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Mid-Range Game 59: Alcatraz vs the Lens Destructors


Elandera

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I am here

rather hectic Saturday, which can be blamed partly on @Hemalurgic Headshot and partly on my family coming together to do a DIY project (my arms are sore). Will also probably not be on for much of tomorrow as I’ll have church and then travelling to a relative’s house so that’s fun too I guess. multiquote coming in a second (read: an hour or two)

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On 7/22/2022 at 8:24 PM, A Joe in the Bush said:

Interesting. Does anyone know why this cycle is tagged 'rng is hilarious'?

Since there wasnt a tie or anything presumably the only other RNG thing was funny which is the trranslators lens so whoever got something funny off that good job you made it into the header

23 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Same deal with regard to effort reading JNV.

What have I done thats even worthy of considering an effort clear like at most I did a long post where I waffled back and forth on opinions and made commentary about voting meta thats not really alignment indicative at all so no definitely dont clear me by effort when I havent put in much effort 

23 hours ago, Kasimir said:

This world is basically one in which at least one Elim pushed the Ash train. This could be to blend in and try to appear helpful, or to try to save a teammate. I am leaning a bit against that as in my view, the easiest way for Elims to save teammates is to simply get the teammate to self-pres, but nevertheless.

If your reasoning is either theyre trying to blend in or trying to save a teammate while also saying you odnt think Luckspren or Droubhtbringer are evil you eliminate the second possibility and think theyre trying to blend in by voting but if anything it invited more controversy and confusion on them and about them so what exactly do you think an elim in the vote pool on Ashbringer would be trying to accomplish by doing so 

I mean the fact that Im immediately tempted to discount them as evil is a sign it might have bene a good play for them as evil so you can focus on them and Ill turn my attention elsewhere and well find them all 

23 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Dingogate was real

Whats dingogate I misread it as dinogate initially and wondered what dinosours were doing in sanderson worlds then reread

23 hours ago, A Joe in the Bush said:

JNV -  I don’t have any reads on them. I will note that they didn’t want to vote on Luck, Ash, or Drought. If any of them turn out to be Elims, this will be soft evidence that JNV is a villager.

 

Why would not wanting to vote on evil be evidence that Im good if anything thatd be the opposite 

9 hours ago, The_God_King said:

1 - I end up in a bandwagon and have a small amount of guilt immediately subscribed

2 - I end up as a losing vote which has a similar effect. It can tie me to another players actions 

3 - I end up killing an elim which doesn't prove my innocence and if a bandwagon exists can have some game consequences which I've seen go good and bad.

4 - The vote is random and doesn't mean anything

D1 votes odnt always mean nothnig theyre ideally based on the accumulated evidence of the day and besides your reasoning for not voting is purely vanity or thats not hte right word purely wanting to be seen as good instead of wanting to solve the game which is a valid but wobbly philosphy 

9 hours ago, The_God_King said:

 - JNV a good post C1 but I don't have any lean towards village or Elim

People keep saying things like this and I odntk now what they mean what 'good post' C1 did I even have 

9 hours ago, Conquestor said:

at that point in the cycle, we couldn't leave things at a four way tie

Why

9 hours ago, Conquestor said:

I would call this a very defensive post. All Joe did was throw a little suspicion on you and suddenly you come out swinging. you seem to really want to stay under the radar. You've posted enough that most people haven't said anything (except Joe in his cycle overview) and you haven't voted once. You also haven't truly shared your opinion with the thread at all. Except about suspecting Kas and then talking about how it's quiet, but without contributing to any of the ongoing discussions. I realize that not everyone writes paragraphs for posts, but it would be nice to see something a little more meaningful from you TUN. @The Unknown Novel

Honestly theyre contributing more than usual this game seem a lot more engaged and I dont really know what that means

6 hours ago, A Joe in the Bush said:

Like I mentioned, those notes were not supposed to make it into the thread. They were just my own summaries of posts. You did not miss anything else.

...you said in the post that the post wasnt done not that those were your own personal notes I was refreshing the page every once and a while waiting for a finished bit 

26 minutes ago, The Wandering Wizard said:

TUN

This is purely a survival vote and I would rather not vote because I won't really be on tomorrow, but I'll see how this goes.

Do you have any game opinions at all lkke in the slightest 

 

I might not be able to get online tomorrow so Ill vote eventually just let me do some thinking about the options cause honestly The unknown Novel seems different but I dont want to punish them for being morea ctive and engaged even if it ends up being a sign of evil cause like if you want to be more engaged good on you keep it up dont really want to say 'hey no any attmept to change will be met with a violent death' but at thte same time Wizard has done nothing like actually nothing so give me a bit and Ill come back

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1 hour ago, Conquestor said:

Wow, I feel like there is a lot to unpack here. What do you mean what you say has no bearing, no one has said that. It's true that I am completely unaware of your playstyle, but not only have I had at least some slight elim vibes from you, it seems like several others have had somewhat similar vibes. Nothing serious but you are still pinging elim for me enough. I agree that I don't necessarily love Kas's C1 posts, but that was the way I felt about most C1 posts. Okay, fair enough, there wasn't a ton of good discussions C1, what would you have liked to see more of in terms of discussions? 

Well, again this may just be your playstyle, but you seem to go very defensive when someone points you out. For me that tends to be something more elim leaning, but to be fair, no one wants to die. Especially with longer games like these.

I went back through the last cycle, just to count the number of posts that we each had and you had 8 and I had 6. Both pretty decent amounts, perhaps I should post more, but at the beginning of the cycle I was getting back into the swing of things and near the end, I was rather busy. Also, my posts were much longer than your own. (This may have to do with the business of your life though, so I'll reserve judgment there.)

I just feel like as the first person to really say something about you, this whole post felt, well kind of defensive. Also, yes, this post was very meaningful and so thank you for taking the time to write it.

I meant playstyle wise, since people don't tend to believe when someone talks about their own meta.

I'm not sure. The mechanics are pretty simple, so we didn't have or need discussion about that. Honestly, I'm fine with what was discussed, it wasn't much but I don’t think there could have been much more.

Honestly, we just need another player to testify to see if this is normal, if you want a relatively short read for how I act when I'm due to be exed, BT2 might be a good example if you read the Cryptic doc in combination with the thread. Otherwise I'm not sure.

I must have miscounted yours, I pegged you at 5. I was mostly just laughing at irony, with me being called relatively inactive by people with less posts then me, even if their content might be a little bit greater.

You weren't the first btw, Joe at least has pegged me and I think a few others have as well. 

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31 minutes ago, JNV said:

Why would not wanting to vote on evil be evidence that Im good if anything thatd be the opposite 

At the time of your post, Luckspren, Ash, and Drought were in a three way tie. If one of them AND you were evil, I would expect you to vote on one of the villagers to break the tie and save your teammate. So if one of them is evil, you are more likely to be a villager because you did not take a simple move to save them. It's not that you didn't want to vote on evil, otherwise everyone who didn't vote on day 1 would have to be considered evil if one of those three are evil.

31 minutes ago, JNV said:

...you said in the post that the post wasnt done not that those were your own personal notes I was refreshing the page every once and a while waiting for a finished bit 

Those notes were unedited and unpolished. I had planned to go through and make them prettier and also remove things I didn't want to be public, like Luckspren RP'ing having a Tracker's Lens. I had meant to only talk about that in PM's to avoid painting a target on their back.  But by the time I had finished I changed my mind because of the sheer number of notes that were just "33 - PLAYER talks." And I had already spent far too much time on SE yesterday. So I summarized player reads instead based on the notes I took.


We're already halfway through the cycle and only The Unknown Novel and Wandering Wizard have votes on them. No one else has even been offered up as a candidate for votes. I'm inclined to think that I'm barking at the wrong bush with these two. Does anyone have literally any alternative candidates? Or an opinion on which to vote for? I don't want this entire cycle to be just about these two and Luck, especially if all three are villagers.

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So, I've slept on it and finished my worst ladder games ever yesterday (hi future Kas, if you read this, please remember to go knight-pike against camels, not spam knights like a fool! :P )

Returning to the C1 lynch, I am more interested in <Fifth, Conq> if we work from the assumption that someone on the Ash train was Evil.

To recap, this is the situation: suppose that we think the Ash train was instigated to save a teammate (as it does happen.) The people who were particularly endangered were Drought, Mat, and Luck. I don't find myself strongly convinced that Luck is Evil - I lean mild Village for reasons I've laid out. I accept these aren't infallible - in a world where other low profile players are Evil as well, I should go back to revise that line of thought. But this is currently where I am at. As mentioned previously, I think it is possible that E!Drought, but I don't think that E!Drought would require a dedicated effort to save him - he was always going to not be lynched, due to the amnesty. So regardless of what Drought's alignment is, I think it's fair to say that Elim involvement would not have been instigated to save Drought.

I'm in an odd position where I don't really like Devo's vote, but I recognise I'm like that with late votes. Some of this feels dependent on Drought and Luckspren to me - if V!Luck, I'm leaning V on the late voters. We know that's true in Mat's case but it feels true in Devo's case too. Unless Devo is E-E with Mat (obviously false), I don't believe an Elim has much investment in the Ash train. (Theoretically true in the case of V!Drought but I feel also true in the case of E!Drought - late vote movements attract attention, and I'm not sure E!Devo would do this, especially in a game with players who aren't as familiar with the fact it's a Devo Thing.)

If I work from this, I'm more or less committed in this world to at least (reasonably, just one) of <Fifth, Conq> being Evil. 

In the world where the Ash train is pure, the formal pool is <Joe, Luckspren, JNV, TUN, TGK, Wiz, Steel, Drought>.

I'm reintroducing Drought - I think that "no Elim instigation to save Drought" doesn't say anything about Drought's actual alignment, and making that inference was pushing the logic too far. Still leaning no on Luck, potentially leaning Village on Joe which is a bit of an assumption that depends fairly heavily on Luck. (I think the better way to frame it is I don't really see an E!Joe world with V!Luck.) 

With that being said, been trying to consolidate my thoughts more:

GOOD OL' TIERS:

BALLISTA ELEPHANT FLOOD (STRONG VILLAGE):

Spoiler
  • Nope

MAGYAR DEATHBALL (MEDIUM VILLAGE):

Spoiler
  • The only functional tier I use but still nope.

AND THEN THE WINGED HUSSARS ARRIVED (LIGHT VILLAGE):

Spoiler
  • Joe

Feels a bit inflationary, and I'd be willing to put him one tier lower. Boils down to game engagement, but also more crucially, the fact he noticed and pointed out/called attention to Luck's RP TL claim. Given that Luck claims to not have been shattered, I can't see E!Joe doing this - the reasonable response is to just go for the C1 shatter.

  • Luck

I'm not really sure why I hesitate to put Luck over Joe, since my main reason for thinking Joe Village is heavily Luck-dependent. (It fails in an E!Luck, E!Joe world.) Either way, I instinctively feel as though Luck was best-placed to make a kill or shatter on behalf of an Elim team and didn't. That's weak reason for a Village read but it's what I've got. I'd revise this in a world where the entire Elim team is low profile. Though this opens a whole new can of wyrms about why I got stolen from and Luck didn't get shattered...

SPAGHETTI DROP (NULL+):

Spoiler
  • Steel

Very weak read on the basis of raw dgaf differing from observed low activity Elim playstyle, can be demoted a tier. Exercise caution with apathy clears.

  • Devo

Could potentially be elevated one tier, but I just don't feel comfortable with that vote. Yet Devo's late vote seems to be attention-grabbing - a bad place for an Elim to be, especially when I don't think that the Ash train was particularly protective. 

  • JNV

I want to put JNV higher because JNV feels helpful and Village from their posts and they have the best PMs, but at the same time, that's the exact complacency spiral I got into with them in LG84, so I think caution is the correct approach.

WHO NEEDS MILUNITS ANYWAY? (NULL):

Spoiler
  • Drought

Can't properly read someone who isn't there and trying to divine Drought's alignment from that C1 was foolish and I'm not going there.

  • Conq

This is an odd placement. Intuitively I like Conq's engagement with the game, and he feels like he's trying to solve. At the same time, Conq is in the Ash voter pool, and I'm not sure how committed I am to that pool being pure. If it isn't pure, I lean more towards Fifth than Conq. One question I have for Conq, which more or less resulted in deflation from Null+.

  • TUN

Going back and forth about this one. TUN feels more stubborn or more willing to defend his ground than he does when Evil, where my impression is that he prefers to fold to avoid suspicion, but is also fairly defensive, which can feel more Elim tonally. Not sure how much of that can be chalked down to having changed his play and how much of that is standard TUN.

GOTH SPAM (NULL-):

Spoiler
  • TGK

Disliked the framing about objecting to being involved - that felt like a distinction meant to point out he doesn't want to gain guilt and is thinking in terms of how he'd look to players, rather than in terms of what's helpful to the Village.

  • Wiz

Players invested in survival but not particularly invested in threadstate usually strike me as playing more E than V.

  • Fifth

It still goes back to my personal, powerful dislike of the Ash over Luckspren push, honestly. I recognise that's gut and my best diagnosis is that I don't see a reason for a player to be this invested. IDK, maybe I should apply the same reasoning I did and recognise that this investment doesn't really seem to track with an Elim and is more Village, but my mind absolutely remembers thread!Fifth and TJ's PTSD and isn't happy with that. Could be convinced to chuck him back up to Null I guess.


General Comments:

  • JNV:
15 minutes ago, JNV said:

What have I done thats even worthy of considering an effort clear like at most I did a long post where I waffled back and forth on opinions and made commentary about voting meta thats not really alignment indicative at all so no definitely dont clear me by effort when I havent put in much effort 

You waffled, but you're more active than the thread, and still thinking/engaging, which is probably a bad sign of the state of the thread. And no, I don't like effort clears so I'm not going to but it's something I've had to keep in mind from LG84, so yeah. More a reminder to myself than anything because I have no issues with temporary effort clears then revising even if this is a risky tactic. (Hi Orlok, if you're reading this, I will be as risky as I want to be!)

17 minutes ago, JNV said:

If your reasoning is either theyre trying to blend in or trying to save a teammate while also saying you odnt think Luckspren or Droubhtbringer are evil you eliminate the second possibility and think theyre trying to blend in by voting but if anything it invited more controversy and confusion on them and about them so what exactly do you think an elim in the vote pool on Ashbringer would be trying to accomplish by doing so 

I mean the fact that Im immediately tempted to discount them as evil is a sign it might have bene a good play for them as evil so you can focus on them and Ill turn my attention elsewhere and well find them all 

Well, first, I'm doing this by pathwalking - so the idea is I build in several (in this case, two) mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive worlds and then try to work out what they would say about player alignment. If I can't determine which world is more likely, then the goal is to use the info we have as the game goes along to try to work out which world we're in. The two mutually exclusive and collective exhaustive worlds are: <Ash train is pure, Ash train isn't pure.> (Part of this also is that if you pathwalk, you can end up in a proof by contradiction situation where you find it's contradictory, therefore that world is more unlikely.)

There are I think two main things that could motivate the Ash train. Either to save teammates (which I think is unlikely - I still don't think Luckspren is Evil, and I recognise after more thought that 'It doesn't make sense for a teammate to save E!Drought' can't license an inference to whether Drought himself is or isn't Evil), or because they want to blend in - either with high activity play (keep in mind that Fifth has a standard of being very active as a Villager, so Fifth not going for activity play in thread would be striking), or just by trying to appear engaged. I think the point of it inviting more controversy and confusion isn't really true though - who exactly in thread is actively suspecting any of the Ash train voters beyond your question to Conq? Attention is on the C1 peripherals right now. I do agree with this, but I think that's more true of the late voters (so blatantly Devo and Mat, and Mat flipped Village) than it is for the rest of the train.

  • Conq
10 hours ago, Conquestor said:

Well, let me explain. The reason I swapped over for multiple reasons. The first was that even though I had opposed Fifth's second vote on Ash early on, at that point in the cycle, we couldn't leave things at a four way tie. I was hoping that other people would start jumping in and using their votes, which I guess kind of happened. The second reason was for inactivity and day one I don't necessarily want to kill a villager that will be more active. Day 2 is when everything really goes down! I also was able to hop on about an hour before the cycle closed and saw that Ash didn't even bother really saying anything other than "Oh my...". I wish he said more, it would've been really helpful! 

Greatly appreciate your responses!

Two questions, I suppose. 

To echo JNV: Why not? And how do you make the determination that anyone else is going to be a Villager that will be more active? With so little that people were saying on C1? Why not 'an Elim that will be more active'?

10 hours ago, Conquestor said:

Also, I'm assuming that the lenses are starting to consolidate. If Kas had a lens stolen from him and both Matrim's and Ash's lenses were given to two other random people, then that is something to think about as well. Speaking of lenses. We keep talking about TL lenses, but that could be either a Translator's lens or the Tracker's lens. How about TL for the Tracker's lens and TLL for the Translator's?

I am down for TLL. Consolidation is a concern insofar as this would allow the Elims to shatter more at once, but I don't see a straightforward solution other than a commitment to play this game like the most basic high-regular Tyrian game, and finding a decent chunk of the Elims to actions starve them.

10 hours ago, The_God_King said:

Okay, now to digest the amount of information I have. Having my name shortened to "King" is new. I guess I shouldn't be surprised because there is a new crowd but it was previously TGK. Whatever works does work!

More a TGK fan - everytime I saw King, I kept thinking Joe was referring to Paranoid King, and this is even after I kept referring to Paranoid King as PK...

Alright, so Fifth is mostly busy, and my vote has been functionally useless for most of this cycle. I'm going to shift to TGK, for the reasons mentioned. Bottom line being that a preoccupation with looking Village (or at least not accruing perceived guilt) as compared to actively engaging in discussion and the lynch however poorly-informed (most of the game is in the same plight - the regular crowd doesn't know the returning players, the returning players don't know each other necessarily...) feels more like paying more attention to and prioritising how players think of you than what the Village needs. To me, that's more of an Elim mindset than a Village one.

*And yeah, I realise we're skirting the edges of the 'C1 lynch or no' discussion. May the gods grant that we not reopen it again, especially on C2.

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First, since I wanted to take a look at this last cycle and didn’t have time, Kas made a long voting theory post which I actually pretty much completely agree with. I will note two things about it, though: one, that my LG87 “stab vote” on Araris was purposely misconstrued because I wanted an excuse to stay off the main Exe drama and just conveniently distance from a factionmate instead, and two, that my Ash vote was trying to apply pressure in the same way you describe a stab vote. As we saw over halfway through the cycle, the random system of pokes meant that nobody felt that he was under any duress, as four of five votes spread thinly at one each indicated. Doubling up on Ash made the threat of his death real, put someone in the lead to generate actual discussion as to why people were (or were not) voting the way they did (as evidenced by Conq’s reply to my ploy), and moved the Exe forward. After Ash posted two very short posts, I didn’t see a reason to move my vote, or a better target, other than perhaps you which I wasn’t about to pursue with no time left in the cycle and a consensus more or less already forming.

Now on to stuff from this cycle. I still need to read it in more depth to figure out what’s going on but these are what jumped at me.

On 22/07/2022 at 7:55 PM, Kasimir said:

Alright. Time to go look at/analyse the voting patterns. I feel like there was a sudden end cycle push towards Ash, but that's more my impressions of EoD. I didn't like the way I kept getting @ about Luckspren too - it felt like I was being redirected to Ash, and I didn't see a particular reason to favour Ash in the circumstances. (Probably biased because I did have a PM with Ash, even if it wasn't the most productive one.) Since Mat flipped Village, we know that part of the push is pure, but I'm going to put a vote for now on Fifth.

Also, to whoever who stole my Tracker's Lens, the one time I rand an actual scanner since the disaster that was MR1 and you do this? :P Weighing whether I think it was Mat. It feels more Village because I'd expect to get Shattered or just outright killed if an Elim believed I had a TL. If there's a second TL out there and you did catch someone VSing me, I'd say you can probably lean Village on them. But that's off the top of my head.

Might I remind you that you were the first on Ashbringer? :P If we’re going to complain about starting pushes, maybe we look there first—I followed you on and stuck to the idea when you had abandoned trying to apply pressure to him. And yes, I was redirecting you to Ash, because he was a target of existing pressure and, to some extent, existing discussion, and none of the reasons to want him dead had really changed at the time. Luckspren was out of the public eye, yes, but I don’t know if your eventual vote on her did much other than spread existing votes out even more. We ended up exeing Ash and sort of getting a group of people on the same page, but it was last-minute as you noted, and I’m not sure the wider focus actually helped the village—we got no clear alternative to Ash, and thus no good wagon discussion towards EoD. Consolidating earlier might have changed that—you had the opportunity, and didn’t take it. I think that’s pretty much what that complaint boils down to. 

As for being Voidstormed, I doubt this clears either you or the Voidstormer, mostly because (as I doubt someone holding a newly acquired tracker’s lens would say something about it) your claim can’t really be contested (and please, if you have actually taken a lens from Kas, for the love of Edgli don’t claim to make a point >>). Assuming you are telling the truth, a Voidstormer is in an awkward position of being a lens I would see as unlikely as being in Elim hands—as I’ve speculated in a few PMs, I’d think they’d have some more permanent ones—as well as a lens that Team Evil would love to use C1; they gain nothing from sitting on it, and have the chance of stealing repeatable tracking or roleblocking from the village. So I don’t know what to make of the VS. I suppose it could just as easily be said that a villager wouldn’t see a reason not to use one, though. This is a really long way of saying that I find both your claim and your vote odd. :P 

On 22/07/2022 at 10:46 PM, Kasimir said:

H'okay. Let's do this the old-fashioned way.

  • Elim involvement in the Ash train

This world is basically one in which at least one Elim pushed the Ash train. This could be to blend in and try to appear helpful, or to try to save a teammate. I am leaning a bit against that as in my view, the easiest way for Elims to save teammates is to simply get the teammate to self-pres, but nevertheless.

The main suspect pools: <Fifth, Conq, Devo, Mat>, with subsidiary pools (on the hypothesis that they were trying to save a teammate) <Drought, Luckspren.>

I lean against E!Luckspren - I am not going to voice the results of her scan in thread, but I can say that she neither killed nor used a shatter. Intuitively, it feels to me that a low profile Elim is precisely the person to be submitting kills or shatters, so I am leaning mild V on Luckspren. This is fallible obviously, since other teammates can put in kills or shatters, I just think that Luckspren was well-placed to do so. With Drought, it feels a bit counterintuitive, but Drought would not have been present in the thread to defend. But I don't see substantive pressure coming from defending Drought, since fundamentally, Drought was never going to be lynched anyway as a returning player. So lean against the subsidiary pools in general.

  • No Elim involvement in the Ash train; Elims were hiding elsewhere in the thread

This world is somewhat unhelpful in that everyone and their dog basically did not want to get involved in the lynch yesterday, which I get, but also makes it hard to have a strong view about the candidates in this world. We're looking at a formal main pool of: <Joe, Luckspren, JNV, TUN, TGK, Wiz, Steel, Drought>. Drought and Luckspren are removed; Drought for inactivity, and Luckspren for reasons I've mentioned previously. 

My current/main thoughts: no strong read on most players.

  • Steel's raw dgaf continues to stand out to me. It's a bit of an apathy clear, which I dislike, but let's call it an apathy-not-my-immediate-problem-for-C2. I have seen low activity E!Steel before, and I am not sure E!Steel just acts this disinterested or disengaged, but at the same time...Dingogate was real.
     
  • I am tempted to effort read Joe for that post RIP, but I really shouldn't. Same deal with regard to effort reading JNV. Some of it is going to depend a little on the results of something else. Drought vote is eh in my eyes, but Joe also mentioned just rushing it, which I have some sympathy for, so I'm leaving that off.
     
  • TUN, TGK, Wiz more or less in the same ballpark for me.
     
  • Fifth - I will always, always be wary of thread!Fifth, am aware that it's his MO whether Village or Evil, but all the same. I've stated my reservations with the Luckspren/Ash push, and that's about where I'm at. @Fifth Scholar
     
  • Devo - Gut eh. I know it's a classic Devo late vote, I just don't always feel good about late trains, especially since Mat flipped Village. Does your reasoning for Ash boil down to your theorised Elim team? @Devotary of Spontaneity
     
  • Conq - Feels like an inactivity pressure vote on Ash. He feels engaged with the game in our PM, which is a good sign for me, but I suppose I'd like to ask more about why Ash pivot - you said you'd rather kill someone not participating, and I assume Drought was out because returnee, and Luckspren had those two posts. Is that the correct way to read your vote? @Conquestor

Okay, this is a more classic Kas post :P Barring some absurd gambitry on a Kas/Luckspren elim team, your scan results sound helpful—I’d agree that Luckspren would be more likely to submit a kill as someone low-profile (though, if I am reading Elan’s rules correctly, the Order seems restricted to some/one elim(s), as only the kill is mentioned as being an explicitly faction ability, so not sending in a shatter might not have any bearing on her desire to do so, merely her ability).

If there’s an elim on the Ash train, it’s probably Devo—Conq has seemed genuinely village in PMs (though take this with the Shai’tan gut that comes with all people who try to pocket me privately) and seemed to join the train out of actual suspicion/desire for information, whereas Devo…is her usual inscrutable self. At least to me. :P Which means I kinda don’t want to string her up just on a handful of weak PoE assumptions. If she’s evil, we should just kill her teammates anyway and then I’ll have a fighting chance against her. (Sorry, Devo :P)

22 hours ago, A Joe in the Bush said:

The only people I'm currently 'suspicious' of are Novel and Wizard, and both of those are only because of Play styles, which I don't know nearly enough about to condemn them for. I'm going to just watch them for now. I've been trying to think of questions to ask them to get a better read on them, but haven't come up with anything.

If Luckspren is an Eliminator, JNV and you would likely be Villagers and I'd look very hard among Fifth, Conq and Devo for Eliminators.

And that is good night! I have spent far too long on SE today. I'll hop back on to read in about 10 hours, but it won't be responsible for me to post again for about 20 hours. Yell at me if you view me reading the shard please. I'm remembering how easy it is to get sucked into these games, which might by why I stopped in the first place.

Understand the spending too long thing, it’s a curse sometimes >> I have a question for both Novel and Wizard, though (and anyone who cares to answer): out of last cycle’s non-voters, who is most likely to be evil? 

I have very mild bad gut on TUN from this cycle but am not sure if it’s lingering LG87 side effects so I’m minded to hold my judgment. His more recent frustration seems to be genuine, which isn’t necessarily AI, but it does make me minded to back off him a bit—there are probably more fruitful targets anyway.

9 hours ago, The_God_King said:

Okay, now to digest the amount of information I have. Having my name shortened to "King" is new. I guess I shouldn't be surprised because there is a new crowd but it was previously TGK. Whatever works does work!

 

Yea I didn't clarify about being safe from kills. I don't know if I would have phrased it so bluntly in the synopsis. Was there anything else I missed? I would appreciate enlightenment

 

I do believe that there is a difference between abstaining without contributing and objecting to be involved. I believe I was in the later. Pretty quickly into the round votes were being cast and I don't feel that my vote would have contributed. Most of the conversation was well beyond my Meta knowledge and, like I said, is good discussion but I feel my vote ends up being swayed by other players votes. Otherwise, it's either killing an inactive or RNG. I know it's information and some of the CC arguments have some founding but if I vote C1 I see several scenarios as a more quiet/returning player voting.

1 - I end up in a bandwagon and have a small amount of guilt immediately subscribed

2 - I end up as a losing vote which has a similar effect. It can tie me to another players actions 

3 - I end up killing an elim which doesn't prove my innocence and if a bandwagon exists can have some game consequences which I've seen go good and bad.

4 - The vote is random and doesn't mean anything

 

Honestly I feel that Meta C1 discussion has the detrimental effects because the concepts are fairly old and I believe both sides have very good arguments but it can start to feel like reading competing theses. Adding to that discussion is a lot of work that doesn't yield much C1. Those are my thoughts on the C1 discussion I don't think I will dwell on it much more.

 

As for my thoughts on the game:

 - A Joe in the Bush has a couple posts but only contributed a bit in C1 and I don't know what drove the vote. Honestly I can understand the approach. @A Joe in the Bush was there a method to your vote?

 - Steeldancer hasn't posted anything of immediate consequence. I would love to see more activity

 - JNV a good post C1 but I don't have any lean towards village or Elim

The Wandering Wizard self described as cautious new player, an understandable approach but an easy hide for an elim as well. The vote and the retraction is somewhat typical C1 activity. I think I have a slight elim read

 - Fifth Scholar was in on the exe and has been quiet this cycle. @Fifth Scholar any thoughts on the results of C1?

- The Unknown Novel A couple posts, no real read

 - Droughtbringer No posts yet? I may have missed one but I don't think I did. The inactivity filter will take them if not

 - The_God_King good guy, never led me astray :P

 - Kasimir very active, very engaged. Haven't played with them but something is striking me as a bit off. I'm getting an elim vibe but I don't have the evidence to back it up yet

 - Conquestor was in on the exe, the vote made sense and the switch cinched it. no read

 - Devotary of Spontaneity voted near the end to seal Ashbringer's exe. Don't love it but C1 is a weird beast

 - Luckspren some RP, no real read yet

Hmmm. As someone whose philosophy is always “vote if able,” conscientious objectors to voting kind of bother me. :P At the risk of rehashing a very old debate, voting is the lifeblood (death blood?) of the village—it’s a source of information, a mechanism of pressure, a tool of analysis, something that forces commitments and decisions and real stakes. Staying out of it isn’t necessarily evil by default—there are good Village reasons sometimes to not contribute to Exe voting—but Elims stand a lot more to gain from the neutral stance that it provides. Yes, voting might put you under suspicion. That’s how it works. We all get thrown into the suspicion pool and tear at each other until someone is dead, then look at the autopsy. :P If too many people stay out of that fray, even early on, we get less info to work with. Maybe you’re less bloody, but so are the Elims. So jump in, TGK

 

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3 minutes ago, Fifth Scholar said:

Might I remind you that you were the first on Ashbringer? :P If we’re going to complain about starting pushes, maybe we look there first—I followed you on and stuck to the idea when you had abandoned trying to apply pressure to him. And yes, I was redirecting you to Ash, because he was a target of existing pressure and, to some extent, existing discussion, and none of the reasons to want him dead had really changed at the time. Luckspren was out of the public eye, yes, but I don’t know if your eventual vote on her did much other than spread existing votes out even more. We ended up exeing Ash and sort of getting a group of people on the same page, but it was last-minute as you noted, and I’m not sure the wider focus actually helped the village—we got no clear alternative to Ash, and thus no good wagon discussion towards EoD. Consolidating earlier might have changed that—you had the opportunity, and didn’t take it. I think that’s pretty much what that complaint boils down to. 

So, two issues here: first, the redirection is my point, rather than the vote that never changed. None of the reasons to want him dead had really changed, but none of the reasons continue to be reasons for Ash as compared to functionally half our absentee set. The only reason I could see being persuasive is "he was a target of existing pressure" but that's a bad reason and more or less a sunk cost fallacy on stilts. The fact that the cycle was quiet despite our two votes being on Ash, and Ash was PMing me without much motivation to be in the thread clearly indicated that the status quo, or sinking more votes into Ash / redirecting people to Ash wasn't going to cut it. Most of the game was going to fold their hands for C1. It's kind of really kayana because if I think Luck is Village, and I know Ash is Village, then technically I should be leaning Village on you because E!Fifth has no reason to want to strongly redirect me to 

Did it spread existing votes out more? I don't see how you can make that judgement. From the time the vote was placed, to the time you made a post on it, there was no take-up, on Luck or on Ash or on Drought. Who, may I remind you, were the only trains existing, even through to EoD. Drought was never going to take off, simpliciter. I don't see how you believe that a world in which Ash was the only train or the only train likely to go through to endgame was in any way healthy for the Village. I could have played less provocative and baity, yeah, since I hate it when Illwei pulls that on me :P But I think the core is true - a one-train uncontested quiet lynch isn't a good C1 and I don't see why the charge of 'spreading existing votes out more' remotely makes sense. If you want to adopt the retroactive perspective, then with most of the game committed to folding their hands, how realistically was this supposed to work?

The votes had been on Ash. Nothing happened. What did you realistically expect to happen, in your alternate universe where two votes remain on Ash?

Like, maybe I'm tunnelling. It wouldn't be the first time I found my one (1) thing about a player and lost it (I think Aman thought I was faking it in LG84, but nope, 100% vintage Kas.) But I genuinely still do not understand where you come by the confidence that the Ash train makes more sense than the Luck train to the point of solicitation. Even though logic tells me this is so insane and risky I don't even know if Evil!Fifth would do this.

12 minutes ago, Fifth Scholar said:

As for being Voidstormed, I doubt this clears either you or the Voidstormer, mostly because (as I doubt someone holding a newly acquired tracker’s lens would say something about it) your claim can’t really be contested (and please, if you have actually taken a lens from Kas, for the love of Edgli don’t claim to make a point >>). Assuming you are telling the truth, a Voidstormer is in an awkward position of being a lens I would see as unlikely as being in Elim hands—as I’ve speculated in a few PMs, I’d think they’d have some more permanent ones—as well as a lens that Team Evil would love to use C1; they gain nothing from sitting on it, and have the chance of stealing repeatable tracking or roleblocking from the village. So I don’t know what to make of the VS. I suppose it could just as easily be said that a villager wouldn’t see a reason not to use one, though. This is a really long way of saying that I find both your claim and your vote odd. :P 

Fundamentally, my claim is because I believe I have an action that makes Luck look more Village. It's not decisive the way catching a kill is, but I thought it was worth making the claim - a "I scanned Luck and Luck neither shattered nor killed" claim is not credible in a game where any tracker who sticks his head out is bound to be shot or shattered. It makes more sense when people understand that it comes from having lost the TL. It's dated information anyway, so why not just put it out there? Maybe someone can make some use out of it. And the Luck scan should definitely be mentioned, since I don't have anymore scans. Obviously if I still had scans, I'd shut up, stay put, and keep scanning until I found a kill or shatter - that's the correct play, but not given the fact I'm now my favourite SE role :P 

We can litigate whether or not this is true based on my personal credibility, but I'd rather not be spending half the cycle debating about whether claiming a track even makes sense. This cuts that detour short.

17 minutes ago, Fifth Scholar said:

Hmmm. As someone whose philosophy is always “vote if able,” conscientious objectors to voting kind of bother me. :P At the risk of rehashing a very old debate, voting is the lifeblood (death blood?) of the village—it’s a source of information, a mechanism of pressure, a tool of analysis, something that forces commitments and decisions and real stakes. Staying out of it isn’t necessarily evil by default—there are good Village reasons sometimes to not contribute to Exe voting—but Elims stand a lot more to gain from the neutral stance that it provides. Yes, voting might put you under suspicion. That’s how it works. We all get thrown into the suspicion pool and tear at each other until someone is dead, then look at the autopsy. :P If too many people stay out of that fray, even early on, we get less info to work with. Maybe you’re less bloody, but so are the Elims. So jump in, TGK

I don't understand this vote, even though I agree with the sentiment/thought process, and it makes me uncomfortable to be voting alongside a player I'm wary of.

21 minutes ago, Fifth Scholar said:

I didn’t see a reason to move my vote, or a better target, other than perhaps you which I wasn’t about to pursue with no time left in the cycle and a consensus more or less already forming.

If you're suspicious of me, why are you voting alongside me?

Do you think I'm distancing here? Because why in the hells would you willingly go vote with someone whom you suspect? This doesn't make sense to me.

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23 minutes ago, Fifth Scholar said:

First, since I wanted to take a look at this last cycle and didn’t have time, Kas made a long voting theory post which I actually pretty much completely agree with. I will note two things about it, though: one, that my LG87 “stab vote” on Araris was purposely misconstrued because I wanted an excuse to stay off the main Exe drama and just conveniently distance from a factionmate instead, and two, that my Ash vote was trying to apply pressure in the same way you describe a stab vote. As we saw over halfway through the cycle, the random system of pokes meant that nobody felt that he was under any duress, as four of five votes spread thinly at one each indicated. Doubling up on Ash made the threat of his death real, put someone in the lead to generate actual discussion as to why people were (or were not) voting the way they did (as evidenced by Conq’s reply to my ploy), and moved the Exe forward. After Ash posted two very short posts, I didn’t see a reason to move my vote, or a better target, other than perhaps you which I wasn’t about to pursue with no time left in the cycle and a consensus more or less already forming.

Now on to stuff from this cycle. I still need to read it in more depth to figure out what’s going on but these are what jumped at me.

Might I remind you that you were the first on Ashbringer? :P If we’re going to complain about starting pushes, maybe we look there first—I followed you on and stuck to the idea when you had abandoned trying to apply pressure to him. And yes, I was redirecting you to Ash, because he was a target of existing pressure and, to some extent, existing discussion, and none of the reasons to want him dead had really changed at the time. Luckspren was out of the public eye, yes, but I don’t know if your eventual vote on her did much other than spread existing votes out even more. We ended up exeing Ash and sort of getting a group of people on the same page, but it was last-minute as you noted, and I’m not sure the wider focus actually helped the village—we got no clear alternative to Ash, and thus no good wagon discussion towards EoD. Consolidating earlier might have changed that—you had the opportunity, and didn’t take it. I think that’s pretty much what that complaint boils down to. 

As for being Voidstormed, I doubt this clears either you or the Voidstormer, mostly because (as I doubt someone holding a newly acquired tracker’s lens would say something about it) your claim can’t really be contested (and please, if you have actually taken a lens from Kas, for the love of Edgli don’t claim to make a point >>). Assuming you are telling the truth, a Voidstormer is in an awkward position of being a lens I would see as unlikely as being in Elim hands—as I’ve speculated in a few PMs, I’d think they’d have some more permanent ones—as well as a lens that Team Evil would love to use C1; they gain nothing from sitting on it, and have the chance of stealing repeatable tracking or roleblocking from the village. So I don’t know what to make of the VS. I suppose it could just as easily be said that a villager wouldn’t see a reason not to use one, though. This is a really long way of saying that I find both your claim and your vote odd. :P 

Okay, this is a more classic Kas post :P Barring some absurd gambitry on a Kas/Luckspren elim team, your scan results sound helpful—I’d agree that Luckspren would be more likely to submit a kill as someone low-profile (though, if I am reading Elan’s rules correctly, the Order seems restricted to some/one elim(s), as only the kill is mentioned as being an explicitly faction ability, so not sending in a shatter might not have any bearing on her desire to do so, merely her ability).

If there’s an elim on the Ash train, it’s probably Devo—Conq has seemed genuinely village in PMs (though take this with the Shai’tan gut that comes with all people who try to pocket me privately) and seemed to join the train out of actual suspicion/desire for information, whereas Devo…is her usual inscrutable self. At least to me. :P Which means I kinda don’t want to string her up just on a handful of weak PoE assumptions. If she’s evil, we should just kill her teammates anyway and then I’ll have a fighting chance against her. (Sorry, Devo :P)

Understand the spending too long thing, it’s a curse sometimes >> I have a question for both Novel and Wizard, though (and anyone who cares to answer): out of last cycle’s non-voters, who is most likely to be evil? 

I have very mild bad gut on TUN from this cycle but am not sure if it’s lingering LG87 side effects so I’m minded to hold my judgment. His more recent frustration seems to be genuine, which isn’t necessarily AI, but it does make me minded to back off him a bit—there are probably more fruitful targets anyway.

Hmmm. As someone whose philosophy is always “vote if able,” conscientious objectors to voting kind of bother me. :P At the risk of rehashing a very old debate, voting is the lifeblood (death blood?) of the village—it’s a source of information, a mechanism of pressure, a tool of analysis, something that forces commitments and decisions and real stakes. Staying out of it isn’t necessarily evil by default—there are good Village reasons sometimes to not contribute to Exe voting—but Elims stand a lot more to gain from the neutral stance that it provides. Yes, voting might put you under suspicion. That’s how it works. We all get thrown into the suspicion pool and tear at each other until someone is dead, then look at the autopsy. :P If too many people stay out of that fray, even early on, we get less info to work with. Maybe you’re less bloody, but so are the Elims. So jump in, TGK

 

As a regular non-voter, my reason for not voting is because I would rather be silent then wrong. Why be wrong now when you could be right later?

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7 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

So, two issues here: first, the redirection is my point, rather than the vote that never changed. None of the reasons to want him dead had really changed, but none of the reasons continue to be reasons for Ash as compared to functionally half our absentee set. The only reason I could see being persuasive is "he was a target of existing pressure" but that's a bad reason and more or less a sunk cost fallacy on stilts. The fact that the cycle was quiet despite our two votes being on Ash, and Ash was PMing me without much motivation to be in the thread clearly indicated that the status quo, or sinking more votes into Ash / redirecting people to Ash wasn't going to cut it. Most of the game was going to fold their hands for C1. It's kind of really kayana because if I think Luck is Village, and I know Ash is Village, then technically I should be leaning Village on you because E!Fifth has no reason to want to strongly redirect me to 

Did it spread existing votes out more? I don't see how you can make that judgement. From the time the vote was placed, to the time you made a post on it, there was no take-up, on Luck or on Ash or on Drought. Who, may I remind you, were the only trains existing, even through to EoD. Drought was never going to take off, simpliciter. I don't see how you believe that a world in which Ash was the only train or the only train likely to go through to endgame was in any way healthy for the Village. I could have played less provocative and baity, yeah, since I hate it when Illwei pulls that on me :P But I think the core is true - a one-train uncontested quiet lynch isn't a good C1 and I don't see why the charge of 'spreading existing votes out more' remotely makes sense. If you want to adopt the retroactive perspective, then with most of the game committed to folding their hands, how realistically was this supposed to work?

The votes had been on Ash. Nothing happened. What did you realistically expect to happen, in your alternate universe where two votes remain on Ash?

Like, maybe I'm tunnelling. It wouldn't be the first time I found my one (1) thing about a player and lost it (I think Aman thought I was faking it in LG84, but nope, 100% vintage Kas.) But I genuinely still do not understand where you come by the confidence that the Ash train makes more sense than the Luck train to the point of solicitation. Even though logic tells me this is so insane and risky I don't even know if Evil!Fifth would do this.

Fundamentally, my claim is because I believe I have an action that makes Luck look more Village. It's not decisive the way catching a kill is, but I thought it was worth making the claim - a "I scanned Luck and Luck neither shattered nor killed" claim is not credible in a game where any tracker who sticks his head out is bound to be shot or shattered. It makes more sense when people understand that it comes from having lost the TL. It's dated information anyway, so why not just put it out there? Maybe someone can make some use out of it. And the Luck scan should definitely be mentioned, since I don't have anymore scans. Obviously if I still had scans, I'd shut up, stay put, and keep scanning until I found a kill or shatter - that's the correct play, but not given the fact I'm now my favourite SE role :P 

We can litigate whether or not this is true based on my personal credibility, but I'd rather not be spending half the cycle debating about whether claiming a track even makes sense. This cuts that detour short.

I don't understand this vote, even though I agree with the sentiment/thought process, and it makes me uncomfortable to be voting alongside a player I'm wary of.

If you're suspicious of me, why are you voting alongside me?

Do you think I'm distancing here? Because why in the hells would you willingly go vote with someone whom you suspect? This doesn't make sense to me.

No knocking down my stilted fallacies, it’s rude :P And maybe it’s another case of bad logic, but in my mind, when it comes to voting and wanting results, I take the caveman approach of high numbers good. This doesn’t really apply early in the cycle—you want to keep options open—but later on, you put pressure not only on certain people, but also on voting populations as a whole, by clustering. One vote on a few people? Okay, my vote will equalise that, no problem. Two votes? Three? All of a sudden I have to find people to agree with my ideas, or push back against already-formed blocs. I was trying to push us into that stage of the Exe yesterday because that’s when people start committing—to voting or not voting, to hopping on bandwagons or steering off on side-trains. If Ash and Luck were functionally equivalent, I, in your shoes, would have kicked the stakes into what I view as a higher gear. Your explanation makes sense on an intellectual level, but instinctually it’s never something I would have done.

okay, yeah, fair. In a world where you’re telling the truth, I’ll concede that the claim makes sense. 

bro unlike you not everyone types at 240 WPM. I’m on mobile and that post was in one tab for like an hour, and I wasn’t about to go hunting the “new reply” button as I saw them come up because that has a historical record of eating my posts, and it’s already past midnight :P far as I knew your vote was on me. I’ll admit I’m not comfortable either with your switch, since your focus on me has kinda surprised me so far, but have you considered that if we separately decided to vote on the same player, you’re maybe tinfoiling on me too hard? Maybe? Just because you have never personally seen village!Fifth in thread with actual time on his hands does not mean you can testify to his nonexistence :P 

3 minutes ago, The Unknown Novel said:

As a regular non-voter, my reason for not voting is because I would rather be silent then wrong. Why be wrong now when you could be right later?

I would rather be wrong now so I can be right later. 

1 minute ago, Kasimir said:

i s2g if this turns into the C1 lynch discussion on C2, I'm voting Araris.

This Evil must be stopped.

Kas and I might not be having a very village bro game right now but I stand by him on this, if I am forced to continue this nonsense I will lock myself in an asylum and give the key to HH and tell him to check in on me in ten years >>

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I completely forgot about this game. But I've remembered now! I'll be active! @Matrim's Dice I know you're dead now, but did you have to start the game with a vote on me?

Don't have tons of time at the moment, but want to get a post out, so speed reading Cycle 1.

A bit of stuff about both contribution and PM safety, both of which are great!

Steel forgot he signed up for this which... well... I can relate to. Probably not a useful thing to waste my speedreading on, but here we are with the longest point that I've made thus far so... deal with it.

I do like the idea of playing with a tie. It gives us info, and I imagine would have been more useful in round 1, but still isn't a bad place to look. 

Oooh. But Matrim makes a good point about naturally forming ties. But I think that we still get info, even if it gives us initially bad reads, it gives us a place to start, it gives us stakes, and it gives us information.

Also, feel free to lynch me. Like, please don't, but I won't be offended even though I'm a vaguely returning player. 

There was a lot more going on, and if anyone would like my thoughts on it then feel free to quote it at me and I'll respond, but time. 

I don't yet have time to think much about this cycle, life came calling faster than I hoped it would, but I find it interesting that Mat died. From the speed-read it seemed like there was at least a bit of suspicion on them so killing them isn't how I'd play an elim. But I also very briefly skimmed the back half of the cycle so I could have missed a lot.

I'll get this posted and... hopefully have time in the morning to do some Cycle Two stuff.

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Okay TUN, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I wasn't trying to antagonize you or anything (well guess votes tend to do that...) I was just genuinely suspicious. After everything that's happened this cycle I lean more neutral or vil towards you. I dislike the idea of someone jumping on to my vote of you as purely a survival vote, especially when we still have almost a full day tomorrow. (Although I can understand that Sundays can be very busy for some people. It could be so for me.) 

Going back to my vote last cyle. Wandering Wizard, you seem to be keeping careful track of what is happening, after all, you seem to be rather prompt at responding to accusations against yourself. Also, a survival vote so early? I mean if you really are expecting to be full tomorrow (with the thread closing at 5pm) I could understand, but you seem to not want to at least try and defend yourself at all. Why the need for a survival vote if not for the worry you will get lynched for some reason? (I mean, I guess that sort of thing kind of happened to Ash so there is some reason to be worried there.) There is a big difference here though. You had a chance to convince us of some things that you may be mulling over in your mind and instead stated that you don't think TUN is evil but that you don't necessarily want to die. Why not jump on Fifth? The TGK train started after you posted so they were just as viable as an option. Is it because people were already naturally leaning towards TUN being evil?

SPEAKING OF WHICH...that TGK train happened pretty quickly... I'm not sure how I feel about that. There is a small chance that both Fifth and Kas are elims and are trying to distance themselves by side eyeing each other, yet still voting on the same person. Like I said, I feel like this is only a small chance and couldn't post without pointing it out. I'm very interested to see how TGK will repond.

As for why not leaving the votes in a tie. There are no stakes in that!!! Really though. If I were an elim and I was in that string of four tied votes and all of them were being voted by one person each, I would've told my team to leave it or maybe to even make the pool slightly bigger. With four people I would have a 25% chance of dying, but if I lived, which is the likely hood, what does the village really gain? As someone else said, I think Kas, what really gets info for a village is multiple band wagons at the same time or in the same cycle. At that point, there wasn't much, so far this cycle has been much better in terms of what is happening with the voting pool, but still not enough people are voting! I agree TUN that I would rather have a small amount of accurate information than a large amount of hazy info, but even hazy info is better than none.

 

 

Okay, now on to something that I've been thinking about since last cycle. VOTES. There was a lot of talk about voting patterns and what they mean, how a good vote gets info, and even if cc is good or not (which fundamentally involves votes). Great, but what is a vote, what does it mean to vote in the first place, why vote at all, and how do I decide how to vote? 

1. (What is a vote?) - Fundamentally a vote is you trying to kill someone. It doesn't matter if that's what you're intending or not, that's what a vote is. I don't even care if you're planning on changing it. With enough votes, someone dies, so every vote on a person counts (especially if fewer people are voting). What happens at the end of a cycle to someone with a bunch of votes? They die.

2. (What does it mean to vote?) - To me, and I realize that this is usually what is so divisive when it comes to these games, it is the threat of death. If a vote is essentially a death sentence, then voting is you trying to kill that person. This, at least partly, is the reason that C1 is so awkward!  You need to kill someone, but who to choose with no info (as a village), or who to scape goat with all the info (as the elims)? 

3. (Why vote at all?) - Most importantly though is why should you even vote? Why kill? To win of course! The elims can kill people twice as quickly with votes, so why not? For the villagers, it is their only way to win. They can't kill elims without it, most of the time. The real problem for the village is trying to find elims without drawing too much attention to themselves. For both parties, information manipulation is what is actually running these games. 

4. (How do I decide how to vote?) - This is a rather monstrous question, after all, this tends to be what most people are thinking about. This is pretty much the only thing that a villager is in complete control of that cycle and something the elims have to worry about balancing with their extra kill. What one should focus on while pondering this hearty question is, what are your goals??? For elims, this is rather easy. Having anyone but my faction mates killed (how to do this without drawing attention though?). For villagers, this is a much harder since they don't know who their faction mates are. For most villagers then, it comes down to three things: not voting because killing other villagers is bad, killing to find more info (which ends up almost being the end for some people and not just the means), and finally killing based on hunches and logic. 

I think that these sorts of games have focused too much on finding info through the vote and not enough through other people. Is there a risk with that? Of course! I mean, my first game of Sanderson Elimination proves that, however, sharing info isn't always a bad thing. Do you give some power away, yes and maybe that'll turn around and bite you, but also, it may turn out to be the saving grace! People can lie and death can't, but the reason we are stuck so much with people sticking to the sidelines and not voting is because we put too much into voting! Talk with your fellowman and figure stuff out! Voting is a very helpful and sure-fire way to gain info, but not the only way. Sometimes you've got to take risks, especially as a village. 

 

 

With this in mind, I will openly declare that I have the Translator's lenses, especially since they are the lenses of the second to least importance. (Thanks JNV :lol:) Also, I did not use it last cycle because I completely blanked on the fact that it has to be activated... (I felt real stupid pming the gm about that one.) Speaking of lenses, I believe that is what is referred to in the cycle tag. Did they end up with one person or with the elims only???

P.S. I am extremely sorry for the long post. I have been thinking about this since the whole meta discussion started on the first cycle. It kind of all came bubbling out while I was typing up what was to be a much shorter post. I had been typing this up for almost an hour and a half and so my thoughts might be really scrambled... :P I hope that at least one person finds this useful! Good night!

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13 minutes ago, Conquestor said:

With this in mind, I will openly declare that I have the Translator's lenses, especially since they are the lenses of the second to least importance. (Thanks JNV :lol:) Also, I did not use it last cycle because I completely blanked on the fact that it has to be activated... (I felt real stupid pming the gm about that one.) Speaking of lenses, I believe that is what is referred to in the cycle tag. Did they end up with one person or with the elims only???

Bro. Can you please not.

Is this information anyone needs to know? Does this particularly help the Village?

Look. We have three to four Elims in this game. Let's lean four, and be pessimistic. How many players right now? Twelve in total after last cycle. We're stipulating four Elims, so eight are Villagers. 

The Elims now know:

-I had a TL but not anymore
-You claim to have a TLL.

So now they have a glorious six players within which to shoot or shatter to try to take out the TL (wherever my TL ended up, assuming they didn't already get it, and assuming there's no second TL), or useful lenses like the TFL or DL. Every unnecessary claim we make is a claim that allows the Elims to continue playing their PoE game to identify where good lenses are and shoot or shatter. This just decreases our target surface and that's a bad thing.

I'm seriously questioning this move.

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Abstaining from a vote just limits the amount of information on you. Anyone can say whatever they want but it's the final votes that have the most bearing on alignment. Not wanting to leave a record is more of an elim move so long as no teammates are in danger. I don't know what to think of both Fith and Kas voting for TGK and then fighting each other though. They were strongly opposed on Ash but I suppose that only matters if Luck or Drought is evil.

I tend to see preemptive survival votes as more village, because an elim knows they have a team to support them.

Dinosaurs exist in Alcatraz, even though it's a modern day earth setting.

Conq probably does have Translator's lenses and didn't use them, but that doesn't make him more likely to be village.

 

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47 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

I tend to see preemptive survival votes as more village, because an elim knows they have a team to support them.

You could argue it the other way around: Elims are more sensitive to survival, Villagers dgaf. (Yes, I know, don't remind me about MR56 Mat.) Elims may have a team but risk drawing connections between them, so would favour self-pres votes anyway. (Elims welcome to prove me wrong - makes vote analysis easier, thanks :P )

I do feel which way to lean is more a personal meta judgement, but don't feel we have a strong basis for making a personal meta judgement in Wiz's case.

47 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

Conq probably does have Translator's lenses and didn't use them, but that doesn't make him more likely to be village.

Either he's Evil or he's Village. If he's Village, then there is a point in engaging with that. If he's Evil, the move should still be engaged with, by pointing out why doing so draws fresh targets on the backs of others in order to discourage further pointless claiming, especially given the early "don't recklessly claim" consensus. To do that, the two Villager scenario is a better illustration since that's the worse (rather than worst) case scenario - if he's Evil, then it's a pool of seven players to kill and shatter within instead (yes, yes, mea culpa), unless someone else decides to claim and make matters worse. That doesn't work with the 'pessimistic assumption' scenario building we're working with, because as Village you hope for the best and plan for the worst when doing projections.

47 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

Abstaining from a vote just limits the amount of information on you. Anyone can say whatever they want but it's the final votes that have the most bearing on alignment.

This entire post read like you were preparing to cast a final vote, and then you did not. Given your views, presuming you're preparing to step in eventually?

Edited to add:

1 hour ago, Conquestor said:

I think that these sorts of games have focused too much on finding info through the vote and not enough through other people. Is there a risk with that? Of course! I mean, my first game of Sanderson Elimination proves that, however, sharing info isn't always a bad thing. Do you give some power away, yes and maybe that'll turn around and bite you, but also, it may turn out to be the saving grace! People can lie and death can't, but the reason we are stuck so much with people sticking to the sidelines and not voting is because we put too much into voting! Talk with your fellowman and figure stuff out! Voting is a very helpful and sure-fire way to gain info, but not the only way. Sometimes you've got to take risks, especially as a village. 

I liked this and wanted to respond:

  • Talking and info-sharing is good and =/= claiming, which is especially key since you segued from this into...threadclaiming; I don't ever believe in pointless infosec for infosec's sake (people remembering my dead doc rant when no one wanted to claim at endgame when that would've softcleared Mouse in AG8 will remember this.) It's situational! But I like the emphasis on discussion since that's basically what everyone has been asking for since C1.
     
  • Voting forces players to put their money where their mouth is and shows a player's priorities. MR57 Evil!Aman talked so beautifully he convinced a Mat who had decided he was Evil that he was Village over the course of five PMs. I still don't know how he did it, and as the GM, I got front row seats to every PM. But what he did was that he always voted Villagers and never voted Elims. (Maybe in one case, can't remember, not relevant here, his voting was awful.) Arguing that voting is prioritised to the exclusion of discussion is a fair charge and I think we need to go back to the idea that a bit is better than nothing at all. But it neglects that the best Elims can talk you into thinking that Evil is Village and Village Evil. You have to soberly look at their voting patterns to identify them, because when the chips are down, their priorities aren't Village. It's certainly the only way most of us identified Evil Aman in AG8, barring a post reading specialist (TJ I miss you bro :( )
     
  • If you are a post reading specialist, ignore what I said about #2. I regularly ML people when I put too much emphasis on what is said and too little on votes and need votes to keep me grounded so I will always emphasise why I think votes are important. (Hi Creccio, hi Orlok, hi Bort...)
Edited by Kasimir
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8 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Bro. Can you please not.

Is this information anyone needs to know? Does this particularly help the Village?

Look. We have three to four Elims in this game. Let's lean four, and be pessimistic. How many players right now? Twelve in total after last cycle. We're stipulating four Elims, so eight are Villagers. 

The Elims now know:

-I had a TL but not anymore
-You claim to have a TLL.

So now they have a glorious six players within which to shoot or shatter to try to take out the TL (wherever my TL ended up, assuming they didn't already get it, and assuming there's no second TL), or useful lenses like the TFL or DL. Every unnecessary claim we make is a claim that allows the Elims to continue playing their PoE game to identify where good lenses are and shoot or shatter. This just decreases our target surface and that's a bad thing.

I'm seriously questioning this move.

Well, that is fair and to be honest, something that tired brain didn't think about... I can however turn your own response back on you. You claiming to have been VSed hasn't really helped, at all. Not that many people were voting for luckspren, just Joe. If a band wagon was beginning to form, that would be more of a reason to come out. Also, how do you even know that there is another TL? Only 14 of the 16 lenses made it in.

Also, yes. I was not advertising to thread sharing. It can sometimes be extremely helpful and other times hurtful. This may have been me pushing back a little too hard. I was kind annoyed that people never share anything worthwhile with each other, not even to save their skins. What if someone had a pm confidant that they shared just a few things with (Their most trusted person, of course) and so if they died, that person can carry on with the knowledge of at least a few parts of what they've learned. Or, even better, you could've pmed someone to have them tell the thread that "anonymous was vsed and lost a TL, but they tracked this person last night and they didn't take a kill action or a shatter action." It is a little iffy for a person to do this for another person, in terms of thread, but not that much more than a person claiming it for themselves. It is called a claim after all. This would almost completely eliminate all the negatives of claiming something in thread that the elims don't want.

I guess to sum up my points, we as a group need to have a little more trust with each other. Is there a chance you accidently share something with an Elim, yes, but what could we gain as a village? Now ALERT, this doesn't mean going around sharing stuff willy nilly (like I said, I probably went too far in my last post), but to cautiously and carefully share info. One of my problems with these games is that everyone leans too far on the careful and cautious side. There is a golden mean there and I intend to find it.

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12 hours ago, JNV said:

People keep saying things like this and I odntk now what they mean what 'good post' C1 did I even have 

I noticed a long post from C1. That's what I was referring to and I could see others doing the same.

11 hours ago, Kasimir said:
  • TGK

Disliked the framing about objecting to being involved - that felt like a distinction meant to point out he doesn't want to gain guilt and is thinking in terms of how he'd look to players, rather than in terms of what's helpful to the Village.

Considering there were already votes for the exe, and I didn't have any need to vote should honestly clear me of this. I feel that voting with 0 information or bandwagoning doesn't help me or add any additional investigation for the village. 

12 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Alright, so Fifth is mostly busy, and my vote has been functionally useless for most of this cycle. I'm going to shift to TGK, for the reasons mentioned. Bottom line being that a preoccupation with looking Village (or at least not accruing perceived guilt) as compared to actively engaging in discussion and the lynch however poorly-informed (most of the game is in the same plight - the regular crowd doesn't know the returning players, the returning players don't know each other necessarily...) feels more like paying more attention to and prioritising how players think of you than what the Village needs. To me, that's more of an Elim mindset than a Village one.

*And yeah, I realise we're skirting the edges of the 'C1 lynch or no' discussion. May the gods grant that we not reopen it again, especially on C2.

The trouble with voting on me is that it does open up a 'C1 lynch or no' discussion. Because that is my only real way to defend against accusations. I'd like to distance myself from C1 Meta discussion because I do have strong opinions and they don't necessarily represent my alignment. I believe that the current votes against me are in the same vane as voting against someone because they opposed a CC vote.

11 hours ago, Fifth Scholar said:

Hmmm. As someone whose philosophy is always “vote if able,” conscientious objectors to voting kind of bother me. :P At the risk of rehashing a very old debate, voting is the lifeblood (death blood?) of the village—it’s a source of information, a mechanism of pressure, a tool of analysis, something that forces commitments and decisions and real stakes. Staying out of it isn’t necessarily evil by default—there are good Village reasons sometimes to not contribute to Exe voting—but Elims stand a lot more to gain from the neutral stance that it provides. Yes, voting might put you under suspicion. That’s how it works. We all get thrown into the suspicion pool and tear at each other until someone is dead, then look at the autopsy. :P If too many people stay out of that fray, even early on, we get less info to work with. Maybe you’re less bloody, but so are the Elims. So jump in, TGK

So I felt this C1 had plenty of votes and I wasn't needed to provide any additional information. It actually seems that my not voting has given me more fodder than my voting. Because I have a small bandwagon formed. I feel that it is an Elim move to vote this way and force me into a Meta discussion corner. This would distract from actually relevant information. Fifth 

 

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Just now, Conquestor said:

Well, that is fair and to be honest, something that tired brain didn't think about... I can however turn your own response back on you. You claiming to have been VSed hasn't really helped, at all. Not that many people were voting for luckspren, just Joe. If a band wagon was beginning to form, that would be more of a reason to come out. Also, how do you even know that there is another TL? Only 14 of the 16 lenses made it in.

As I said to Fifth, you can contest it if you want, but at the bottom line - if we bracket issues of my personal credibility:

You claiming that you have a TTL is basically information we already suspect, and were already acting as though was true. If you want to pretend that the knowledge that you have a TTL is on par with the knowledge that: A. there is a VS in the game, B. I had a TL, C. I scanned Luckspren and Luckspren's action checks out (a claim which would require Luckspren and myself to be teamed if I were lying), and D. Luckspren is likely Village - go ahead. I'm not really going to stop you.

I agree with the principle more information matters to the Village. I expect this information to matter to people who care about having some basis to work out Luckspren's alignment. And I do expect this information to matter to people to wonder why the hell I am suddenly light Village reading Luckspren given I was aggressively voting Luckspren and challenging Fifth and Mat to justify the presupposition I should vote for Ash over Luck. The point is showing your working - if people don't understand why you've arrived at the conclusion you do, they get confused and this doesn't help in a game where the point is to find the Elims, i.e. those who are coming by their conclusion by dishonest means. In a world where I still had my TL, yeah, absolutely, I wouldn't do it, but it's not because the information isn't in any way of value (I don't want to say valuable, as I agree it ain't a Seeker scan.) It's because doing so prevents me from further collecting more valuable information. And I point out that if an Elim did in fact VS me, which I don't think is likely but I can't exclude, then the Elims already knew I had a TL anyway, because that's what the VS user would have gained.

As Devo pointed out, knowing you have a TTL doesn't help me work out your alignment. It helps Elims narrow down targets. I'm happy to take the charge that I shouldn't have claimed simpliciter - some people do draw the line there, and maybe two years ago,  I absolutely would have. The VS claim can't be made without the TL scan claim, because anything else is inconsistent nonsense because no reasonable TL scanner just ups and claims like this. Arguing that my response works on me though because our actions are symmetrical is fairly tendentious. I am providing some form of alignment information - you aren't. You can counter this by arguing that this is only if my information is credible, i.e. if I can be trusted. All I can do at this point is /shrug - it at least checks out.

FYI -  I don't know there's another TL, but my assumption is there should be, as I've said in a number of PMs. I can be wrong, it's not a hard assumption. We'll find out more information as the game goes on and playerbase sizes shrink. Why do I think there's another TL? Well, because lenses can go missing via shatters, or stolen via VS. My view is that it doesn't make sense to give the Village a single TL. A game where there's ways to lose lenses and kill lens holders and shatter lenses is a game which encourages redundancy. Maybe I'm wrong about the distro - wouldn't be the first time, and Mat knows by heart by now my line about not guessing distro without full sight of the distro, but there are still some fundamental constraints that we can usually, with an asterisk, try to guess at.

I don't think hypothesising a second TL functionally matters, and letting the second TL know that this might be a useful scan result for them to work from is good. Working defensively, we want to assume there's a second TL to protect, and the Elims will be assuming there is a second TL to shatter. I don't think we should be expecting help from the TL(s), and that's part of assuming the worst as well, but there you have it.

20 minutes ago, Conquestor said:

What if someone had a pm confidant that they shared just a few things with (Their most trusted person, of course) and so if they died, that person can carry on with the knowledge of at least a few parts of what they've learned.

You'll excuse me if I say it was a beautiful what-if and I had that one guy and he took everything I told him (I was a Seeker then) and used to badly screw the Village faction over, because wonderful, turns out he was Evil, and I didn't have time to scan him, and anyway the other guy I scanned couldn't really be trusted either for reasons we won't go into, because I don't want Drought to foam at the mouth and die (or anyone else really) at another longpost (too late, I guess.)

Do you know if you are the only TTL person here? Do you know if the other TTL (if it exists) is in the hands of an Evil player? Do you even know if who people are proposing to trust can be trusted?

23 minutes ago, Conquestor said:

Or, even better, you could've pmed someone to have them tell the thread that "anonymous was vsed and lost a TL, but they tracked this person last night and they didn't take a kill action or a shatter action." It is a little iffy for a person to do this for another person, in terms of thread, but not that much more than a person claiming it for themselves. It is called a claim after all. This would almost completely eliminate all the negatives of claiming something in thread that the elims don't want.

Okay, and if I PMed an Elim, wonderful. Now the information is in the hands of the Elims but not the Village. Now people continue to not know where exactly I pulled out a belief in V!Luck from. And do you really think that ruse is something that fools anyone? Everyone and their dog does it in SE, every single time, thinking they're so very smart for doing it, as though it hasn't been done enough by players who also think they were very smart to do it, including me, and then get punished for it. "I know a roleblocker/scanner but it's totally not me, but they had this scan result" and every single time, it turns out to be them, really, and the Elims just do the basic job of checking and kill them anyway, or hard-assume they have that role and that info is really theirs.

If you think it's something that is worth risking an Elim knowing, which you have to concede given TTL, and given that practically no one has ride-or-die reads at the start of C2, then it might as well be shared with all, rather than hoarded with one person, who may then proceed to lie to the Village after you die. C2 isn't the point at which you obtain certainty.

33 minutes ago, Conquestor said:

One of my problems with these games is that everyone leans too far on the careful and cautious side

I feel like this is a meta gap. Just last year, and what some would argue, this year, through to AG8 and LG83, we had a whole slew of games with players recklessly claiming left, right, centre. In AG7, players were so free with claims that it broke the game by...C3 I think, resulting in more or less an Elim slaughter and some neutral rebalancing. I GMed LG74 where players claimed so freakin' much to Maili that by N3, the Elims knew practically all the roles and their Seekers were functionally useless. They killed the Village Coinshot and Lurcher as a result. There was a decent amount of thread unsafety in LG86 too, though this came as the Village was closing out the game. If anything, I don't know where you're getting the "everyone is too cautious" from.

Anyway, I'm going to send one PM and step away - I've been involved in a few brawls over the last few games as I can word things very strongly and I'd rather not make Araris work hard in his dotage ;P 

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Vote Counts so far:

TUN - Wandering Wizard

Wandering Wizard - Joe, Conq

TGK - Kasimir, Fifth

Fifth - TGK

 

Skip to the big space between if you don't want to read my Kasimir response.

Okay, I am going to make my response to Kasimir as short as I can.  I already mentioned in our pm that I would be more than happy to discuss it in depth. What do you mean that I having a TLL was something that "we" already suspected? I never claimed that the knowledge I have a TLL was on par with anything. I would assume already that there was at least one VS lens in the game and now doesn't matter because they are one use. (I would classify that as useless info) This scan doesn't clear Luckspren anymore than me claiming TLL clears me. 

Why is the VS claim so important? Nice word! Tendentious, I had to look that one up! In my view (which I guess is biased) the moves we made were very similar and so I stand by the fact that your argument works against you. In terms of the pm confidant, I did think about that scenario and so I was thinking about ways to lessen the chance you struck evil. (One being that you tell two people and let them know who the other person you told is, so if you get targeted that cycle, hopefully at least one of them is good. Still a work in progress.) 

Nope, I don't know about another TLL, but a lot of pms are pretty useless, I don't get the names of people, and IT'S RANDOM. Odds are you don't get what you want. Being able to trust people is definitely the hardest thing to work around. I also feel very misrepresented by your response to my thought experiment. You pm a bad guy with what you know and they don't tell the thread. Well, message the thread and say that you pm'd this person that didn't post the info. That is some pretty nice information that's nice for the village! Also, you completely missed the point. I meant literally do that. It seems like you trust both Luck and Joe enough to tell them in a pm right? 

I have to concede nothing given TLLs. Agreed that no one has ride or die reads. Wasn't my first post about the village being a little riskier and you agreed with at least part of it. It is interesting to hear about past games and how they went to the other extreme, but again my point was a median between the two and not riding the extremes. Also, I wasn't around for those games and so how would I know about them? I just rejoined after 5 years. If the games were last year, are you expecting me to read every game that I've missed???

 

 

That wasn't as short as I would've liked, but not nearly as long as I wanted to go either. Either pm me is you have any questions or just call me out in thread if you would like me to respond to anything in particular. No getting into some thoughts on the cycle. This is the second time that Kasimir and Fifth have double voted on someone, which I think is rather interesting. Not only that, but the ordering is the same. Kas voting, followed closely by Fifth giving some reasoning as to why he is voting on the same person. Now, I know that TGK hasn't been the most responsive, but I find it very interesting that he decided to go with suspicions rather than with a survival vote, as I would've expected from almost anyone. I want to join him in going after Fifth, but I want to give Fifth enough time to respond and well, it is the end of the cycle in an hour and ten minutes. If you have time to respond, @Fifth Scholar.

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29 minutes ago, Conquestor said:

That wasn't as short as I would've liked, but not nearly as long as I wanted to go either. Either pm me is you have any questions or just call me out in thread if you would like me to respond to anything in particular. No getting into some thoughts on the cycle. This is the second time that Kasimir and Fifth have double voted on someone, which I think is rather interesting. Not only that, but the ordering is the same. Kas voting, followed closely by Fifth giving some reasoning as to why he is voting on the same person. Now, I know that TGK hasn't been the most responsive, but I find it very interesting that he decided to go with suspicions rather than with a survival vote, as I would've expected from almost anyone. I want to join him in going after Fifth, but I want to give Fifth enough time to respond and well, it is the end of the cycle in an hour and ten minutes. If you have time to respond, @Fifth Scholar.

I thought I had been fairly responsive. Did I miss anything? I think my schedule is somewhat opposite of everyone and while I was active there weren't any new posts to respond to 

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Ugh, my reads are going all over the place. I'm typing this at work on my phone, so this will be short.

The exe on Wandering Wizard and TUN didn't feel like it did much. The TGK exe might be an attempt by Fifth to save WW? That doesn't seem too likely, but Fifth and Kas' interactions have been itching at the vack of my mind, so I'm going to move my vote from Wandering Wizard to Fifth Scholar.

The vote is now:

TUN(1) - Wandering Wizard

Wandering Wizard(1) -  Conq

TGK(2) - Kasimir, Fifth

Fifth(2) - TGK, Joe

I'm sorta suspicious of a Fifth, WW, Drought team, but i don't know if that makes sense. This geels scummy yo do in the last 20 minutes. But I just got off work. I'm trusting my gut on this.

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