Strategy Discussion

[Shoal]

In this thread we talk about strategy in general.

I'll get the ball rolling by copypasting what I wrote in the QT.

I think if all 5 of us discend on the heretic and say TULIP IS INNOCENT DIE YOU INFIDEL HOW COULD YOU SUGGEST OTHERWISE that would be extremely conspicuous. We should avoid voting each other when we think our vote will get the other person lynched (except when we must, or like in pistachi0n's situation), but we should be careful to neither appear too co-ordinated or too knowledgeable or too clique-y in public. If we work together in kind of ever shifting groups of 2 or so that should be okay.

Example (with names made up, not even bothering to look at the player list)

day 1: pistachi0n and me are both mildly suspicious of andais. jalapeno and aesterix don't really respond to this and are both separately a little suspicious of tau for different reasons. tamien and tulip are mildly suspicious of kappa

day 2: aesterix and me are mildly supicious about something wolf said. jalapeno and tulip are more focused on something mildly supicious modrony said. pisachi0n and tamien etc. somebody else.

[pistachi0n]

So, Kappa's number generator just picked me. What do I do?

I mean, I have to get lynched at some point, so it's not terrible, but for purely selfish reasons (playing Mafia is fun!!) I'd rather not die until day 4 or 5. I'm also useful to you guys, so you probably want to wait before you throw me under the bus.

[jalapeno_dude]

Kappa is not generating his random numbers in public, so that's a possible line of attack.

[Aestrix]

And here was my contribution in the QT, also copy pasted:

1. I feel like any precautions we make are more likely to hurt us than the traitor, but if anyone can think of a good precaution that won't hamstring our greatest asset (our ability to talk to each other) I'm all ears. Thoughts on the traitor: if they could out us all day one this would be a very short game, so I suspect they have SOMETHING keeping them from doing that. Most obvious is that they need to live in order to win, but I might be able to think of other things if I sat down and thought about it for a while.

I'm not inclined to think the gods are lying, that would be an extra bastardy thing to do. The gods are kind of bastards, but not to the point where they would incite a witch hunt among our own with no actual traitor to find, kill, and display the pieces of at carnivals.

2. Moderation, I'd say. It's okay if our compatriots get a BIT of heat on them, everyone gets a bit of heat on them in a mafia game. Intervene through some indirect means if you need to at all. Something that worked last game for me with defense of michaelblume was pretending to ignore the person being bandwagoned and starting ANOTHER, better one, but there's no guarantee that'll work. Especially if *I* do it, people are catching on to my tricks. Tulip getting attention from Kappa via RNG? Fine, it doesn't look like it's going anywhere, and Kappa's making the mistake of not making the RNG public, so no one will trust that it's truly random.

Ever shifting groups of two sounds like a pretty good bet, but careful that it doesn't look too organized. If we can pull it off, it might be smart to FAKE suspicion of another mafia member (because never being suspicious of any ever is suspicious) but nothing very conclusive. For example, "I am somewhat suspicious of Tamien, but am more suspicious of andaisq, so I'll vote andaisq."

Edit: If it's a possible method of attack, I don't think it's a very good one, and frankly Kappa's smarter than that. I think he's just been getting lucky.

[Shoal]

I don't think they'll settle on you for good today. If it comes down to it, you have your safe claim, but maybe someone should put forth the idea -- preferrably before everyone piles on to anyone -- that if we force people to claim early that will give the mafia an idea of who to target at night. Alternatively, we could just...not... and let them run up wagons on whoever and when someone who isn't us claims a power role we can off them. That might be more educational and a better strategy for us.

So, I guess, just play it cool and nonchalant. don't squirm too much. I think while we shouldn't all collectively pile on plaindealingvillain, he would be a great lynch for today after his "scumslip" earlier where he predicted 3 deaths a night. that's awfully specific, how does he know how many mafia there are when the rest of us don't ;)

[pistachi0n]

I want DanielH to die. I know he hasn't said anything yet. I'm worried he'll give us trouble later only because he's smart and strategic and Alicorn probably gave him a power role.

I don't think we should lynch him, but maybe a nightkill. Is it too early to start talking nightkills?

[Shoal]

Ever shifting groups of two sounds like a pretty good bet, but careful that it doesn't look too organized. If we can pull it off, it might be smart to FAKE suspicion of another mafia member (because never being suspicious of any ever is suspicious) but nothing very conclusive. For example, "I am somewhat suspicious of Tamien, but am more suspicious of andaisq, so I'll vote andaisq."

Edit: If it's a possible method of attack, I don't think it's a very good one, and frankly Kappa's smarter than that. I think he's just been getting lucky.

agree. we should even sometimes vote for each other now and then, just not in a concerted way and not when we think it'll actually cost us somebody (until pistachi0n's ready to be sacrificed). at that point, one of us can go through the thread and earn lots of towncred for nitpicking all of pistachi0n's old posts to make her look scummy.

I should probably also continue to tunnel people ineptly like I did last game. Once people start pointing out that i'm always wrong i could tunnel on one of you guys if we think i'M not likely to be believed, or pistachi0n if people are going to do "shoal is ALWAYS wrong. i'm going to sheep shoal and vote for whoever shoal is voting for. what's the worst that could happen?" again. :D

putting in lots of effort into the game can make you appear towny. we have to be appearing to progress the game without actually doing all that much (but still progressing it some just in measured directions). at the same time, we shouldn't be too quick to reply, shouldn't be the first to speak in the morning because the first few posts of the day will be the most scrutinised i think.


I think we should use nightkills whenever someone claims a power role, but if we don't have any guesses about who is a powerrole, we should either pick whoever is looking towniest or whoever we think will cause the most confusion when they try to figure it out why that person was killed. for example if lots of people end up voting kappa today but not enough for kappa to be daykilled, we could kill some of the people who were being loudest against kappa.

preview-edit: I also think Daniel would be a good early target. Taking out smart people early is a viable strategy if we don't have leads on powerroles.

[Aestrix]

It's never too early to start talking nightkills, in my opinion. :)

I do agree that DanielH is dangerous. Because he's smart. That makes him a very juicy target, yeah, but if we kill him we need to be careful of conspicuously avoiding other smart people in our midst. Many of us are considered smart - if we target exclusively smart people someone might go, "Hey, Aestrix is usually smart, why is she not dead yet?" So... I don't know. Moderation! Thinking ahead! Flailing in the direction of the keyboard!

[jalapeno_dude]

Hmm, I wonder if we can meta this to some extent. We know Alicorn *did not* assign roles randomly, so we might be able to predict what sort of people are likely to have complicated roles. E.g. I'm pretty sure she made me Mafia High Priest based on what happened last game. (Hopefully other people don't guess that...) For similar reasons, I assume DanielH is less likely than average to have a plain powerless town role. This makes him more likely than usual to not be in Town, I'd assume, but of course we want to kill *everyone* not in the Mafia, not just town.

[Shoal]

Yeah, as much as I totally jumped on the opportunity to PM Alicorn with "please make me mafia if we get a private thread" because i've never been mafia before and i really really really wanted to be mafia, the mafia is clearly going to be skewed towards people who wanted to be mafia (so hopefully none of expressed these sentiments in public before we realised it would be a reality, or if we did lets all not call attention to it publically).

we should totally have a "rampant speculation about people" thread where we try to work out what powers people have. now that the cult thread is public you can look at that for an example of how we went about it