Fair setups

[Voss]

What would be fair win rates for mafia-game factions?

For example, in a classic 15 player setup with a serial killer, 3 mafia, and 9 town, (maybe a neutral nonkilling evil and benign)...

how often should the serial killer, town, and mafia win to consider it a fair setup?

33% 33% 33%?

1/15, 3/15, 9/15?

What do you all think?

[deathworlds]

MattZed is probably the best person to ask about this, he's all about win rates when balancing a setup!

But in my personal opinion the win rate of a killing neutral, town and mafia, should be around 15%, 42.5%, 42.5%.

15% for the serial killer because a solo victory has a much higher reward than a shared victory (such as town or mafia), and the neutral killer should be stronger in terms of night potential than the mafia or the town, however it is harder to control the lynch when you're alone, which is often the only thing that can actually kill you.

42.5% for town and mafia because the win rates between the town and mafia should be inherently equal.

[Never Unlucky]

You should definitely aim for:

-Neutral killing -> 15% to 20%

-Town -> 40%

-Mafia -> 40%.

That's roughly the numbers a fair setup should have in a "9T-3M-3N" type of structure. The NK should not have the same odds of winning than the two other factions given that he is alone.

EDIT: I sampled 80 mod mafia games 2 months ago, and those were the results: Town (49/80 = 61%), Mafia (24/80 = 30%), NK (7/80 = 8%).
This is data is, however, somewhat erroneous because a) not all of the games tracked were of the 9-3-3 type (In some setups, there wasn't even a mafia), and b) I am a good player and roll town most of the time since I -blacklist half of the mafia roles, so the mafia tends to lose more games than usual in my games, thus invalidating my sampling.

It does tell us that a setup, fair or unfair, does not necessarily warrant the winrates to be reasonable. RNG and players are factors that make it hard for any setup to have the desired outcome percentage.

[MattZed]

Are we talking for your mafia game/SC2Mafia or for forum mafia? It does change my answer. For a quick game that's over in less than an hour, it's fine to have some hard roles to win as because people can just change roles soon.

But for forum mafia game, giving someone an extra-hard role they have to stick with is in general cruel. You don't want the SK to think at the end of the game "I played so well but got unlucky with a cop check; if only I had an ally like mafia I would have won!" I believe very strongly that the best FM setups give all factions a roughly equal chance to win. So if it's Town-Mafia-SK, I aim for 33-33-33 by giving the SK night immunity, possible detection immunity, and perhaps an extra kill.

In practice, you'll get something off from that, but if your three-faction game lets town win more than 50% of the time, or SK win less than 20%, it fails my notion of balance pretty hard.

[DarknessB]

But for forum mafia game, giving someone an extra-hard role they have to stick with is in general cruel. You don't want the SK to think at the end of the game "I played so well but got unlucky with a cop check; if only I had an ally like mafia I would have won!"

Yeah, this is why Neutral Evil (but non-killing) roles are heavily disfavored in Forum Mafia other than Cult of course (which tends to be the anti-Town faction in its games). More so solo roles like Witch, Auditor (I don't think I've ever seen someone use an Auditor in an FM game interestingly), Judge (which has rarely been seen), etc. It's just tough rolling Neutral -- you're basically playing to do well vs. win in most games realistically speaking.

[deathworlds]

neutral roles need to be op is what everyone is saying, will design setup with this in mind this weekend.

[Voss]

Are we talking for your mafia game/SC2Mafia or for forum mafia? It does change my answer. For a quick game that's over in less than an hour, it's fine to have some hard roles to win as because people can just change roles soon.

But for forum mafia game, giving someone an extra-hard role they have to stick with is in general cruel. You don't want the SK to think at the end of the game "I played so well but got unlucky with a cop check; if only I had an ally like mafia I would have won!" I believe very strongly that the best FM setups give all factions a roughly equal chance to win. So if it's Town-Mafia-SK, I aim for 33-33-33 by giving the SK night immunity, possible detection immunity, and perhaps an extra kill.

In practice, you'll get something off from that, but if your three-faction game lets town win more than 50% of the time, or SK win less than 20%, it fails my notion of balance pretty hard.

(Playing a little devil's advocate, because i pretty much agree)
I get that and initially thought this was the right answer, but shouldn't a town that's working really well together have a higher chance of winning? I mean, on the other hand, I'd like to almost reward a town that's playing the right way since it's harder for town to 'work the right way'.

[secondpassing]

(Playing a little devil's advocate, because i pretty much agree)
I get that and initially thought this was the right answer, but shouldn't a town that's working really well together have a higher chance of winning? I mean, on the other hand, I'd like to almost reward a town that's playing the right way since it's harder for town to 'work the right way'.

I think MattZed takes into account the probability that towns work together. Statistics is for looking at the big picture— you should get town teams that should work together and towns that will lynch each other.
Seeing that you've played quite a few FM games yourself, you probably understand that towns that work together simply will probably win.

I recommend you answer the "Are we talking for your mafia game/SC2Mafia or for forum mafia?" question.

[MattZed]

(Playing a little devil's advocate, because i pretty much agree)
I get that and initially thought this was the right answer, but shouldn't a town that's working really well together have a higher chance of winning? I mean, on the other hand, I'd like to almost reward a town that's playing the right way since it's harder for town to 'work the right way'.

I bake the town's success at "working together" into that; some setups will be balanced on one community and won't be balanced on another simply because different strategies and metas will affect the easiness of some wincons. So by "equal chance" I mean something like a "a randomly assigned group of regulars at the site will tend to have 1/3rd of their games end with each victory type."

[MattZed]

Yeah, this is why Neutral Evil (but non-killing) roles are heavily disfavored in Forum Mafia other than Cult of course (which tends to be the anti-Town faction in its games). More so solo roles like Witch, Auditor (I don't think I've ever seen someone use an Auditor in an FM game interestingly), Judge (which has rarely been seen), etc. It's just tough rolling Neutral -- you're basically playing to do well vs. win in most games realistically speaking.

One fix I find for "neutral evil" roles, given there's only one scum faction, is to simply let them win while being dead, as long as town lost. They're basically just a member of the mafia who doesn't know the mafia, which is how neutral evils basically play anyways.

[Quick]

I think in a perfect world, yes, you would definitely want an equal split between all factions. I will say, however, that this is no easy task to accomplish. One perspective on viewing whether the setup is balanced or not is by looking at the EV of all roles and factions in the game. Obviously this get very complex when it comes to 3rd party and giving them just the right amount of edge to reach up to the same probability that they will win. Give too many powers to them and it makes it near impossible for them to even die, give too little and they are getting the short end of the stick. I'd say in a normal 13 player game with 1 SK, 3 Mafia and 9 Town, you would balance the game as you normally would for the Town and Mafia, but give SK an innocent when people investigate them and a 1-shot BP (bulletproof) to go along with that. Obviously, if anyone finds out that that player is SK they are almost surely dead and will not make it to end game. I think the idea of how to play as SK in this position is to play somewhat townie, but not so townie that the mafia want to kill you.

[Cryptonic]

Mafia and Town should be equal and Neutral should be much lower. Like 10-20%