafia CLIV: Bigger, Medium, Smaller Mafia (Town Win)

[Jordan767]

Zoomzip--

1. I think the town's best outcome is if everyone's the same size. Removes vote weighting and harmful NK effects. Failing that, larges seem like the most dangerous of the the 3 to have in a mix due to them having the most NK effects.

2. I figure scum would want to be large against a medium/small town for NKs and small against a town with a high amount of larges for extra hides. If scum decide to play the odds on that, they probably end up assuming that most townies aren't large, so they don't choose small.

3. Looks to me like based on that we should go for either full infosec and everyone visits a scumread/the lynch runner-up like UDC's plan or full reveal to minimize the amount of townies killed by townies. I have a suspicion that if you were to game-theory this all the way out you'd end up with all large being optimal, but this could then end up being a Prisoner's Dilemma-like situation if anyone bothered doing that anyway, which is unlikely to begin with.

+1 on not revealing without full approval.

I am more worried about townies killing townies at night than mafia killing townies. Am I wrong in this?

If we don't reveal, I'm more worried about town killing town. If we do reveal, then we really cut down on town killing town but let the scum know exactly who to target. It's a tradeoff.

I think you are close to an important truth here. Everyone's vote counts the same -- Given the game mechanics, is there a way we can make this happen anyways?

If we reveal, we all vote as if we had one vote, then with a certain amount of time left until deadline we consolidate in a way that's representative of the majority views. If we don't reveal, I guess this could work but it's cruder and we get less size info on people (which I guess isn't an entirely bad thing if we decided not to reveal anyway).

Welcome back Zoom! Also pretty excited to be playing with genuine new (to me at least) folks, so welcome Jordan and Hold. Chuck, sorry we aren't scumbuddies this time around. We had a solid run. You scum?

I've got a total of 3 days under my belt. So yeah, I'm new.

Chuck you make some good points (I had forgotten how little the mafia actually know) but I'm still not sure they outweigh our ability to reduce town vs town squishes by revealing.

[Don Juan of Austria]

"I'm here" (That was for you zoomzip)

Okay, so I was thinking. "Yay! Wouldn't it be nice if we (the town) were all the same size." Like you guys said, equal vote power, and equal stomp power. The problem is....I lost my train of thought. But theres problems with that thought.

So right now, I'd say I'm against the reveal of sizes. And plus, people have been known to lie about such things before.

I should think that the mafia are small...they can carry extra voting power, and hide, while us townies stomp it out while the mafia hide. And think about it, 2 small mafia voting together have a power of 6....and there are only 7 townies to begin with. And I think most townies went larger, rather than smaller.

Just my thoughts at the moment. Convince me otherwise.

[Jordan767]

"I'm here" (That was for you zoomzip)

Okay, so I was thinking. "Yay! Wouldn't it be nice if we (the town) were all the same size." Like you guys said, equal vote power, and equal stomp power. The problem is....I lost my train of thought. But theres problems with that thought.

So right now, I'd say I'm against the reveal of sizes. And plus, people have been known to lie about such things before.

I should think that the mafia are small...they can carry extra voting power, and hide, while us townies stomp it out while the mafia hide. And think about it, 2 small mafia voting together have a power of 6....and there are only 7 townies to begin with. And I think most townies went larger, rather than smaller.

Just my thoughts at the moment. Convince me otherwise.

So if you think there are 2 small mafia and 7 mostly medium-large townies, and that the mafia will (obviously) hide while we stomp each other into oblivion and then simply vote us to death, what can/should we do about that?

[Don Juan of Austria]

We should consolidate our vote on (hopefully) a mafia member, and think wisely upon who we step on.

[Don Juan of Austria]

People's thoughts.

[justy]

Hello all, it's good to be playing again.

Question 1: Suppose all players let random.org chose their size. what is the best outcome for the town?
Question 2: Thinking about the result of Question 1, now just suppose the town players got the best outcome, but the scum could select their size. What would they chose to maximize their advantage?
Question 3: Given how you think the scum might react, what should the town do to counteract the scum's plan?

1) Best result for town would be all ending up with similar size. That would mean there are no night kills, and scum wouldn't have voting advantage over town.
2) I'd choose average as scum. Chance to squash some players but still some say in voting.
3) Choose average size to avoid getting squashed by average scum.

No comment on wether this was my train of thought before I chose my side.

I think we all should reveal sizes today. That helps us to avoid accidental night kills.

@UDC, if we don't reveal, how do we know who the lynch leader and runner up are? Do you think consolidation works here similar to normal games where everyone has only one vote? I'd guess that without reveals, players won't consolidate as easily. Normally, you can switch to someone you want lynched, but here your original target might be a lynch leader if he had small player voting him. Without reveals, we don't really know what the score is and probably end up with several players revealing their size near the EoD.

[justy]

The plan where only runner-up reveals seems to mean that we make two lynhces at least in D1, as it's quite unlikely that runner-up survives the visists unless he is large (or we don't have large townies). I don't think that double lynch is the best play for day one, as we make the lynch decision today with very little information. In fact, pair of two small scum could make a play of this by hiding for two nights and using their votes to get two town killed (on as lynchee and one as runner-up).

[sjg11]

Question 1: Suppose all players let random.org chose their size. what is the best outcome for the town?

Everyone being the same size, everyone's vote is weighted the same and nobody can squish anybody else. It turns it into a vanilla game with 6 town mislynches before we lose. Which is a scenario that sjg likes.

Question 2: Thinking about the result of Question 1, now just suppose the town players got the best outcome, but the scum could select their size. What would they chose to maximize their advantage?

Tactically, their best option would be to choose two different sizes. It ensures that there are different sizes in play. The Mafia that's different to the rest of the town would then lie about their size.

Question 3: Given how you think the scum might react, what should the town do to counteract the scum's plan?

I'm not sure there's anything we can do to stop them selecting their sizes in the way they want to. Basically our tactical options at this point centre around whether we reveal or not.
If we reveal: Then we organise it so there is no unnecessary town on town violence based on who we're targeting. Smalls and Mediums probably decide whether to hide that night to add some uncertainty to the mix for the Mafia. I think that's a better option than everyone hiding from the start until they run out of hides. However the Mafia get to pick a night kill. Turns it into a vanilla game with 3 (I think?) mislynches assuming the Mafia's night-kill doesn't go through. Oh, we also know what everyone's vote weights are. Which is useful for diminishing the chaos within the game.

If we don't reveal: Chaos reigns. Positives are that the Mafia might get caught in the crossfire. Negatives are that it's far more likely for a townie to be caught than a Mafia.

Yeah, overall, I think a reveal is the better tactical option available to us at this point. Put simply it turns this into a vanilla game with a ratio which is reasonably favourable to us.

It now becomes clear to me that you weren't referring to a practical "What do we actually do now?" question and were probably asking "In the abstract, how could a town counter that?"

Ah well, I feel like that stuff on reveals is useful so I'm gonna keep it there.

Right, so. If the Mafia were to "rig" the game to make it, effectively, a vanilla game with the same vote-weights but with night kills then the thing we could do to counter that depends on exactly what the Mafia select:
If they select Medium/Large: If everyone picks Large then they can't pull off a night kill. Pretty good for us. The Mafia get one additional vote but that's not a big deal.
If they select Medium/Small: Again they can't night kill anyone if everyone picks Large. However they do get additional vote weights in the thread giving them 5 votes to the town's 7. So the town all selecting Large isn't ideal in this scenario. However if everyone in the town picks Medium they can't kill anyone and only gets one additional vote to the town.
If they select Large/Small: See Medium/Large

So, basically, my answer to question 2 is that the Mafia can counter an "everyone picks the same" option by selecting two different options. And my answer to Question 3 is that the town can counter that by either all picking Medium or all picking Large.

This... has caused me to re-think the way I view this game considerably. I came from this from a completely different perspective pre-game.

In practice, I do think we should reveal by the way.

Zoomzip

He's a Spurs fan. 'Nuff said.

[sjg11]

Sorry if my last post was a bit waffley, I hope my ideas are clear by the end of it but it was a "thought process" sort of post. My thinking developed as I went through each question.

[sjg11]

A couple of questions for you (or anyone, if they want to jump in) -- I am more worried about townies killing townies at night than mafia killing townies. Am I wrong in this?

I agree, it informed my selection to a large extent.

I think you are close to an important truth here. Everyone's vote counts the same -- Given the game mechanics, is there a way we can make this happen anyways?

Not that I can think of, I freely admit that there's a very good chance I'm missing something though.