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Chrononauts[Phalla]-Game Over - Village Alternate Victory

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Posts

  • EgosEgos Registered User regular
    edited May 2018
    Sir Fabulous had left the building at that point, so that was a bit hard to do. :|

    and sorry discrider, I didn't see myself realistically having a chance against kuhlmeye. He had been vocal and helpful whereas I had been silent. Also I honestly wasn't sure how much the other mafia members wanted to keep playing.

    But yeah, in hindsight, I should have tried . Would have at least been more sporting.

    Egos on
  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    Bluecyan wrote: »
    Discrider, I'm sorry you didn't have a good experience, I will look for ways to make the mafia role more involving next time, but respectfully, yes there was a chance for mafia victory.

    The alternate win requires a total of eight actions by the mafia, three disrupts and five freezes, over a game lasting ten days. As more nodes become frozen the personal victory conditions start to fracture the village making things easier, and both days 1 and 7 offer a lot of opportunities.

    The village also does not have as many opportunities to get information as you are crediting. PRO breaks if any one of the members doesn't do what they should, and without that the village has no idea what the node should be. Eventually the information gets out, but it happening day 5 is a big difference than day 2. It does make mafia vulnerable but then its 1/3 people that is lying, which is pretty good odds for the mafia. Village needs 40% mafia hit rate to win conventionally.

    For the village alternate win, there are a couple ways to completely stop it, and I believe you are underestimating what it takes to fix a frozen node in the wrong position. Anomalies were not intended to be the prefered way to slow the village.

    Dumb luck, and a very involved village set this game fairly well in the village favor early. Also, I think if sir fabulous and egos could have organized something when they were both on a disrupted node, this would have been a very different game.

    Each dead village O confirms a node's state.
    Over the P/R/O days, the village can cycle different teams over the non-10 mil nodes twice, and mafia need both O roles to obfuscate.
    A frozen early node is going to be anomalied by the village on the assumption that the node is in the wrong state.
    The eight actions that the mafia alt-win requires are eight actions that are not spent stopping the village alt win and also not preventing the village alt-win (or otherwise being the obvious P/R imbalance).

    I checked the other timelines and the result was the same each time.

  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    Resistance/Coup games have a very particular math, and I don't believe this game hit that balance.

    It is unfortunate that the mafia had no agency, but thank you very much for hosting and good luck with your next game.

  • BluecyanBluecyan Buzz.. Buzz Buzz? BUZZ! Buzz buzz BuzzRegistered User regular
    One small thing I want to mention. @JPants when you initially called out either Cythraul or Infidel had lied based on SOEs personal victory conditions day 2. I was freaking out, scrambling making sure I had given out the right set.

  • JPantsJPants Registered User regular
    Bluecyan wrote: »
    One small thing I want to mention. @JPants when you initially called out either Cythraul or Infidel had lied based on SOEs personal victory conditions day 2. I was freaking out, scrambling making sure I had given out the right set.

    I have never felt so crappy about a mistake!

    I'm pretty sure it was obvious but I enjoyed the hell out of this game. I'll agree that it was skewed in the village favor, but I actually think an agressive mafia play day 1, when all 4 mafia got sent out, would have given the mafia a decent chance. By the end of day 1 they could have had one node frozen (delayed timer), and up to three more disrupted (iirc). Several teams may have been implicated, but it's basically a he said she said between three people. if disc and egos had let that node go natural, but then froze it I doubt they would have been discovered so quickly as well.

    Lots of ifs and hypotheticals, and the village was definitely favored, but I think not as drastically as people have been staying. To be fair, with the way things *actually* went, mafia was pretty far behind after day 1.

  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    JPants wrote: »
    Bluecyan wrote: »
    One small thing I want to mention. @JPants when you initially called out either Cythraul or Infidel had lied based on SOEs personal victory conditions day 2. I was freaking out, scrambling making sure I had given out the right set.

    I have never felt so crappy about a mistake!

    I'm pretty sure it was obvious but I enjoyed the hell out of this game. I'll agree that it was skewed in the village favor, but I actually think an agressive mafia play day 1, when all 4 mafia got sent out, would have given the mafia a decent chance. By the end of day 1 they could have had one node frozen (delayed timer), and up to three more disrupted (iirc). Several teams may have been implicated, but it's basically a he said she said between three people. if disc and egos had let that node go natural, but then froze it I doubt they would have been discovered so quickly as well.

    Lots of ifs and hypotheticals, and the village was definitely favored, but I think not as drastically as people have been staying. To be fair, with the way things *actually* went, mafia was pretty far behind after day 1.

    How.
    That four disruptions is assuming that all mafia land as an Observer.
    Otherwise the village Observer sees no conflict, and it's 50:50 between the mafia and the Observer.

    And if all four mafia disrupt, as Observers, that's six nodes now set to the correct timeline.

  • JPantsJPants Registered User regular
    discrider wrote: »
    JPants wrote: »
    Bluecyan wrote: »
    One small thing I want to mention. @JPants when you initially called out either Cythraul or Infidel had lied based on SOEs personal victory conditions day 2. I was freaking out, scrambling making sure I had given out the right set.

    I have never felt so crappy about a mistake!

    I'm pretty sure it was obvious but I enjoyed the hell out of this game. I'll agree that it was skewed in the village favor, but I actually think an agressive mafia play day 1, when all 4 mafia got sent out, would have given the mafia a decent chance. By the end of day 1 they could have had one node frozen (delayed timer), and up to three more disrupted (iirc). Several teams may have been implicated, but it's basically a he said she said between three people. if disc and egos had let that node go natural, but then froze it I doubt they would have been discovered so quickly as well.

    Lots of ifs and hypotheticals, and the village was definitely favored, but I think not as drastically as people have been staying. To be fair, with the way things *actually* went, mafia was pretty far behind after day 1.

    How.
    That four disruptions is assuming that all mafia land as an Observer.
    Otherwise the village Observer sees no conflict, and it's 50:50 between the mafia and the Observer.

    And if all four mafia disrupt, as Observers, that's six nodes now set to the correct timeline.

    The observer knows its 50/50 but to the village it's 33/33/33.

    Plus no conflict will occur, so the village won't know what the right state is.

  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    edited May 2018
    JPants wrote: »
    discrider wrote: »
    JPants wrote: »
    Bluecyan wrote: »
    One small thing I want to mention. @JPants when you initially called out either Cythraul or Infidel had lied based on SOEs personal victory conditions day 2. I was freaking out, scrambling making sure I had given out the right set.

    I have never felt so crappy about a mistake!

    I'm pretty sure it was obvious but I enjoyed the hell out of this game. I'll agree that it was skewed in the village favor, but I actually think an agressive mafia play day 1, when all 4 mafia got sent out, would have given the mafia a decent chance. By the end of day 1 they could have had one node frozen (delayed timer), and up to three more disrupted (iirc). Several teams may have been implicated, but it's basically a he said she said between three people. if disc and egos had let that node go natural, but then froze it I doubt they would have been discovered so quickly as well.

    Lots of ifs and hypotheticals, and the village was definitely favored, but I think not as drastically as people have been staying. To be fair, with the way things *actually* went, mafia was pretty far behind after day 1.

    How.
    That four disruptions is assuming that all mafia land as an Observer.
    Otherwise the village Observer sees no conflict, and it's 50:50 between the mafia and the Observer.

    And if all four mafia disrupt, as Observers, that's six nodes now set to the correct timeline.

    The observer knows its 50/50 but to the village it's 33/33/33.

    Plus no conflict will occur, so the village won't know what the right state is.

    The village knows it's 50:50 because of the change in node state (or not) showing that the P(/R) player either didn't submit that order, or that the O player is lying.
    If there remains questions over the state of the node, then a new team can be sent, less one now outed mafia.

    discrider on
  • JPantsJPants Registered User regular
    discrider wrote: »
    JPants wrote: »
    discrider wrote: »
    JPants wrote: »
    Bluecyan wrote: »
    One small thing I want to mention. @JPants when you initially called out either Cythraul or Infidel had lied based on SOEs personal victory conditions day 2. I was freaking out, scrambling making sure I had given out the right set.

    I have never felt so crappy about a mistake!

    I'm pretty sure it was obvious but I enjoyed the hell out of this game. I'll agree that it was skewed in the village favor, but I actually think an agressive mafia play day 1, when all 4 mafia got sent out, would have given the mafia a decent chance. By the end of day 1 they could have had one node frozen (delayed timer), and up to three more disrupted (iirc). Several teams may have been implicated, but it's basically a he said she said between three people. if disc and egos had let that node go natural, but then froze it I doubt they would have been discovered so quickly as well.

    Lots of ifs and hypotheticals, and the village was definitely favored, but I think not as drastically as people have been staying. To be fair, with the way things *actually* went, mafia was pretty far behind after day 1.

    How.
    That four disruptions is assuming that all mafia land as an Observer.
    Otherwise the village Observer sees no conflict, and it's 50:50 between the mafia and the Observer.

    And if all four mafia disrupt, as Observers, that's six nodes now set to the correct timeline.

    The observer knows its 50/50 but to the village it's 33/33/33.

    Plus no conflict will occur, so the village won't know what the right state is.

    The village knows it's 50:50 because of the change in node state (or not) showing that the P(/R) player either didn't submit that order, or that the O player is lying.
    If there remains questions over the state of the node, then a new team can be sent, less one now outed mafia.

    May be right. It's late and I can't sleep but that doesn't mean my brain is working.

    Night!

  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    Night

  • BluecyanBluecyan Buzz.. Buzz Buzz? BUZZ! Buzz buzz BuzzRegistered User regular
    discrider wrote: »
    JPants wrote: »
    discrider wrote: »
    JPants wrote: »
    Bluecyan wrote: »
    One small thing I want to mention. @JPants when you initially called out either Cythraul or Infidel had lied based on SOEs personal victory conditions day 2. I was freaking out, scrambling making sure I had given out the right set.

    I have never felt so crappy about a mistake!

    I'm pretty sure it was obvious but I enjoyed the hell out of this game. I'll agree that it was skewed in the village favor, but I actually think an agressive mafia play day 1, when all 4 mafia got sent out, would have given the mafia a decent chance. By the end of day 1 they could have had one node frozen (delayed timer), and up to three more disrupted (iirc). Several teams may have been implicated, but it's basically a he said she said between three people. if disc and egos had let that node go natural, but then froze it I doubt they would have been discovered so quickly as well.

    Lots of ifs and hypotheticals, and the village was definitely favored, but I think not as drastically as people have been staying. To be fair, with the way things *actually* went, mafia was pretty far behind after day 1.

    How.
    That four disruptions is assuming that all mafia land as an Observer.
    Otherwise the village Observer sees no conflict, and it's 50:50 between the mafia and the Observer.

    And if all four mafia disrupt, as Observers, that's six nodes now set to the correct timeline.

    The observer knows its 50/50 but to the village it's 33/33/33.

    Plus no conflict will occur, so the village won't know what the right state is.

    The village knows it's 50:50 because of the change in node state (or not) showing that the P(/R) player either didn't submit that order, or that the O player is lying.
    If there remains questions over the state of the node, then a new team can be sent, less one now outed mafia.

    Except day one has six different teams and only one village kill, and you are assuming perfect play from the village. Many teams observers weren't randomly selected, but defaulted due to people not submitting actions.

    PRO was also not often chosen randomly, mafia could pretty easilly just claim it and do stuff. This is also ignoring two mafia on a team who could cover for each other or set up frozen anomalies. The fact that in this last game a frozen anomaly could have been created night one says the mafia can win.

    I'm not sure really what you are arguing for, I have admitted I could have set up the mafia better. I just think the defeatest attitude hurt the mafia, again I think that was my fault for not making the mafia role more interesting.

    I would appreciate any other constructive comments though. Too much flavor text, too little. Was four different votes a day too much? Would people want to play something like this again, should I look at doing something simplier next time, or should I leave game hosting to the more experienced people?

    I did appreciate every bit of advice people gave over the week about how to better host, especially from Infidel.

  • EgosEgos Registered User regular
    JPants wrote: »
    Bluecyan wrote: »
    One small thing I want to mention. @JPants when you initially called out either Cythraul or Infidel had lied based on SOEs personal victory conditions day 2. I was freaking out, scrambling making sure I had given out the right set.

    I have never felt so crappy about a mistake!

    if disc and egos had let that node go natural, but then froze it I doubt they would have been discovered so quickly as well.

    Sir fabulous wasn’t around after he withdrew in the thread so was unable to coordinate. Disc just ended up as an observer I believe

  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    Ugh...
    Would an Anomoly/Freeze day 1 in 1959 have resulted in an unfixable 1977 node @Bluecyan ?

  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    edited May 2018
    Read your comment again, and it seems to suggest so.
    Only crossed my mind now.

    That is a move that would definitely help the mafia win, and one I missed.

    Still outs two mafia members, but then the remaining two just need to do nothing suspicious.
    Would be down to like 12-2 10-2 village/maf in the best case though.

    discrider on
  • BluecyanBluecyan Buzz.. Buzz Buzz? BUZZ! Buzz buzz BuzzRegistered User regular
    discrider wrote: »
    Read your comment again, and it seems to suggest so.
    Only crossed my mind now.

    That is a move that would definitely help the mafia win, and one I missed.

    Still outs two mafia members, but then the remaining two just need to do nothing suspicious.
    Would be down to like 12-2 in the best case though.

    10-2, and then it's basically standard Mafia, though 38th and Wildcat would've had some pretty clean track records to back them up.

  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    edited May 2018
    Bluecyan wrote: »
    discrider wrote: »
    JPants wrote: »
    discrider wrote: »
    JPants wrote: »
    Bluecyan wrote: »
    One small thing I want to mention. JPants when you initially called out either Cythraul or Infidel had lied based on SOEs personal victory conditions day 2. I was freaking out, scrambling making sure I had given out the right set.

    I have never felt so crappy about a mistake!

    I'm pretty sure it was obvious but I enjoyed the hell out of this game. I'll agree that it was skewed in the village favor, but I actually think an agressive mafia play day 1, when all 4 mafia got sent out, would have given the mafia a decent chance. By the end of day 1 they could have had one node frozen (delayed timer), and up to three more disrupted (iirc). Several teams may have been implicated, but it's basically a he said she said between three people. if disc and egos had let that node go natural, but then froze it I doubt they would have been discovered so quickly as well.

    Lots of ifs and hypotheticals, and the village was definitely favored, but I think not as drastically as people have been staying. To be fair, with the way things *actually* went, mafia was pretty far behind after day 1.

    How.
    That four disruptions is assuming that all mafia land as an Observer.
    Otherwise the village Observer sees no conflict, and it's 50:50 between the mafia and the Observer.

    And if all four mafia disrupt, as Observers, that's six nodes now set to the correct timeline.

    The observer knows its 50/50 but to the village it's 33/33/33.

    Plus no conflict will occur, so the village won't know what the right state is.

    The village knows it's 50:50 because of the change in node state (or not) showing that the P(/R) player either didn't submit that order, or that the O player is lying.
    If there remains questions over the state of the node, then a new team can be sent, less one now outed mafia.

    Except day one has six different teams and only one village kill, and you are assuming perfect play from the village. Many teams observers weren't randomly selected, but defaulted due to people not submitting actions.

    PRO was also not often chosen randomly, mafia could pretty easilly just claim it and do stuff. This is also ignoring two mafia on a team who could cover for each other or set up frozen anomalies. The fact that in this last game a frozen anomaly could have been created night one says the mafia can win.

    I'm not sure really what you are arguing for, I have admitted I could have set up the mafia better. I just think the defeatest attitude hurt the mafia, again I think that was my fault for not making the mafia role more interesting.

    I would appreciate any other constructive comments though. Too much flavor text, too little. Was four different votes a day too much? Would people want to play something like this again, should I look at doing something simplier next time, or should I leave game hosting to the more experienced people?

    I did appreciate every bit of advice people gave over the week about how to better host, especially from Infidel.

    You did well.
    Just Coup/Resistance games are hard to balance and ultimately are about math instead of social deduction.

    I wasn't originally keen on the multiple votes; it seemed like it would sideline people not in your timezone.
    But I don't think that was a big issue, given you could pre-submit votes, and then had until vote close to submit mission orders.
    So I thought that worked well.

    discrider on
  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    edited May 2018
    Bluecyan wrote: »
    discrider wrote: »
    Read your comment again, and it seems to suggest so.
    Only crossed my mind now.

    That is a move that would definitely help the mafia win, and one I missed.

    Still outs two mafia members, but then the remaining two just need to do nothing suspicious.
    Would be down to like 12-2 in the best case though.

    10-2, and then it's basically standard Mafia, though 38th and Wildcat would've had some pretty clean track records to back them up.

    Well.. it'd be 12-2 because chamberlain got run out of town by the villagers.
    10-2 if that hadn't happened and instead Egos can convince everyone that he did whatever chamberlain had actually done.

    I don't think you could delay this freeze; the anomoly would get fixed pretty quick I think.

    discrider on
  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    It is somewhat of an extreme move to eliminate the purpose of the non-red votes so as to make the game winnable <_<

  • kuhlmeyekuhlmeye Registered User regular
    Thoughts:

    This was a game I had fun playing. I would agree with discrider that after really the second day it felt like a village win was inevitable. There were steps the mafia could have taken to slow down the village. For instance, if the freeze on 1959 had occurred 1 day earlier it would have extended the game by at least 2 days. Or, as bluecyan pointed out, there could have been a frozen anomaly which would have basically left us dead in the water.

    Luckily the village had people that stepped up to the plate as the mafia knocked out the daily leaders. I was worried after saber got killed that we simply wouldn't have the organization to continue, but that was not the case. I also think that the last day, dropping down to 2 players/team saved us, as the village could keep all the unknown actors out of the final day teams easily. The mafia could probably have used one more player to start.

    I did not have 38th or Wildcat as mafia so that was good misdirection by the mafia. Also, I'll note this dumb thing I said...
    kuhlmeye wrote: »
    Beta Day 2 - 1492 - EB, Kuhl, Wildcat - State switched from A --> B. Originally I was going to observe, EB supposedly locked in preserve. Wildcat was in sleepy town, so I switched to reverse right before close. Wildcat confirms P/R conflict here. If wildcat is willing to use their child as way to mask a lie here... hats off, I like the style.

    Hats off to wildcat.

    PSN: the-K-flash
  • kuhlmeyekuhlmeye Registered User regular
    Also, @AustinP0027 thanks for bouncing ideas with me on Day or 3, whenever that was. I think that really helped us out.

    PSN: the-K-flash
  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    kuhlmeye wrote: »
    Thoughts:

    This was a game I had fun playing. I would agree with discrider that after really the second day it felt like a village win was inevitable. There were steps the mafia could have taken to slow down the village. For instance, if the freeze on 1959 had occurred 1 day earlier it would have extended the game by at least 2 days.

    ?
    The only way to obscure the freeze was to pin it on another team.
    The node was not natural, so I, as observer with two villagers, could not have both:
    - Unbalanced the P/R
    - Frozen the node

    The only play was to tag you with the Freeze ([0]), as you were the observer who went to correct the node.

    Ideally, I would have claimed No conflict, lynched Egos, but I didn't get onto the mafia PM trail until after I had claimed seeing a conflict.
    I had thought Egos had simply made the node non-natural, not frozen.

  • kimekime Queen of Blades Registered User regular
    Thanks for running. I enjoyed the game, although it ended up being a bit too complex for the amount of time I had to dedicate to playing. I liked still following along and being a warm village body. I'm always a fan of time travel themes too

    I will look forward to your future games :)

    Battle.net ID: kime#1822
    3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
    Steam profile
  • kuhlmeyekuhlmeye Registered User regular
    edited May 2018
    discrider wrote: »
    kuhlmeye wrote: »
    Thoughts:

    This was a game I had fun playing. I would agree with discrider that after really the second day it felt like a village win was inevitable. There were steps the mafia could have taken to slow down the village. For instance, if the freeze on 1959 had occurred 1 day earlier it would have extended the game by at least 2 days.

    ?
    The only way to obscure the freeze was to pin it on another team.
    The node was not natural, so I, as observer with two villagers, could not have both:
    - Unbalanced the P/R
    - Frozen the node

    The only play was to tag you with the Freeze ([0]), as you were the observer who went to correct the node.

    Ideally, I would have claimed No conflict, lynched Egos, but I didn't get onto the mafia PM trail until after I had claimed seeing a conflict.
    I had thought Egos had simply made the node non-natural, not frozen.

    I mean if the initial freeze on it had been 1 instead of 2, and it had frozen day 3 before we had gotten back to fix it. Then we would have needed an additional two missions, one to create an anomaly on the previous node, and another to fix it. That would have in turn given the mafia an additional set of missions to cause havoc.

    It was a good play after the fact to try to pin the freeze on our group that tried to fix it.

    kuhlmeye on
    PSN: the-K-flash
  • 38thDoe38thDoe lets never be stupid again wait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered User regular
    @Bluecyan @MrTLicious Thanks for running. There were a lot of cool ideas here.
    I don't have room to say much because I wasn't really helping for a lot of the game. Unfortunately my Grandmother passed away on Saturday and it was hard for me to follow things here as well as I should have. So maybe a lot of this is on me for not being a good team mate but, it felt like the village had too much information and there really wasn't anywhere the mafia could hide for long enough to win. Maybe giving the mafia a few more free disruptions, or not telling the village the mafia had no abilities might have swung things back? Not sure. Especially the later days I felt like my options were to drag the game on or lose without having a chance to win. Its not the best feeling.

    38thDoE on steam
    🦀🦑🦀🦑🦀🦑🦀🦑🦀🦑🦀🦑🦀
    
  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    kuhlmeye wrote: »
    discrider wrote: »
    kuhlmeye wrote: »
    Thoughts:

    This was a game I had fun playing. I would agree with discrider that after really the second day it felt like a village win was inevitable. There were steps the mafia could have taken to slow down the village. For instance, if the freeze on 1959 had occurred 1 day earlier it would have extended the game by at least 2 days.

    ?
    The only way to obscure the freeze was to pin it on another team.
    The node was not natural, so I, as observer with two villagers, could not have both:
    - Unbalanced the P/R
    - Frozen the node

    The only play was to tag you with the Freeze ([0]), as you were the observer who went to correct the node.

    Ideally, I would have claimed No conflict, lynched Egos, but I didn't get onto the mafia PM trail until after I had claimed seeing a conflict.
    I had thought Egos had simply made the node non-natural, not frozen.

    I mean if the initial freeze on it had been 1 instead of 2, and it had frozen day 3 before we had gotten back to fix it. Then we would have needed an additional two missions, one to create an anomaly on the previous node, and another to fix it. That would have in turn given the mafia an additional set of missions to cause havoc.

    It was a good play after the fact to try to pin the freeze on our group that tried to fix it.

    If it had been Freeze[0], Egos would have been caught immediately, as I would have No Conflict'ed him.
    If it had been Freeze[1], Egos and I would have been caught day 3, instead of him being sent on another mission.

    If Sir Fab had been around, or if I had been brought in earlier, maybe we could have said Freeze [0]/[1] was an acceptable risk.
    But what was more likely is I would have tried to unbalance the node by going P or R, claimed Conflict, been voted out day 3.
    Namely, flipping nodes and hiding amongst villagers seemed the better play.
    I would think those silent fraudulent states would last longer than day 1 or day 2 frozen, most likely to be non-natural, nodes.

    Given the Freeze, I think Freeze[2] was the best play out of the three options, as that landed when another team came to investigate, but then Egos didn't accuse you of playing a Freeze[0] so...

    None of us thought of the Freeze/Anomoly combo, and that would have been worth the two mafia sacrifice.
    And even so, I'm not sure that combo places the game in a better place for existing; if that happened to me on day 2 as villager, I would be questioning why we couldn't fix a node that we could visit (1977) and also why the mafia was allowed to destroy the village alt-win-con day 2.
    It would make the game fair, but it sort of breaks the system.

  • BrodyBrody The Watch The First ShoreRegistered User regular
    @Wildcat that was very well played. The more I saw stuff push onto Ebum, the more I started to wonder if maybe it wasn't' you instead, especially because you were so quiet. Ofc, if you had been louder, I probably would have been more suspicious of you, which is completely the opposite of how it should work, considering how hard I was arguing myself.

    "I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."

    The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson

    Steam: Korvalain
  • EgosEgos Registered User regular
    edited May 2018
    kuhlmeye wrote: »
    discrider wrote: »
    kuhlmeye wrote: »
    Thoughts:

    This was a game I had fun playing. I would agree with discrider that after really the second day it felt like a village win was inevitable. There were steps the mafia could have taken to slow down the village. For instance, if the freeze on 1959 had occurred 1 day earlier it would have extended the game by at least 2 days.

    ?
    The only way to obscure the freeze was to pin it on another team.
    The node was not natural, so I, as observer with two villagers, could not have both:
    - Unbalanced the P/R
    - Frozen the node

    The only play was to tag you with the Freeze ([0]), as you were the observer who went to correct the node.

    Ideally, I would have claimed No conflict, lynched Egos, but I didn't get onto the mafia PM trail until after I had claimed seeing a conflict.
    I had thought Egos had simply made the node non-natural, not frozen.

    I mean if the initial freeze on it had been 1 instead of 2, and it had frozen day 3 before we had gotten back to fix it.

    Yeah I was kicking myself on day 3 for not doing this once I had a better grasp on the rules.

    Thanks for hosting Bluecyan and MrTLicious. And sorry I wasn’t more active.

    Also nice catch @jdarksun re: sir fabs 330 AD vote for me . Was curious when someone would mention that.

    Egos on
  • InfidelInfidel Heretic Registered User regular
    Mafia proboards?

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  • 38thDoe38thDoe lets never be stupid again wait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered User regular
    Nope.

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  • SaberOverEasySaberOverEasy Info Broker Registered User regular
    Congrats Village! I was a bit worried that we'd have a bunch of inactives as the game wore on, but I'm happy to see that that wasn't the case.
    Thanks to @Bluecyan and @MrTLicious for running it!

    A few thoughts:

    1.) The game was mostly won/lost on Day .5/1

    Looking back, there are really only two possible paths to victory for the mafia in a game like this - screw the timeline up so that the village can't win together or spread the suspicion around enough that the village can't kill all of them in time. At best, the mafia could cast suspicion on 12 people with disrupts over the first day. Given that the village can still vote out 7 of them, that's the not the greatest odds. Screwing up the timeline and getting villagers to go out on their own is a much stronger strategy, but it's also tough to easily see, and ends up with a very counter-intuitive phalla game where mafia and select villagers are working together, or at least not being opposed.

    That all being said, I think the village ended up playing fairly well on Day .5/1. We got to the right strategy and didn't give the mafia a whole lot of room to really push themselves into the teams that they might have wanted. There were enough engaged villagers that a single shot wasn't going to stop the village. Finally, the village just got enough done with their nodes that it was set up really well for the next few days and the mafia was going to be on the back foot for the rest of the game.

    I think the mafia was especially hurt by inactivity on Day 1. With Sir Fab and 38thDoe both distracted by real life (@38thDoe I'm so sorry for you loss. I can't imagine how I would even attempt to focus on something like phalla at a time like that), the mafia really didn't have anyone to either step into the village discussions and try to influence them appropriately or strategize among themselves as to the best path forward. @discrider got the worst of it in having to come in to a situation that he didn't have any control over on day 1 and immediately get outed as a mafia.

    2. The village got really lucky, but in the end it probably didn't matter.

    The village got a huge break of luck after day 1 which really set the mafia back again. The fact that they killed me and I had a.) given my victory condition to Jpants; b.) that victory condition was specifically targeted to the nodes that had come back the night before, with all of the observers verifying conflict and c.) the node the mafia reversed from its natural state happened to be one that I needed in a natural state on the same night that the two I didn't need did get switched. That's... a lot that needed to go right that no one could have known or planned. Had Egos and Sir Fab gone to 1931 instead and kept it at A (which would have still been the non-natural state), we would have never known.

    All that being said, I think that shortened the game, but with how everything else played out, I don't think it ultimately changed the result. There was a lot of information available, and after day 1, it was going to be very difficult for the mafia to get multiple members on a single mission, which they would need to really screw things up for the village.

    3. An active mafia may not be a good design goal.

    I think it's really interesting to compare this game to Locus's attorney phalla that we had just before. I think there are a lot of similarities in terms of design goals between them: more opportunities for normal villagers to interact and effect the game, eliminating traditional seer/vig/guards, encouraging the mafia to be more active and take more risks in the thread. Having poked my head in and out of phalla here for years, it's interesting that you could look back 2, 4, 6 years ago and find lots of other games that had those exact same goals. I think that speaks to how phalla has really stayed remarkable consistent (if highly cyclical) over the years. Of those goals, I think we may want to re-examine the idea/goal of making the mafia more active.

    Being active in phalla is TOUGH. Especially on the level of Jpants or I on day 1; or the judges/DA's in Locus's game. It take a lot of time and effort that take away from all of the other possible things you could be doing with your life. To some extent, that's ok. Many of us play because we really enjoy doing that sort of thing. Plenty of other people enjoy phalla perfectly well without trying to devote hours per day to it. Which is also fine. Even those of us who enjoy that sort of thing don't get to do it every game due to real life commitments. And allowing for a solid mix is what allows phalla to grow and be somewhat welcoming to new players. And that's just talking about being a villager.

    As mafia, this effort gets doubled, because you also need to interact with your mafia colleagues and do the same strategizing and such that the villagers do in the thread. Going in with the expectation or hope that the mafia will be able to be as active as the most active villagers is probably not a realistic assumption. I'm not saying it never happens, but it's asking a lot from random people who have lots of other things going on. I'm fully in favor of games that allow villagers more say and agency. But designing games around the idea of an "active" mafia seems to run into more trouble than it solves. I think this is especially true with the smaller games that are being run. If you have 50 people in a game, with 10 mafia, that increases the odds that one of those people will be available and willing to put in a ton of work. As you get down to 20/4; it's a lot less likely.

    Which isn't to say "stay away from complex games." In a lot of ways, complexity favors the mafia, because they can trust themselves to run through different ideas. It is to say "have a reasonable idea of what 'active' means for the mafia." Don't expect that they will throw down with the villagers from the start.

    Whew, that is a massive wall of text.

    All in all, I do want to thank Bluecyan and MrT for putting this together. Blue, I think you had a lot of interesting ideas in here. I'll be happy to see what you have in your next one and hope that I get a chance to play in it.

  • EgosEgos Registered User regular
    If ran again, may be worth considering leaving voting open all day for the various time traveling teams. Even if they mechanically depart in a specific order. I suspect people not being on at the right time played a big part in terms of the lack of votes there.

  • InfidelInfidel Heretic Registered User regular
    I don't think it's the hosts fault for an inactive mafia, nor is it wrong to design assuming people play to their win condition and are appropriately active.

    You'll always be at the whims of differing activity level, and we really saw that luck swing hard here. While the win condition was not balanced, the mafia still could have tried. It's not quite a landslide a design as it is being made out to be, it's more a landslide of outcome. And people in this community very often conflate outcomes with balance.

    Stuff like avoiding mid-day events where people can't participate if they're not on the first half of the day is generally a good idea though, as Egos mentions. It's one of the biggest things I try to design around when introducing "stuff to do" during the day, make sure that things are fair enough to 9-to-5-ers, timezone differences, etc.

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  • InfidelInfidel Heretic Registered User regular
    Like, we very clearly had a lucky split in active organizers. Village had them all basically, and discrider made a really good effort but it was too late at that point.

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  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    By the last day I was leaning towards Wildcat more than Brody, but there was too much circumstantial evidence against Brody.

    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    I think this game encouraged an inactive mafia, since an inactive mafia would nab the O roles, and that was necessary for the mafia to win.
    It was however fairly obvious mafia play.

    I also believe saying day 1 came down to luck is not giving the village enough credit, or rather any credit at all.
    The P/R/O strategy was the only way for the village to gain knowledge of the true node state, aside dumping wincons in thread.
    It's also the entire purpose of the O role.
    So I don't think any village would not P/R/O especially when given a week to think about the game mechanics prior to day 1.

    Also, according to Phyphor the personal goals set up only a few (<10) possible true node state sets.
    Given this, it seems highly likely that any node that is changed day 1 to a non-natural state would alert somebody, eventually, based on their personal wincons alone.
    It might not have been an active player, but I don't think it being an active player makes it 'luck'.

  • 38thDoe38thDoe lets never be stupid again wait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered User regular
    I feel like the game shouldn't be able to be decided on Day 1.

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  • AustinP0027AustinP0027 Registered User regular
    One of my first thoughts was how much tougher it would be for the village if there was a third “C” state.

    Would require other balancing but then there wasn’t a clear “you lied” state because it was one or the other. Would allow a little more mafia flexibility.

    The other thought was removing the O/P/R auto correct state and forcing powers on the village to tease out correct node states to build info from there.

    Obviously both are balance changes so need more, just random thoughts

  • BluecyanBluecyan Buzz.. Buzz Buzz? BUZZ! Buzz buzz BuzzRegistered User regular
    One of my first thoughts was how much tougher it would be for the village if there was a third “C” state.

    Would require other balancing but then there wasn’t a clear “you lied” state because it was one or the other. Would allow a little more mafia flexibility.

    The other thought was removing the O/P/R auto correct state and forcing powers on the village to tease out correct node states to build info from there.

    Obviously both are balance changes so need more, just random thoughts

    The observe role was actually a later addition, the original had no explicit information given about the P/R conflict and relied on three people being honest when they said they did P/R/Idle. Those simulations... did not favor the village.

    If I do this again, I will make the time line stuff less stable, maybe a C state, though a branching path might be more interesting.

  • AustinP0027AustinP0027 Registered User regular
    A branching path would be awesome. To play, that is. I can’t imagine having to balance that

  • FryFry Registered User regular
    Finally, Villagers have personal victory requirements. Each villager will have four node state requirements, of which they need to have at least half complete in order to win with the village. Some of these requirements will be Natural, some of them Recessive, however at least half will be Natural (a village alternate win guarantees all village win).

    Probably beating a dead horse, but laying the groundwork for town to be able to build a mathematical solution is IMO not a great design. If you want town to know that they can all share an alternate win, I think you need to give the mafia cover stories to fit in, or just have the rule be that villagers can share an alternate win regardless of their personal goals.

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