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How to Improve: Mafia XXX Analysis

Forum Index > TL Mafia 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 All
  Ver   United States. August 26 2010 13:07. Posts 1881Profile # 
There is a marked difference between a town playing poorly on its own, and a town playing poorly due to mafia interference. This is why in a game such as TL Mafia XXVIII, it is not fair to simply condemn and say 'bad town' because the mafia were actively disrupting, misleading, and keeping things uncertain. Games like that are harder to analyze as a whole because it is a struggle by both sides to make the other one do worse, not just do well in itself. On the contrary, an extremely passive game like XXX is easy to analyze from a purely objective standpoint. Furthermore, the behavior in this game is also clear from the thread, meaning it is easy to illustrate basic analysis without losing people along the way. The analysis for both reds and blues is simple and definite, so it's a great game to practice analysis and looking at ways to improve overall.

I'll be analyzing this for both sides in a chronological basis. For the most part I will try to stay away from ninjas and focus on what the town and mafia could have each done better. Not as many people posted/sent me pm's as I hoped, so I will probably have to make some assumptions which might turn out incorrect about reasoning, etc. But thankfully, most of the game is clear from the thread, just not the specifics of how some things occurred.




Day 1 (Overview):


Town play has suffered for far too long by relying too much on the crutch of confirmed innocents and blues. Understand that the town's objective is to find and kill mafia, not find and worship confirmed innocents. Both the day 1 discussion, plan, and the emphasis/directive in future days this game is based far too much on confirmed innocents. They are a tool that helps if the situation demands it, not something to focus on from the get go no matter what the circumstances are. And in this game, the circumstances were decisively against confirmed innocents. The town would've been better off ignoring the plans presented and not caring about any kind of town circle for most of the game.

There are three main goals for the town on day 1 in a standard game:
    1) Get useful information (often achieved via point 2)
    2) Create an ideal atmosphere (will go over this in detail in town guide)
    3) Figure out your plans/direction


Mafia naturally want the opposite of the above. It would be perfect for them if the town turns into a finger pointing grudge match between egoistic townies or if everyone is under so much doubt that they can't figure out anything for certain.

Of course killing mafia on day 1 would be great and it is indeed possible. But in order to get a mafia you need to achieve all of the above steps anyways and have people with the skill and initiative to provoke key information and analyze it properly to catch the mafia, then push for a lynch in limited time. It's very difficult and hardly required (games are designed on the assumption town misses day 1), so if the town can merely accomplish the above objectives, that is more than sufficient.

However, it was disheartening to see a lot of the people in the thread moan about the uselessness of day 1. A lot can be accomplished if you have the skill and activity in day 1. The key point is you have to make things happen, not just sit around waiting for it to happen. That is something too difficult to expand in here but I will go into it in my guide. In the mean time, check out TL Mafia V for instructive play on day 1.

The worst way to play day 1 is with apathy and disinterest and lynch the most outspoken/controversial player, who is never going to be mafia. Lynching inactives is generally fruitless, but slightly less so; the mafia will always be able to deflect it to some bored townie but they might be forced to step up and do something that reveals their true colors. Note that forcing a mafia to expose information they would not have done so in ordinary circumstances is exactly what I mean for point 3.

As for plans, you don't always need one but there are many successful and poor plans that have been discussed and used over the past several games. More than the actual plan itself, the planning stage is more important as a mechanism to get useful information about people that you would not otherwise see. After all, the main contributors to the plan this game (not surprisingly at all), were entirely innocent! In addition, several mafia stood out as trying to appear 'supportive' of the plan while not making any real contributions to it. If the plan had been ditched and people just took that info and ran with it, the town would've been in a great position. More on this later.

Frankly the plan agreed upon by the town, to have all non-kp roles use their power on Xelin and coordinate a legendary 'circle' around him, was a potential disaster in the hands of a capable mafia. Let's look at it objectively:
    1) It's a semi-open game, you know the mafia count is the standard 6/30 with 3 kp so the # of town blue roles will be somewhere from 6-10, as 8 is the average for balance purposes.
    2) There are EIGHT possible blue roles, with an additional one for confounding watchers and trackers.
    3) This means the almost entire blue force (sans KP roles/BD/Vet) will be used in an effort to coordinate.
    4) The entire plan hinges on there being a watcher and at least one other type of information role. Without it the plan fails, especially if Xelin is mafia. It's a pretty safe guess that several roles in the OP won't exist at the minimum simply due to the necessity of having medics/vets/kp.
    5) Watcher will get 1-2 mafia in their group of blues, so nothing is confirmed, meaning another day will have to be wasted before anything is organized. Even if there aren't 1-2 mafia, the watcher has no way of knowing because there are so many different possible blue combinations that you can't logically deduce much.
    6) If Xelin is godfather the town has no way of differentiating him from green or veteran, so they have to coordinate through the watcher. Mafia can compound this problem by throwing in roleblocker/framer on him (town can't trust a mafia rolecheck on Xelin because he'd be likely framed). They furthermore can hide the roleblocker being in the watcher list by roleblocking the godfather but having another mafia claim to be roleblocked. This is of course, if the watcher even exists.
    7) Whether or not the watcher/other info roles exist, which the town cannot know, the town is 'wasting' it's entire blue force day one. The Mafia have nothing to fear from medic prots and therefore can kill dangerous townies and overly exposed blues without risk. Lastly, every info role checking Xelin means that they are losing the most crucial day for information (as they have a limited lifespan, earliest days are most important).


So to sum up, the plan relies on certain roles being in the game that you cannot know if they are in or not. If those roles are in the game, you trade the most important night's worth of actions for an unconfirmed, semi-coordinated group that will mistrust each other. Trade 2 nights for a coordinated group (that is likely to wind up all dead before they can do anything). If these roles are not in the game, you waste an entire nights worth of actions AND the mafia know it (very easy to fake a role then plus get free hits).

If the town had tried this plan against a mafia with a skilled bluesniper, they are losing ~2-3 blues with information/protection roles every night (blues are easier to figure out generally when they are in a circle as well). In this game, there were 6 players with those roles (not counting ninjas). Assuming a good situation for the town, 1 of the night 1 hits is a tracker and 1 of the night 2 hits is a tracker. The town gets a total of 3 tracks night 1, 2 night 2. You are using over half of the town's tracking information for the whole game on the same person to try and confirm him. If this scenario did occur, it would have the very negative effect of everyone in the group mistrusting each other and the rest of the townies thinking 'someone leaked!' like they always do. For an example of this happening, see Ace's Mafia World, where MBH and Camlito picked off almost all the blues the first 2 nights and every innocent ended up pointing fingers at each other, trying to find a reason for the leak when it was simply excellent mafia skill (and irc infiltration).

Extremely fortunately for the town a number of things went right:
    -the mafia had a poor choice of hits and got one blue kill the entire game! (though they had good roleblocks)
    -Xelin was a friendly neighbor, meaning he could only have been roleblocker or framer. RB was very fortunately ruled out because Xelin was tracked to BM, BM's night action didn't fail and he was in contact with the town group as a 3rd party, and Brownbear claimed to be roleblocked. The town got even more lucky by Tree Hugger the framer being killed night 2 by a 3rd party and therefore confirming Xelin innocent. Nonetheless the mafia still had several of chances to achieve their objectives. Fortunately for the town, Chezinu and Rastaban didn't waste their time with the plan night 1 so at least not all blue actions were tied up doing nothing but confirming each other so they could hold hands and dance in a circle.
    -The mafia did not build on the mistrust of the town leadership in the thread (there was reason to distrust it before Tree Hugger's death, especially after the gross Pandain blunder) and try to actively disrupt their hold over the town.


Despite this, the town still wasted 6 of their 8 information roles in the first two days trying to confirm each other and the medics only protected a blue or key role 1 out of 4 times. That's a pretty poor return just for having a confirmed group, and despite getting incredibly lucky.

What mafia could have done:
    -Brownbear should have pushed much harder to get key info and help point the town circle in the wrong direction. He did help contribute to the pandain over youngminii lynch, which was crucial for the mafia (as foolishness would have torn up the game singlehandedly otherwise). But given his position and the loose lips of TL townies in general, there's so much more he could've done.
    -Mafia should have faked another blue and given the town more headaches in trying to confirm everything. The extremely bizarre rolecount and semi-open setup almost demands mafia playing proactively in faking blues and destroying any attempts at trust.
    -Multiple mafia members should have been actively infiltrating various town groups and individuals trying to get information and disrupt their plans. So far as I can tell, they mostly sat back and let the town do what they wanted. With that attitude, of course the town will eventually develop an unstoppable steamroller of confirmed roles.
    -Mafia should have egged on the 'Foolishness is GF' bandwagon that seemed to be taking up half the posts in the thread early. The logic behind the accusation may have been terrible but it screwed up the town badly even without much mafia assistance and nobody except foolishness/rastaban/divinek/bc (and mafia lol) was pointing out how dumb it was. What's the use in getting townie cred by protecting foolishness if he's the only one who realizes it's townie cred? Many times mafia suffer from realizing they are mafia and trying to overcompensate by acting too innocent for their own good.
    -Most importantly, their hits were the biggest issue. Had 2-3 blues popped up dead in nights 1 or 2, the town circle would have been destroyed, not only by death, but also torn apart for distrust. From there it would've been easy to keep a mafia-favored atmosphere in the thread and prevent the town from getting any kind of certainty, trust, or analysis on suspects.


Anyways, on to the rest of the first day. This is one of the most important 'principles' of good town play that is violated all too frequently in recent games:

Keep the town on a need to know basis.

People don't always need to know your role. People never need to know every single thought you have. Nobody needs to respond to every single thing said. Focus on what's important (refer back to the original 3 points). Posting more often means you are spending less time analyzing and rereading, which are two key parts that aren't done nearly enough, and you are making life harder for your fellow townies. If you look at most of the best town performances, these players have a tiny fraction of the posts and dominate the discussion with influence and quality, not quantity.

The town ideally wants an atmosphere where people can focus on one or two things at a time to get real information. This means there needs to be a fair number of posts: too little and the town can't get enough information; too many and the town can't sort through all the irrelevant junk to find the good stuff. Unfortunately I have to speak in such vague terms because it's a rather abstract concept, but to get a fair depiction of what a 'good' atmosphere is, see the TL Mafia V. The first day was an excellent example of the right number of posts and overall feel for the town. The focus on several different plans brought up in specific ways with specific reasons let us confirm a number of highly likely innocents extremely early on. It's also important to realize that the plans themselves was not important, it was the data revealed by discussion of the plans. The lack of doubt put forth, the extremely high quantity of constructive posting, and the flaring of passion with direct and fearless play all indicated that we were dealing with a very passive mafia; exactly like the day 1 of this game. Knowing a lot about the mafia's character is very useful for identifying them later on.

Sadly this game, like most other recent games, suffers from the 'too many posts' syndrome. The inherent cause behind this problem is the desire to say everything that comes to their mind. That isn't needed one bit! Not only does this distract you from accomplishing analysis or creating useful plans, it also just mucks up the thread with useless info. How can any forcing information be achieved if your posts are instantly covered up by a dozen spammers? What's the point of putting pressure on someone to get useful info if they can just ignore it and let the rest of the town stash it under a pile of nonsense?

Moving on, the majority of the day can be summarized as thus:
    -Post less and make bigger posts. The multiple low-content posts in a row is a huge impediment to the town, as is the desire to say everything on your mind.

    -Focus on what's important. Discussing frankly mediocre at best, if not downright awful plans to the death is not particularly productive except in the sense that it shows a lot of clear innocents (but people need to realize this, otherwise it's pointless). Forcing people to post is great, but that won't happen if like this game, they will just get drowned out anyways.

    -The good news of all the over-discussion of irrelevant topics is the number of obvious innocents that appear. This is based on their willingness to contribute their own ideas, not just sit back and critique others, and their sheer activity. Whenever this type of conversation comes up in TL games, the mafia just sits back and laughs while a bunch of townies eagerly talk about some nonsense. Pyrr, Chaoser, South, LSB, Divinek, Rastaban, and Pandain being the most obvious innocents. Of course Pandain is a ninja in reality, but he certainly isn't mafia with that behavior. It would be well worth it for eager townies to take the initiative and start getting pm info networks going with these people to try to unearth information that can't be found in the thread.

    -Naturally the town ended up discussing essentially irrelevant info to death and the mafia got to sit back and hide amongst all the other lurkers who were avoiding the thread for whatever reason. This is where pm's become really crucial, as picking out Misder's incriminating post (below) in this mess is extremely difficult and the enormous quantity of town posts meant that the mafia had no reason to post anything major at all, meaning they aren't going to make any mistakes. That means any information on mafia, and therefore the lynch target, should come from pm's. Unfortunately nobody took the initiative in trying to do this; Foolishness spent most of his time trying to get information from pm's but unfortunately didn't take the extra step of actively trying to lay traps or string along mafia.


-The lynch target with this little focus is of course going to be a non-mafia. The person you would want to target, if PM's cannot unearth anything, is someone who is posting a little but not too much. Definitely none of the mass posters, but the group below that. Almost all of the mafia fit into that group. Of course there were innocents there as well, but the odds of hitting mafia were MUCH higher than hitting someone who clearly didn't care about the game, and most importantly, had almost nobody defending them.

Failing that, killing one of the major spammers would have probably helped the town anyways. In my view killing the biggest spammer is a more compelling reason than the biggest inactive, as the spammer, at least initially, hurts the town more than the inactive. Of course the spammer is almost always not mafia, but if you have to have a policy lynch, may as well kill someone who's actively disrupting the town. Of course both of these are inferior solutions. The ideal day 1 scenario is to find a mafia, but in order to even attempt at lynching one enough information through an ideal atmosphere or from a plan, needs to be obtained.

The most important thing to do with the day 1 lynch is look at the votes and trends. Was there a big swing for one candidate over another? How late was it in the cycle? How many people received 1-2 votes? In this case, the most interesting vote count list is the one posted with 4 hours to go. At this point, love1another has 6 votes, Bill Murray has 5, and Roffles has 4. There are 9 players with 1-2 votes and 4 players have not voted yet. This list tells you that there probably isn't a mafia in the top 2 vote getters. The votes are close enough that the mafia doesn't really have to risk itself too much to do a voteswing, but the mafia also don't want to do a voteswing at the last minute because last minute voteswingers generally get put under heavy pressure after an innocent lynch. The mafia would have been pushing a different candidate harder over the course of the day if there was a mafia at risk. Instead, expect to see the mafia pretty spread out among the votegetters and don't expect many of them to switch at the end. And sure enough, only Misder is voting for any of the top 3 vote getters. Infundibulum hasn't voted yet and the other 4 mafia members are in lists of 1-2 votes. Sure enough, looking at the final votes, only 1 mafia changed their vote and Infundibulum came in and voted. There isn't a single mafia on the love1another lynch list. At this point, Bill Murray should be viewed as almost certainly not mafia.

Most often it is the innocent that jumps around at the last moment and attracts suspicion to themselves. The difference is, and this will be a common theme so keep note, in the psychological mindset of each side. Townies generally don't care too much about being suspicious (blues are the exception to a degree, hence why blue mislynches are rare). For townies, they'll react to the game long before even considering how suspicious they might or might not look. On the other hand, Mafia are absolutely terrified to do something that will put them in the spotlight and get suspicion on them. That's why they will only jump around at the last moment and place themselves under scrutiny if there is an extremely compelling reason. In ordinary scenarios like this lynch, mafia will not be threatened unless you look for the people who aren't in any danger.




Day 1 Analysis:


Basically I'll point out the posts that are great for analysis, either finding reds or greens. In doing analysis most posts will be worthless, it's the gems you want to search for unless you want to do a full analysis profile on that person (dragging up all their posts and looking in context for patterns). That unfortunately takes a lot of time and thus can only be done on a few people at a time. Thus for those stretched on time, it's much easier to look for mistakes/bad posts and then do a thorough inspection of said person. That's how I'll present the red analysis.

Misder
:

Here is a great example of a mafia slipping up very obviously in day 1.


On August 06 2010 13:13 Misder wrote:
@Divenek I'll try to be as active as possible. I was better during the end of that last mafia game. At least I was right for my lynching targets

I'm not used to being active early game, so lets try this out. From my last two games, it seemed like we always tried to vote for inactives, except for the XXIII where town voted for a one liner mistake. We shouldn't do that. Because just because you make one mistake early doesn't mean you are mafia, just more likely. We should always be suspicious, but not impulsive. And the other game was where we had to vote for a mayor and a pardoner, so people had to talk.

As for strategies in the beginning... no idea. I'm still learning, (I still haven't done what you told me to do BC sorry!)



On August 06 2010 15:45 Misder wrote:
xD I'm sorry! I'll try to post better, but for me, it's hard to post in the beginning of the game...

Vote count is:
(3) Bill Murray
(1) Divinek
(1) Misder
(1) Chezinu
(1) Youngminii


Show nested quote +



This leaves my suspicions on BM. If everyone randomized, BM would be more likely to get a higher vote count (due to already having 2 votes on him). I'm not voting yet though; don't want to be impulsive...


These are two posts full of flagrant errors. This is the first easy mafia catch the town could've had; let's go through it:

-Note the multiple apologies, excuses, the specific mention that he is still learning, and overall meek tone. Newer mafia players will try to emphasize their inexperience as a way of overcompensating. Think about this from the angle of being a townie: why would you want to say all this? What's the point in painting yourself to be some noob who is useless and shouldn't be listened to? If you want to be of use to the town, apologizing a bunch and acting all sorry for doing nothing wrong is hardly going to make yourself listened to. In fact, it will make people ignore you instead. Someone who can't even convince themself is hardly going to convince anyone else. That would be great for a mafia who wants to hide though, wouldn't it?

On that angle it makes perfect sense from the mafia's perspective. You want to find reasons that make you look less suspicious without looking like you are trying too hard to do so. See how Misder isn't even suspicious before this but he's trying to make himself look less suspicious. That's entirely mafia rationale. A townie might want to defend himself if someone accuses him, but only a mafia feels inherently guilty and has a need, perhaps even a desire to defend himself before he's even a blip on anyone's radar. It's a very common pattern that I've seen many, many times.

-Next, make sure to take account of the out of place vote count tally. Does anyone really need to see that at this point? What's the point of doing it? Who cares that three people have voted for Bill Murray and there are random single votes on a few others, it means nothing. This is another tool mafia love to use. They want to make it look like they are contributing, that they fit in with the rest of the town, and they want to do it without pointing fingers and making enemies. All the Mafia just want is some peace and quiet, and posting extremely neutral things like vote tallies is perfect for achieving peace and quiet. On its own it's not a sure sign of being mafia but being combined with the above it is certainly extremely suspicious.

-Lastly, dock another point against Misder for his extremely mild statements about his suspicions and refusal to vote. Why would voting be impulsive?

-With these two posts being very incriminating to take a very close look at him, let's check out Misder's post history this game and last for a full view. When looking at post history as a whole, you want to aim for two things: general patterns and the objectives for each posts. By objectives I mean, what does this person aim to do with this post?

Misder's post history this game:

Nothing before these two posts.

Misder's post history last game as Townie:

He is much more assertive in his posts. Actively tries to contribute, says what he believes without fear, and tries to reason things out. All of these are indications of being townie. There is no meek or submissive tone; in it's place is almost impulsiveness to a degree (another townie indicator). Objectively All in all there were no posts last game anywhere close to these two.

With the post analysis and history heavily against him, putting a lot of pressure on him and trying to get him lynched would have been a great move. A case this convincing is something you don't want to pass up.




Night 1:


Here I'll just go over the hits for mafia and do analysis of the blues. The plan was already discussed above thoroughly and it would have been wisest to have scrapped it.

As mafia you want to make hits for 3 reasons, in rough priority:
    1) Blues (demoralizes the town in addition)
    2) People who are a severe threat to the mafia (usually #3's on the mafia's tail)
    3) Powerful town assets (usually analysts)


For reference, mafia hits were: chaoser, LSB, and Foolishness (veteran).

Foolishness is certainly a sensible hit. His role is uncertain but he is an extremely dangerous entity as town (as he showed this game) and taking him out early has been a key success for other mafias and misfortune for those who haven't. The problem was, as the analysis below will demonstrate, he was a veteran and double stacking, especially early on, is not favorable for the mafia except in extreme circumstances. Still, it is not easy to see, and the hit can hardly be faulted.

The other two are obvious greens via their game history and activity level. Relative to his game history, Chaoser was simply too active, too freely contributing without fear, the complete opposite of the more reclusive, cautious play as blue. LSB had no history to compare to but again, his extreme openness, very prominent presence, and overall lack of hesitation and fear indicated greenness.

As Foolishness would be probably the only legitimate threat at this point, the rest of the attention should focus on offing blues. Here's how I'd go about it:

To keep this simple and save time, let's look at some heuristics to find potential targets, then go through their post history to get the best ones. Here are some common heuristics I use of blue indicators:

-Tries to contribute but doesn't stick their neck out
-Shows fear/wants to instinctively hide
-Drastically lower post quantity compared to games when they are green but still tries to contribute.
-Focuses most of their posts on blue roles or ignores them entirely.
-To figure out which role specifically, they will focus unnatural amounts of attention on that role, know the rules for that role thoroughly, or ignore it entirely while mentioning other blue roles. Figuring out the specific is difficult to ascertain and not always applicable, but these heuristics will hold up more often than not.

Of course a number of mafia might fit some of these characteristics, minus point 1 and 4 usually. That is why it is much easier for mafia to figure out blues than a townie. As a townie you'll often just have to settle for 'has a role' in your analysis early on in the game.

Anyways, here's a list of people who fit the characteristics in rough order based on purely feel, sans mafia because this is from their perspective:
    -KF91
    -Amber
    -Hesmyrr
    -Zeks
    -Xelin
    -Opz
    -Artanis
    -Darth
    -opz
    -Jayme
    -Foolishness


The people lower on the list fit some of the categories but their either their history doesn't differentiate between their play this game and as a green, or they don't have that history. I left off Chezinu and "Papa Smurf" (BC) because it's difficult to get solid info from nonsense posting like that early on (mafia should have been pm'ing them though to get that sorely needed info). They will reveal themselves in due time.

Just a general point: Larjarse is pretty easily found as a green because he posted his aim (lol). Foolishness pointed out that this is almost a sure sign of a bored green and I can't disagree with that reasoning. This assumption can be supplemented with his small number of posts that show a desire to contribute and no fear.

That aside, let's go through the list and look at their post history from this and other games to get a solid grasp:

KF91
    -By post history, KF is one of those very polarizing guys who contributes a lot as townie and lurks a lot when he has a role.
    -In his 6 posts up till day 2, KF contributes but clearly doesn't stick his neck out.
    -His posts focus almost entirely on blues.
    -He does focus on vigi the most, but you can pretty much rule him out as vigi given that he didn't realize until later that vigis can't shoot until night 2. Blue roles will know their role better than anyone else! Finds a way to mention every blue role except veteran, tracker, and hatter even though he doesn't post much. Veteran doesn't make sense though given his history and hesitation. I'd put him as one of tracker/hatter.


Verdict: Excellent Kill! It's rare to get any easier than this.

Amber[Light]:
    -7 posts up till day 2.
    -Has a huge history, therefore I'll select the most standard games to get the best idea under normal circumstances. Is rather active when green and contributes his ideas without fear. When blue he posts extremely rarely and his posts don't have much content.
    -His posts this game have little content. He contributes in 3 posts, 2 which focus on roleclaims and blues and the other which talks about a lynch target. Special emphasis on roleclaiming and blues telling the truth.
    -Doesn't stick his neck out but no real indication of fear either.


Verdict: Solid Kill, but not entirely certain.

Hesmyrr:
    -5 posts.
    -Taking a brief look at his history, he made a little over a dozen posts in the same time period in Godfather mafia despite being afk for part of it due to posted IRL reasons (as townie). I didn't include 3 Kingdoms because of the bizarre setup and him saying it was an exception, Micro Mafia 1 because of the different setup, and WaW because he was SK. In Godfather, he contributes actively, focusing on plans, the lynch, and suspects. Nothing abnormal here for a green and a solid game to use for history comparison.
    -Two of his 5 posts exist for explaining his low activity. Another also responds to first thing in the post. This is a definite example of someone contributing not wanting to stick his neck out. Of all the things he could contribute in such a vast thread with so few posts, why put most of your focus on your inactivity? He clearly has something to hide here or he wouldn't be so reactionary to this out of everything else he could have posted.


Verdict: Good kill.

Darththienan:
    -12 posts
    -Overall lack of useful history for deciding this, as he has been mafia in almost all normal games and goofed off as green once, leaving only one semi-useful game as green. That game showed a reasonable level of day 1 activity and he freely expressed his thoughts, then went inactive.
    -Most of his posts are either irrelevent or talk about role distribution and ninjas. It looks like he has a decent amount of content but upon closer expection not really.
    -Uncertain on fear, but he clearly isn't sticking his neck out.


One very interesting post he made jumped out at me:


On August 06 2010 12:24 DarthThienAn wrote:
In response to bumatlarge's post...

Green townies should basically talk a lot (reasonably and not spamming of course) and make themselves a threat to the mafia. That way, the mafia want to hit them, and the greenies take a hit, which is better than a blue taking a hit. Veterans should do the same thing.


Isn't this interesting and very relevant? What's even more interesting is that he doesn't really follow the advice of being green/veteran that he just described! Such contradictions are the core of analysis.

Verdict: Hit! Hit! Hit!

Zeks:
    -5 posts
    -History shows that he generally, but not always, posts more when he is blue than when he is green. His blue posts clearly are filled with signs of wanting to blend in and lay low, while his green posts tend to have more content.
    -Posts without hesitation or fear.


Verdict: No. Possible but nothing really in favor of him.

Xelin:
    -14 Posts
    -History indicates he is eager and open when green, though activity level varies for the start.
    -Posts this game do indeed show impulsiveness and eagerness and a reasonable activity level.
    -Doesn't particularly care about the plan that is being centered around him. It would be rather likely that if he was blue, he would be much more aware of what was going on than totally confused.


Verdict: No.

Artanis[xp]:
    -3 posts.
    -Artanis's history is the good example of a guy who sits back and says little. Unfortunately he has only been green so we can't know if he steps up his activity when blue or not.
    -Contributes a bit, no fear nor uncertainty. Doesn't seem like hiding
    -Focuses half on the lynch and half on the tracker/watcher plan.


Verdict: Uncertain. Not enough evidence. confirm in pm's or wait.


~Opz~
    -5 posts
    -Opz is very active and has a long history. This amount of posts is definitely smaller than previous games but is not a sole indicator for him this early on. The difference between him as green and blue is best shown in future days, but in his green posts he sticks his head out more.
    -Lays low in day/night 1. An indicator, but not a certainty yet.


Verdict: Decent, but there are clearer ones.

Jayme:
    -6 posts
    -History is indecisive. His first game as green had very few posts and he essentially gave up early. Last game he posted a decent amount and contributed early on. In both games he spoke freely and had relatively the same tone. Most importantly his posts were forceful and direct.
    -This game his attitude stays constant. Speaks his opinion freely and forcefully and contribution level remains the same.


Verdict: Not good.

Foolishness:
    -17 posts
    -History is uncertain as he generally doesn't put a lot of effort in the first day or two. This game is a stark contrast with that even though he is focusing a lot on pm's.
    -Extremely open and posts completely without fear. Strong sign of veteran.


+ Show Spoiler [Complete confidence] +

Check out that confident undertone. Of great importance is the line in red. Notice that it specifically assumes that he will live another 2 days. No if's, but's, or 'medics protect me for once.' Contrast this ironclad, casual certainty with his well-known history and regularity of dying day 1 (the past 3 times he's been town) and you can easily see how this leads to divining his veteran status. That one slipup is all that is needed to correctly identify his role (though even without it the general pattern of his posting is enough).

Verdict: Avoid.

Recommended hitlist: KF91, Hesmyrr, Darththienan.

That would have been hatter, medic, and tracker.

The general list to analyze of obvious characteristics was:
    -KF91 (hatter)
    -Amber (medic)
    -Hesmyrr (medic)
    -Darth (tracker)

    -Zeks (green)
    -Xelin (green)

    -Opz (tracker)
    -Artanis (green)
    -Jayme (green)

    -Foolishness (veteran)
Last edit: 2010-09-01 06:25:44
Twitter- @VerInspired
Old Post

  Ver   United States. August 26 2010 13:08. Posts 1881Profile # 
Day 2-


The second day is the test to see if the town is moving in the right direction or not, and what the mafia can do to stop it. An objective look at the thread at various points would have shown that the town was definitely not on the right track at all. There was too little certainty, too much chaos, too much spam, and not enough talk about the important things. Despite that, Foolishness, Rastaban, and Divinek nearly managed to get Youngminii lynched if it wasn't for the meddling of mafia and the almighty town circle. Despite how clear it was to several observers how innocent Foolishness was, how guilty Youngminii was, and how silly the town was for listening to Xelin, the fact is it was not obvious to the majority of the players in the game and therefore must be thoroughly addressed. The Foolishness and Youngminii cases will be discussed following the general analysis of the day, while the remaining analysis will be in its own section.

During the course of day 2, attention was not focused but instead people kept jumping around topics, the thread was very spammy (some 700-800 posts), most discussion was on irrelevant subjects, and there was way too little care about the lynch subject. All of these characteristics favor the mafia, and indeed it is no surprise that the mafia managed to avoid disaster.

Pyrr, it's perfectly fine to analyze someone and be wrong with it; that happens to everyone. However, posting so much that in essence you shut Foolishness out of the game did the town a real disfavor. Mafia is not a game about trying to outpost the other guy, and the fact that Foolishness got spammed out of the game was crucial in allowing the Xelin group to come in and take charge without any proof of their innocence or any reason to believe them.

Overall it's important to stop, re-read, and think, instead of going on a one-way train of thought.




Pandain's Lynch


As for the Pandain lynch, Tree.Hugger's post was dead on despite his alignment.


On August 11 2010 11:24 tree.hugger wrote:
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

I get back, and some garbage wagon on Pandain is what comes up? I thought I was reading a different game. This sets a new record for shoddy town play.

If Pandain were ninja, stands to reason he'd act like mafia, in spreading some deception around. But would mafia claim ninja? That's the dumbest strategy I've ever heard. Because mafia would obviously put a huge target on their backs by claiming a third party elimination role. Who's logic was that?

We had a vote between two solidly opposed camps. We had ample evidence to lynch youngminii. The mafia had likely all stacked on BM, because that was the only way to save him. At any rate, we have an excellent opportunity to get a kickass role list of innocent or mafia names. This isn't necessarily true obviously; what's more important is how the mafia will react to it in the thread. This will be analyzed later on as it's a prime way of catching mafia off of a sudden accusation.

INSTEAD XeliN waltzes in and provides enough "evidence" to start a third party bandwagon that provides the world's most convenient outlet for the mafia.Very true. This is a 'worst case scenario' for the town. This literally ranks as one of the worst town-plays of all time.

And to answer your question in pm's, XeliN, there's no way in hell I'm telling you anything. Your town circle seems to have a hole the size of the titanic, and with the slick move you just pulled off there, I think I'd rather go along with the people I currently trust, and not add a whole host of people who can't keep their mouths shut, and who would rather help the mafia then kill them.

Worst town move I think I've ever seen. Good grief.


Putting aside the cases for each target, Tree.Hugger's point about giving mafia an easy way out is very important. It still of course is possible to use this as another source of information, as 4/6 mafia did hop on the bandwagon (3-5 would be a good guess in a situation like this), but with the majority of the town over on Pandain as well, the voting is not particularly valuable. Too easy of a chance for mafia to blend in like everyone else and say 'oh better follow the (un)confirmed innocent.'

The most useless kind of lynch is a last minute switch that is really easy and safe to hop on the bandwagon for. If there's a highly polarized lynch, the dead information + voting lists can provide a lot, even if the people accused are all innocent (then you can see who's manipulating just out of site).

Frankly the town should have totally ignored Xelin and just went on to lynch YM (regardless of how good the case was against him). Pandain claiming ninja was probably the best move he could've possibly have done to show his colors. As Tree.Hugger says, mafia claiming ninja simply does not make any sense.

Also, this is a good point to address the misconception that 'lying=mafia,' which is clearly not the case. I lie all the time as town, and much more rarely as mafia. Some may condemn this as inferior play, but lying, among other 'anti-town plays,' lets you open new routes of play that are ordinarily inaccessible if you behave as a 'perfect townie.' Most of the time you have to take a risk if you want to win. Of course the execution is everything, as lying for no gain is just going to make it harder for the town to do anything. And of course, many town players will lie on accident, without reason, or for some bizarre reason or another that you have no way of knowing. A point that will be emphasized continuously is the necessity to differentiate between mafia and bad townie play. You can't just lynch people and when they pop green excuse yourself by saying 'oh they were anti-town anyways.' The goal is to kill mafia, period.

The key part about lying is to analyze whether their lie helps the mafia and what motivation could've been made. In this case it doesn't matter if Pandain got the ninja role counts mixed up because that could be an honest mistake or a mafia mistake and you have no way of knowing. But that is really irrelevant because mafia would almost never have claimed ninja in the first place.

The Pandain lynch was simply that an inferior solution. Here's how it should've been handled. Make a post saying this:

"Attention, Pandain has claimed ninja and refused to help us. We don't like ninjas that refuse to help us. Other Ninjas out there, have fun tonight."

Isn't that an easy way to offsource the problem? Get someone else to deal with it.

Overall way too much power was given to the 'town circle' (which at this point was not confirmed whatsoever and had no special knowledge), because as soon as Xelin appeared online everyone in the thread started bowing down and obeying his group's every command. This is a good example of the greater "must rely on confirmed innocents and blues" malaise that has infested every game as of late. They aren't confirmed, they didn't know anything special, so why believe them? Even if they were confirmed, being innocent doesn't mean you are right.




Foolishness


First interesting thing, Pyrr posting LSB and Foolishness's exchange:

+ Show Spoiler [Quote] +

Let's look objectively at that pm, even ignoring game history. Foolishness is requesting help getting information to help reveal mafia. Why would this be necessary? Perhaps because the thread is a giant mess thanks to a certain group of spammers. Given how a certain 7ish people completely dominated day 1 discussion (which produced no effect, and thus had little pressure on mafia as a whole), it should be logically clear that the vast majority of mafia are outside of that group of 7. Thus Foolishness, in targeting the lurkers, is trying to find the group where the majority of mafia lie. And how does that make him suspicious again? Sure, that is also where the majority of blues will lie, but at worst this just means he's looking for mafia and blues. That doesn't make him mafia any more than it makes him town. Also note his comments about the people reacting to LSB's plan. Those are some solid, sensible behavior patterns. There's no reason to get suspicious over this pm exchange, as it worst it is neutral and at best it is a solid bonus in his favor.

Anyways, Foolishness took a hit night 1 and later claimed vet. This does not mean he is innocent, but he is a good indicator to start thinking that. A solid heuristic in mafia is that the simplest explanations are usually correct. Of course automatically assuming that will lead to a loss, but why start with the assumption that Foolishness is faking veteran and being GF? Far too many people ended up worrying about useless things, such as whether foolishness can be confirmed or whether he's the GF faking. The simplest solution, as both scenarios are possible (though Vet is much more likely), is just to ignore it and go on, though medics should seriously think of protting him the next night.

+ Show Spoiler [Pyrr and the chainsaw defense] +

When it comes down to it, most things like scumtells, wifom, fos, chainsaw defenses, and all the other bizarre 'tells' or whatever that is occasionally brought up are best ignored and left in the dumpster. In this scenario, how is 'foolishness did a chainsaw defense' even relevant? Let's think through, why would specifically only mafia behave as Foolishness has done? And could a townie have motivation for acting like that? The first question has no answer, because defending someone by attacking someone else is too general to differentiate between mafia and town play at all (which is why it should never be used; as a general rule it is meaningless). And clearly he could have motivation for doing that as townie and BM flipping red wouldn't mean foolishness is red. If Foolishness is not red, how could he know what BM's role is for certain? All Foolishness defending BM says is that he either is defending his mafia buddy, he's mafia defending a non-mafia, or he's town defending someone who he believes is innocent but doesn't know for certain, and you have no way of telling which is which. This will be an often repeated point, but the 'how' matters a lot more than the 'what.'

+ Show Spoiler [Pyrrs major accusation] +

The problem is, none of this evidence gives any reason why Foolishness could only be mafia for doing it. Defending BM doesn't mean anything at all on its own. I've defended BM when the entire town was against him in mafia XVIII. Did that make me mafia? No of course not. More compelling evidence, something that can rule out any townie behavior and would only be done by a mafia, is needed.

It's also important to clear up the misconception of being super defensive over blue roles. Every alignment benefits from knowing blue roles. Just because mafia gets the most benefit doesn't mean that anyone trying to find out blue roles is mafia. There are very good town reasons for trying to figure out blues.

From an analysts point of view who knows foolishness's history well, his posting history this game could hardly be more of an indicator that he is pro town, especially from day 2 onward. If you look at all of foolishness's games as town where he lives beyond the first day, which are Plexa's game and Pyrr's game, his primary purpose is to find the inevitable mafia that lurked and stayed away from the spotlight. He takes sides aggressively, speaks directly and doesn't hesitate to pick fights, and overall tries to direct the town and put himself in the spotlight. All of these qualities are general innocent indicators.

Here's a sample post that shows how he works as town:

+ Show Spoiler [Foolishness in Plexa's game] +

Look how distinctly similar this game is to Foolishness's post in Plexa's game (and overall play of course). In that game, BC and Pyrr fought each other the entire time and he made a great effort to stop them from fighting and get them to focus on the lurking mafia Ecomania. Of course he was not entirely right, as Pyrr was indeed mafia while BC was innocent. But compare this scenario to the current game, where he says Pyrr and Bill Murray are innocent, tries to stop them from fighting, and focuses on other targets. In this case, Youngminii. Note how similar his analysis and thinking patterns are.

Now let's look at him when he is mafia. There is a total difference here that is glaringly obvious. He doesn't contribute, often barely saying anything of note for most of the game, he never points fingers, even when accusing someone he is hesitant and doesn't go all out; most of his 'major' posts are simply used to cast doubt upon various people or plans, but he doesn't provide anything himself.

Here's a sample post from PYP1:

+ Show Spoiler [Foolishness mafia] +

Overall it's important to note that the town would have been far worse off had Foolishness not kept his cool under extreme pressure and instead starting an all out grudge match with Pyrr. Not being able to keep cool in the face of pressure (as town), no matter how stupid or ridiculous, is a neglected aspect that I, along with many others are guilty of. Strong headed people fighting, that disrupt the entire town or just as bad, ignoring the game due to frustration, is the subject of many 'TL Mafia horror stories' that inevitably screw the town over as long as all parties are alive. The best atmosphere for the mafia is one where there are a few townies dominating the discussion by arguing against each other. Mafia can play both sides or just sit back and laugh, and none will be the wiser.



YoungMinii
:

I am copy pasting foolishness's central accusation on Youngminii between the line breaks and will add my comments afterwards. I am not using spoilers or quoting this because this is a very important post and it needs to be easy to see.




On August 10 2010 11:12 Foolishness wrote:


youngminii

This is about why youngminii is mafia. I first suspected him early on day 1 when I posted:

On August 06 2010 13:25 Foolishness wrote:

Show nested quote +


Why wait until tonight when we got a lynch today?

My reasoning for wanting to kill him was because he had yet to make a real contribution. He was posting frequently like we would all expect except he had yet to make a real contribution. Here are his posts longer than 2 lines:

On August 06 2010 13:12 youngminii wrote:

Show nested quote +


DT can use a proxy townie like was done last game with Zeks and lakrismamma.

Also, how did the mafia suck at blue sniping last game? They got every single blue long before the end of the game (and the end of the game was significantly shortened BECAUSE they sniped every blue). You were the one playing like a total scrub early game, linking pretty much all the blues together and accusing them as a group of scum (remember your PM parade telling everyone to lynch Subversion?).

I hope people don't use PMs to the same effect this game, I'd say stay very wary of most PMs early game (case in point: Subversion revealing to Pandain that he was DT without having checked Pandain, Pandain was in fact a miller, but still could have been very dangerous).

I never found out how Subversion's DT role got leaked, that was well and truly stupid as fuck.

This was about last game, nothing relevant.

On August 06 2010 13:44 youngminii wrote:

Show nested quote +


Why are you being so hard on Chez? I mean he's not BAD, but when people try to imitate him it's bad (case in point: DTA last game). I don't see why you're trying to force him to change his play when it works for him. Yeah it's annoying but if it works, it works.

What's the bet that if Chez does change his style, bum will accuse him of being scum because of his changed ways?



On August 06 2010 14:15 youngminii wrote:

Show nested quote +


I'm not saying "LET'S NOT LYNCH CHEZ BECAUSE OF HIS STYLE! HE'S IMMUNE" I'm saying it's okay for him to play that way and anything that happens down the road that gives town cause to lynch him is fine, but immediately going to lynch him because of the way he always plays is dumb as fuck.

Why don't you include the scenario where he possibly snipes a red? Bias bias bias.
Look I'm not saying Chez isn't red, I'm just saying your reasoning for lynching him isn't valid at all.

Here he is kinda defending Chez (but he says he isn't) and is refuting bumatlarge's post. Nothing relevant to the game at all, just telling bumatlarge what Chez's style is. It may seem like he's contributing but all he's saying is "this is how Chez plays, he may be mafia, he may not be", he doesn't provide any insight one way or the other.

On August 06 2010 15:05 youngminii wrote:
Maybe we are posting a bit too much (I don't think it's as much as last game lol).. Isn't the whole point of all this to generate discussion though? I mean, what else are we going to do, sit around and twiddle our thumbs?

I found this post to be odd because it doesn't make sense. Here we have a spammer saying "let's not post" even though we all know posting generates discussion which is better for the town. He asks a lot of questions, just as a hesitant mafia would.

On August 06 2010 18:43 youngminii wrote:
Okay apparently BM can't see what's wrong with his plan. I shall outline them for you.

If you are scum, we lose instantly.

If you are town, 6 people will lie and you won't know who lied and who didn't and you can't publicly reveal them without exposing their identity.

What are you going to do when all 6 scum claims town? Hmm? Oh right, nothing.

Do you really, really, really think every single person will claim to you? Do you know how hard organisation is, especially on a forum?

What are you going to do when the framer frames people? Uh oh.

Can't be fucked listing anymore.

May seem like a contribution, but he only repeated what had already been said by Pyrry, DTA, and others. Plus he just gives quick reasoning, instead of going into detail on possible scenarios as everyone else had done. This is typical of mafia behavior, they repeat what's already been said to make it look like they care and that they are contributing. And they do this without adding in thoughts of their own.

On August 07 2010 20:16 youngminii wrote:
I don't like the plan.

What BM, are you gonna label me as red? So if anyone doesn't agree with your play, you label them as red. That's fucking ridiculous.

Do you really want to see how a Day 1 plan turns out? It doesn't turn out well. Just because you think you've come up with some god awesome plan that'll save everyone doesn't mean it will. And you don't go FoSing everyone that doesn't want to use it. Let me tell you now, I'm good at finding out whether people are scum or not, remember Godfather mafia? Yeah I destroyed that game. Now hopefully I'll be able to weed out scum again but you going on about this god damn plan for 20 fucking pages doesn't help when the only fucking posts I can see are by you.

Here I would like to transition into his previous games. We know from Godfather mafia that he helped the town win enormously. He has promised here that he's going to be able to weed out scum but he has not done any of it yet. In fact he hasn't done any analysis so far. Compare to a post from godfather mafia:

On July 10 2010 18:09 youngminii wrote:


Show nested quote +


You spelled my name wrong

While I'm not ruling out BC as a townie, I'm not convinced he's scum and I think there are other people that we should concentrate on, namely BM's four.

The best play on scum's end would be to get rid of the DT (ie. me). Scum knows that I'm DT but they also know they can't touch me because of the jailing. The only way they can get rid of me for now is to sacrifice their KP for two nights. Hence my suspicions lead me to YI. He's the one who suggested/pushed forward the idea to roleblock me. As scum, he knows I am a DT and the best way to neutralize my ability is to roleblock me, knowing that he can't touch me otherwise. Sacrificing KP is a major blow to scum so instead of that, blocking me is the best option.

Now I would have liked to see what his reaction would have been after finding out I was roleblocked (maybe I should've faked it) but since that's too late, there's no other place for me to lay my accusations. So if we end up lynching someone other than YI (like BB) then my check will go to YI tonight.

Here we see analysis youngminii style. Actively laying out scenario and figuring out who's most suspicious. We see this again:

On July 24 2010 09:48 youngminii wrote:
My case on Chaoser.

+ Show Spoiler +
Outside of the obvious fact that he's posting long stuff in this game, we see him actually doing analysis. Yes there is flaming in there as we would expect, but we still see him doing analysis of other people. This is good analysis he does, and he's yet to do any of that this game.

Youngminii's attitude this game is very different from his past games. While the spam amount may be relatively the same, in the past youngminii actively analyzed people. This game he hasn't made any contribution and has only repeated what's already been said.

I accused youngminii in order to see how he would react. Read my previous post where I talk about pressuring people. His response to my accusations is not good for him. He starts by instantly accusing me and backing up Pyrry's fallacious arguments. He then proceeds to just spam away arguments against me.

On August 09 2010 13:44 youngminii wrote:

Show nested quote +


What the fuck are you talking about lmfao.
I haven't even been on in a day or so and you automatically assume I'm scum because you got hit. You know what I think? I think you faked the hit. I don't even know why you want me lynched, maybe you're scum and you think I'm not worth a night hit so you go for a lynch.


On August 09 2010 13:54 youngminii wrote:
Oh okay EXCUSE ME for trying to spam less, I'll be sure to go back to my last game style and spam the crap out of this thread.

I've been busy with uni, thank you very much. And what have you contributed besides accusing me? Fake claiming doesn't count.


On August 09 2010 14:08 youngminii wrote:
Why are we voting Divinek?
If we're gonna vote for someone completely random with no plan and no hard evidence I suggest foolishness. If he really is Vet, well he's lost his usefulness since he already soaked up a hit but I think he's scum trying to look active and pointing fingers everywhere. Obviously I have no evidence so if people want to vote someone else, be my guest but there's as much chance that foolishness is scum as Divinek/BM being scum.

Better get rid of foolishness now if he really is fake claiming then trust him later (assuming he is scum).

Part of this I totally expected. It's youngminii, if I accuse him, he's going to call me stupid and spam. However notice that he really never denies my accusation, he never claims to be innocent or deny being mafia. Instead he just spams "lynch foolishness, lynch foolishness". There's also no hard analysis against me. We saw in the previous games that he's very capable of doing analysis on players, yet all he has to say about me is that I'm useless and that I've faked claim for sure. No analysis at all, he just says I'm faking my claim.

The important thing is that he still hasn't contributed. He immediately calls me a liar and says we need to lynch me. No behavior analysis (which we know he is capable of). Not to mention after the town got distracted off of him, he vanished again. Yes, not conclusive, but still convenient that once he saw it was a legit threat he vanished into lurking.

Finally, Divinek pointed out his slip up:

On August 09 2010 14:34 Divinek wrote:

Show nested quote +




Show nested quote +




cool story bro

This slip up is more than enough reason to vote for him. He says I need to be lynched, then says my posts aren't scummy, then votes for me. That's classic mafia reaction.

Summary: youngminii has not contributed all this game. We've seen in his past games that he is very capable of doing analysis on players. He was a big help in the town in in Godfather mafia. His final slip up at the end shows his overreaction to my accusation and only builds upon the case that he is mafia. youngminii is mafia

-Foolishness




What people did not seem to get was that Youngminii's behavior was not just different, it was different in an extremely mafia-orientated way. Could this accusation have been made if Youngminii said in the thread 'screw you BM I'm going pm's only now to avoid your spam?' That would have constituted his play being different right? Definitely not. That would not have been evidence one way or another, so no case could've been made.

This case could be made so certain because Youngminii fit mafia patterns and had specific mafia motivations for the actions he made. He could not be an inactive townie too busy with life because then the posts he had the time to make would not have been made with the objective that only suits a mafia.

By mafia patterns I mean the typical mafia behavior patterns, not obvious ones, but subtle and psychological ones that have come up again and again in irl and online mafia games on TL and other sites. Mafia motivations/objectives means an action or post that when looked at fully, only makes sense from the perspective of a mafia (read on for more info). I,e it rules out the 'bad townie' argument that often comes up because bad townies would not make posts that could only come from the specific mindset/psychological state mafiosos inherently have.

Look really hard at why he posts what he does. Foolishness outlines how almost every post that isn't short drivel up until the accusation is just long drivel in disguise: writing several paragraphs about Chez that in the end says nothing, echoing statements made by other players already, talking about last game, talking about irrelevent setups, asking why he's being told to calm down, etc. His one non-useless post says lynching the inactive love1another is bad and lynching BM to shut him up is good. I guess that's better than nothing?

The objective result is that he is posting nonsense to look like he's being useful without actually being useful. Now why would he do such a thing? Let's look at motives for each distinction:
    Green: No explanation possible. He might flip out if green and he could be trying to set the world record for not sleeping and make horrific logic leaps once pressured, but he has absolutely no reason to try to look like he's posting stuff without actually saying anything.
    Blue: Blues have a bit of motive here in that they want to hide as well. The difference is, blues want to offer what they can without sticking out, while mafia want to offer as little as possible without sticking out. Blues have no reason to look like they are saying something without saying anything. What's the point?
    Ninja: Difficult to say either way. Ninja's can act however they want and are under no pressure. In such an open game as this one at day 2, they have no reason to feel much, if any, fear and can just do what they want. The town isn't actively trying to look for them and they don't care whether they live or die, so ninja's aren't really under much duress at this point. They can help the town or not, it doesn't really matter to them. They have no reason to look like they are helping the town without actually doing so though.
    Mafia: Mafia have pressure on them, as the town is actively hunting them and the mafia can't let their teammates down. Thus they have an active reason, no, a necessity, to keep the town's eye off them and will must try to blend in the mix of townies however they can. Unlike the ninjas, mafia are working against the town and thus want to help the town as little as they can. Putting in this context, it makes perfect sense for Youngminii to look like he's posting actively yet not say anything.


Now let's look at his posts and motivations after being pressured:

Here are the facts against him:
    -When town, both green and blue, he has no fear about sharing his thoughts and makes an effort to give real analysis. His posts actually mean something when he makes them, regardless of how little or often he posts (usually the latter). He clearly has some experience and puts priority on analysis and lynch decisions.
    -He made 40 posts in the first cycle at varying times throughout the day and is clearly active, yet claims he's busy (lolrly).
    -Up until he is accused he made posts that seem to have value but upon close inspection are double talk or irrelevant. Only mafia have motivation to do that. Apparently he's so busy that he cannot make a single decent proposal for a lynch target or make any kind of real contribution that is exemplified in both his previous games, yet he has plenty of time to make useless statements, wish happy birthdays, talk about last game, and derail discussion onto something as meaningless as saying 'chezinu might be mafia or town' in 4 paragraphs.
    -He made no strong statements about targets (mafia want to avoid finger pointing since it makes them prominent), only suggesting that someone not be lynched (doesn't mean anything either way). His ample history completely contradicts any 'townie' argument due to this glaring distinction.
    -He immediately countervotes Foolishness on zero evidence after being accused (mafia or noob townie sign, but YM is not a noob). Mafia will often reflexively counter-accuse to shift the blame/focus onto someone else and avoid having to defend themselves or fix their behavior.
    -Completely avoids the accusations against him and fails to correct the problems raised against him, but instead diverts talk into the irrelevant discussion of whether foolishness is veteran or GF (seriously who cares? Nobody can prove it either way so there's no need to talk about it. Yet it is a very convenient way to avoid defending himself). If he had adequately defended himself, then started talking about Foolishness's role, then it could be seen from a bad townie play angle as well. It's the lack of defense and contribution combined with the diversion of discussion that makes him look so bad.
    -Gets caught with a blatant contradiction in vote and statement and doesn't make any effort to do the serious analysis that is so characteristic of him. Time can't be an issue because he clearly has the time to add another dozen posts.
    -Is quite passive even when assuming an antagonistic and otherwise direct stance, which is a contradiction in behavior. Remember mafia don't want the spotlight on themselves and they don't want to get into a 'its you vs me' war. Note how successful he is at all of this. There's a huge case on him but yet the subsequent behavioral issue is only pointed out by a few people (divinek/rastaban) and he mostly just gets ignored.


So how is there any doubt about this?

I want to highlight the various incorrect posts about the Youngminii case, (keep in mind a bunch of other players, sadly, totally ignored this issue) not to shame anyone, but to show how much different in-depth, top level analysis differs from the overhasty assumptions, shallow conclusions, and lack of logic that is all too characteristic of the average town player. I hope this will encourage those who viewed the events of this day incorrectly to take a second look at what happened and improve for the future.

*My notes will be in blue*

+ Show Spoiler [Wrong Posts] +




Now, what if by some miracle, Youngminii was lynched and flipped green, or worse, vigilante? What would that have said about Foolishness? Think hard and carefully here, because this is a logic issue that really has plagued the town in so many TL games, especially this one. At its core is the question: what does "lynching for information" actually mean?

The lynch outcome alone would have said nothing about Foolishness! If Foolishness is veteran, how does he have any definite knowledge of what Youngminii is? He doesn't, therefore he can only do his best and try to figure out YM's role from the tools he has. That in itself does not distinguish him from Godfather Foolishness one bit. The key distinction between the two is to look at how he got Youngminii lynched and his overall play, not that he got Youngminii lynched. The latter fact, while not entirely irrelevant, is nowhere near sufficient enough on its own to warrant a lynch (and everyone knows if YM had popped up vigi Foolishness would've been autokilled the next day).

Thus it would be nonsensical to lynch YM because you think it will give the most information (the information is next to useless). The only reason to lynch YM, or virtually anyone ever, is to kill mafia. That's it.
Last edit: 2010-08-26 14:55:37
Twitter- @VerInspired
Old Post

  Ver   United States. August 26 2010 13:09. Posts 1881Profile # 
Day 2 Analysis
:

This is the day where the mafia revealed themselves completely. Note how different Day 2 was from Day 1. In day 1 the scrappy seven were spamming up a storm fighting each other and the mafia had zero pressure on them at all. They could sit back, relax, and laugh. The only major slipup was from Misder. Yes several mafia could be identified by a thorough examination, but it wasn't particularly obvious yet. Now in day 2, the heat is on them. Foolishness has a very strong case on Youngminii and despite the town's efforts to stop him from succeeding in the thread, his behind the scenes alliance was able to build up the necessary steam to put the mafia in a real pickle. Suddenly, mafia mistakes were all over the place and the entire team could be safely identified before day 3.

Youngminii's case is extremely solid: there wasn't much wiggly room before Foolishness provoked a response and he was definitely out of rope after his poor responses that were both out of character and fit mafia objectives. That certainty of guilt, even before the lynch, allows the rest of the mafia to be picked out with ease.

Of course all of the mafia make individual slipups on their own today because the pressure is on them, but a prime indicator outside of that is who is being wishywashy regarding Youngminii's lynch. Mafia are not going to want to run their own guy into the ground if they can help it, but it's also inherently difficult for them to oppose such a strong case both logically play wise and psychologically. Several townies this game had no problems flat out saying, totally incorrectly mind you, 'Youngminii has no real case against him,' but mafia psychologically have a very difficult time doing that because they KNOW HE'S GUILTY. And that knowledge can and should be used against them!

Keep in mind that because Youngminii was not lynched (even though he was by far and away the best candidate), one cannot say with complete certainty that he is mafia despite how good that case is. Therefore, the flipflopping or dodging of the Youngminii issue is a heuristic to lead to likely mafia, but it is not enough to condemn them on its own. A real key in mafia is time. Townies only have so much time each cycle to figure out mafia and it can be incredibly time-consuming to do a thorough analysis of someone. Thus it is extremely helpful to try to use heuristics, or shortcuts, to help look at probable mafia candidates to be analyzed in full. You just must keep in mind that the heuristic is not a definitive, just a guide. And all of these mafia have a lot more against them than just being wishywashy in the day 2 lynch.

Overall, when a mafia is suddenly put in the spotlight out of nowhere, especially this early on, the entire mafia team will be thrown into a state of chaos and will not know how to react properly. In such situations you can often bag their entire team (as in this game) by searching for the people who don't know how to react to the situation but are trying to hide it. In these 'sudden red accusations,' uncertainty, covering up the important posts with irrelevent spam (unfortunately so many townies do this too that it's not as useful as the other points), and flipflopping around during the lynch discussion are all extremely accurate signs that should be used to pin mafia.

*When going through the quoted posts I will add in my own emphasis to the key parts with red.*




Tree.Hugger
:

Tree.Hugger's posts were, not looking objectively, enough to paint him as an ally of the town. But now, under a little pressure he makes a horrific error and a case is easily made for him:

+ Show Spoiler [Tree.Hugger's contradiction] +

What the? Are you joking? I'll post it in the open for emphasis just because it is so important to see:


Going to hold off on a vote for him at the moment, just on principle, really, but I think he's far and away our best candidate.


This is the type of gem to look for!! Note the blatant contradiction in logic, the excuse of adhering to some mysterious 'principle' despite saying specifically how good of a candidate YM is. This of course following his earlier support of Foolishness yet voting for Artanis for no reason.

The post itself is a confusing mess upon close examination. Tree.Hugger has been supporting Foolishness from the start, he has defended him in the past against various things and does so again. He does suggest people vote for Foolishness to keep their points, yet doesn't say anything against doing so despite being clear about how he is "convinced on foolishness." Note how very neutral everything he says is. No forceful statements, no posting with certainty. He points fingers but doesn't do so. It's like listening to a politician.

What's Tree.Hugger's objective for posting this? He brings up a bunch of interesting points but doesn't go anywhere with them. He explore's a bunch of scenarios and just asks questions but provides no certain answers. Half of what he says contradicts the other half. He jumps around thoughts continuously and doesn't stick with anything. That's either poor play or mafia play. There really is no overall objective for posting this: it looks just like a jumble of words. The closest posting motive I can pinpoint is that he's trying to look like he's contributing without saying anything, and guess what, that's a mafia motive. In addition, a good analyst reading this will feel the fear and hesitation pouring out: this is not a normal post.

That is a pretty damning post but to be certain let's look at his posting history this game and last.

This game:
    -Provides summary (very neutral post, mafia trying to blend in indication)
    -Offers some minor contributions of his own but mostly echoes and responds to other players.
    -Tree Hugger does make some good points and calls out various players on their crappy logic. But most of his attention is either on calling out stupidity or raising questions and not answering them. In short, Tree Hugger is pointing out mistakes in other players yet not providing any direction of his own. By virtue of his insights on other players this game he clearly has the ability to at least think and decide something, yet he's not doing it. Something is out of place here.
    -Apparently can't decide with certainty on anyone's alignment. His vote is on a safe neutral, the relative inactive Artanis. Not the worst vote, but it certainly is safe.
    -Speaks with certainty about Foolishness in his first post of day 2:


+ Show Spoiler [Post] +

Now that's great and all, but it makes his highlighted post inserted before this very condemning for reasons to be stated. If he is 'positive Foolishness is telling the truth,' then he should logically defend Foolishness (who is under massive attack the entire day) and get other people off his back with much force than he ends up doing.

Also make sure to see how Tree.Hugger, despite fully believing Foolishness, doesn't end up voting with him against YM initially but votes for Artanis for no real reason.

Finally after the Youngminii bandwagon starts going he commits more.

+ Show Spoiler [More Aggressive Post] +

This is a good post. Solid logic and analysis. It still lacks complete certainty and has a little bit of wishywashyness in there but it's much better than his other ones. However, this post serves as a great contrast with the ones that follow it. Suddenly everything is out of place.

+ Show Spoiler [Wishywashy] +

Check out here how he changes from trying to get Youngminii lynched semi-seriously to suddenly being totally uncertain despite posting nothing to indicate why. The previously posts point out how BM is posting poorly and how YM is posting like mafia. There is little other reason for posting this suddenly reversal to "Yeah this is useless" and "it's a gut call" in light of his previous posts that went much harder at YM without considering a mafia motive. However, if you look at this from the lens of Youngminii being mafia, this post makes a lot of sense, for a mafia. It provides Tree.Hugger with a way out, an easy jump to camouflage a vote switch to BM. One post as a mostly determined activist doesn't make up for the many others of a shady politician, it just raises contradictions.

+ Show Spoiler [Mistake post] +

What he says here is all perfectly fine. He has good logic and some important points. What's the problem then?

It doesn't fit! First, put it in context. compare how certain he suddenly is about everything with how wishywashy and hesitant he was in the past. Remember, this is Tree.Hugger the mild who has been talking like a vague politician the entire game. Now suddenly here he is extremely forceful and is absolutely convinced that Youngminii is mafia despite specifically saying 2 posts ago "it's a gut call whichever is more likely." Yet now he says with certainty that the mafia had likely all stacked on BM. Where was this certainty when it was actually needed, instead of now when it is useless?

Secondly, the post time is extremely incriminating. It's a common mafia tactic to arrive just after a lynch is final (in this case, 24 minutes later) and start berating everyone and putting suspicion on those who were responsible. Keep in mind that doing so absolves them of any responsibility (they weren't 'around' ). Actually considering that it was in such a short time if he had seen it exactly as it came up, to have that post written up with such definite conclusions in that short amount of time is rather questionable. Maybe he's a fast writer, maybe his thoughts were all clear in his head beforehand, or maybe he was just waiting for the chance. Not a point in his favor at best and at worst it's grounds for a lynch. Combine this with everything else against him and his case is hardly salvageable.

Last game (Townie):

Total difference. Last game he was actively pushing for lynch targets and proposing plans. He was posting with certainty and showed no hesitation. His contributions were not just responses but original as well and his actions were consistent. Not much more needs to be said. Frankly you don't even need past game mafia history to be certain on this.

Tree.Hugger is a great example of a mafia who manages to post but not attract attention, looking innocent enough at a glance to ignore and move on to bigger fish, but falls apart upon close inspection.




Infundibulum
:

+ Show Spoiler [Fear and hesitation] +

Again the mafia mess up regarding the Youngminii lynch. Infundibulum, like every player in the game, has to address the YM/Foolishness/BM/Pyrr issue. Yet the way he does is even worse than Tree.Hugger. Look how he tries to make it look like he's saying something but doesn't say anything. He reaches no definite conclusion and abstains instead. Now it's understandable if he can't figure out right away who to go on, but he doesn't make any attempt to! His only vote of the whole day is on Pandain! Can you feel the fear radiating from that post? It rarely gets easier than this.

See how he brings up a point on the merits of each side, is hesitant about everything, and then drops it. Can you imagine someone cared about the town to post like that? I mean, it's possible for a total confused newbie, but for Infundi to do it? He has a lot of games under his belt. He knows better, and when he's town, he doesn't not have such weak opinions and indecisiveness.

Current game history:

In one word, bad. Tons of no content/no real contribution posts. Posts seem to be objectively to fit in. Does have 1-2 posts that are fine but they aren't good enough to make up for the rest. He talks about plans a little but he just gives general/obvious content and gives minor critiques. In the posted pm between Foolishness and LSB (listed at start of day 2 here and in thread) Foolishness says to watch out for these guys and he's exactly right. Infundi fits that bill perfectly.

All of his posts really don't have much purpose to them. The only ones with content or original contribution talk about useless things like how many ninjas factor into balance. Mafia love to talk a lot about useless stuff but so do innocents. The difference is usually that innocents will also talk about other stuff, while mafia might not. And Infundi does not. He sidesteps the most important question of the day and overall he just doesn't seem to care what happens. Quite odd isn't it? I can understand not caring about day 1, but day 2 is very polarizing and even though he is clearly online at the important points he just doesn't do anything.

As an added bonus here was a weird post that something doesn't really feel right about:


On August 09 2010 07:11 iNfuNdiBuLuM wrote:

Show nested quote +



I think it's pretty much a given that mafia will frame Xelin, in order to mess with the blue count and make it so Xelin is not confirmed. If Xelin comes up anything other than red he's gotta be the GF, is how i'm seeing it.


The odd certainty and bizarre conclusion at the end sticks out in contrast with the rest of his post and post history.

Previous game history:

Infundi has a rich history to sort through and his style has remained similar throughout, so pretty much any two games work.

Townie (XXVIII):

There's a noticeable difference just in sheer quantity. Is much more active and provides actual original content about important subjects instead of irrelevant nonsense. His posts about the lynch are forceful and he goes into real behavior analysis on suspects, posts suspects, maps out the voting patterns in excel for more accurate analysis, and actively takes sides in debates. Another core aspect of his games as town is his decisive and forceful opinions, something which is notably lacking from this game.

+ Show Spoiler [Sample posts] +

Mafia (XXII):

Overall it's rather similar to this game. Lots of little content, doesn't present his own ideas on anything important. He does post more on lynch suspects than this game but he's still hiding in the background and is very hesitant. He doesn't push hard and clearly is trying to avoid getting too much attention on him, resulting in very neutral and objectively content lite posts.

+ Show Spoiler [Sample post] +

Nothing about him gives any reason to think he is innocent, so the only question here is whether he is a busy townie or mafia. The biggest sign overall for mafia is that awful indecisive post and the clear lack of interest in a very important lynch despite being around. This one is a little tricky because it relies on being able to see between the lines and feel out emotions from a post and series of posts. Infundi always is interested and cares when he's town, but not when he's mafia.

The nail in the coffin is the fact that he ends up abstaining in such a situation. How much more obvious could he make it that he doesn't care? His post history and overall fear eliminate any possibility of being an apathetic townie.




BumatLarge


+ Show Spoiler [Red Flag posts] +

This is an example of pretty flimsy vote switching and clear hesitation, but there's nothing definite. Still he fits the pattern and should be looked at: voting indicates he Could be mafia or could just be silly green, so let's take a closer look.

Current game analysis:

Essentially drivel on the first day and part of the second. What's interesting about his talk in the second day is the focus. Almost all of his non-drivel talk is about confirmed innocents. He ignores the youngminii accusation entirely and doesn't say much about Bill Murray or Foolishness despite being active with his vote.

The truly bizarre part is that he is posting during the entire time of Youngminii's defense and right next to Youngminii's blatant posting/voting contradiction yet is completely ignoring it. Instead he posts nonsense that references Chezinu and ignores the issue, then later talks about confirmed innocents. Does this mean he's mafia? No, it could also mean that he's a townie fixated on the wrong things. But it's something to keep in mind for the overall analysis.

Most of his posts have their 'focus' on confirming innocents, yet they really get repetitive. I mean, there's only so many times you can say the same thing, which isn't really saying much, about forming a town circle around either Foolishness and Brown Bear. Is it mafia behavior? Perhaps, perhaps not, but it certainly doesn't bode well for him.

The biggest problem is he has all these posts that look like they are contributing, yet he says nothing definite about finding mafia. No real attempts to analyze someone despite a huge war going on, no real interest in who he thinks is mafia, just a couple of empty posts that serve as an excuse to throw down a vote on someone or another. That is much more problematic.

Past History as Townie:

Bum's posts have content, point fingers, speak directly and without fear, and overall contributes actively. He also focuses quite a bit on the lynch targets and actively contributes his thoughts and ideas.

+ Show Spoiler [Sample Post] +

As Mafia:

Has more content than the current game but his posts are riddled with fear and hesitation. He fits a very easy pattern of a mafia trying to hide in the contributors by looking like he's saying something without actually doing it. Doesn't point fingers, doesn't take sides, and his posts don't really have much purpose when looked at objectively.

+ Show Spoiler [Sample] +

Now let's put this all together:
    -When town, bum actively discusses lynches and gives them the appropriate amount of attention. He's interested in finding mafia and analyzes the possible candidates, makes up his mind, and sticks with his conclusion.
    -When mafia, doesn't really care about lynches (voting someone without looking at their posts), poses a lot of hypotheticals that frankly don't matter, and overall says a bunch of obvious things that really don't need to be said.
    -This current game his 'contributions' are bringing up random questions or responding to hypothetical scenarios that might warrant a bit of attention, but not his entire post history. At a brief glance he seems to want to get confirmed innocents, but he really just discusses possibilities and leaves it at that.
    -Most of his posts don't have much of a purpose.
    -Dodges the lynch question almost entirely and does virtually no analysis.
    -Flipflops around with flimsy votes and flimsier reasoning


Looks pretty definite yeah?





Brownbear:

-52~ posts in the first two cycles.
-Here are his contributions of those 52 posts:

+ Show Spoiler [Lynch talk] +

So let's go over exactly what he says in those 52 posts. Almost nothing!

So what does this mean? a) Apathetic Blue (he claimed hatter) b) Mafia lying low. How do we tell which is which? Use past game comparison and look for things out of the ordinary. First thing out of the ordinary is his rampant vote switching for the flimsiest of reasons. Why would a hatter operate like that? Wouldn't he care more?

The rest of his posts are spam or nonsense designed to look like a contribution. For example:

+ Show Spoiler [Questionable Post] +

What does this even mean? What is the point of saying this? 'Hmm our plan might not be perfect because it's out in the open. someone else do something because I can't think of anything.' What's his motive for posting this? Is he subtly trying to get the plan to be abandoned? He overemphasizes how much he likes the plan (possibly overcompensation to look innocent), yet the implication with the post is that for the sole reason its out in the open it might not be worth doing. This would be fine if he provided any kind of objection to it, but he doesn't. Whichever reason it is, all of them are only done from a mafia viewpoint. This looks more like a hesitant player trying to look like he's doing something while not actually doing anything. And that is an unmistakable sign of mafia. Just to be sure, let's compare past history.


Brownbear as Townie (Mafia XXVIII):

Very actively contributes. Discusses his thoughts, creates a plan, posts impulsively, and overall has no hesitations. He's a completely different person.

+ Show Spoiler [Sample post] +

It would be possible that he was a lurking blue based on a purely quantitive comparison between this game and last, but when we add in his vote flipflopping and posts that only can be explained as someone trying to look like he's contributing but not doing so, we have ourselves a mafia.


Misder:


Just want to briefly point this out, even though in an ideal world he wouldn't be alive at this point.

+ Show Spoiler [A Public apology] +

A public apology. Seriously, a public apology. Out of nowhere. What!? Why would he post that? His post history shows it is out of character as town. This just is another indicator of him overcompensating by using his 'noob alibi' as an excuse.

Add this into his two day 1 posts which basically said 'don't suspect me because I'm a noob. Sorry I can't do anything because I'm a noob' and you've got analysis more confirming than a rolecheck. Again, only mafia have a need to compensate like this. His emphasis on how noob and sorry he is doesn't make any sense from a townie perspective.





Night 2
:

Everything is pretty definite tonight.

Amber:
    -6~ posts in second cycle
    -Extremely limited content despite posting many times throughout the day (thus being quite active). Is clearly hiding something.
    -Never contributes this little and hesitates so much as green.
    -Not 100% decisive like most of the others but this is a high probability hit. PM'ing to be certain would be advisable.



Rastaban:
    -Clearly is trying to contribute and interested.
    -Holds back at times and does posts that make you think he's hiding something (vote counts, inactive lists)
    -Nearly all of his posts exclusively talk about blue roles!? Whoa whoa big red flag. Overall an inordinate amount of focus on blues, sometimes out of nowhere. Also keeps responding to posts about blues.


Opz:
    -Lack of early posts/content early on despite clearly being around often, opposite of when green.
    -Mentions early on that blues aren't that important. Then afterwards literally all of his posts are about blues.
    -Immediately after second day starts he automatically assumes Xelin is innocent, and starts subtly prodding people to roleclaim to Xelin and reveal all kinds of information overall (like foolishness medic prot vs vet hit that isn't usually revealed).
    -Seems intimately familiar with the plan (not many people were).
    -Gets defensive about the circle, almost as if it's a personal insult that the circle should be distrusted.


+ Show Spoiler [the circle is my life] +

Everything points to only one conclusion here.


Chezinu:

-Almost no content
-He roleclaimed in thread. So, how to figure out whether he's lying or telling the truth?

+ Show Spoiler [Important Posts] +

Fortunately this is easily resolved with his history. Chezinu had open claimed twice before as a DT, both times he was telling the truth: Mafia XVIII and Mini Mafia 2. Also his word choice of asking for trust in such a way gives a certain feel for innocence, but this is mostly intuitive and not something that can be taught.

All of the blues have identified themselves at this point.

Amber Medic
Rastaban Tracker
Opz Tracker
Chezinu Tracker
Last edit: 2010-08-26 14:59:07
Twitter- @VerInspired
Old Post

  Ver   United States. August 26 2010 13:23. Posts 1881Profile # 



Day 3:
:

As the main analysis on reds, blues, and critical errors has already been thoroughly done, the remainder of this piece will just point out any good moves or major errors by any side.

Mafia really needed to take a more active role today and wrest control of the town from the Xelin group instead of just sitting back and letting the town dictate play. A few things were apparent at day 3:

-The watcher didn't exist, doesn't trust Xelin (understandably), or is so inactive they are irrelevant anyways. That meant the blues weren't confirmed and the plan failed.
-The Xelin group clearly screwed the town over the previous day. Why should anyone listen to them if they don't have blue information? But how can they trust any blue info? (Mafia really should've faked another role)
-Xelin is afk anyways and as the town is erroneously placing too much faith in him anyways, the mafia have a grand opportunity to take the initiative.
-Pyrr and BM are both going after Foolishness pretty hard. Encourage them, chat them up in PMs and try to find other supporters for him. You might get him killed, you might not, but it would keep attention off of the mafia and might have forced Rastaban to focus his efforts into defending Foolishness instead of building a case against bumatlarge.

Misder going after Larjarse was certainly a good start; unfortunately he never got any impetus as the mafia were too scared to support him openly and they never tried to influence any townies to their side. In the wake of this failure Rastaban stepped up the plate here and took the initiative for the town, forcibly overcoming the Larjarse/Foolishness bandwagon and getting a mafia killed with solid analysis.

+ Show Spoiler [Rastabans accusation] +

A few comments on this:

The keys to differentiating a suspicious/apathetic/bad townie from mafia (the most difficult part of analysis) is to look at their motivations and emotions. For example, his the switching of his stance on RNG is not necessarily a sign of mafia: maybe he simply had a change of heart between games or the result of last game persuaded him to change his stance. Either way, it doesn't mean he is mafia.

Catching him in the unfilfilled promises part is good evidence; it is not key and again could simply be negligence, but as Rastaban says mafia do fail to deliver on promises and hope they are forgotten often. A mark against him, but not definite.

The exchange between bum and tree hugger is difficult to pin one way or another because while it does seem artificial and silly, on its own it doesn't mean that bum is simply not an innocent quibbling with a statement that he disagrees with.

Same for the Xelin part: the motivations for doing so aren't necessarily limited to mafia.

The strongest proof is actually in the summary: the abrupt change in demeanor (a great catch, changes in psychology aren't easy to spot but are really compelling) and the extreme lack of content are the two essential issues that the 'green bum' argument would have great difficulty explaining. Tack on some of the earlier points like failing to deliver promises that now suddenly look much more damaging when combined with the complete lack of real content, and you have yourself a winner!

Youngminii:

Opz brought up a great point that sadly was ignored. It is seriously amazing that YM lived the entire game given his position at day 2.

+ Show Spoiler [YM suspicion] +

The only thing I want to emphasize here (as the rest is just dandy) is for Opz to push a little harder. When you have someone with YM's day 2 circumstances and he has a serious issue with his claim, don't leave it up to the town to decide. If you aren't confident in your own suspicions, nobody else will take them seriously. If you think someone should die and there's a very compelling reason for it, don't hold back.




Night 3:


Yes, the mafia did get pretty screwed with the ninjas not shooting each other, though mafia should have really tried harder to gain the support of the ninjas. Again, their passive play really limited their overall options.

As for blue errors, Opz completely revealed his role with these posts:

+ Show Spoiler [too much insider knowledge] +

Let's examine the general patterns and their inferences here:

-Opz is a core part of the Xelin circle and is privy to critical info (look how closely he identifies with it and attacks anyone who puts suspicion on it, as if he was personally attacked himself). This means he has either been checked by another blue (who cannot be Darth as Darth is dead and checked Xelin night 1), or Opz helped confirm Xelin (meaning blue).
-Opz is absolutely certain that Xelin is innocent with Tree.Hugger's death. As Tree.Hugger is framer, that means Xelin must have been trackable. Opz says Darth tracked him, but there is a piece of information convienently missing there, namely: how does Opz know that?
-Xelin was not online until very late in the day (well after Opz posted all of these things). That means Opz either knew this critical information during the night itself, or it was related to him by someone who checked him during the 2nd night (as 1st night they would've checked Xelin in accordance with the plan). This is not definite by any means, but that brings us to the final and decisive point.
-If Opz was just a green/friendly neighbor that someone else confirmed, why is he deliberately hiding how he got confirmed into the group. Opz never makes an oink about how he suddenly is in-the-know, he takes it for granted that he is a key member of the group. But think about it, would a green checked by someone else and let into the secret order have the absolute certainty Opz shows, take his innocence and importance for granted, and more importantly, would he identify himself so tightly with the group that he feels personally attacked when Xelin is questioned? It's far more likely that he has taken an active role in it and has been from the first night. Add everything together and it's pretty clear Opz is an information role.

The mafia of course had at least a suspicion that opz was blue (their roleblocks were very accurate, hitting a blue every night except the first when Brownbear faked it), but this is a great heuristic that should be brought to light, for it can be used to tear apart circles (it's a critical weakness of the circle, as the circle depends on the power roles. These power roles in the circle act inherently differently, revealing themselves in ways they might not have otherwise).

Same principle for Rastaban:

+ Show Spoiler [Implying Blue] +

Same reasoning as for Opz. It lacks the confirmation of Opz taking mistrust of Xelin as a personal attack, but combined with the previous day's evidence on Rastaban, it's enough to warrant a hit. Apparently the mafia believed so as well and hit him. Unfortunately were not able to acquire anything on medic info and the hit was blocked.

Day 4:
:

The most important issue to discuss is the southrawrea mislynch. Foolishness hit the nail on the head with the following post, though it likely came too late to make a serious enough impact.

+ Show Spoiler [Correct Analysis] +

The SRR mislynch was a good example of the town putting too much faith in blue powers without actually considering the circumstances behind everything. If BM and BC had not had their big fight in the thread that clearly showed BM's distaste with BC and the town, then the lynch would've been sensible enough. However when you combine BM's attitude with the fact that he is a 3rd party and do a proper analysis on South, the lynch looks pretty silly. Unfortunately not enough players put these facts together in time.




Night 4:
:

The inability to kill the blue roles and keep the town in doubt has now come back to haunt the mafia. Once again a hit was protted and that essentially sealed it.




Conclusions
:

This game was a great example of the mistakes that have been plaguing TL games for some time now. For clarity, I'll restate them:

1) Posting far too much (giving every thought instead of keeping the town on a need to know basis)

2) Putting far too high a priority on obtaining confirmed innocents and establishing pm circles. Confirmed innocents should be an exception demanded by the situation, not a must-have necessity attempted even when the circumstance or setup doesn't warrant it.

3) Relying far more on blue roles than needed, which gives rise to circle syndrome and overall passive play. As with the unneeded emphasis on confirmed innocents, the blue problem stems from the inability to do real analysis. Rather than continually trying to rely on crutches and faulty plans, players need to take the time to learn how to figure out mafia without a blue role to help them.

4) Obeying and listening to confirmed innocents. Just because someone is innocent does not mean they are right. It just means they aren't intentionally being wrong. Analysis should be judged on its content more so than its source. In fact, mafia will often push bad plans proposed by confirmed innocents because who would doubt the word of a confirmed innocent?

5) Violent misuse of PMs. Due to the replacement of analysis with reliance on blue roles the way people view PMs as town is fundamentally incorrect. There are two main ways to use PMs as town. The first is to coordinate, find innocents, and gather information: this is what Foolishness did and it allowed him to overcome the enormous walls other players were putting in front of him. The second is to force decisive information from someone. If a mafia is forced to play their part in the thread and in PMs, their likelihood of making a mistake exponentially goes up. With this type of play it is necessary to be more narrow and focused as otherwise you will simply be overwhelmed with information.

6) Not lynching off of dedicated analysis but instead 'lynching for who gives the most information'. Unfortunately lynching for information, while sometimes a great idea, is more often than not misused when players forget that non-power roles have no certain information and thus might simply be wrong. For example, if Youngminii is lynched and flips vigi, they might think Foolishness is red when there is no clear certainty either way. It is the "how" that is really important, not the "what." The "what" usually only takes precedence when it occurs too frequently.

7) Along with #6, analysis presented is usually either done superficially or given far too limited examination. Most townies are simply too lazy to actually look closely at other's analysis and just make a snap judgment that more often than not has major gaps.

8) The ability to stop, sit back, take in everything, form an intelligent plan (whether for your team or just yourself) and make analysis, then initiate and lead your side is a key trait that differentiates the top tier player from one at an average to decent level. Most players are simply victims of the atmosphere and the course of the game, they forever react and never initiate. If you want to see the difference, take a close look at Foolishness this game. The rampant spam during day 1 distracted almost the entire town and going into day 2 they essentially had nothing going for them, but he figured out how the mafia would be acting, formed a team to support him, did serious analysis, and tried to direct the game in a totally new direction by the start of day 2.

9) Mafia as of late, perhaps because the town's analysis skill is so low, generally rely on killing anyone who can catch reds without a blue role and then play passively, hoping for the town mess up. Unfortunately, active play is generally demanded in most situations when poor town plays present an opportunity for mafia to take advantage, and it is almost always more favorable for the mafia to lead the town to a conclusion the mafia wants instead of reacting to whatever the town does. It is useful to compare the mafia this game to the mafia last game (BM's XXVIII): last game the mafia actively took the lead both publically and privately, influencing key townies, gaining crucial information, controlling the atmosphere of the town, and not letting the town get away with shoddy moves. On the other hand, this game the mafia played purely reactionary, let the town get away with poor plays, didn't gain information fast enough, and overall manipulated only when threatened, which at some points was too late.

10) Perhaps most importantly, there is overall a failure to learn from past games. For example, in this game many people felt afterwards the plan was great, when in fact it was a fundamentally poor play that only squeaked by with enormous luck, the complete inability of the mafia to capitaize, and yet it still almost fully wasted the first two nights.
Last edit: 2010-08-26 13:30:53
Twitter- @VerInspired
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 Qatol   United States. August 26 2010 13:34. Posts 3010
Profile Blog # 

On August 25 2010 01:21 Ver wrote:
He's exaggerating, as the quotes are what takes up a ton of space. Its long but readable.


On August 25 2010 03:54 Qatol wrote:
I'm not exaggerating! Part 2 was 39 pages in word. Yes, it had a lot of quotes, but that was also only 1/3 of the total document. It's long!

See? Long!
Last edit: 2010-08-26 13:36:09
Uff Da
Old Post

  Ver   United States. August 26 2010 13:34. Posts 1881Profile # 
A big thank you to Qatol for all his editing help.

Hopefully this giant can help make up for my absences as of late.
Twitter- @VerInspired
Old Post

 
 BloodyC0bbler   Canada. August 26 2010 13:36. Posts 6662
Profile Blog # 

On August 26 2010 13:34 Ver wrote:
A big thank you to Qatol for all his editing help.

Hopefully this giant can help make up for my absences as of late.


It better. It is insanely informative.
#3 Member of the Chill Fanclub / Rhaegar fought nobly. Rhaegar fought valiantly. Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaeger died. --Ser Jorah Mormont TL MAFIA FORUM http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/index.php?show_part=31 go go !
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 Ace   United States. August 26 2010 13:38. Posts 13543
Profile Blog # 
heh yea this is a lot, but I bet it's good ^_^

No sir I fully get it, however unless I can unlaunch my nuke there is not much we can do about it. I also wasn't posting as much because I didn't fully read the rules yet LOL! - RebirthofLegend in WaW Mafia
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  Divinek   Canada. August 26 2010 13:47. Posts 4016Profile Blog # 
damn it is nice to read stuff like this.

was great to work with foolishness for the short time i was alive in that game, that dude really gets stuff done.

i wish people would believe evidence more heavily over people that are 'confirmed'

thanks a ton for this
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Oh goodness me, FOX tv where do you get your sight? Can't you keep track, the puck is black. That's why the ice is white.
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 citi.zen   August 26 2010 14:11. Posts 2504
Profile # 
Fantastic resource. Thanks Ver!
Aut viam inveniam, aut faciam.
Old Post

 
 Pandain   United States. August 26 2010 14:47. Posts 5827
Profile Blog # 
Amazing read. Well done.
This could be a huge acquisition as long as they also get the puppy
Old Post

 
 Infundibulum   United States. August 26 2010 14:56. Posts 2314
Profile Blog # 
thanks man

will be reading this at least twice
Best tabbing program found at @ http://www.tabit.net - TL MAFIA: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/index.php?show_part=31
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 Ace   United States. August 26 2010 15:15. Posts 13543
Profile Blog # 
Also I heavily disagree with your stance on lying. If we are talking about fake claiming as town it's almost always a bad idea to lie about your role. Unless the setup is made in such a way that lying isn't going to result in confusion and innocent lynches then there is no point in lying. Just pure scumhunting is going to be a faster path to winning.

Of course the town play is usually too bad to punish anyone for lying about their roles. But in general lying as town gets you farther from winning. How many times has someone lied about being a "blue" role, and then the actual role ends up dying anyway? Vanilla Townies trying draw night kills by lying usually ends up costing lots of time. There is also the fact that some people, like me, when scum don't always want to kill "blue" roles. Unless it's a serious situation or I really think it's obviously a great play - I'm most likely going to kill players that are on the right track, look too pro-town, or will take too much effort to get lynched. Most of the time I feel if a DT or some other role claims I'm scum by the time it's all over my team is going to be in a better position anyway.
Last edit: 2010-08-26 15:16:31
No sir I fully get it, however unless I can unlaunch my nuke there is not much we can do about it. I also wasn't posting as much because I didn't fully read the rules yet LOL! - RebirthofLegend in WaW Mafia
Old Post

 
 Ace   United States. August 26 2010 15:28. Posts 13543
Profile Blog # 
Oh and good point on how the Youngmini lynch went down. In my Scum guide I was thinking about putting in some information on the nature of a lynch to tie in with the "Who's responsible for a lynch piece" but as we all know, I never got around to it

And the "lynching for information" bullshit. That is one of the dumbest ideas ever. Not surprisingly some of the most scummy players post it, and foolish townies go along with it. Every lynch is going to generate information but it won't always be useful. Great, you lynched a townie. Was there a serious wagon that took forever to build? Pressure to claim? People voting for bullshit reasons?

But now I'll stop here because I don't want to get into the realm of why double lynches are usually bad ideas for town, and why No Lynching can actually help in some cases.
Last edit: 2010-08-26 15:32:41
No sir I fully get it, however unless I can unlaunch my nuke there is not much we can do about it. I also wasn't posting as much because I didn't fully read the rules yet LOL! - RebirthofLegend in WaW Mafia
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 youngminii   Australia. August 26 2010 17:58. Posts 7347
Profile Blog # 
Ctrl-F "youngminii" = 54 hits
Ctrl-F "foolishness" = 77 hits

Fuck I never win anything.
lalala
Old Post

 
 Amber[LighT]   United States. August 26 2010 22:30. Posts 5078
Profile Blog # 
Well just wasted about an hour digging through this. Thanks Ver! I guess it would be nice if you had some tips for playing certain blue roles. It's easy to be an outspoken townie since the risk of losing a townie appears (at least to me) lower than losing a blue. Going into a role like a medic or a hatter is difficult as you have to play to fit the mold of the game, at least that's how I've played with the blue roles in the past.

My questions would be...
-What should a medic/DT do to make himself look like less of a target? You said yourself that I was high on the list, and even when I was making my posts I knew I was looking like a medic. I couldn't have painted a bigger picture in my day 1/2 posts
-How should a medic/hatter place their night one actions? What is the best way for them to act upon day 1 discussion?
-Do you ever want to drive attention to yourself with a blue role, such as a hatter, or a veteran, or is it better to keep yourself in the shadows until later in the game?


Also general question about this game:
-Would it have been better to avoid the town circle idea? I understand the huge risk we took (huge reward I guess), but if you were playing from Day 1 what would have been a better suggestion for a town plan where there's no election and an ambiguous amount/types of blues?
It's not supposed to be easy, that's why it feels so effing good.
Old Post

 
 Qatol   United States. August 26 2010 23:47. Posts 3010
Profile Blog # 

On August 26 2010 22:30 Amber[LighT] wrote:
Well just wasted about an hour digging through this. Thanks Ver! I guess it would be nice if you had some tips for playing certain blue roles. It's easy to be an outspoken townie since the risk of losing a townie appears (at least to me) lower than losing a blue. Going into a role like a medic or a hatter is difficult as you have to play to fit the mold of the game, at least that's how I've played with the blue roles in the past.

My questions would be...
-What should a medic/DT do to make himself look like less of a target? You said yourself that I was high on the list, and even when I was making my posts I knew I was looking like a medic. I couldn't have painted a bigger picture in my day 1/2 posts
-How should a medic/hatter place their night one actions? What is the best way for them to act upon day 1 discussion?
-Do you ever want to drive attention to yourself with a blue role, such as a hatter, or a veteran, or is it better to keep yourself in the shadows until later in the game?


Also general question about this game:
-Would it have been better to avoid the town circle idea? I understand the huge risk we took (huge reward I guess), but if you were playing from Day 1 what would have been a better suggestion for a town plan where there's no election and an ambiguous amount/types of blues?

I think I can answer a few of these if you don't mind hearing them from me and not Ver.

1. It is a mistake to try and play the game differently when you are a blue or a green. Your objective should be to post the same way regardless of whether you are blue or green. Now this is hard to do psychologically, so you will inevitably make some mistakes still, but you should make the effort nonetheless.

2. I think you are giving blue roles too much credit. Yes, blues inherently have more special abilities in game than greens do. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that losing a specific townie is worse than losing a blue. Things are more situational than that. In this game, Xelin was effectively a townie. But how would the game have turned out if he had died night 1 barring stupid mistakes from the blue circle? Losing Xelin is crippling to the town because they used so many blue actions on him night 1.

3. Medics and DTs in particular should not be trying to "hide." In games this small, it simply won't work out that way. Medics and DTs should be trying to post like they do when green. They are trying not to stand out, yes? Well it raises a huge flag when someone who is normally decently outspoken only posts a few times a day and they are all bandwagon posts.

4. Medic and Hatter need to act upon their reads. They need to do a lot of the same analysis Ver was talking about. Do you see someone who fits the mold as a mafia? Might want to drop a bomb on them. Do you see someone who seems blue to you? Protect them. Another option for medics is to protect someone like Foolishness who has the ability to do some damage and may have already struck a nerve. There really isn't an easy answer for this one. Those two roles are simply hard to play as.

5. Again, don't even think of trying to "keep yourself in the shadows." That is a flawed way of looking at playing a blue role. That kind of playstyle stands out. With those roles, just focus on doing as much damage to the mafia as you can. If you scare them enough, they will hit you anyways.

6. Absolutely it would have been better to avoid the town circle this game. There were too many variables in play (the biggest being the uncertain blue roles) and the town got very lucky that it didn't turn out worse. Instead, the town should have focused on finding mafia. Almost every game someone is going to try and step forward with a plan. This game was no different. However, the town didn't really need to spend much time talking about the plan. It was pretty obviously flawed from the beginning. Just use early discussion as a way to get out a few accusations. Once they are on the table, talk about that. You could have pretty easily nailed Misder on day 1, but everyone was too focused on the flawed blue circle plan. You don't need to have a plan every game. Discussing suspects and letting blues do their thing at night can be quite effective.
Uff Da
Old Post

 
 rastaban   United States. August 27 2010 00:34. Posts 2223
Profile Blog # 
wow, thanks a lot for your time writing this up, so very informative.
Tyler: "...damn it, that's StarCraft. Opening doors is what we do. Being the first to find food is the greatest pleasure a player can have!"
Old Post

 
 Hesmyrr   Canada. August 27 2010 00:37. Posts 4180
Profile # 
Heh, the funny thing is that I actually did have no time (or at least interest) to contribute into the game. There's one game in Mafiascum where I was Cop and acted so pro-town that I was perceived to be one of the unlikeliest player to be mafia. It's just that my activity level is streaky as hell, since it generally takes at minimum ~30 min for me to make serious posts and generally I can't muster enough enthusiasm to write down that shit (especially in setup with short deadlines like TL ones).

Edit: I really appreciate the analysis btw xD
Last edit: 2010-08-27 00:38:57
"If watching the MSL finals makes you a progamer, then anyone in Korea can do it." - Ha Tae Ki
Old Post

  flamewheel   HANG KANG. August 27 2010 00:57. Posts 21495Profile Blog # 
Eh, I'm with Ace on lying. I don't really like lying myself, and if you can tell the truth (or bend it) consistently then when you do have to lie it's so much easier to get away with it. Lying can waste hits from Mafia (I think of Judge from some mini game) but if you look at the numbers the people you're confusing are ~80% town-aligned and only 20% Mafia-aligned, and the Mafia have the information to begin with.

Either way, I enjoyed reading this. I spent more time reading this than I have on TL all week

Love you Ver.
Clouds are making way for me.
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