Mini Mafia Round 3

[General Spoon]

This is the official Mini Mafia game thread where all discussions/game play/voting will take place. For those playing, all game-related posts should go here.

If you are dead or not playing, do not post in this thread. If you're dead, you're dead. I can't stop you from talking about the game outside of the forum, but by the honor system, please don't. It'll only ruin the fun of the game for others.

Gameplay/Rules

Each game day consists of the Day Phase and the Night Phase. Since my schedule is fairly busy and not perfect, there will not be a 100% set schedule for this. There will, however, be a minimum time limit of 48 hours per day phase. So from the time of my most recent update, you have at least 48 hours to post your votes. Once that time has passed, someone will be hung and the night phase will begin. Once I post that the night phase has begun, ya'll can start PM'ing me. I will post the results once all actions are submitted (or at least 24 hours have passed, in case people forget). This may cause the game to run a little slowly, but it also gives more time for forum discussion, strategy stuff, etc.

Additionally, I would ask that you do not change your name while playing the game.

Also, only edit your post if you are changing a vote. To edit your post for any other reason goes against the spirit of the game.

Day Phase

The Day Phase is when everyone decides to cast a vote to hang someone (or hang no one, if you decide). You do not have to vote. For this game, votes will be cast publicly on the forum. Votes must be bolded and obvious. If I miss a vote because you implied it or forgot to make it obvious, that's your fault, not mine. If you change your vote and make a new post with a vote, unbold your old one. If you change your vote and forget to unbold your first one, I'll ignore your attempt of change because, well, because I can. Remember, everyone (save for those who are dead) participates in voting if they decide to.

Night Phase

The Night Phase is for those with special abilities (certain villagers have these, as do the Mafia). The most notable part of this phase is who the Mafia kill. To do your actions, send me a PM on this forum. Make it 100% clear who you are performing your action to. In the subject, put the Day # in there somewhere. For example, the mafia will PM me who they kill each night, if there's a doctor then he will protect someone, etc.

Special Roles

Everyone will receive their role in a PM. For this round (yes, we'll have more rounds later), I will be posting the approximate number of mafia members and what special roles there are. All roles are distributed randomly. No, it's not rigged, and no, I am not going to change the results for friends. I want to hold true to the randomness of the game. So, theoretically, the same person could be mafia 5 rounds in a row.

Town Roles

Townie

The townie does not have any special powers, but may still try to outwit the mafia. He can also vote to lynch people during the day phase.

Doctor

Every night phase, this player can protect one person. Protecting blocks all killing actions done on that person that night phase. A doctor cannot protect himself. If a yakuza is protected on the same night he uses his power, the conversion will go through, and the yakuza won't die.

Tracker

The tracker can follow another player at night. The tracker will know who the person he tracked visited.

Bulletproof

This player can survive one shot at them, whether it is from the mafia or from the hunter. When this player is shot, they receive the following message:

A bullet strikes your vest! You cannot survive another hit!

Hunter

When this player is lynched, he can shoot another player. When lynched, he will send me a PM with who he wants to shoot.

Shrink

The shrink can pick ANY player, even himself, to shrink at night. All conversion attempts on the player he shrinks that night will fail.

Mafia Roles

Vanilla

Regular mafia guy. Participates in the mafia's discussion and stuff. This is the role that a player who has been converted by the yakuza becomes.

Yakuza

At night, the yakuza can sacrifice himself in order to convert another player to the mafia. This does not prevent the yakuza from making a kill that night. Even if the conversion fails, the yakuza will still die. If the yakuza uses his power on the same night a doctor is protecting him, he will live and the conversion will still go through (unless stopped by shrink). When he uses his power, he visits the player he is converting, and he visits himself to commit suicide.

PLAYERS WHO HAVE BEEN YAKKED WILL NOT KNOW WHO THE OTHER MAFIA MEMBERS ARE UNTIL THE NIGHT.

Winning Conditions

The town wins if the mafia are all dead.

The mafia wins if they make up half of the town.

We have 9 players this game.

There are/is:

1 Townie

1 Doctor

1 Tracker

2 Bulletproofs

1 Hunter

1 Shrink

2 Yakuza

Player Status

Core- Alive (Bulletproof)

Ulki -Alive (Bulletproof)

Ether -Dead- Night 1- Bloody death (Townie)

Fayt Zelpher -Dead- Day 3- Claim (Yakuza)

BK-201 -Dead- Night 5- Chop chop! (Tracker)

Lightning -Dead- Night 1- Seppuku (Yakuza)

Balcerzak -Dead- Day 4- Public hanging (Doctor)

Bizz -Dead- Day 5- All dead (Yakked Hunter)

CATS -Dead- Night 4- Killed (Shrink)

PLEASE DO NOT SEND PMS ETC. TO EACHOTHER. THE DAY PHASES ARE GOING TO BE 48 HOURS LONG THIS GAME

Edited May 14, 2010 by General Spoon

[General Spoon]

Roles are currently being distributed. Also, it wouldn't be a half bad idea to check this thread out. http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=20129

It also helps to be able to count and do simple addition and subtraction when deciding if you should lynch on day 1, etc.

[General Spoon]

Also, a player can vote for himself this round. This really only matter when the hunter claim is being lynched.

[General Spoon]

Night 1 Begins

Please PM me your orders.

[Zanarkin]

night starting soon? I hate the fact that i got killed so early in the other 2 games <_<

[General Spoon]

Night has started already.

[Zanarkin]

I meant day...

Edit: Didn't mean the edit, nothing is changed though, only added this.

Edited May 7, 2010 by Ulki

[General Spoon]

It should start eventually...

[General Spoon]

Night 1 Results

As dawn broke, it become apparent that:

1. Ether the townie was lying dead in a pool of his own blood

2. Lightning the yakuza had committed seppuku and was dead

3. It was day

Day 1 Begins

As a reminder, no PMs are to be sent. This day phase will last 48 hours, so please take the time to talk and stuff like that, as there is no rush.

[Balcerzak]

Okay. Based on the recommendations Spoon put forth in the other thread, I actually went and signed up for EpicMafia to get a few practice games of this mode in to get a better idea of how things go down from here on out.

Tracker, any night one "no visits" you found are completely useless. Whoever you followed could've been yakked. Well, unless you followed Ether, but he was plain townie anyway. That said, if you got a night one follow where something actually went down, you need to come out with it immediately, because it's the remaining yakuza, and if we don't catch him now, he could go off tonight.

The fact that one of the yakuza didn't go off makes this a little more tricky, actually. I'll need to rethink this a little bit more and post with further details and recommendations.

[riariadne]

WAIT WHAT, THIS STARTED WHEN I WAS IN CANADA NO FAIR ;_;

Edited May 3, 2010 by Lightning

[Balcerzak]

Wait, Spoon, clarification. That was a mod-kill and not a conversion seppuku?

[General Spoon]

He committed suicide. Read the description.

[Zanarkin]

so he converted someone?

You know i think that Bal is a likely target for Mafia conversion...

[Balcerzak]

Okay, still delightfully vague, but I'm going to assume that means, yes he converted and killed himself. Though then I have no idea what Rein is bitching about. He got a role that requires him to die to use its powers. Tough it up, man.

Anyway. Only one yak going off either means the Shrink had a successful conversion prevention, or yak #2 just decided not to use his powers. I'm banking on the fact that it was conversion prevention, because it's much smarter for the yak to go off right away.

Case 1: Both yaks yak, plus one mafia death.

Town population: 9 -> 6

Composition: 4 blue, 2 mafia

Assume a good lynch for town -> 4 blue : 1 mafia

Case 2: 1 yak yaks, plus one mafia death

Town population: 9 -> 7

Composition: 5 blue, 1 'nilla, 1 yak

Lynch yak -> 5 blue : 1 mafia

Lynch mafia -> 5 blue : 1 yak equivalent to Case 1

If they don't yak right away, and town decides to lynch, there's a 1 in 7 chance that they are left much worse off than they would otherwise have been as a team.

However, since both cases are mislynch and lose*, they may just bank on the situation that there will be a no lynch, try to set up a false positive as far as a clear from the shrink goes, and maybe get lucky. Whether or not they're smart enough to orchestrate such a thing depends on them. I feel confident in suggesting that this is probably not something Reinfleche would have come up with, but we don't know who his partner was.

I'm banking on the fact that it was, in fact a successful prevention, and would like to call the Shrink to out themselves with their target. Don't worry about dying. In this format, the game will never make it past Day 3 anyway, so you'll only miss out on a small portion of the fun in exchange for having likely a huge impact on guiding a successful town victory.

Of course, we have to also beware of false claims, or the possible fact that although the shrink prevention went off, the possibility that the Shrink himself was hit, and could be lying to us. None of these things can be determined though without people other than me contributing, so town, let's get on this thing.

[spoiler=*]Case 1:

-> lynch a townie

Composition: 3 blue, 2 mafia

-> Night kill

2 blue, 2 mafia

Town loses Night 2.

Case 2:

-> lynch a townie

Composition: 4 blue, 1 mafia, 1 yak

-> Night kill, yak conversion

2 blue, 2 mafia

Town loses Night 2.

[spoiler=Further maths]

In this case, if we lynch the hunter what will happen?

-> lynch hunter

Composition: 4, 1, 1

-> Hunter shoots

Case 1: Hits town! 3, 1, 1

-> Night kill, yak conversion

1, 2 lolbad

Case 2: Hits mafia! 4, 1

-> Night kill, yak converion

2, 1 still in the game

Case 3: Hits yak! 4, 1

-> Night kill

3, 1 still in the game

[spoiler=Summary]

So, if we lynch,

raw chance of hitting yakuza 1/7, best outcome

raw chance of hitting mafia 1/7, good outcome

raw chance of hitting hunter 1/7

--->hunter shot hitting yakuza 1/6, decent outcome

--->hunter shot hitting mafia 1/6, fair outcome

raw chance of hitting other town 4/7

Chance of lynch being a good thing 33%, chance of lynch being bad 66%.

Of course these numbers are liable to chance with an influx of information, but as it currently stands...

[General Spoon]

Clarification. If a yak uses his powers, he dies, no matter the end result (unless saved).

[Balcerzak]

Oh, right. I either forgot that, or overlooked it. So noted.

[Balcerzak]

Rethinking situation. Shrink, your target was now meaningless. It might be better to continue to hide. Not sure yet.

[Balcerzak]

No, that's not true, it's possible you prevented conversion from Rein's target. Leaving 6 blue and 1 yak. Outing is still important.

[Deliriyum]

Don't forget about the bulletproof Bal

[Balcerzak]

Hmm, Bulletproofs do throw off all of my math, but I'm not sure they're safe enough to rely on. Nice reminder though.

[Fayt Zelpher]

No, that's not true, it's possible you prevented conversion from Rein's target. Leaving 6 blue and 1 yak. Outing is still important.

I'm not so sure. Say that the shrink outs himself during this day phase. But then he gets Yakked during the night. It's a good thing for the town, but now the shrink is playing a losing hand. The problem is that no one wants the mafia to get too disadvantaged at this point, because anyone of the townies could find himself/herself on the mafia side very quick...

In other words, outing is a good decision from the standpoint of the town, but it's not so great for the shrink himself/herself.

The other problem is that tracking is useless tonight, and we can't know if it will be useful tomorrow night. Plus, the doctor's power is limited, since if he or she should save the yak and the yak converts, we'll quickly find ourselves facing a mafia win by day 2 start, and that's a really bad scenario... Especially since we have a better than chance probability that if we hit the hunter, he blasts another townie, and we're doomed no matter what happens even if the doctor didn't save the second yak.

The question is: are we facing a 5-3 or 6-2 (or 7-1, if the shrink hit Rein's target) split at the moment? Most likely it's 6-2. That means that we certainly don't want to hit the hunter. We also definitely don't want to take out the shrink, because then the mafia will get a free conversion and make it 5-2 (4-2 after the standard mafia kill if that goes through).

Obviously, those are the bad scenarios that we have to watch out for. The best scenario we could hope for is that the shrink stopped the conversion and we hit the other yak tonight, in which case we win tonight. Also, if the shrink stopped the conversion and we hit the hunter, the hunter could blow the yak's brains out and we also win in that case.

No lynch is of course the safest option in this case, but is it the one we want to pursue? That means the mafia gets a free kill and the second yak gets a chance to go off as well, which means that if both new members are bulletproof, we're in a mislynch = lose scenario, and the mafia wins 2/3 of the time if that occurs. But at the same time, if the yak doesn't go off a second time, we have to be very careful of what's going to happen, because now we can't rely on any powers again and we'll have to lynch in the relative dark...

In short, all this is making my head royally hurt and I can't think straight and I want to hear from someone else before I even think about casting a vote for anyone.

[Percivalé]

This is going to be a pretty hard game for me, but I should learn how to play in these kinds of setups, haha

[Balcerzak]

I'm not so sure. Say that the shrink outs himself during this day phase. But then he gets Yakked during the night. It's a good thing for the town, but now the shrink is playing a losing hand. The problem is that no one wants the mafia to get too disadvantaged at this point, because anyone of the townies could find himself/herself on the mafia side very quick...

In other words, outing is a good decision from the standpoint of the town, but it's not so great for the shrink himself/herself.

Shrink can shrink themselves tonight. 100% guaranteed they won't become mafia. He could die, sure, if the doctor doesn't protect him (which would be stupid in the case of an uncontested Shrink claim).

Even for non-shrink citizens, since I'm positive we're in at worst 6-2, there's only at at highest 20% chance of getting converted, so any logical thinker would play the odds and continue to bat for the side of the town as long as they are on it. The likelihood of conversion is not large enough to warrant a significant shift in strategy until after it goes off in my opinion, but if there are any game theory specialist in the game, I'd defer to their opinion on the matter, I suppose.

The other problem is that tracking is useless tonight, and we can't know if it will be useful tomorrow night. Plus, the doctor's power is limited, since if he or she should save the yak and the yak converts, we'll quickly find ourselves facing a mafia win by day 2 start, and that's a really bad scenario... Especially since we have a better than chance probability that if we hit the hunter, he blasts another townie, and we're doomed no matter what happens even if the doctor didn't save the second yak.

Tracking is only useless as far as "no visits" are concerned. The tracker should of course still be tracking, and could get active hits which will either tell us targets of conversion, or killers. Any positive information is still entirely plausible, Tracker cannot be disregarded.

Additionally, in the case of uncontested Shrink claim, the Doctor will be perfectly free to protect them. The mafia member doesn't know who the yak is until nightfall, so even if the Shrink were converted, at worst the Doctor would be protecting a vanilla, but in the lack of vigilantes it'd be the same as if he stayed home. There's no way the Yak can be an uncontested Shrink claim, because he doesn't know if the Shrink is the new mafia or not, and he most likely won't risk that kind of exposure, as contested claims tend to be lynched very quickly.

The question is: are we facing a 5-3 or 6-2 (or 7-1, if the shrink hit Rein's target) split at the moment? Most likely it's 6-2. That means that we certainly don't want to hit the hunter. We also definitely don't want to take out the shrink, because then the mafia will get a free conversion and make it 5-2 (4-2 after the standard mafia kill if that goes through).

With all the forewarning out there ("thanks Spoon!"), I'm positive we didn't pull a Doctor stupid enough to protect someone Night 1. It's 6-2 at worst, 7-1 at best.

That said, hitting the hunter is bad, but it's not catastrophic at this stage. If we account for the fact that some of the town targets will live through hunter retaliation, it's not an autoloss if we're at 7-1, and there's a fair chance of hitting scum, especially if the Shrink and his Clear are well known. That would actually give the hunter enough knowledge to make things 50-50. If we hit any town, Hunter is clearly the one to hit.

[Deliriyum]

I've got high suspicions on Bizz and CATS, but because of mislynch and lose, I won't act upon my suspicions.