Apparently, players suck.

In black flag nightless - expected value for town to win by random lynching is 50%
https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php...Flag_Nightless

As I showed earlier today, it seems that for us - town only wins when they have Distorted.

In the White Flag setup - Towns EV by random lynching is 48%. But they only have 29%.

Long story short: don't let anyone fool you in believing that you are doing a educated lynch at D1. At D1 D2 lynch those who slow down the flow of information. Don't fool yourself. First lynches are more random than you are making yourself believe almost always.

Hmm, this to me confirms something that I've seen in many games, namely that mafia are usually far more willing to engage in risky plays than the town is.
In fact, Townies are typically penalised and strongly discouraged from risky plays; there's a reason Fancy-Play syndrome (as a term) is something that is exclusively applied to town members. You don't even think of risky scum plays as FPSes; merely as strategies.
I think townies usually think that scum wouldn't do something insane, whereas the opposite is usually true.
I'd be far more likely to bus my teammates as scum than to save them.
Your teammates are a liability; having teammates is a hindrance, not an advantage.

That being said, I don't agree in that D1 lynches are random. They're only random if you make them random.

Bussing is a weak play in my book.

I love the beautiful balance between one team having the numbers but the other team unity.
Everyone makes mistakes all the time. Townies push for a townie lynch every game. Townies defend wolves every game. It happens all the time. Yet a wolf fears to be wrong and that's why they give up their teams advantage by bussing? That's not only a all-in play in the hopes that the deep wolf will win the game. Going for such all-in play should be a last resort, not a norm.

Isn't it against your instincts to give the enemy team unity while sacrificing yours? And for what? A all-in deep wolf strategy caused by the fear of being wrong.

Distorted, as wolf, feeds the town their paranoid tendencies. As town he pushes and pressures and questions everyone till they slip up. Both those things not only look nearly identical, but it also gives him all the freedom in the world to be wrong.

Just go look at any random town game of you and tell me how often you pushed a townie, defended a Wolfie at EoD, yet still weren't lynched for it. Now why bus as a wolf?

Think about this: fear causes your tmi to make you more townie as wolf than as townie in some scenarios. Can you make an argument why that can be good?

I remember playing Game 3. The town win was totally legitimate. We completely destroyed the mafia, to the point that they used their single-kill (they had a single-kill in this variant) to kill themselves.

Game 1 the mafia won with exceptional organization. It comprised of three of the best players, esp. Calix and Darkness who really led the town astray. Town characters you might have expected to put up a fight like Iced and Kovath weren't very active for that game.

In Game 2, there were several town players who really distracted from trying to get scums (i.e. RLVG, SJ). There were also some very bad reads from other towns who had influence (i.e. myself). Iced also played a great scumgame by causing massive hysteria without quite ever being the top lynch choice. Scum handled their associations well too.

idk, I don't know whether trends can be drawn from that tbh. In Games 1 and 2 scum won by playing much better than the town. I don't know about 4 and 5 - I'm sure distorted contributed very well to the town wins, regardless.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OzyWho

Distorted, as wolf, feeds the town their paranoid tendencies. As town he pushes and pressures and questions everyone till they slip up. Both those things not only look nearly identical, but it also gives him all the freedom in the world to be wrong.

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@Distorted do you concur?

I don't think bussing's a weak play. It can be a very strong play if done correctly, just depends on how and when it's done.
It's of course not always viable, but my point is that scum should always be ready to bus their teammates if necessary.
And by bussing I mean actual bussing.
The real problem on most sites (and especially on this one) is that people get tied up in insignificant details and they start to rely on too much information.
For every scummy thing someone does, people often ask 'but is that really scummy?' and the truth is, if you look REALLY hard, you can justify almost any sort of behaviour - but at that point, you're no longer really reading people, you're just trying really hard not to cause a mislynch. The reverse is also true: some people tend more towards death-tunnelling than towards indecisiveness (scumreading everyone and going 'but is this really towny?');
I cannot really explain this feeling very well but I'm 100% convinced that it is possible to have a, lets say, 70-80% hit ratio with your reads if you rid yourself of these tendencies (not saying you specifically need to do that, just talking out of principle of course)

I'm always skeptical when people claim you can't tell the difference between a player's scum/town games.
No matter how good you are, the fact is, as scum, you have to lie to achieve your goals. You're lying somewhere; if people look hard enough they'll eventually catch you.

That being said, I believe that in order for town to win, they have to be better than the Mafia; also, 6 games don't really show much, but it is true that scum usually win on this site; but I don't think that points to any element of randomness with regards to d1 lynches, or even with lynches in general

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Magoroth

I believe that in order for town to win, they have to be better than the Mafia

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I think so too because Mafia can win while sitting on their hands, it's the town who has to win. Now imagine Mafia putting in effort.


Ofc everyone can be caught.
I think what I wanted to bring the attention to about Distorteds play - him feeding the town their paranoid tendencies make the town scattered. The thing about bussing is - it's only necessary when town already has a strong core, a unity. That's another argument why bussing is bad - it shouldn't have gotten to that point.

But yeah, ofc everyone should be willing to buss at a moment's notice. It's a judgement call, like everything.

Ah, I thought you were saying it was impossible to accurately read (some) players.
Yeah, I agree with you there. Bussing should be a last resort strategy, you don't wanna shoot yourself in the foot.
For me, interacting with my teammates in a way that feels natural is kinda awkward and difficult, so I usually resort to bussing them hard (if one of them is out in the open anyway).
it can be useful, but I agree that it's not always useful; just like suicide (well..... that's very rarely useful I guess, bussing can be an effective strategy, usually more so than suicide)

When in doubt

Blame Distorted

Hard bussing for "no reason" can be extremely hard to play against. Some sites have that kind of plays in their meta, and it makes wild games that Mafia can win very often. Bussing is an art, and the reward depends on the skill of the busser and of the bussed.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by yzb25

Game 1 the mafia won with exceptional organization. It comprised of three of the best players, esp. Calix and Darkness who really led the town astray. Town characters you might have expected to put up a fight like Iced and Kovath weren't very active for that game.

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I barely even remember that game... must have filed it away as a bad experience. Or maybe because I was distracted at the time.