Mid-Range Game 55: Sudden but Inevitable Betrayal

[Szeth_Pancakes]

Hm, ok. This doesn't really change my reads one way or the other. I'm still reading Mat heavy crew, and Archer moderately elim. But I'll take this round as a victory.

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

@The Unknown Aon

Quote

Devo, I actually don't think that the Alliance are all that likely to team up with eachother. The Reavers have motivation to seek them out, but there isn't much reason for the Alliance to do so if the Reavers don't contact them in my opinion. 

The alliance wins when all the crew are dead without finding four clues, so they definitely want to team up with the reavers. In a situation where it was say 3 crew, 2 alliance, 2 reavers, the reavers could openly claim and we wouldn't be able to exe them since the alliance wouldn't vote for them. I personally expect we only had two alliance members to start with so there'd be one now. Although it looks like we either don't have an operative (I imagine they'd shoot for their primary win con every cycle) or an attack got sheparded since there was only one attack, so three alliance isn't unreasonable

14 minutes ago, Archer said:

I feel like I have some questions to answer, so fire away if you have them.

How would you have figured out Szeth's teammates if he was alliance? The alliance specifically doesn't know who their other members are. Was your vote for him part of a plan between the two of you, were you genuinely trying to kill an alliance member, or what?

2 minutes ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

his doesn't really change my reads one way or the other.

So Archer PM'd you, claimed alliance, you claimed alliance back. He then claimed reaver and told you five people who were not reavers? Or that he'd be fine with you voting for those people at least. Of those, Mat, Danex, Illwei, and Ash had one vote, TUA had none. You thought Archer was most likely a reaver, then he PM'd you after your vote and you swung more village on him, and now you're back to thinking he's a reaver?

[Szeth_Pancakes]

Just now, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

So Archer PM'd you, claimed alliance, you claimed alliance back. He then claimed reaver and told you five people who were not reavers? Or that he'd be fine with you voting for those people at least. Of those, Mat, Danex, Illwei, and Ash had one vote, TUA had none. You thought Archer was most likely a reaver, then he PM'd you after your vote and you swung more village on him, and now you're back to thinking he's a reaver?

I didn't swing village on him after the PM, I did before the PM. In the PM, he acted quite suspiciously, so I'm tentatively back to my elim read (though it's not as strong as it was before). Sorry - I should've made that more clear.

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

3 minutes ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

I didn't swing village on him after the PM, I did before the PM. In the PM, he acted quite suspiciously, so I'm tentatively back to my elim read (though it's not as strong as it was before). Sorry - I should've made that more clear.

Good to know. Any specific suspicious things he said in your PM that you can paraphrase?

[Szeth_Pancakes]

4 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

Good to know. Any specific suspicious things he said in your PM that you can paraphrase?

He made a vague threat about how when he flips vil, that'll incriminate me, then acted just... really strange and like he was trying to look not desperate but actually was desperate. There's no reason he shouldn't be desperate - self-pres is natural for both vil and elims. But trying to act like he wasn't...? I don't know. It was strange, and set off a lot of alarm bells for me.

Edit: @Elandera isn't Alliance purple & the Operative's blue?

Edited December 22, 2021 by Szeth_Pancakes

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

4 minutes ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

He made a vague threat about how when he flips vil, that'll incriminate me, then acted just... really strange and like he was trying to look not desperate but actually was desperate. There's no reason he shouldn't be desperate - self-pres is natural for both vil and elims. But trying to act like he wasn't...? I don't know. It was strange, and set off a lot of alarm bells for me.

I don't think it would incriminate you if Archer flipped village. Trying to think about a situation where Archer is village and claims alliance to you, a reaver. When he then claimed reaver you would have known he was lying, and probably crew who would be hostile to you regardless of whether he thought you were alliance or a reaver. So I guess if Archer's village it is more likely that you're evil, but I would not put that as the highest possibility in the absence of any hard information. I'm not sure why v!Archer would be fine with you voting for any of the other people with votes unless he planned to exe you no matter what or had truly no opinions on anyone else's alignment.

@Archer do you have a stronger opinion of Szeth's alignment?

[Mat]

29 minutes ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

Edit: @Elandera isn't Alliance purple & the Operative's blue?

I was going to ask this lol

[Archer]

12 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

Although it looks like we either don't have an operative (I imagine they'd shoot for their primary win con every cycle) or an attack got sheparded since there was only one attack, so three alliance isn't unreasonable

How would you have figured out Szeth's teammates if he was alliance? The alliance specifically doesn't know who their other members are. Was your vote for him part of a plan between the two of you, were you genuinely trying to kill an alliance member, or what?

It's also possible we had a conversion, and Danex was the Operative kill. The Shepard theory is believable though, because that would help explain why no Secrets were discovered. 

It wasn't necessarily about the team, although if they'd connected with a teammate or been converted, that would have been great. Plan A was figure out what they were thinking, reasoning that they'd at least probably try to avoid voting for potential teammates, hence my interest in getting them to vote on someone. I gave them possible pairings and stuff and they ended up choosing the Mat route, which realistically I had down as a villager, so that made sense. Plan B was go deep cover and hope to find the Secrets if the exe didn't go our way. But that wasn't going to be needed because they were being heavily voted upon. I actually was interested in who might jump off that wagon once it got to four votes because that might have been Reaver indicative, but there was a secondary benefit of we would have guaranteed killed a!Szeth that round if they hadn't chosen to do what they did. I was also waiting for the elims to hammer and show their hand too, because they should be trying to protect their Alliance allies. It's hard to tell what happened there because the gambit thing threw everyone's final votes off. 

9 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

 

@Archer do you have a stronger opinion of Szeth's alignment?

There’s three possibilities here. One, Szeth is Reaver. Illwei-Szeth would explain Illwei’s interest in killing me, but not explain why they would risk my Crew flip pointing to them as a suspect. Two, they’re Alliance and used the opportunity to get out of being exed. But I think the biggest point against that theory is that I felt that they felt I was Alliance – so they’d be bussing a teammate. So the most likely is Three, where they really are just a Crew. That theory is buoyed by the fact that they pulled the ripcord on C1 instead of sitting on it and risking allowing the exe of a villager. Like any reasonable Crew member absolutely would. Except me. :P. So yeah, they're very likely village. Unfortunately. 

Rereading the thread, a few things stand out to me. 

-I don't know why Illwei expected me to stick to my poke of a guy who wasn't going to show up. 

-I still say Mat might have been spooked by my Dannex vote, but I've warmed to the defense that it was too blatant to be e-e protection. 

-Lotus' vote/unvote seems like an elim participating for its own sake. PMing sounds nothing like peeing, it sounds like plumbing. 

-"I think that's a matter of judgement on their part when the time comes. If they get informed that the fighter is going to be attacked that would be a good time I believe. Otherwise it depends on the matter at hand and the alignment of the doctor." This is a weird take from TUO, because giving advice to elim doctors isn't the best strategy.

-Illwei didn't explain why they voted for Ashbringer, but did provide a list of other people they'd prefer to kill... then didn't vote for any of them. (Not that voting off an Alliance member is a problem.)

-Mat was the first to move onto me, then TUO and Devo implicitly supported me, so I wonder if the elims wanted to exe Szeth, have them flip Crew, then get an easy exe on me. Except Devo provided an out and TUO retracted their Szeth vote, so ignore that idea. 

-Hey @Teia, what do you think about all this?

 

[Mat]

14 minutes ago, Archer said:

-I still say Mat might have been spooked by my Dannex vote, but I've warmed to the defense that it was too blatant to be e-e protection.

I find this incredibly funny since I legitimately don’t remember you ever voting Dannnex and there’s no way for me to convince you of that. I know you did vote Dannnex, I just didn’t notice or didn’t care enough to remember.

I want to reread early D1 because I clearly don’t remember it that well. Off-the-top-of-my-head takes are Archer/Szeth/Illwei vil and Lotus/TUO elim but there’s no guarantee any of that stays since I don’t really have a lot of justification for any of it.

Edit: Wait, @Archer xD Dannnex died and flipped Crew so I wasn’t e/e spooked by it. Obviously. Yeah I should have lead with that.

Edited December 22, 2021 by Matrim's Dice

[+Lotus]

Fascinating results. Perhaps we should murder more people and see if it comes up with anything. 

[Szeth_Pancakes]

3 minutes ago, Lotus said:

Fascinating results. Perhaps we should murder more people and see if it comes up with anything. 

...elim slip?

[+Lotus]

24 minutes ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

...elim slip?

Murder, Xing, it’s all the same to me! X-más! Merry Christmas and to all a good night

[Szeth_Pancakes]

Just now, Lotus said:

Murder, Xing, it’s all the same to me! X-más! Merry Christmas and to all a good night

um

[Elandera]

2 hours ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

Edit: @Elandera isn't Alliance purple & the Operative's blue?

Oops. Yeah. I'll change that once I get to a desktop again. Thanks for pointing it out!

 

[Szeth_Pancakes]

Just now, Elandera said:

Oops. Yeah. I'll change that once I get to a desktop again. Thanks for pointing it out!

 

You're welcome

[The Unknown Ajah]

3 hours ago, Archer said:

-"I think that's a matter of judgement on their part when the time comes. If they get informed that the fighter is going to be attacked that would be a good time I believe. Otherwise it depends on the matter at hand and the alignment of the doctor." This is a weird take from TUO, because giving advice to elim doctors isn't the best strategy.

It's not. The doctor saves a person, so the fighter will kill the attacker and survive. 

I... didn't? It was mostly just an observation. 

[Mat]

3 hours ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

...elim slip?

Nah, we murdered Ash :P.

@Walin @Teia @Steeldancer, any thoughts?

[Teia]

About 300 cookies, 2 apple pies, and a chocolate pie later... 

9 hours ago, Archer said:

Hey @Teia, what do you think about all this?

Wait, I’m still not convinced that you and Szeth couldn’t be working together as Alliance. Is it so impossible to believe that you guys teamed up? Got any arguments otherwise? If anything, Szeth seems like they have the most plausible argument out of the two of you. 

To answer, I’m still kinda confused about that whole situation, much less anyone else. 

[---]

11 hours ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Wonder how many Alliance voted Ash

Doesn't matter, they don't matter. they don't know eachother.

11 hours ago, Archer said:

I killed a baddie, so I'm obviously conf town. :P. Just kidding. I feel like I have some questions to answer, so fire away if you have them. That end of round was... a lot!

Alliance doesn't matter. you either didn't know he was or you're a reaver. it's possible.

11 hours ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Though today I’m not really interested in voting either Archer or Szeth

We could compromise on Lotus?

 

EDIT:

this post wasn't meant for the thread

it was in the process of drafting

i posted on accident. anyways.

@Elandera if the Crew eliminated all of the other factions, would they win? Or would they be forced to think the game isn't over, killing ourselves while trying to find the nonexistant threats and searching for the things.

Spoiler

Kinda wishing I didn't sign up for this game tbh because I just realized that it's a complete RNG win for us, with a 10% chance of finding things and a faction that can try to stop us anyways

The theoretically correct thing to do here is to not kill anyone during the day. no one votes and crew searches. makes it harder for the reavers to know who the crew are and who the alliance/operatives are as well as makes sure we don't kill crew in an attempt to kill a faction we don't even need dead to win.

no one is going to listen to me on that, but it makes sense. think about it. It requires absolutely everyone to not vote though and an agreement to completely vote out anyone who places a vote the next turn.

My two cents on how the game should be played.

I had the thought yesterday but then was like "nah that doesn't make sense, the more reavers we kill the longer the game goes" but that's not necessarily true depending on distro, hm?

someone tell me where I'm wrong here

Edited December 23, 2021 by Illwei

[Elandera]

39 minutes ago, Illwei said:

if the Crew eliminated all of the other factions, would they win? Or would they be forced to think the game isn't over, killing ourselves while trying to find the nonexistant threats and searching for the things.

The game would end if only Crew are left alive. So essentially the Crew has two ways to win: Survive (like any other game), or end it early by finding 4 clues. 

[Archer]

15 hours ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Edit: Wait, @Archer xD Dannnex died and flipped Crew so I wasn’t e/e spooked by it. Obviously. Yeah I should have lead with that.

I don't believe it. Seems like a trick. :P.

I should read the writeups better. 

11 hours ago, The Unknown Aon said:

It's not. The doctor saves a person, so the fighter will kill the attacker and survive. 

I... didn't? It was mostly just an observation. 

In a game like this, there's the possibility the two alignments signal ideas to each other through posts like that. That's what my suspicion was based on. 

6 hours ago, Teia said:

Wait, I’m still not convinced that you and Szeth couldn’t be working together as Alliance. Is it so impossible to believe that you guys teamed up? Got any arguments otherwise? If anything, Szeth seems like they have the most plausible argument out of the two of you. 

To answer, I’m still kinda confused about that whole situation, much less anyone else. 

That's an interesting theory! My counterargument would be that a!Szeth risked pushing the exe onto a!me, so the net loss would be the same. The execution risk seems too high to make that a reasonable plan, especially because I ended up in a tie with a 50/50 chance of being exed at the end of it. 

5 hours ago, Illwei said:

We could compromise on Lotus?

someone tell me where I'm wrong here

Who cares that they're "suspicious", that exemas line was hilarious. 

Your plan works a lot better now that the vote manip is out of the way. Does the ties lead to an RNG target apply in a no vote scenario? 

Let's assume there's four elims out there, and six of us. Let's also assume protection roles negate the Operative kill, and we lose one villager per round. It's basically a coin flip every time that we find one clue. If we all search, minus the bodyguard, this round has a 10+10+10+10+20=50% chance of finding a Secret. Let's say it goes to 40% next round, then 30% is when the Reavers hammer at EoD. There's other possibilities, like elim friendly fire, but in that situation, our odds of success are fairly low, even if we forgo the exe. So I'd rather treat this as an elim game where we win by taking out all the baddies, and hope that we get lucky with the Secret search along the way. But if y'all want to commit to a round of no kill as a Christmas treat, I won't interfere with it. 

*

Owl Sity sat happily in his spacebedroom, playing the only song he knew for the piano, like that dusty kid in Charlie Brown. 

[Mat]

7 hours ago, Illwei said:

Doesn't matter, they don't matter. they don't know eachother.

I know, I was just wondering because it’d be funny :P.

7 hours ago, Illwei said:

someone tell me where I'm wrong here

I mean the Alliance and Reavers wouldn’t agree to that plan. I guess disagreeing would out themselves but we wouldn’t actually know that and it could just be a rogue crew. I think in theory this idea works but everyone would never actually agree on that.

[Teia]

4 hours ago, Archer said:

That's an interesting theory! My counterargument would be that a!Szeth risked pushing the exe onto a!me, so the net loss would be the same. The execution risk seems too high to make that a reasonable plan, especially because I ended up in a tie with a 50/50 chance of being exed at the end of it. 

10 hours ago, Illwei said:

That’s a good point. Hmm... Well, now I’m not totally convinced that you are Alliance or Reaver. Guess I’ll see what goes down at the end of this cycle.

[+Lotus]

Seth total gut read, no explanation

[Szeth_Pancakes]

8 minutes ago, Lotus said:

Seth total gut read, no explanation

*Szeth

I can't really defend myself against that. Leaning village on you now, though. That doesn't seem like something an elim would be gutsy enough to do