I ran two absolutely awful Phallas solo (pretty much no one liked them) before finding my groove by co-hosting with Locus.
From a quick glance through your history, you've run plenty of good ones, so we need good hosts to keep hosting! Plus, this one wasn't really soul crushing or anything, so I don't even count this as a "bad" Phalla (and I would know )
Game was pretty swingy and the village had horrible luck. This probably wasn't as balanced as I would have liked it to have been, but I hope some of you enjoyed it. I'm sorry about any confusion with the Guild Members. I'll post more thoughts on that and other stuff later today...when it's not morning.
Thanks for playing (special thanks to premium for coming in last minute) and hope everyone is staying safe out there!
also Bedlam * for reserving and being available to play
I signed up when I learned that we'd be in lockdown for 3 weeks and I had time. Sadly it was too late to get on the roster.
The close time would have been problematic had I been working, otherwise I would have done sooner.
In this specific case, assuming the neutral is now working with the mafia, then the village needs to kill them off BECAUSE their vote matters potentially three times as much as anyone else's. It was only twice but that's still powerful when there are only 11 people.
They don't NEED to do anything. GG had the option not to use his ability and could show people that. A true neutral would just avoid the wagons toward the end. And he was a true survivor neutral and just that , I just don't think I made that explicit enough to him. And thus he made comments and took actions that didn't make sense for a pure survivor neutral (it makes sense if he thought someone might be hunting him ).
If the idea is more "The village had little else to go on", yeah that was true since the network got decimated and went inactive.
(And his vote was +1 at the time.)
If the best play was not to use my power, then that power is useless.
The best play would have been not to have tied the vote on Day 1. That doesn't mean the power was useless.
The Guild Member aspect was a mistake. Issue of my initial design being toned down and sadly prioritizing Lore over Mechanics in some respects.
I don't think it wasn't a good play to tie the vote.
It just meant GG was tying himself to the Mafia, especially after making comments about how we can't use the vote anymore.
Yeah, I mean, again, I voted GG because that just seemed like mafia plays. You could've easily voted for the vote leader each night, and if it comes up give the same reveal but say "I've been using my power to help prevent whatever other vote manip may be in the game." Would we have believed you? Eh, still tough to say. Would I have thought "golly everything GG is doing is exactly what a mafia would do"? Nope!
In this specific case, assuming the neutral is now working with the mafia, then the village needs to kill them off BECAUSE their vote matters potentially three times as much as anyone else's. It was only twice but that's still powerful when there are only 11 people.
They don't NEED to do anything. GG had the option not to use his ability and could show people that. A true neutral would just avoid the wagons toward the end. And he was a true survivor neutral and just that , I just don't think I made that explicit enough to him. And thus he made comments and took actions that didn't make sense for a pure survivor neutral (it makes sense if he thought someone might be hunting him ).
If the idea is more "The village had little else to go on", yeah that was true since the network got decimated and went inactive.
(And his vote was +1 at the time.)
If the best play was not to use my power, then that power is useless.
The best play would have been not to have tied the vote on Day 1. That doesn't mean the power was useless.
The Guild Member aspect was a mistake. Issue of my initial design being toned down and sadly prioritizing Lore over Mechanics in some respects.
I don't think it wasn't a good play to tie the vote.
Yeah, I take that comment back. Upon reflection.
Thanks for being ready at the helm, premium. Glad it was alright.
Yeah, I mean, again, I voted GG because that just seemed like mafia plays. You could've easily voted for the vote leader each night, and if it comes up give the same reveal but say "I've been using my power to help prevent whatever other vote manip may be in the game." Would we have believed you? Eh, still tough to say. Would I have thought "golly everything GG is doing is exactly what a mafia would do"? Nope!
But that's just my own thoughts.
Just stop being so naturally evil GG :P
Evil is in my blood! You should understand that, Father!
Edit: As far as the rest of the post, If I didn't use it then, I'll still be in the same position later when I did. So really the best option was to not use my power period, which meant it was useless. Once people starting saying that the vote Manipulation had to be a mafia power, I knew that someone would look at the votes and had basically a 1/3 chance of figuring it out, so I tried to say it might be from two sources to hide my tracks.
The reason I said it might be a faction game was because of how Loyalty was listed in my role PM, and with how I was connected to Guild Members, caused me to expect that maybe there was a Stormtrooper version of me out there, and I wanted to see if I could get him to talk to me. Once Sir Fab died (who was the only person that I had done the reverse seer thing on), I figured since my role was tying me to the village, I could somehow get the guild members at least to talk to me and get a soft network going. But instead I got neutral hunted when the village couldn't afford it and the rest of history.
@Egos , I must also thank you very much for hosting, and agree that one potentially dodgy role doesn't invalidate the awesomeness of you agreeing to entertain us for almost a week.
Yeah, I mean, again, I voted GG because that just seemed like mafia plays. You could've easily voted for the vote leader each night, and if it comes up give the same reveal but say "I've been using my power to help prevent whatever other vote manip may be in the game." Would we have believed you? Eh, still tough to say. Would I have thought "golly everything GG is doing is exactly what a mafia would do"? Nope!
But that's just my own thoughts.
Just stop being so naturally evil GG :P
Evil is in my blood! You should understand that, Father!
Edit: As far as the rest of the post, If I didn't use it then, I'll still be in the same position later when I did. So really the best option was to not use my power period, which meant it was useless. Once people starting saying that the vote Manipulation had to be a mafia power, I knew that someone would look at the votes and had basically a 1/3 chance of figuring it out, so I tried to say it might be from two sources to hide my tracks.
The reason I said it might be a faction game was because of how Loyalty was listed in my role PM, and with how I was connected to Guild Members, caused me to expect that maybe there was a Stormtrooper version of me out there, and I wanted to see if I could get him to talk to me. Once Sir Fab died (who was the only person that I had done the reverse seer thing on), I figured since my role was tying me to the village, I could somehow get the guild members at least to talk to me and get a soft network going. But instead I got neutral hunted when the village couldn't afford it and the rest of history.
Use your power every night to increase the lead the first place vote getter had. This helps prevent other potential vote manip, even if it doesn't look like it's doing anything. Also helps prevent last minute shenanigans, although that wasn't a factor this game.
Again, many people voting for you didn't do it simply because you were neutral or had vote manipulation. It was how you used it and what you said.
We (mostly) weren't neutral witch hunting, we though we had a mafia!
Yeah, I mean, again, I voted GG because that just seemed like mafia plays. You could've easily voted for the vote leader each night, and if it comes up give the same reveal but say "I've been using my power to help prevent whatever other vote manip may be in the game." Would we have believed you? Eh, still tough to say. Would I have thought "golly everything GG is doing is exactly what a mafia would do"? Nope!
But that's just my own thoughts.
Just stop being so naturally evil GG :P
Evil is in my blood! You should understand that, Father!
Edit: As far as the rest of the post, If I didn't use it then, I'll still be in the same position later when I did. So really the best option was to not use my power period, which meant it was useless. Once people starting saying that the vote Manipulation had to be a mafia power, I knew that someone would look at the votes and had basically a 1/3 chance of figuring it out, so I tried to say it might be from two sources to hide my tracks.
The reason I said it might be a faction game was because of how Loyalty was listed in my role PM, and with how I was connected to Guild Members, caused me to expect that maybe there was a Stormtrooper version of me out there, and I wanted to see if I could get him to talk to me. Once Sir Fab died (who was the only person that I had done the reverse seer thing on), I figured since my role was tying me to the village, I could somehow get the guild members at least to talk to me and get a soft network going. But instead I got neutral hunted when the village couldn't afford it and the rest of history.
If you hadn't been caught, then using your power to help the Mafia and winning with the Mafia is a strategy that would have won you this game.
But you were caught, and then killed because of the way you used your power to benefit the Mafia.
Saying that because you were caught the power was useless is not sound reasoning.
Good game all. I think it would have been possible for an Imperial Victory if he had cut down our kills to one after enough of us were gone, though...
Yeah, I thought after learning that Greef's vote manip decreased with guild members that we'd lose the second mafia kill each night after losing another player. Because of that I thought the game had a couple more nights to go, and didn't realize it was a done deal whether I died or not.
Hey wait, you missed Austin on that list... That list of villagers, you left out my good buddy AustinP. That's a typo right? He wouldn't be a baby loving probono softy right?! He's a bad ass evil Merc like he told me he was!
Sorry about that. Figured I should make some attempt Day 1 to talk to people, then the Megagame kicked off when I wasn't expecting it to start so soon and I kind of didn't reach out to anyone else.
I figured it hadn't mattered until you reached out again yesterday to talk more.
Apologies for not giving this game the attention it deserves. You'd think with the quarantine going on I'd have nothing but time for Phalla but in reality it's really thrown my wife and I for a loop.
Sadly, ID'ing H3K as mafia (sorry I couldn't explain why you were suspicious better, it was just a little too much like an impression of a helpful villager rather than actually a helpful villager) is balanced by forcing the village to waste a shot on me
No hard feelings. I just feel like I've been stuck in a bit of a rut with the phallas I've participated in lately, and the things I used to do differently generally blew up in my face, so I want to play better but I'm not sure how.
Apologies for not giving this game the attention it deserves. You'd think with the quarantine going on I'd have nothing but time for Phalla but in reality it's really thrown my wife and I for a loop.
Sadly, ID'ing H3K as mafia (sorry I couldn't explain why you were suspicious better, it was just a little too much like an impression of a helpful villager rather than actually a helpful villager) is balanced by forcing the village to waste a shot on me
No hard feelings. I just feel like I've been stuck in a bit of a rut with the phallas I've participated in lately, and the things I used to do differently generally blew up in my face, so I want to play better but I'm not sure how.
For what it's worth, I thought you played mostly fine. You caught the odd vote here and there, but that just happens sometimes. People focus in on the most random things when they're in 'mafia hunting mode' and sometimes you catch flak for things that don't seem to make a lot of sense. You did make it all the way to day 5 before finally eating the vote, which is more than halfway through a typical game, so it's not like you gave yourself away early in the game or anything.
Apologies for not giving this game the attention it deserves. You'd think with the quarantine going on I'd have nothing but time for Phalla but in reality it's really thrown my wife and I for a loop.
Sadly, ID'ing H3K as mafia (sorry I couldn't explain why you were suspicious better, it was just a little too much like an impression of a helpful villager rather than actually a helpful villager) is balanced by forcing the village to waste a shot on me
No hard feelings. I just feel like I've been stuck in a bit of a rut with the phallas I've participated in lately, and the things I used to do differently generally blew up in my face, so I want to play better but I'm not sure how.
Playing mafia is the hardest (for me at least, I assume for most people). Don't sweat it.
These 2 are the posts that tripped my trigger the most, just for reference/constructive criticism:
I'm like the real life astronomer, Tycho Brahe, in that I'm real good at collecting information but terrible at drawing accurate conclusions from it. So who wants to be my Johannes Kepler?
btw h3knuckles what caused me to seer you was your bandwagoning onto a relatively nonsensical jdark bandwagon very quickly, and the way you postured the day after (when I already knew jdark was village)
btw h3knuckles what caused me to seer you was your bandwagoning onto a relatively nonsensical jdark bandwagon very quickly, and the way you postured the day after (when I already knew jdark was village)
I figured following a public vig was a reasonable play for a supposed vanillager. Not sure what you mean by posturing?
I mean, I was sure GG was neutral, and had said as much throughout the evening, so hoping to also get someone who seemed like they should be very suspicious by that point felt like an obvious 'less bad' option for village than just getting GG. But point taken.
I mean, I was sure GG was neutral, and had said as much throughout the evening, so hoping to also get someone who seemed like they should be very suspicious by that point felt like an obvious 'less bad' option for village than just getting GG. But point taken.
Exactly. Because you were mafia, you knew he was for sure not mafia - and most likely neutral.
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+1
H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
In all honesty,
Knowledge of the series and no one else claiming to be Greef would've had me convinced even if I were just a villager.
i'm not sure the exact context here but I take issue with "rooting for/setting up ties is always anti-village". Not that this is the claim you made but I know others have made the claim in the past and I disagree with it. Creating ties earlier enough, or with enough activity on to break them if necessary, can be a great way to get usable vote records.
Letting the day end with a tie is almost ALWAYS a bad idea, unless you're in a "we need to kill off the top two so we can move on and stop wasting time on person X" situation, and even then with Vote manip around it's pretty universally a mistake.
I don't think ties are evil. Getting rid of more people gives you more information. And if done well, can force mafia to either sacrifice their own or reveal themselves. It can also give the village an extra kill. Sure, it can be manipulatied by the mafia just as easily, but it still can be useful, imo.
I don't think ties are evil. Getting rid of more people gives you more information. And if done well, can force mafia to either sacrifice their own or reveal themselves. It can also give the village an extra kill. Sure, it can be manipulatied by the mafia just as easily, but it still can be useful, imo.
I disagree. The village benefits from a longer game. Early-game votes are often so random that you don't gain much from them anyways, and late-game votes are even more easily manipulated. It's also (at the very least) commonly seen that ties are bad for the village, which means sure maybe a mafia member breaks the tie, but villagers break ties all the time, so you don't gain anything from that.
I don't think I've ever seen a mafia member die in a tie, and I can't recall ever catching someone from "preventing" a tie.
I don't think ties are evil. Getting rid of more people gives you more information. And if done well, can force mafia to either sacrifice their own or reveal themselves. It can also give the village an extra kill. Sure, it can be manipulatied by the mafia just as easily, but it still can be useful, imo.
I disagree. The village benefits from a longer game. Early-game votes are often so random that you don't gain much from them anyways, and late-game votes are even more easily manipulated. It's also (at the very least) commonly seen that ties are bad for the village, which means sure maybe a mafia member breaks the tie, but villagers break ties all the time, so you don't gain anything from that.
I don't think I've ever seen a mafia member die in a tie, and I can't recall ever catching someone from "preventing" a tie.
On the other hand, going to far to prevent a tie can create bandwagons making it hard for the vote record to matter and making it easy for mafia to hide. I don't think trying to create a tie is in the village's interest, but if your honest vote puts things at a tie then it shouldn't be viewed as mafiaesque simply for that (unless its like five minutes to vote close).
I don't think ties are evil. Getting rid of more people gives you more information. And if done well, can force mafia to either sacrifice their own or reveal themselves. It can also give the village an extra kill. Sure, it can be manipulatied by the mafia just as easily, but it still can be useful, imo.
I disagree. The village benefits from a longer game. Early-game votes are often so random that you don't gain much from them anyways, and late-game votes are even more easily manipulated. It's also (at the very least) commonly seen that ties are bad for the village, which means sure maybe a mafia member breaks the tie, but villagers break ties all the time, so you don't gain anything from that.
I don't think I've ever seen a mafia member die in a tie, and I can't recall ever catching someone from "preventing" a tie.
I've definitely seen both. Maybe not recently, and the mafia killing tie might have been a surprise via vote manip, but catching mafia breaking ties feels like it happens once every couple games. Or maybe that's just how I hunt mafia so I notice it more.
Knowledge of the series and no one else claiming to be Greef would've had me convinced even if I were just a villager.
Claiming survival neutral with some fluff wrapping as a cover for being mafia also isn't exactly unknown. I've done it before.
I am amazed to this day how long I got away with that Sitting Bull claim in Deadlands back when, but at least we had some mechanics to help make it plausible.
Knowledge of the series and no one else claiming to be Greef would've had me convinced even if I were just a villager.
Claiming survival neutral with some fluff wrapping as a cover for being mafia also isn't exactly unknown. I've done it before.
I am amazed to this day how long I got away with that Sitting Bull claim in Deadlands back when, but at least we had some mechanics to help make it plausible.
I managed to convince the village not to vote out someone who I admitted was mafia through some very audacious bullshit
There was one game where I was an SK, but because my role text was green I thought I was village aligned. And I ended up killing all of my special units whose role was to support me, so they were all pissed even though we won the game.
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Sorry for being off topic but if anyone is interested in joining a Megagame hosted by Matev and AustinP, we had a few people drop out and need replacements. Its a bunch of scheming deception and plotting so right up any Phalla players alley (I should know as that is how I joined up with the game). Contact either AustinP or Matev if you are interested.
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I ran two absolutely awful Phallas solo (pretty much no one liked them) before finding my groove by co-hosting with Locus.
From a quick glance through your history, you've run plenty of good ones, so we need good hosts to keep hosting! Plus, this one wasn't really soul crushing or anything, so I don't even count this as a "bad" Phalla (and I would know
Island Name: Felinefine
The close time would have been problematic had I been working, otherwise I would have done sooner.
I don't think it wasn't a good play to tie the vote.
It just meant GG was tying himself to the Mafia, especially after making comments about how we can't use the vote anymore.
So we killed him.
But that's just my own thoughts.
Just stop being so naturally evil GG :P
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
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I enjoyed the day I got to experience and the narrations were a fun read
3DS: 1289-8447-4695
Yeah, I take that comment back. Upon reflection.
Thanks for being ready at the helm, premium. Glad it was alright.
Evil is in my blood! You should understand that, Father!
Edit: As far as the rest of the post, If I didn't use it then, I'll still be in the same position later when I did. So really the best option was to not use my power period, which meant it was useless. Once people starting saying that the vote Manipulation had to be a mafia power, I knew that someone would look at the votes and had basically a 1/3 chance of figuring it out, so I tried to say it might be from two sources to hide my tracks.
The reason I said it might be a faction game was because of how Loyalty was listed in my role PM, and with how I was connected to Guild Members, caused me to expect that maybe there was a Stormtrooper version of me out there, and I wanted to see if I could get him to talk to me. Once Sir Fab died (who was the only person that I had done the reverse seer thing on), I figured since my role was tying me to the village, I could somehow get the guild members at least to talk to me and get a soft network going. But instead I got neutral hunted when the village couldn't afford it and the rest of history.
I may have seen Locus, so premium came into the game networked
Use your power every night to increase the lead the first place vote getter had. This helps prevent other potential vote manip, even if it doesn't look like it's doing anything. Also helps prevent last minute shenanigans, although that wasn't a factor this game.
Again, many people voting for you didn't do it simply because you were neutral or had vote manipulation. It was how you used it and what you said.
We (mostly) weren't neutral witch hunting, we though we had a mafia!
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If you hadn't been caught, then using your power to help the Mafia and winning with the Mafia is a strategy that would have won you this game.
But you were caught, and then killed because of the way you used your power to benefit the Mafia.
Saying that because you were caught the power was useless is not sound reasoning.
Yeah, I thought after learning that Greef's vote manip decreased with guild members that we'd lose the second mafia kill each night after losing another player. Because of that I thought the game had a couple more nights to go, and didn't realize it was a done deal whether I died or not.
You pretty much lead the mafia through this, so yes, I'd say you did a great job.
No hard feelings. I just feel like I've been stuck in a bit of a rut with the phallas I've participated in lately, and the things I used to do differently generally blew up in my face, so I want to play better but I'm not sure how.
For what it's worth, I thought you played mostly fine. You caught the odd vote here and there, but that just happens sometimes. People focus in on the most random things when they're in 'mafia hunting mode' and sometimes you catch flak for things that don't seem to make a lot of sense. You did make it all the way to day 5 before finally eating the vote, which is more than halfway through a typical game, so it's not like you gave yourself away early in the game or anything.
3DS: 1289-8447-4695
Playing mafia is the hardest (for me at least, I assume for most people). Don't sweat it.
These 2 are the posts that tripped my trigger the most, just for reference/constructive criticism:
I figured following a public vig was a reasonable play for a supposed vanillager. Not sure what you mean by posturing?
I mean, I was sure GG was neutral, and had said as much throughout the evening, so hoping to also get someone who seemed like they should be very suspicious by that point felt like an obvious 'less bad' option for village than just getting GG. But point taken.
Exactly. Because you were mafia, you knew he was for sure not mafia - and most likely neutral.
Island Name: Felinefine
i'm not sure the exact context here but I take issue with "rooting for/setting up ties is always anti-village". Not that this is the claim you made but I know others have made the claim in the past and I disagree with it. Creating ties earlier enough, or with enough activity on to break them if necessary, can be a great way to get usable vote records.
Letting the day end with a tie is almost ALWAYS a bad idea, unless you're in a "we need to kill off the top two so we can move on and stop wasting time on person X" situation, and even then with Vote manip around it's pretty universally a mistake.
I disagree. The village benefits from a longer game. Early-game votes are often so random that you don't gain much from them anyways, and late-game votes are even more easily manipulated. It's also (at the very least) commonly seen that ties are bad for the village, which means sure maybe a mafia member breaks the tie, but villagers break ties all the time, so you don't gain anything from that.
I don't think I've ever seen a mafia member die in a tie, and I can't recall ever catching someone from "preventing" a tie.
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
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On the other hand, going to far to prevent a tie can create bandwagons making it hard for the vote record to matter and making it easy for mafia to hide. I don't think trying to create a tie is in the village's interest, but if your honest vote puts things at a tie then it shouldn't be viewed as mafiaesque simply for that (unless its like five minutes to vote close).
I've definitely seen both. Maybe not recently, and the mafia killing tie might have been a surprise via vote manip, but catching mafia breaking ties feels like it happens once every couple games. Or maybe that's just how I hunt mafia so I notice it more.
Claiming survival neutral with some fluff wrapping as a cover for being mafia also isn't exactly unknown. I've done it before.
I am amazed to this day how long I got away with that Sitting Bull claim in Deadlands back when, but at least we had some mechanics to help make it plausible.
I managed to convince the village not to vote out someone who I admitted was mafia through some very audacious bullshit
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Not really when all of the other bounty hunters were red
https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/235528/megagame-aegons-conquest-a-charge-of-kraken-turn-5#latest
Sorry @Egos!