Quick Fix 46: Mysteries within Secrets

[Kasimir]

Found scribbled hurriedly onto a slip of aging paper:

Quote

The door. The cursed door. Everyone's arguing now, of course. Everyone is Korathi, except that of course not everyone is. Makes any sense to you? Sure doesn't to me. Some of the fools are saying there's Jeskeri hidden among us. Merciful Domi, nobody needs that. I signed on to this expedition because Father Dedan was paying well for porters. Need the money for Ireden.

'Course, the others were telling stories about the pyramid. Saying that the expedition would find ancient treasure or writings. Or a blessing from Domi. I don't need any of that. I wouldn't get to put my hands on the treasure and Ireden needs food and medicine. And now the whole expedition has gone kayana over the door. Does this make sense, I ask you? Okay, so we tried to break down the door and it wouldn't budge. A pickaxe broke. But what's to say the door is divinely-guarded, or it won't open because there are Jeskeri among us? Kayana, I tell you. Utterly kayana.

I don't trust Sevat though. Says he won't brook us turning on each other. Would be nice if we could hold hands and sing songs together, but now that everyone's kayana? How's that going to happen?

And if there are Jeskeri among us - well. Who says they won't just cut our throats in our sleep?

What's wrong with this world?

Edited for spacing.

Edited July 28, 2020 by Kasimir

[Mat]

16 minutes ago, Sart said:

Right then. Time to propose my game-breaking strategy.

NOBODY VOTE IN THE THREAD.

I'm a Korathi. The Jeskeri combined make up a sizable percentage of the town, so I doubt any attempts to lynch a Jeskeri Practitioner will work. Meanwhile, the Jeskeri will be lynching themselves at a rapid rate to try and accomplish their win condition. Instead of killing ourselves, we should let the Jeskeri do our work for us.

Any votes will be viewed as Jeskeri aggression, and I will vote on the first person who votes, for as long as they continue to vote.

I mean... uh... yeah, I guess. There's a one vote minimum.

But like something about this doesn't make sense... or something :/ 

I don't really want to do that. And I'll say it as well, I am a Korathi- 1. I think it's odd how many people have been implying that even if it's what everyone wants to appear as, and 2. not having a lynch just seems like it would make it easier for the Practitioners to get their win con. And that is not what we want. The Jeskeri are just gonna eat themselves out anyway and we could at least try to do something like any other SE game. 

And honestly the game would be pretty boring without a lynch.  And please don't start the D1 lynch argument again  

So I'll probably be voting, but not yet, not this early. And you can vote on me if you wish, but it'll be worse than not voting at all.

[Ashbringer]

16 minutes ago, Sart said:

Right then. Time to propose my game-breaking strategy.

NOBODY VOTE IN THE THREAD.

I'm a Korathi. The Jeskeri combined make up a sizable percentage of the town, so I doubt any attempts to lynch a Jeskeri Practitioner will work. Meanwhile, the Jeskeri will be lynching themselves at a rapid rate to try and accomplish their win condition. Instead of killing ourselves, we should let the Jeskeri do our work for us.

Any votes will be viewed as Jeskeri aggression, and I will vote on the first person who votes, for as long as they continue to vote.

... No.

I highly doubt that the Jeskeri will be "lynching themselves at a rapid rate" while the Korathi blockade any in-thread vote. Doing so would get them much further to their own win condition, but it won't win them the game.

Because there's a Korathi Cultist.

@Elbereth, you may want to look at this for balance reasons. As Lotus asked (and I believe the startup thread said, somewhere) the Jeskeri Inquisition can only hit people in the Jeskeri doc, meaning it can only kill Jeskeri Practitioners and Jeskeri Cultists. That means that without the main, in-thread lynch, the Jeskeri Practitioners cannot kill the Korathi Cultist, and therefore have no way of winning the game.

That means that they either need to wait out the lack of votes by ignoring their Inquisition as well, or pray they can bus the Korathi Cultist to death with one shot and win before the Korathi pick them off one by one with their vote control. That would be highly unlikely, so I believe the Jeskeri

Meanwhile, the Cultists will be free to pick off whomever they want, as their kill isn't dependent on a vote. They can also fairly easily take control of the Jeskeri Inquisition if they need an extra kill more than secrecy. 

 

I'm saying this from a Korathi perspective. For one thing, we'd be handing a lot of control over to the Cultists on a silver platter, and for another, we're forcing an entire faction, with a large set of numbers, into a scenario where their odds of winning are nearly zero. That doesn't sit well with me.

[Elbereth]

5 minutes ago, Lotus said:

Question: Can the Jeskeri practitioners only lynch within themselves or from everyone?
 

Only within themselves.

[+Lotus]

Sun followed the weird old woman. He had never been completely sure why he was the only person to see her, but she seemed legit, knew his name ‘n all, so he went with it.

He hadn’t seen a high storm for years. Had they stopped? Yet nobody seemed to comment on it. Maybe he was in Shinovar. The plants were certainly strange enough for that.

He turned to a person pulling a cart nearby. “Has is occurred to you, that all this dirt is just plain weird? What’s wrong with some good stone?” The man backed away hurriedly.

Dang. Sun thought he must be loosing his flirtation skills. Their once was a time where any man or woman could end up with him with only mild flirtation.

Sun have a laugh and continued following after that old woman. She knew his name after all.

[Mat]

5 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

But like something about this doesn't make sense... or something :/ 

Figured it out:

5 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

I highly doubt that the Jeskeri will be "lynching themselves at a rapid rate" while the Korathi blockade any in-thread vote. Doing so would get them much further to their own win condition, but it won't win them the game.

Because there's a Korathi Cultist.

Yeah that. ^ That was it. Not having an in-lynch thread is a very Cultist strategy, and as I wish to lynch the Practitioners, I'll leave Sart alone.

[+Lotus]

Is Sart a new player though? (Forgive me, IDK, only been playing a few rounds) Cause that seems like a idea a new player might have. Rust and Ruin, I made enough blunders my first time playing.

Still might support a Sart lynch though. Just bringing this up. (And if he is a veteran, will definitely support a lynch with that)

[Kasimir]

3 minutes ago, Lotus said:

Is Sart a new player though? (Forgive me, IDK, only been playing a few rounds) Cause that seems like a idea a new player might have. Rust and Ruin, I made enough blunders my first time playing.

Still might support a Sart lynch though. Just bringing this up. (And if he is a veteran, will definitely support a lynch with that)

[OOC] I can't remember when Sart first started playing, and my memory isn't that good these days (old man brain, sorry, I still try to bluetext as OOC which tells you all about how forgetful I am) - but we played LG5 together.  

[Straw]

2 minutes ago, Lotus said:

Is Sart a new player though? (Forgive me, IDK, only been playing a few rounds) Cause that seems like a idea a new player might have. Rust and Ruin, I made enough blunders my first time playing.

Still might support a Sart lynch though. Just bringing this up. (And if he is a veteran, will definitely support a lynch with that)

Sart started in LG4 and is #3 in terms of games played, so no!

I find Sart's thing odd? He says that the Jeskeri can probably control the vote, which is very debatable!!! He seems to think that this will result in the vote swinging towards Korathi, which I disagree with! I think that the Jeskeri would probably direct the vote towards themselves, in an attempt to kill the Cultists!!!

[Mat]

Dasehe didn't know what to think. She had expected this expedition to be more science-grounded, but now everyone was arguing over what religion was best- and the temple was being left alone. It was all very confusing and overwhelming, these arguments over the Jeskeri- Domi forbid! And whether to just leave that alone.

Well. If there were Jeskeri among them, leaving that matter alone seemed like a bad idea to Dasehe. But she was just a farm girl, only here because of her faith and interest in archeological sites. She just wished the expedition would start.

But no. The Jeskeri threat was too daunting. The secrets that could lie in the temple should only be shown to Korathi eyes and heard by Korathi ears. Dasehe sighed. It would seem that this trip would be a lot more dangerous then it had seemed on the surface.

---

4 minutes ago, Straw said:

I find Sart's thing odd? He says that the Jeskeri can probably control the vote, which is very debatable!!! He seems to think that this will result in the vote swinging towards Korathi, which I disagree with! I think that the Jeskeri would probably direct the vote towards themselves, in an attempt to kill the Cultists!!!

Agreed here.

 

[Gears]

I typed this up earlier and forgot to hit submit. Responding to things said in thread will occur under the following.

Village [Korathi]: Crucially, the village doesn’t want the elims dead. They want the half-village dead. However, an orthogonal goal may be to reduce elim population without causing extinction as the elims wish to eliminate the village. The half-village will behave in ways distinct from a standard elim. They are trying to catch elims of their own, so they’ll be behaving like a standard villager [analysis, focus on lynching elims, etc.]. Possible strategies: Ignore elims altogether, focus on elims less than normal, lynch those who support focusing on elims.

Half-village [Jeskeri Practitioner]: The half-village is under attack from both fronts. The village wants them dead, and the elims want them dead, though not as much as the village.  The half-village will be engaging in a miniature game in their doc, complete with a lynch, so they must prove their innocence in one game and imply their innocence in the other. To successfully catch all of the elims, the half-village must catch the Korathi cultist, and so they must convince the village to try and lynch elim suspects. Possible strategies: Imply that lynching elims would be helpful, ignore the village lynch and hope that the Korathi cultist gets caught by a random lynch, blatantly proclaim that lynching elims will be helpful in hopes that the obviously suspicious play would seem too risky for a half-villager to engage in.

Elim [Jeskeri Cultist]: To win, the elims must eliminate the village before the half-village since all win conditions are game-ending. The elims are fairly standard, though they are playing 2 games at once. Acting to endear yourself with the village will endanger your trust with the half-village, so the elims have to be even more careful than in a standard game. Possible strategies [though I’m probably not qualified to speak on elim strategies since I’ve never been an elim]: Act village in the thread and half-village in the Jeskeri doc, suggest prioritizing the extermination of half-villagers [which might get you killed by the Jeskeri lynch, though this might be a good Korathi cultist strategy].

Concerning the no lynch strategy: This will fail. The elims need to exterminate the Korathi before the Jeskeri [because win-cons are game ending, see above], so they will probably kill a Korathi over a Jeskeri most of the time. Also, the Jeskeri lynch isn't random chance. They're playing their own little game in a doc, so the lynch will [hopefully] be based on sound reasoning. Even if the lynch is entirely random, the odds of the Jeskeri being wiped out before the cultists is 50/50 [I think, someone check that] because the numbers will quickly even out.

Concerning @Straw, your current personality must end sentences with an exclamation mark?

[Straw]

Just now, Gears said:

Concerning @Straw, your current personality must end sentences with an exclamation mark?

Close, but not quite!!! What's your next best theory?

Also, I'm personally going to avoid calling them the half-village!!! They're really more like an elim team playing another game within themselves!!!! Half-village almost implies that they're aligned with us!!!

[Gears]

1 minute ago, Straw said:

Close, but not quite!!! What's your next best theory?

Also, I'm personally going to avoid calling them the half-village!!! They're really more like an elim team playing another game within themselves!!!! Half-village almost implies that they're aligned with us!!!

Your personality must be extremely peppy at all times? I'm calling them the half-village because that's what El called them in the dead doc when she brought this up, but in the future, I will make an effort to call them the JP [for Jeskeri Practitioners].

[DrakeMarshall]

Now that RP is finished, game talk.

The way I see it it's not really too different from a normal elimination game. We pretty much need to root out a smaller and better informed faction before we lose majority. The catch is that the faction that's killing us (Cultists) is not the faction we have to kill (Practitioners). That should definitely change how we do analysis, but I really don't think it changes our overall approach to the game that much.

Which leads us into the other topic. Like loads of peeps have already said, I don't think Sart's plan is so great of an idea, and I have every intention of voting. If we don't use our lynch, we're effectively wagering that the Practitioners will all get wiped out on their own before we do, which is a bad wager since neither Practitioners nor Cultists want that to happen.

However, I also don't think Jeskeri!Sart would have suggested it. As much as I think the proposal would make us lose, to me it feels more consistent with Sart's attempts to be proactive as a villager at the beginning of a game, and it seems a tad on the nose for a Practitioner to be suggesting it, since I would argue it would benefit the Practitioners moreso than anybody else. So I also kinda oppose lynching Sart.

Tbh from the part of my brain that's still in elim-mode from last game, it kinda occurs village!Sart making a suggestion with backlash would provide a pretty good pretext for a mislynch. Kasimir @Kasimir, what do you think?

[Straw]

18 minutes ago, Gears said:

Your personality must be extremely peppy at all times? I'm calling them the half-village because that's what El called them in the dead doc when she brought this up, but in the future, I will make an effort to call them the JP [for Jeskeri Practitioners].

Kind of, but not quite!!!!

1 minute ago, DrakeMarshall said:

However, I also don't think Jeskeri!Sart would have suggested it. As much as I think the proposal would make us lose, to me it feels more consistent with Sart's attempts to be proactive as a villager at the beginning of a game, and it seems a tad on the nose for a Practitioner to be suggesting it, since I would argue it would benefit the Practitioners moreso than anybody else. So I also kinda oppose lynching Sart.

Tbh from the part of my brain that's still in elim-mode from last game, it kinda occurs village!Sart making a suggestion with backlash would provide a pretty good pretext for a mislynch. Kasimir @Kasimir, what do you think?

Somewhat same on Sart!! However, I do think his thing is more NAI than you're implying!!!! TBH, I feel like the entire Sart discussion is ripe for a bad vote!!

Speaking of bad votes, I'm going to place a (hopefully not bad) vote on TJ Shade!!! This is pretty much purely gut, but there's not much point in not voting!!!

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

58 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

That means that they either need to wait out the lack of votes by ignoring their Inquisition as well, or pray they can bus the Korathi Cultist to death with one shot and win before the Korathi pick them off one by one with their vote control. That would be highly unlikely, so I believe the Jeskeri

Meanwhile, the Cultists will be free to pick off whomever they want, as their kill isn't dependent on a vote. They can also fairly easily take control of the Jeskeri Inquisition if they need an extra kill more than secrecy. 

The Practitioners would need to vote eventually, since that's the only other way to kill Jeskeri Cultists. There is, however, no scenario where the Jeskeri Practitioners are completely wiped out without the main Inquisition. If necessary, the Jeskeri Cultists would claim in the Jeskeri doc and hammer a Korathi on the way out. We'd end up with 1-3 Practioners depending on how well they do rooting out Cultists, the Korathi Cultist, and maybe 6 or so Korathi depending on how many times the Cultists had to kill a Practitioner, how many Inquisitions the Jeskeri skipped, and assuming a 13/5/2/1 distribution. That leaves a decent chance of winning for everyone I think; the Cultist can claim in PMs in self preservation but there's nothing stopping the Practitioners from false-claiming the same. It would take a while for the Cultists to win, but it would be possible. Doing things this way could be beneficial, but I don't see a clear advantage in doing so. The point of this game is that it auto-balances so no team can maintain a big advantage. It is possible to disrupt that balance by killing too many Cultists too quickly, but that's not incredibly likely to happen and voting in thread is certainly more interesting.

[The Young Pyromancer]

@Sart you going to follow through on that pledge?

EDIT: Flame On!

Edited July 28, 2020 by The Young Pyromancer

[Ashbringer]

*Applauds*

@Devotary of Spontaneity, I... can’t understand what you’re trying to say. Could you elaborate?

[Kasimir]

Found scribbled with a lump of charcoal on an old stone. Dark charcoal strokes cut across what appears to be crude graffiti, but are barely readable, except in fragments:

Quote

MERRYN - ? looking for reason? (distrust)

I was first to speak with Sevat

reasons

                                                       no way to know... others would agree or disagree with Sevat's strategy

K A Y A N A everything is kayana

@DrakeMarshall [OOC] You called?  

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

2 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

I... can’t understand what you’re trying to say. Could you elaborate?

Nobody voting in thread doesn't have substantial advantages or disadvantages(other than taking longer) over everybody voting in thread because the game balances itself. It's impossible for the Korathi to win without voting because the Jeskeri Cultists would rather claim in the Jeskeri doc and let themselves get killed rather than let all the Practitioners die. The Cultists would probably aim for 2 Practitioners and as few Korathi as possible surviving the Jeskeri purge and depend on the Korathi Cultist to win. Voting in thread adds more risk/reward potential and is more interesting overall, but is still unlikely to be a runaway for any particular team.

[The Young Pyromancer]

Mancia Young heaved a sigh of relief after dropping off that bundle of letters. Nearly two dozen! Her fingers were still sore from gripping her quill, as even though the messages were short, they added up. 

She sat down to give her hands a rest, before a voice called to her. "Um, Miss? I believe there's some letters for you."

In hindsight, maybe Mancia shouldn't have sent that many letters...

[Haelbarde]

Morning all.

Suppose I never came up with a character name so I should go do that... Need to go do a few things now though so l'll be back in an hour or so to write up a proper post then.

[DrakeMarshall]

2 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

no way to know... others would agree or disagree with Sevat's strategy

Hm, considering the placement of your post, that's a valid point. Kasimir.

@Elkanah (Elkanah) consider yourself poked for the time being. Do you think the analysis/strategy is different for catching "Half-Villagers"?

8 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

Nobody voting in thread doesn't have substantial advantages or disadvantages(other than taking longer) over everybody voting in thread because the game balances itself. It's impossible for the Korathi to win without voting because the Jeskeri Cultists would rather claim in the Jeskeri doc and let themselves get killed rather than let all the Practitioners die. The Cultists would probably aim for 2 Practitioners and as few Korathi as possible surviving the Jeskeri purge and depend on the Korathi Cultist to win. Voting in thread adds more risk/reward potential and is more interesting overall, but is still unlikely to be a runaway for any particular team.

The checks and balances in this game are delightfully complicated. One way or another, I am expecting the late game to be rather interesting. There are just so many possibilities 

But as far as I can tell, I think not voting does put us at a rather significant disadvantage:

• The Jeskeri lynch will kill only Jeskeri.
• The Cultist kill will target more Korathi to compensate.
• So long as this lasts, Practitioners will only really be killed by the Jeskeri lynch, which will generally be controlled mainly by the Practitioners themselves. Since dead Practitioners is the Korathi win condition, this is not an optimal state of affairs.
• The Cultists can only really afford to kill Practitioners if several more Korathi are dead than Practitioners (since unless I'm mistaken they need to wipe out the Korathi before the Practitioners in order to win), but since one Jeskeri of some kind will have died every cycle due to the Jeskeri lynch, that can only ever happen if most of the Jeskeri Cultists are dead and the Practitioners are already close to winning.
• Best-case scenario, the stalemate continues and everybody's number's dwindle, but we still aren't really any better off than we started.

Seeing as votes are happening, though, it might be a moot point. There's no voting minimum, and I will confess that I for one do not currently intend to end the cycle without a vote on somebody, it's probably best to proceed as if there's going to be a lynch today.

[Ashbringer]

51 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

Nobody voting in thread doesn't have substantial advantages or disadvantages(other than taking longer) over everybody voting in thread because the game balances itself. It's impossible for the Korathi to win without voting because the Jeskeri Cultists would rather claim in the Jeskeri doc and let themselves get killed rather than let all the Practitioners die. The Cultists would probably aim for 2 Practitioners and as few Korathi as possible surviving the Jeskeri purge and depend on the Korathi Cultist to win. Voting in thread adds more risk/reward potential and is more interesting overall, but is still unlikely to be a runaway for any particular team.

Why would the Jeskeri Cultists claim? If they don't, the Practitioners won't just kill themselves off and cede the win to the Korathi. The Practitioners might do a few Inquisitions, but while the Korathi Cultist lives they won't be able to win anyway, and the Cultists may just take over eventually.

Really I think the no-vote strategy will just lead to a Cultist win. A longer game means more Cultist kills, no lynch makes the Korathi Cultist invincible, and the Practitioners have to choose between going for their win con then bussing the KC or preserving their numbers by directly avoiding their wincon and waiting out the Korathi.

Plus, I really don't like any strategy that relies on... not playing the game.

Edit: ninja'd by Drake, ish.

Edited July 29, 2020 by Ashbringer

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

5 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

But as far as I can tell, I think not voting does put us at a rather significant disadvantage:

I'm assuming that the Practitioners will hit themselves at least once, especially with private votes, while fewer Cultist kills due to speeding up the game will be balanced by hitting Korathi with the main Inquisition, but I haven't really done the calculations for that.

6 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

Why would the Jeskeri Cultists claim? If they don't, the Practitioners won't just kill themselves off and cede the win to the Korathi. The Practitioners might do a few Inquisitions, but while the Korathi Cultist lives they won't be able to win anyway, and the Cultists may just take over eventually.

Really I think the no-vote strategy will just lead to a Cultist win. A longer game means more Cultist kills, no lynch makes the Korathi Cultist invincible, and the Practitioners have to choose between going for their win con then bussing the KC or preserving their numbers by directly avoiding their wincon and waiting out the Korathi.

Wiping out all the Practitioners obviously loses for the Cultists, but only having one Practitioner is also bad for them, and so long as there are at least two Practitioners it's possible for them to accidentally kill one of their own. Maybe there will be enough dead Korathi that the Cultists won't prefer dead Cultists until there's only one Practitioner left, but that wouldn't be for a while. I suppose claiming might be less likely than bussing even though votes placed in the doc can't be trusted, but it has a similar overall effect. Also, it almost looks like you think the Practitioners know who the Korathi Cultist is when that's definitely not the case.