Alright people, I'm here after a while AFK... and I'll read what I've been missing and reply properly after I dutifully play Among us.

(BTW, everyone is invited. As long as they continue properly playing this game in the rest of the time)

I'm not sure if the math really points to a NL "helping" town, just that an NL on a day where even number of players are alive would be less risky than voting were we in a position where people were voting just to vote.

That provides a dilemma however: The prime time to replace the "vote just to vote" attitude with a NL would be the first day, as typically that would be when we have the least to go on. Trouble is a NL day 1 means scum can easily set up a NK that leaves nary a crumb to investigate. D2 repeats D1 with regards to lacking good evidence to dig into, and we lose a townie with not much to show for it.

It is funny that ZFR started providing evidence for the benefit of a D1 NL AFTER trent used it as a reason to vote for him, not before. if it wasnt for the fact that he nitpicked you so much about how he didnt mention a D1 NL, I would almost believe that ZFR and trent were purposely trying to build a divide between each other and ZFR just forgot to mention the D1 NL before trent could call him out on it.

Great to see you here.

Btw a word of advice: Don't play too long...that game is like virtual smack sometimes. :)

(P.S. Please make sure to check the signup thread. I made a post to you(and others) there[Post 175 in the signup thread]. :))

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(Bump please)

Please don't post in the thread if you're not listed as a player!

Exactly, D2 repeats where D1 left off with one less Townie. That's the whole point. Instead of playing D1-D4 we play D2-D5. That NK on N1 is meaningless. We lose a Townie, but we still have the same number of "lives" left. the game just gets "shifted" by 1 Day.


In both cases you have the same finite number of votes to kill scum and same number of finite wagons to analyse.. For example, in 7vs1, it's 3 lives:

7 vs 1

Without NL

_ Lynch (flip and anlyse)
_ NK (flip and analyse)
(we're now at 5 vs 1)

_ Lynch (flip and analyse)
_ NK (flip and analyse)
(we're now at 3 vs 1 - we have to lynch scum or it's game over)

With NL

_ NL
_ NK (flip and analyse)
(we're now at 6 vs 1)

_ Lynch (flip and analyse)
_ NK (flip and analyse)
(we're now at 4 vs 1)

_ Lynch (flip and analyse)
_ NK (flip and analyse)
(we're now at 3 vs 1 - we have to lynch scum or it's game over)


Do you see now? we either go

Vote-Vote-1Life remaining

Or

NL-Vote-Vote-1Life remaining.

That NL in the second case didn't cause us to lose anything. We still have the same number of wagons to analyse. It's like you said as if the game started on D2 and finishes on D4, or it starts on D1 and finishes on D3.

We get the same number of wagons to analyse, the same number of everything.

So why do it? Is it, as you say, that "we have nothing to show for it"?
No, We *do* have something to show for it. We have the advantage that going forward, the pool of players is smaller, so we have a bigger chance of hitting scum.
The small disadvantage is that we lost one player's ability to analyse. They're dead and can't talk. However that NL doesn't cost us anything otherwise.


I'm really surprised why trent said I wanted to NL D1. Did he mistake my post with Koro's? I'd like an explanation from him when he's back.


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Anyway, NL on D1 is the right thing to do, however I won't push for it. The EV% advantage is very small (less than 5% for 10vs2), and I can understand how it's counterintuitive for people to do it now. So if people are against it, I'm fine of not NLing D1. However I will definitely push for NL if we haven't done it by MYLO.

Thing is, i've seen most of that during some games before...even without a NL.

As to this game and ZFR's suggestion: Fwiw I think ZFR is more likely town than scum at this point, and he is good with the math.....so i'm inclined to trust his judgement on this.

Maybe....we will see in time, no doubt. For now, though, I don't think ZFR would put his butt on the line and hanging in the breeze like this by pushing the idea of a NL so early in the game.

Guys, it even says so on the setup page:

[url=https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Category:Vanilla_(Open_Setup)]https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Category:Vanilla_Open_Setup[/url]

"If the total number of players is even, Town should No Eliminate - this is because the number of miseliminations is unchanged, while the probability of eliminating Mafia is increased with one fewer Townie. "

That's pretty much the thing. The number of "lives" remains unchanged, the probability of hitting Mafia increases.

Hmmm.

Mathematically, I am sure there's nothing wrong with the D1 NL. Practically however, I am just not that certain.

That's because, much as D1 is a day where Town runs at random like a headless chicken, so is a D2 after NL. Whereas with any later days ending in NL Town will still have the current Day's posts to cross against the previous wagons.

That said I am still tentatively inching ZFR townier for their posts in this matter, while on the other hand I have this little voice in my ear that says "You could be letting yourself be pocketed, you know". So I just don't know. I also learned the hard way before that I can't ever scumread Trent, so I won't even try. Without hard PR confirmation I'll 100% believe Trent is not mafia only after his flip or after the game is over.

In another front, I am pleasantly surprised to see Korotan much more at ease with Mafia than in the previous game, already focused on finding who might be lying. (Congrats, mate.)
A little too different from the previous game, actually. But that's to be expected from someone who had a lot to learn in so little time so I consider this change is NAI.

@Korotan: NAI means Not-Alignment-Indicative, so it's something that doesn't make me rate you more nor less possible scum than without it.
And also, its like Dedo said: WIFOM in the context of this game is basically that you start thinking if player X made something because they ARE town, or if they are scum counting on you following that train of thought to believe they must be town.

Thought I'd take yesterday off to get away from the mathematics for a while, come back today and can see it's still going ...

Yeah, that makes sense and it's pretty much how if felt it was going to turn out. That's basically the benefit of skipping on 4 in that other game - you "spend" your "free" shot in exchange for a narrower pool of options to work with - at best you end up in a situation when a question mark is no longer mudding the waters and that makes the process of elimination easier; at worst your in a very similar situation where you still don't know jack but at least you have slightly better odds. The main issue with this approach is the morality of it. We basically sit down and wait for someone to die so we get a small statistical improvement out if it and that kind of sucks for that one player.

@Korotan: if we nolynch on D1, D2 starts with almost as little knowledge as D1 did. D1 sucks, because we are shooting in the dark. I am against repeating D1 on D2, if we can avoid it. And yes, we can. By lynching. So, all statistics that ZFR likes to throw around aside: no-lynch on D1 sucks. So, I'll get a train started:

vote Korotan

Yes, D2 after NL is like D1 in a NL-less normal game. But we get an extra Day to compensate for it later.
Without NL game lasts D1-D4. With NL it lasts D2-D5.

Without NL on D1 we have to out scum by Day 4 to win. With NL we can do it by Day 5.


Did you read anything that I wrote? This has nothing to do with "statistics".

Exactly.

Bingo! That person is out of the game before he can meaningfully interact with it which kind of sucks. Plus we lose any insight/analysis he might have had later (and we can be sure that Mafia will use the opportunity to kill a strong player). And the % advantage when we get at 12 of players is not that significant (we only increase our odds from 0.1667 to 0.1818).

So I won't insist on doing it now for those reason.

But I will insist on doing it at one point. We have a finite number of Mislynches and this won't change.

We do it D1 D2 D3 D4, we can do it D2 D3 D4 D5 or we can do D1 D3 D4 D5. But we won't get any less lives, wagons, analysis or whatever by doing the NL on D1.

Where is Joe? He most definitely isn't in my bed so wtf is he?

So now this is a game of statistics and no lynches to support those statistics, what happened to playing mafia?