Long Game 46: A Land War in Asia

[Steeldancer]

And the day is OVER! 

[Sart]

Gotta take into account Snipexe changing his vote, ya know?

[Steeldancer]

sart, hush. You messed up the excitement. 

[Fifth Scholar]

What the heck just happened?

[DrakeMarshall]

Talking after the day got ended?? INCONCEIVABLE!

[Steeldancer]

Night Four: Unemployed in the Fire Swamp?!

"Many of the pirates still sat around, uncommunicative. But some had decided that they would no longer be pirates! They decided to head out of the castle, and leave the life of pirating behind them. Which, frankly, wasn't saying much, as they were some of the newest of the crew."
"Unfortunately for THEM, a guard patrol noticed them leaving the castle, and pursued them! The small group was chased right into- the FIRE SWAMP!!!"
Alvron gasped. "Oh no!"
"Oh YES!" Grandpa Steel shouted animatedly. "They peered in terror out of the forest, but the guard would pursue them no further. Not they needed to, because the fire swamp would take care of them."
"I guess it serves them right for leaving the castle," Alvron mused. 
The aged narrator glared. "I haven't killed them off yet. In fact, most of them didn't even die. They came out terrified, having left one of their number dead in the swamp. But the two who survived, came out changed people. No more were they cowardly. They were burnt, bitten, and sandy. They had seen the face of death in that swamp itself, and had shoved a stick into its eye socket."
"And so, those two came back to the castle, no more- hopefully- to shirk their duty."
---

"The pirates were still sitting around, hardly doing anything. But as the sun began to set, a deep terror began to set into their hearts. They had realized that the Guards were picking them off one by one. And so, in a panic, they began throwing accusations around. Men changed suspicions on a whim, and the moments of dusk finally revealed the feral nature of the pirates when put in a stressful situation. Rath picked up Indigo's totally dead body, shouting at Rob Indie Banks, shoving the rotting corpse in his face- which of course he did not appreciate. They almost ended up making the suspects drink poison again, but finally at the last moment, one more person spoke up. An old pirate, Grandpa Lace. 'Asu Wish is clearly the evil one,' he rasped, waving his crooked sword to the right of where Asu Wish stood. Regardless of Lace's depth perception, the rest of the pirate crew switched from 3 targets to one."
"Aw," Alvron sulked. "A 3 way tie would have been cool!"
Grandpa Steel nodded. "Those old men, so odd, right? So, they all pounced on Asu Wish, bashing him with whatever they could get their hands on- including pieces of Indigo."
"Ew, Grandpa. I know this has turned into a full fledged tragedy, but we don't need to turn it graphic, right?!" 
"They're pirates, not noblemen. Of course they get a bit graphic."
Alvron sighed exaggeratedly. "Incon-CEIVABLE."

Cadmium Compounder is totally dead! They were a Pirate with a Parrot. 
Rebecca has died from inactivity! They were a Pirate. 
Coop772 and Elephant Earwax have been replaced by Elandera and Manukos respectively! Give it up for pinch hitters!
Bort has been lynched! They are Mostly Dead. 
Bort (3): Dalinar Kholin, Drake Marshall, Sart
Sart (2): Mr Doctor, Snipexe
Doc12 (1): Bort
randuir (2): Fifth Scholar, Randuir
 

Spoiler

1. Walin (Bill Ted)

2. Bort (Asu Wish)  Mostly Dead

3. Manukos

4. Araris Valerian (Araris) Princess/Buttercup

5. Cadmium Compounder (Indigo Montoya)  Pirate with a Parrot

6. Devotary of Spontaneity (Polydactylous Pterrodactyle)  Spaniard

7. Drake Marshall

8. Hemalurgic Headshot (Leonard Wilkins)

9. Snipexe (Exetes the Wandering Artist)

10. Fifth Scholar (Plaristocrates)

11. Jondesu (Q)

12. Elenion (Shree King Eelz) Prince's Guard with Parrot

13. Roadwalker (Brutus Kowd) Pirate with a Dagger

14. Doc12 (D. Senfalo)

15. Dalinar Kholin (Reginald Canuk)

16. Bugsy (Dread Pirate Cummerbund)

17. Kidpen (Incan C. Vable) Pirate

18. Straw (Straw)

19. Mr. Doctor (Dead Private Hobbert)

20. Val (Val)

21. Randuir (Captain K.C. Grumbleton)

22. Sart (Grandpa Lace)

23. Elandera

24. Mark IV (Mark)

25. Elbereth (Elenta)

26. Rebecca (Sir Shrei King Eel)  Pirate

27. Rathmaskal (Rath

A plea from your GM- please be active, to the best of your ability. It makes me sad to kill people off from inactivity, and it makes Alvron bored, and he's hard to manage when he gets bored. 

[Rathmaskal]

Aaand, either there was a mistake in the vote counting, or the elims are taunting us now...  Someone daggered randuir's vote onto...randuir...

Also, Drake, what the heck...  Did Eternum leave behind notes saying, "Make sure you vote on whomever gets lynched...you've got a legacy to uphold!"

Apologies for not voting - my last meeting was supposed to end an hour before the cycle ended...instead it was like 20 minutes and I didn't have enough time to think about who to place my vote on.

To answer this question:

Quote

@Rathmaskal, I don't remember stating a hard village read of you. Did I forget about something? -randuir

I didn't say anything about 'stating'...  I said 'seems to have' (OK, fine, quote below)

Quote

randuir seems to have a very strong read of village on me based on a couple of his posts...  - ME

A couple of your posts just read to me that you had a strong village read on me...

• Last example first (since I have Day four up in another window) - you basically gave me a free pass on my temporary DoS vote.
• For some reason I can't find the post anymore, but you had one where you posed question to everyone...mine was a bit of a softball...something about "what other oddities have you seen in the voting"  (if someone can find the quote, please let me know...I just scrolled through the entire thread and can't seem to find it...hopefully I'm not going crazy and dreaming about SE posts)

Not the best evidence, but felt very, "Oh, Rath is village"-toned to me... (Here I am arguing against myself...great strategy...)

Anyway, a couple of random notes on this round of voting:

• Of the 4 people who voted on randuir yesterday, 2 are dead and the other two swapped to Bort...
• 13 abstentions (including mine...sorry) is the most we've had so far...
• I still don't get the dagger usage...unless Bort had a dagger and tried to use it but targetted the wrong player?  Or Fifth used it at some point?  Unsure there...

Honestly, at this point, given how difficult it's been to stick the elim label on anyone, I wouldn't be surprised if several elims are just chilling in the background letting the rest of us talk ourselves in circles and vote each other out of the game.

Highest abstention numbers (of people who are still in the game as the original character):

• 4 abstentions (no votes)
  • Walin
• 3 abstentions
  • HH
  • Jondesu
  • Bugsy
  • Val
  • MarkIV

I know that RL gets in the way sometimes...I'm just trying to throw out thoughts that no one has really talked about yet.

[DrakeMarshall]

You know, not getting an alignment flip on death is a real kick in the teeth.

10 minutes ago, Rathmaskal said:

Aaand, either there was a mistake in the vote counting, or the elims are taunting us now...  Someone daggered randuir's vote onto...randuir...

Interesting. Depending on when the person who put that order in was active, that could either be highly revealing or highly WIFOM.

11 minutes ago, Rathmaskal said:

Also, Drake, what the heck...  Did Eternum leave behind notes saying, "Make sure you vote on whomever gets lynched...you've got a legacy to uphold!"

Eternum did not leave me a note, but I guess Steel found a fitting replacement 

Never fear though, if I find a suitable lost cause I will throw myself behind it without hesitation.

 

Random question: Who so far has been brought back from the dead, and how did these people die?

 

[Fifth Scholar]

17 minutes ago, Rathmaskal said:

• I still don't get the dagger usage...unless Bort had a dagger and tried to use it but targetted the wrong player?  Or Fifth used it at some point?  Unsure there...

Hi. That’s me, trying to save myself before the wild swing onto Bort. Not really sure what happened there. I would have very much liked to lynch Rand but it appears he shall survive another round. That may be a good thing, because it’ll give me more time to look at him, but it’s also bad in a way because I should be broadening my focus.

Only El has been resurrected, and she was killed by the Elims after claiming Miracle Max.

[Sart]

What the heck was that? I nearly died back there! I understand people suspect me, but be smart about this. I killed an Eliminator. Now look, a vote in self-preservation isn't the greatest evidence in my favor. However, that vote killed an Eliminator. If that wasn't enough for you, I also used up an item to decide the tie. Imagine if I was an eliminator, or if one of my eliminator buddies had that item. Why would we need to use that item? In that scenario, one eliminator would die regardless. Then why use a one-time action? It wouldn't make any sense, unless serious mind games were going on. The alternative is far more likely. I was a cowardly villager, who didn't want to get lynched.

The same thing has happened this cycle. I chose Fifth Scholar at random, and only switched because it wouldn't break the tie. I haven't developed a read on either of them, and now Bort's dead to my actions. You know what's worse though? This:

Quote

Vote Tally
Doc12 (1): Bort
Straw (1): Sart
Randuir (1): Fifth Scholar

That was the vote tally 21 hours ago. Notice the people who had placed votes? For one, there's only three of them. Even worse, look at the people who were nearly killed. It's the same people. Instead of promoting healthy voting behavior, we're attacking it. Do we have the memories of goldfish? Instead of going based off of retaliation, let's actually look at the thread. I'm going to look at Elenion's posts again, and come back once I have some better reads.

[Sart]

Defends Elenion: Fifth Scholar, Elbereth
No analysis on Elenion: Walin, Hemalurgic Headshot, Snipexe, Jondesu, Dalinar, Straw, Val, Mark, Bort
Light suspicion: Doc12, Randuir, Rathmaskal
Waffles: Mr. Doctor
Voted on Elenion: Randuir (Day 1 retracted), Bugsy (Day 1), Eternum (Drake Marshall), Cadmium Compounder, Sart (retaliation)
Inactive: Coop772 (Elandera), Elephant Earwax (Manukos)

Elenion voted for them: Bugsy, Hemalurgic Headshot
Defended by Elenion: Straw, Araris, Fifth Scholar, Doc12, Mr. Doctor
Elenion mentions as vote targets: Fifth, Eternum (Drake Marshall)
Elenion suggests one person who voted on Araris must be evil. Those people are: Eternum, Doc12, Mr. Doctor, HH, and Fifth

These are my notes, but they roughly correspond to how people felt about Elenion while he was alive. This doesn't include information from Day 3 or Day 4. However, this does help me build a suspicion list.

Probably Villager:
Bugsy: Votes on Elenion, and voted by Elenion
Hemalurgic Headshot: Elenion attempts to kill him
Drake Marshall (Eternum): Votes on Elenion with great logic
Sart: Seals the deal on Elenion's death

Possibly Villager:
Mr. Doctor: Was very suspicious of Elenion, but backs off on voting him. Reads as self-doubt of a new player
Rathmaskal: Agrees with Eternum, doesn't put a vote on though. Again, new player, at least to me
Randuir: The Day 3 lynch doesn't look good, but the poke vote and debate with Elenion are points in his favor

Neutral Reads:
Doc12: Elenion's biggest villager read, which gives me pause. However, he did throw some suspicion Elenion's way on Night 1.
Walin, Dalinar, Val, Mark, Bort: No input on Elenion.
Elandera (Coop772), Manukos (Elephant Earwax): Inactive, but now replaced
Elbereth: Claims to be neutral role. I really don't like her defending Elenion, but it could have been genuine.

Possibly Elim:
Snipexe: Tunneling on Sart like crazy. He's voted for me every cycle.
Fifth Scholar: The main point against her is that she defended Elenion. Elenion defended her in one of his posts, but also put her up as a lynch target in the same one.
Jondesu: Usually votes more than this. I would like to see more from him

Probably Elim:
Straw: Defended by Elenion in a weird post Day 1. Barely expressed any view points in thread. He just seems to be going under the radar too much.

These are my reads. Obviously these are a matter of opinion, but I think they are a good place to start.

Edited June 15, 2018 by Sart
Added last sentence

[Walin]

I have a habit with votes...

I either like to play games with the voting, or follow the leader. That is, the lynch train.

Last game, I voted on myself, but this time I think I’ll abstain from voting entirely unless a confession happens.

But then, that person would be winning the lynch, so I wouldn’t need to vote anyways.

I’ll share reads and such, though; I don’t have any at the moment. Skimming too much.

[Snipexe]

54 minutes ago, Sart said:

Possibly Elim:
Snipexe: Tunneling on Sart like crazy. He's voted for me every cycle.

I would laugh really hard if you ended up being a villager, and the elims are just giggling watching me attack you so agressively.

Edited June 15, 2018 by Snipexe
Words are hard at night

[DrakeMarshall]

12 minutes ago, Walin said:

I have a habit with votes...

I either like to play games with the voting, or follow the leader. That is, the lynch train.

Last game, I voted on myself, but this time I think I’ll abstain from voting entirely unless a confession happens.

But then, that person would be winning the lynch, so I wouldn’t need to vote anyways.

I’ll share reads and such, though; I don’t have any at the moment. Skimming too much.

Why do you not wish to cast a vote?

[Arrae]

Yay for @Elandera and @manukos! The rest of you players, shame on you for your inactivity. Pretty sure Alv's said more game-related content in the spec doc than some of you at this point, and he's winning in the daily fashions. Come on, you definitely can do better than that!

[DrakeMarshall]

Alv is winning from the spec doc?

Actually pretty conceivable.

[DeTess]

...that was interesting.

Apologies for not being around to provide my own opinion on the alternate lynch. I had a rather busy evening. Anyway, there's a couple of take-aways I've got from this.

If Bort flips village, I'd think there are pretty good odds of Fifth and Dalinar (and maybe Rath) being elims together. If he flips elim, then I think that clears Dalinar, Drake and Sart (and makes Rath look a bit better). It also makes snipexe look more suspicious.

@Rathmaskal, you backed off from Fifth after some argument Dalinar made. can you tell me what part of it made you rethink him? I personally didn't see Dalinar make any argument that I hadn't seen before, but I could be wrong.

@Snipexe, can you explain w hat makes you so suspicious of Sart that it weighs against his position in the Elenion wagon? @Mr Doctor, you did explain your vote on Sart more, but didn't mention his Len-vote. How does it affect your read of him, if at all?

[Jondesu]

Sorry for missing the vote, I fell somewhat ill yesterday and failed to remember to log in. And yeah, I've been participating less in most of the games I've played lately, for a variety of reasons.  I'll try and be a little more consistent, though.

[Mr Doctor]

6 hours ago, randuir said:

@Mr Doctor, you did explain your vote on Sart more, but didn't mention his Len-vote. How does it affect your read of him, if at all?

Sart's reasoning in that vote seemed weird to me. Even though Elenion turned out Elim, something about Sart’s post here seemed really strange. He claimed that defending Araris was apparently Village-indicative without actually saying why. I disagree with that statement, not because Araris turned out Villager, but because it wasn’t particularly AI at all. Araris’s arguments were non-existent, but by Sart’s logic, it is Village-like to defend him. The only way that I can think of defending Araris to be anything more than a player neutrally taking a side on an argument is the fact that Araris was Buttercup. But Elenion didn’t know that, and so I don’t see any way that Sart could think that Elenion defending Araris was Village-indicative. I suppose that Sart could have gotten the same read on Araris that Elenion did, but I find that implausible because I don’t think that Araris showed any sort of indications, and Elenion was more likely to be attempting an early pocket.. This isn’t really an indicative argument, it just doesn’t make sense.

Sart has also made it clear that he doesn’t like iocaine situations, as he’s voted several times now to ensure that there’s always a decisive lynch, claiming avoiding vote manipulation. I believe that it’s more beneficial for Elims to have decisive votes than Villagers, because of the risk factor in an iocaine situation.

If we look at it mathematically, the calculation of risk is Risk = Probability x Loss. In an iocaine situation, the probability can be assumed at 50% to kill either person. The loss for either side is one of your players out of all of your players. Let’s assume full rosters of players.

Elims:

0.5 * 1/5 = 0.1

Village:

0.5 * 1/22 = 0.023

As you can see, the risk factor for the Village is significantly lower. Every time an iocaine situation appears because of an indecisive vote, the Elims face a risk factor ~4x what the Village does if they have a member in it. Even without a calculation, you can see the logic. And I imagine that elim!Sart or his team would be able to see it after analysing the mechanics of this game. Sart has expressed his desire to avoid iocaine, and by my calculations that is behaviour that would be shared with Elims.

(Wow, being able to say “by my calculations” is really satisfying)

As such, anyone who attempts to dodge an iocaine situation gets a black mark from me. I can’t think of a reason why the Village does not benefit more from iocaine than the Elims, due to an advantage of numbers and therefore a lower risk factor. To that end, anyone who consistently tries to get decisive votes becomes very suspicious to me. Yes, the Elims might be able to swing things with vote manipulation, but it would be an immediate red flag if a suspicious player suddenly got saved by it.

 

However, the case where Sart voted on Elenion muddied that logic a bit, because if Sart and Len were evil, then attempting to get a decisive vote on your teammate…is strange. Or, at least, it’s strange until you look at the rest of the votes for that Cycle. The other person in danger of the lynch was Sart, and he claims that he voted for self-preservation. So, if Sart and Elenion are both Elims, why would Sart off his teammate?

The potential reasons I can think of are:

• Sart is more experienced, at least in terms of raw game numbers. According to the spreadsheet, he’s at 50 to Elenion’s 27. No idea if this is at all relevant, though.
• Elenion was under a lot more pressure. Sart was under scrutiny for voting on Roadwalker, but the case against him seems flimsy now that I read it. Straw as revenge vote, Devotary based on the idea that Sart was attempting to get rid of Max with the night kill as a contingency. If Sart got sacrificed, Elenion might have just been lynched the next Cycle, and you lose two Elims instead of one.
• Sart is Prince Humperdinck, and his tracking was more valuable than Elenion, who was just a regular Elim with a Parrot.

That’s all I can really come up with. Note that these don’t prove that Sart is an Elim, but they do give possibilities for why his vote on Elenion was not Village-indicative. I think that it was neutral-indicative self-preservation at best.

The rest of Sart’s discussion of Elenion could be a sort of soft-distancing, but I don’t think that there’s anything decisive to say about it. I don’t agree with Sart that Max is more of a help to the Elims than the Village. When Max resurrects a player hit by the Elims, that player becomes all but cleared as Village. That’s a massive boon to the Village, and yet Sart is trying to get rid of it immediately.

 

12 hours ago, Sart said:

What the heck was that? I nearly died back there! I understand people suspect me, but be smart about this. I killed an Eliminator. Now look, a vote in self-preservation isn't the greatest evidence in my favor. However, that vote killed an Eliminator. If that wasn't enough for you, I also used up an item to decide the tie. Imagine if I was an eliminator, or if one of my eliminator buddies had that item. Why would we need to use that item? In that scenario, one eliminator would die regardless. Then why use a one-time action? It wouldn't make any sense, unless serious mind games were going on. The alternative is far more likely. I was a cowardly villager, who didn't want to get lynched.

The same thing has happened this cycle. I chose Fifth Scholar at random, and only switched because it wouldn't break the tie. I haven't developed a read on either of them, and now Bort's dead to my actions. You know what's worse though? This:

Quote

Vote Tally
Doc12 (1): Bort
Straw (1): Sart
Randuir (1): Fifth Scholar

That was the vote tally 21 hours ago. Notice the people who had placed votes? For one, there's only three of them. Even worse, look at the people who were nearly killed. It's the same people. Instead of promoting healthy voting behavior, we're attacking it. Do we have the memories of goldfish? Instead of going based off of retaliation, let's actually look at the thread. I'm going to look at Elenion's posts again, and come back once I have some better reads.

This post looks a bit like indignance in an attempt to prove innocence. It almost seems too cliché to be AI, but I’ll go through it anyway. His Eliminator kill was the final vote in a situation that would either kill him or an Elim. He’s already stated that self-preservation is a perfectly good excuse for voting on someone even if you don’t suspect them, so his kill is by his own admission…well, sort of an accident. At best it’s a matter of coincidence and convenience.

I don't agree with his assertion about attacking healthy voting behaviour. I don’t see why an early vote should be considered good enough to provide any protection from the lynch. As for whether it even was that, Fifth has been suspected for a while now, Sart was initially voted on because of my suspicions of him, and so the only one who got voted on for voting was Bort, as far as I can tell. On the whole, those three coming under fire isn’t punishing good voting behaviour. It’s barely even retaliation.

I really don’t know what to think of this post. On one hand, it looks like textbook feigned indignance, especially given the rest of my suspicions of Sart. However, when Rand avoided lynch, his tone seemed a bit snarky and I defended that fact when it was brought up against him, so perhaps this is Sart’s reaction to a similar situation. Additionally, I don’t think that Sart is nearly sloppy enough to pretend to be indignant. I also spent a good part of last Cycle admonishing everyone for letting votes go by with virtually no discussion, so I can understand why Sart would want to admonish us for something similar.

 

So… That’s a really long-winded answer to your question @randuir. Sart’s vote on Elenion changes my read in that it makes it more complex. I don’t like how he’s been acting, and there are good reasons for why elim!Sart would act that way. I would definitely like to see @Sart provide some reasons for the things that I’ve pointed out, specifically his dislike of iocaine situations and vote manipulation.

[Dalinar Kholin]

  In response to Mr Doctor, @Mr Doctor I don't understand why you consider being the final vote on an elim so non-important. You say

1 hour ago, Mr Doctor said:

This post looks a bit like indignance in an attempt to prove innocence. It almost seems too cliché to be AI, but I’ll go through it anyway. His Eliminator kill was the final vote in a situation that would either kill him or an Elim. He’s already stated that self-preservation is a perfectly good excuse for voting on someone even if you don’t suspect them, so his kill is by his own admission…well, sort of an accident. At best it’s a matter of coincidence and convenience.

1

Even if it is "sort of an accident," if he was an elim he would know he's putting the nail in the coffin of his fellow elim. So, if it was an accident he would have to be village, the only other possibility is that the elims decided to let Elenion die in order to clear Sart. That's not an accident, that's a plan (it could be forced out of necessity). If anything, the vote out of convenience (not planned) would be in his favor. It is only a matter of coincidence and convenience if he's a village, so how does this contribute or not affect your suspicions of him?

I think he has a point that we should generally be cautious lynching active people. If we lynch active people we are doing the elims work for them. HOWEVER, although I understand Sart's claim and don't think it should contribute to suspicion of him, I disagree in that lynching active people can give us information, in addition to sometimes being necessary. It should be a consideration, but not that important of one

1 hour ago, Mr Doctor said:

Sart has also made it clear that he doesn’t like iocaine situations, as he’s voted several times now to ensure that there’s always a decisive lynch, claiming avoiding vote manipulation. I believe that it’s more beneficial for Elims to have decisive votes than Villagers, because of the risk factor in an iocaine situation.

If we look at it mathematically, the calculation of risk is Risk = Probability x Loss. In an iocaine situation, the probability can be assumed at 50% to kill either person. The loss for either side is one of your players out of all of your players. Let’s assume full rosters of players.

Elims:

0.5 * 1/5 = 0.1

Village:

0.5 * 1/22 = 0.023

As you can see, the risk factor for the Village is significantly lower. Every time an iocaine situation appears because of an indecisive vote, the Elims face a risk factor ~4x what the Village does if they have a member in it. Even without a calculation, you can see the logic. And I imagine that elim!Sart or his team would be able to see it after analysing the mechanics of this game. Sart has expressed his desire to avoid iocaine, and by my calculations that is behaviour that would be shared with Elims.

(Wow, being able to say “by my calculations” is really satisfying)

 

10

Eh, what? Where are you getting 1/5 and 1/22 from? Technically, an elim should have a 5/27 chance of being hit and a village a 22/27. Maybe I'm missing something. Could you explain your math a little more?

Also, I think that forgets the possibility of vote manipulation. A vote manipulation is worth to save an elim teammate, but it is also worth to cause a double lynch (pretending to save an elim teammate). Soooo, having a decisive vote stops vote manipulation from causing a double lynch or saving a teammate when only the elims know who their teammates are. Thus, it could also be a village thing even if your math is correct.

9 hours ago, randuir said:

...that was interesting.

Apologies for not being around to provide my own opinion on the alternate lynch. I had a rather busy evening. Anyway, there's a couple of take-aways I've got from this.

If Bort flips village, I'd think there are pretty good odds of Fifth and Dalinar (and maybe Rath) being elims together. If he flips elim, then I think that clears Dalinar, Drake and Sart (and makes Rath look a bit better). It also makes snipexe look more suspicious.@Rathmaskal

6

First of all, regardless what happens, me defending Fifth is not the same thing as being on his team. I've openly defended him because I think the lynch on him was pretty weak and wasn't going to help us. You voted because he voted for you (I found and still find the reasons to lynch you pretty solid, and don't count that against him). Rath and Doc had weak suspicions, thus everyone with a vote on him (from my perspective) had poor reasons, it seemed like a mislynch waiting to happen. Second, the weirdness with the dagger. If I was providing a counterlynch to Fifth, I would have told him to put his dagger on Bort not Rand, that seems like pretty poor coordination. Not to mention a totally unnecessary waste of a valuable elim tool when we already suspect the elims have little or no vote manipulation.

That said, there were some points made about Fifth and Elenion that caught my attention and may make me rethink my position. Could someone post them or point me to them? @Fifth Scholar What is your defense in thsi regard? If you've already commented on these I didn't see it.

@Straw Why have you been so quiet? I can't make heads or tails of it, but it's beginning to become weird. 

@randuir If you Bort flips evil you forgot to include Randuir on the elim suspicion list. He defended you vigorously, certainly equally or more as I did fifth.

[DeTess]

2 hours ago, Mr Doctor said:

Sart has also made it clear that he doesn’t like iocaine situations, as he’s voted several times now to ensure that there’s always a decisive lynch, claiming avoiding vote manipulation. I believe that it’s more beneficial for Elims to have decisive votes than Villagers, because of the risk factor in an iocaine situation.

If we look at it mathematically, the calculation of risk is Risk = Probability x Loss. In an iocaine situation, the probability can be assumed at 50% to kill either person. The loss for either side is one of your players out of all of your players. Let’s assume full rosters of players.

Elims:

0.5 * 1/5 = 0.1

Village:

0.5 * 1/22 = 0.023

As you can see, the risk factor for the Village is significantly lower. Every time an iocaine situation appears because of an indecisive vote, the Elims face a risk factor ~4x what the Village does if they have a member in it. Even without a calculation, you can see the logic. And I imagine that elim!Sart or his team would be able to see it after analysing the mechanics of this game. Sart has expressed his desire to avoid iocaine, and by my calculations that is behaviour that would be shared with Elims.

(Wow, being able to say “by my calculations” is really satisfying)

As such, anyone who attempts to dodge an iocaine situation gets a black mark from me. I can’t think of a reason why the Village does not benefit more from iocaine than the Elims, due to an advantage of numbers and therefore a lower risk factor. To that end, anyone who consistently tries to get decisive votes becomes very suspicious to me. Yes, the Elims might be able to swing things with vote manipulation, but it would be an immediate red flag if a suspicious player suddenly got saved by it.

I don't really agree on this part. Leaving votes tied would seem rather dangerous given the opportunity for vote manipulation it presents. Creating ties near EoD between two major suspects can be very interesting for the village as we could then observe how ties get broken, but I don't think consistently breaking ties is indicative of elim behaviour. Consistently breaking ties in favor of elims is something else entirely, but I don't think Sart can be accused of that yet.

I also disagree with your calculation of the risk. On paper it seems correct, if you assume that one elim and one villager are up for the lynch. However, if I see a tie and believe that one person is far more likely to be an elim than the other, it would make sense for me to break the tie, as it would turn a 50% chance to lynch an elim into a 100% chance. It'd only really make sense to not interfere in a tie if you are equally suspicious of both victims and/or believe you can get information by observing how others treat the tie.

@Dalinar Kholin, that's fair enough, I suppose, given that I would suspect you for similar reasons if Bort flips village. However, it should be fairly obvious that I did not forget to put myself on there anymore than anyone else forgets to do analysis on themselves.

Edit: and now I actually read the entirety of Dalinar's post.

Regarding the dagger, it could have been done to provide this very argument. I'd also like to point out that, since Elenion got lynched with only 3 votes, and Sart had two votes, poor coordination could very well be a thing for the elim team. The Bort lynch also took quite a while to take off, so Fifth might already have submitted his action by then when I still looked like a likely target. However, this is a discussion I think we'd best continue once we know how Bort flips.

Anyway, regarding fifth and Len, I brought up the fact that Fifth mentioned he was quite suspicious of Len during D1 (but he settled for voting on Araris as Elenion didn't get any votes). However, during D2 he didn't appear to pursue this suspicion. He mentioned it several times when explaining his D1 vote or to remind other people the Elenion is aggressive both as a villager and as an elim, but he never re-analyzed Elenion or otherwise pushed for his lynch (or explained why he no longer was suspicious of him), which looks suspicious given Len's alignment and Fifth's earlier stated suspicion.

Edited June 15, 2018 by randuir

[Fifth Scholar]

13 hours ago, Sart said:

Fifth Scholar: The main point against her is that she defended Elenion. Elenion defended her in one of his posts, but also put her up as a lynch target in the same one.

Umm...where did I defend Elenion? Also, I’m a he. 

I somewhat agree with the rest of what you’re saying—I’m not liking the way that we’re focusing on active players, as lynching among them has gotten us no real results, only a lot of semiactives who are content to pop in and slap a vote down on anybody that has been voted on recently with fairly minimal justification. I saw Bort as mostly village, and I was surprised at the utter lack of serious thought behind that bandwagon. We should be looking a bit closer at some people nobody’s really bothered to analyze yet, really look at them, so we don’t waste the game focusing solely on the three or four most active talkers. Focusing only on the highly active players will get us one Elim at best, and a whole string of mislynches at the worst, as well as dooming all the players who are actually trying to solve the game, which kills discussion. In addition, I’d like more people to vote, to help us get reads on people so we can actually solve this game instead of lurching from one lynch to the next. 

[Elbereth]

Posting mostly to say I'll be significantly more active this weekend, and that it's been a difficult week. 

I'll also, unfortunately, have to start raising people from the dead if I want to keep my win condition up. Which isn't terribly helpful for a game that already appears to be having inactivity problems. :/ I'll do my very best to drive discussion as well, to mitigate the effect I have on the game, and do apologise for the absence these past few days. 

[Rathmaskal]

I wouldn't say I backed off Fifth because of an argument, more an opportunity for self reflection (I'm using that term broadly).  Honestly, I still don't like the move Fifth made D1, but that's the only real piece of evidence I can find there.  Given that I had been experiencing increasing amounts of doubt on my vote, I decided it best to pull off until I had a chance to re-read more of the content here.  So, you people can tell my wife that I'm not always stubborn to a fault!

At this point, Sart's comment does seem to carry a decent amount of logic with it - we keep killing off people who are contributing to the progression of the game and are actually providing data on their role this game.  I'm probably going to switch my focus, at this point at least, to the people who are just sitting around the edges of the game.  My first comment tonight mentioned the fact that we had a record number of abstentions for this lynch.  (For the record, we had 12 then 12 then 10 then 13...seems a few more people came out of the woodwork after we killed an elim...interesting)  Regardless, as the game goes on, we should have fewer abstentions just due to the fact that there are fewer players (again, I'm partially to blame for this last one).

Note: I'm not giving Sart a free pass here, just saying that when we're grasping at straws, why are we giving the people who aren't contributing a free pass at this point?

[DeTess]

15 minutes ago, Rathmaskal said:

Note: I'm not giving Sart a free pass here, just saying that when we're grasping at straws, why are we giving the people who aren't contributing a free pass at this point?

The most important reason for that is that lynching inactives does not give us a firmer hand-hold. Lynching actives at least generates direct interaction and discussion. If we where to all decide to lynch elephant earwax tomorrow, there'd be less of that. I doubt anyone currently active would just go and sit on their hands and do nothing if we decided to lynch someone that's less active, but the discussion around the lynch would generate less information.

I understand the general sentiment very much, but it is a move we should be careful with as we risk losing discussion.

Edited June 15, 2018 by randuir