Long Game 75: Alethi Politics

[Ashbringer]

And that vote maniper wasn't Dalinar (unless he can turn votes to no-votes). Which... isn't surprising, but isn't really indicative of anything either. I think that makes me gut-trust Dannex a bit more.

Well... it's marginally better than a Spokesperson tying it. More info that way.

[Quintessential]

Just now, StrikerEZ said:

So, that's not how I was expecting that to go. I should've just kept my vote where it was. 

Yeahhhh pretty much : P

I'd say I'm currently most suspicious of Araris (when Illwei and Dannex were tied the first time, he was the one who broke it in Illwei's "favor", and the tone in which he did it read off to me). If Araris flips elim, I'd definitely be quite sus of Dannex as well.

For a similar reason (tone + timing) I'm suspicious of Elan's vote on Illwei. It wasn't a tiebreaking vote, but she seemed to think it was.

Of course, alternatively we could just exe Dannex : P unlike Ash, the vote manipped off of him makes me more suspicious of him, not less. And that might give some information on Araris, (potentially) Elan, and to a lesser extent anyone else who voted for either of the two when they were tied or one vote away from being tied (if Dannex flips elim that is)

[Ashbringer]

I don't think Elim!Dannex + Elim!Spokesperson makes too much sense. Dannex wasn't on for the last bit of rollover, so he wasn't on to self-pres. I feel like an Elim that close to death would at least make an effort to be on to self-pres if necessary instead of forcing the Elim vote manip to save him instead. E!Striker would imply E!Dannex more than E!Spokes would in my opinion.

I... lost where I was going with this  I didn't have much of a read on Dannex besides their relative quietness this game, but I'm not one to talk about that, am I.

[Elandera]

13 minutes ago, Quintessential said:

I'm suspicious of Elan's vote on Illwei. It wasn't a tiebreaking vote, but she seemed to think it was.

If that's how it seemed, it wasn't intentional. I knew it wasn't breaking the tie as Araris' vote did that. I was trying to create distance away from a possible tie in case there was vote manip on Illwei and the other person ended up dead instead. Especially when I didn't believe Dannex to be elim.

I'm with Dannex, though. What exactly was the reason for the votes on them? I don't recall seeing any reason which only created more reason for me to vote Illwei instead of Dannex.

As for the vote manip, that is curious.

4 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

I don't think Elim!Dannex + Elim!Spokesperson makes too much sense. Dannex wasn't on for the last bit of rollover, so he wasn't on to self-pres. I feel like an Elim that close to death would at least make an effort to be on to self-pres if necessary instead of forcing the Elim vote manip to save him instead. E!Striker would imply E!Dannex more than E!Spokes would in my opinion.

Dannex wasn't around, so if they are elim, it would make sense that an elim Spokesperson took away a vote to save their own teammate without drawing as much suspicion onto them as public votes would. Again, that's assuming Dannex is an elim and not a villager. If a village Spokesperson felt like me, they could easily have not thought Dannex a good exe candidate and took a vote off to save them.

[danex]

Can I just say, that was the stupidest least effective D1 I’ve ever been apart of. Like, both me and Illwei had nothing against us, I think 7 out of our 8 combined votes had zero actual reasoning attached.

I’m starting to be mildly suspicious of Quin, but I’ll look back at her posts before officially reading her as Elim.

[Quintessential]

Just now, Dannex said:

I’m starting to be mildly suspicious of Quin, but I’ll look back at her posts before officially reading her as Elim.

Suspicious of me for what, exactly? 

[danex]

6 minutes ago, Quintessential said:

Suspicious of me for what, exactly? 

You voted for me purely because you didn’t want to vote for Illwei. You could’ve just not voted for anyone. 

That whole post just sounded off. Especially because you didn’t say “I don’t want Illwei to die, so I’ll vote Dannex” you just said “I don’t want to vote for Illwei, so I’ll vote Dannex”, and something about that just gives me major bad vibes. 

[Elandera]

1 hour ago, Dannex said:

both me and Illwei had nothing against us

I don't disagree that there seemed to be no reasoning for voting you, but I did have reason to vote for Illwei. As good a reasoning as anyone can have D1. I am admittedly bad at reading Illwei, but their consistent statements that people were village seemed like a way to get people to trust them. Obviously, the suspicion was misplaced. However, saying it was the least effective D1 vote is a bit extreme. There are far worse outcomes than getting some proof of vote manipulation.

[Araris Valerian]

47 minutes ago, Dannex said:

You voted for me purely because you didn’t want to vote for Illwei. You could’ve just not voted for anyone. 

I would strongly disagree. Not wanting to kill person A necessarily means that you want to kill person B, if either Person A or Person B must die.

1 hour ago, Dannex said:

Can I just say, that was the stupidest least effective D1 I’ve ever been apart of. Like, both me and Illwei had nothing against us, I think 7 out of our 8 combined votes had zero actual reasoning attached.

I think the issue here is that you think D1 votes would normally have "actual reasoning" attached, when in fact they are almost entirely random . If they aren't random, then the elims were participating (since villagers can't really do much better than random), so the village wins out eventually in that case.

[Gears]

A quick scan of the votes D1. Final votes italicised. Votes without reasoning relating to the person at hand [excluding pokes, EX: "gut", "to avoid ties", saving the other person, etc.] underlined . I am colourblind, shout at me if I missed anything.

• Archer votes Illwei as a placeholder [The fact that they never changed this throughout the entire cycle concerns me. Not "suspicious" concern, just noted.]
• Lumi votes Taniel as a poke
• Araris stabs™ Archer
• Striker votes Archer for their thoughts about money
• Illwei votes Order as a poke
• TJ votes Ruby as a poke
• Quinn retracts Tani because of gut
• Books votes Araris for "fake-claiming"
• Books retracts Araris once clarity dawns
• Quinn votes Archer for gut 
• Illwei votes Whysper 
• Elandera votes Tani for not wanting a D1 X
• Tani votes Araris in retaliation
• Whysper votes Danex for shading people for incomprehension [@Dannex, here's your reasoning]
• Ys [forget me not] votes Illwei because of gut
• Illwei votes Danex [without reasoning, but they did mention earlier that they agreed with Whysper]
• Lumi votes Illwei for commenting about how long it's been since they've been X-ed as village. [This was strange reasoning. I retract my previous statement about not finding flaws with Quinn's reasoning this game.]
• Tani votes Danex
• Araris retracts Archer and votes Illwei for "LG74 vibes" [which I entirely disagree with, but alas.]
• Elandera votes Illwei to avoid ties [I don't particularly like this reasoning.]
• Quinn retracts Illwei and votes Danex because the train on Illwei is concerning
• Danex votes Taniel for not having reasoning but staying anyways
• Striker votes Danex because Illwei hasn't been suspicious
• Ash votes Danex to stay away from ties.
• Striker retracts Danex and votes Illwei for the tie.

Look at this sea of formatting. Very concerning. The reasoning on Illwei amounted to "placeholder", "gut", "vibes", avoiding ties, and promoting ties. Nothing about anything Illwei actually did. [Future Gears here: Elandera, thank you for the reasoning. I felt like those "village reads" were jokes and banter, but at least the reasoning existed. Also, Quinn had reasoning and dropped it, but I disagreed with it.] The reasoning on Danex is slightly more existent, with actual points about how Danex was implicating people for NAI things. 

The vote manip on Danex does not seem particularly AI. Villagers can think anything without any bearing on the alignment of others, and in a V/V situation, having one person be saved by vote manip strongly implicates the one saved, so an elim might take advantage of that.

[Quintessential]

9 hours ago, Dannex said:

You voted for me purely because you didn’t want to vote for Illwei. You could’ve just not voted for anyone. 

That whole post just sounded off. Especially because you didn’t say “I don’t want Illwei to die, so I’ll vote Dannex” you just said “I don’t want to vote for Illwei, so I’ll vote Dannex”, and something about that just gives me major bad vibes. 

Er... see what Araris said. To be more specific, I didn't want Illwei to die for the same reason that I wanted you to die: because when the two of you were tied, two people quickly voted Illwei, and both of the votes read... off to me. If I had just removed my vote from her at the time, she still would have had more votes (and I didn't want her to die, so...). Besides, I was somewhat working off of the theory that it was a tie between a villager and an elim, and at least one of [Araris, Elan] was voting to save the elim. All of that, plus the elim gut read I'd had on you for a little while, was enough for me to want to vote you. 

(so, @Gears see here for an explanation of my reasons for voting Dannex. None of it was directly related to anything Dannex did, except the vibes, but it definitely wasn't a random vote.)

[Archer]

[Very important backstory about Filico, mm yes. I’m so sorry]

Filico let the hordelings dissolve back into him, smoothly, instantly on impact. This received a huge cheer from the mummified tribe that was at that moment mesmerized by his showmanship and good sportsmanship.

"Quite the champion, young dragon rider!" Ebony said to the girl. She had grabbed an errant seed from the track and crushed it, earning her another round of cheers.

"I hope I can become just as good as you!" Soobie gushed, as he returned the high-five. 

"I hope so too, but let's see how it goes first," Filico said. He let the mummified group climb over the gates.

***

-Apologies for exing you, Illwei. My vote was cast for meta reasons. Illwei is alive in the MR, survived LG74, and joined this game to pad the player count (which was much appreciated, by the way). It’s never fun to be the D1 exe, but I felt if I was going to randomly vote, Illwei would be the fairest choice. Knowing that they ostensibly had little at stake in this game, I was watching to see if they would mount an overly strong defence, which might indicate they were an elim. I should have known better; Illwei’s gonna be responsive regardless of their role. But when I signed out Thursday, the most villagey thing they had done in my eyes was village read me, which I twisted in my mind into an attempt to get me to move my vote.

I didn’t really have any reads then, and at the time of writing this sentence, pre-thread crawl, I still don’t, besides noting that Quinn village read me too. So I left my vote where it was. At the time, I had something like three votes on me and Illwei had two, which didn’t help things. When I’m playing defence, I have less opportunity to make aggressive reads. I’d rather anyone but me be exed D1, but I’d already decided I wouldn’t self-pres, as the vote manips would see that as an elim tell and kill me for sure. So I left it and hoped the thread would find other targets, which they did. Even if I’d been on, I don’t think I would have moved my vote because, once again, vote manips are a thing, and I’m not one to mess with C1 ties just to absolve myself of blame if they flip village.

Now for some proper thread analysis.

-I don’t think elim!Striker would have so blatantly followed elim!Araris onto voting me early in the cycle. I’m ruling out them being e-e and village reading Striker because I don’t think elim!they would have followed anyone like that, coupled with their valid rebuttals to my accidental disinformation early in the round.

-(I'd be offended, but I know that you're poke voting me.)-Randby, in response to TJ.

I think this was a joke, but it felt a little off anyway. Emphasized that the vote was a poke so others wouldn’t follow TJ onto wagoning them.

-Flyingbooks was more active than I think I’ve ever seen them be. Good job. I liked what I saw.

-Illwei village read Araris, but provided no explanation, so I’m not sure how useful that is to us.

-Tani suffered from meta shock, and is operating by a different playbook, so I’m having a terrible time reading them. I think, in their shoes, their actions made sense as a villager. If I was used to no day kills and came in to a game and found everyone going kill-crazy, I’d be concerned too. Elim!them has more incentive to stay quiet about that and let us engage in what they thought was bad strategy. Also, they voted Mat, which precedent says should result in them receiving a billion votes from the overlords, so I think the GM took pity on them because they are a confused villager.

Wait a minute, Elandera makes a good point, This isn’t their first SE game. Maybe it’s fake confusion. Hmmm. Is it reasonable to assume they would have known that someone always dies, even if there are no votes, or not.

-Fomeno voted for Illwei, which is bad. But it’s also their first game, so I respect their willingness to put themselves on the line.

-Dannex and Illwei have very similar writing styles and are generally stream of consciousness thinkers. I think that triggered a bunch of people’s elimdars even though it’s NAI. Dannex leaned a little more into the all the votes on me are without reason! defence, which I have mixed feelings about. They generally have a pretty reactive playstyle, which I don’t think helps them be village read. From my perspective, they made an ‘I’m here!’ post with some flaws, got response pokes with some flaws, then immediately went on the defence and focussed on staying alive for most of the rest of the round. My best advice for you, Dannex, is broaden your focus next cycle so people have a reason to trust you, instead of just hearing reasons to not-exe you.

-Araris moved their vote late in the cycle, so I am officially confused about what their Plan is. It obviously has more flexibility than a patterned RNG. Maybe it’s something like they cause chaos with their role, or are playing based entirely on their gut and first instincts.  

-I didn’t really see anything wrong with how the votes fell late in the cycle. It felt like people solidifying their positions at the end of a cycle without much drama. That includes Flyingbooks’ stance.

-Credit to Quinn and Gears for playing high-effort games. It’s NAI for both of them, but if they’re being genuine, the lists are helpful.

-As for the results of the cycle, I’m not sure the vote manip tells us much. An elim would definitely mess with a v/v tie to create the conditions for a mis-exe. They’d also correct a v/e tie in their teammate’s favour. A villager would do it to make the results align with their suspicions. I suggest we watch to see their moves as the game progresses before we sus them for their actions.

-I’ve yet to decide who to vote for tomorrow. I made some village reads and hope the Bodyguard will protect someone if they aren’t at risk themselves.

-In other news, I have received GM confirmation that if the Hps activate Political Vengeance today and everyone votes for themselves D2, the game will end in a tie. Something to consider. Also, if no one comes forward to dispute this by the end of tonight, I’ll assume that there were originally 10 Hps, now nine because of Illwei’s death.

12 hours ago, Gears said:

I am colourblind, shout at me if I missed anything.

OOC: Is this Eliminate (Retract) easier to read than Eliminate Retract? Or do you have an established way of figuring out votes besides context clues and VCs

[Quivil]

Oh goodness. A lot happened.

Illwei because LG74 she was evil and I thought she was village. I'm just generally wary of Illwei now.

 

Edit: Waaaiit.

Oops. My memory broke.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Tani

[Mat]

24 minutes ago, Archer said:

[Very important backstory about Filico, mm yes. I’m so sorry]

24 minutes ago, Archer said:

OOC: Is this Eliminate (Retract) easier to read than Eliminate Retract? Or do you have an established way of figuring out votes besides context clues and VCs

Is there a difference? (Besides the parentheses on the first)

[Archer]

23 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Is there a difference? (Besides the parentheses on the first)

The difference is indeed just the brackets. People already do that sometimes with their retractions, I figured if everyone does it, RG colourblind people can follow along more easily. 

Also, Tani, votes cast at night don't count, but I think you figured that out already. 

[StrikerEZ]

So, I let myself sleep on things a bit. First off: I’m sorry Illwei for voting you. I got all excited about the idea of tying things, plus I felt like I should put my vote where my mouth was and actually go for the tie like I said I would. Though, in my defense, Illwei could’ve died anyway if I’d just taken my vote off like I’d originally planned too before Ash posted.

As it is right now, I feel a lot better about Archer than I did before. A lot of that big post he made was really reasonable and I liked the points he made. In addition, I think Ash is village, especially if Dannex is an elim. Unless Dannex encouraged his team to bus him (which doesn’t seem likely considering there’s a vote manip), it doesn’t make much sense for Ash to do a last minute vote on Dannex, especially because we know it couldn’t have been him trying to save elim!Illwei since she flipped village.

As for everyone else, I don’t have many reads. I still feel a bit sus about Araris and Elan’s votes, just based on the timing and how back to back they seemed to me (though that could’ve just been because I was back reading and there was in actuality a lot more time between the posts than I remember there being since they just looked back to back to me). I’d be down to exe either of them tomorrow, assuming they survive the night.

[Quintessential]

45 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

(though that could’ve just been because I was back reading and there was in actuality a lot more time between the posts than I remember there being since they just looked back to back to me)

Given that I'm sus of them for precisely that reason, it's definitely not just you lol

1 hour ago, Archer said:

I still don’t, besides noting that Quinn village read me too.

Wait, I did? The only opinion I recall having of you was that you were sus and worth sticking a vote on for a while (a stance which I may have adopted from Striker. Actually, Striker and I are agreeing a lot this game: our gut on Books and Dannex, original opinion of you, opinion on ties, reversal of opinion on you based on that long post just now, a lot of which both of us seem to agree with, Araris + Elan's votes on Illwei being sus, etc... What is with that? xD).

[StrikerEZ]

24 minutes ago, Quintessential said:

Given that I'm sus of them for precisely that reason, it's definitely not just you lol

2 hours ago, Archer said:

Okay coolio, good to know I’m not just crazy

24 minutes ago, Quintessential said:

Wait, I did? The only opinion I recall having of you was that you were sus and worth sticking a vote on for a while (a stance which I may have adopted from Striker. Actually, Striker and I are agreeing a lot this game: our gut on Books and Dannex, original opinion of you, opinion on ties, reversal of opinion on you based on that long post just now, a lot of which both of us seem to agree with, Araris + Elan's votes on Illwei being sus, etc... What is with that? xD).

I mean, we are agreeing on a lot. I don’t know why. But I will say that I don’t really have an opinion on Books, and me being sus of Dannex is more because of how others interacted with him and less what he actually said, if that makes sense. Besides that, we are agreeing on surprisingly a lot.

[Archer]

Striker-Quinn is the same dynamic as Illwei-Quinn with opposite energy 

29 minutes ago, Quintessential said:

Wait, I did? The only opinion I recall having of you was that you were sus and worth sticking a vote on for a while (a stance which I may have adopted from Striker. Actually, Striker and I are agreeing a lot this game: our gut on Books and Dannex, original opinion of you, opinion on ties, reversal of opinion on you based on that long post just now, a lot of which both of us seem to agree with, Araris + Elan's votes on Illwei being sus, etc... What is with that? xD).

Quote

*cough* @StrikerEZ note that Archer is doing more or less the same thing he got voted out for in the MR just now... when he was village : P

This comment specifically stuck out to me as an implicit village read. In the process of trying to find it, I realized that you made that comment before you voted on me, not after you'd moved on to other targets, as I'd remembered. That's on me for engaging in revisionist history. 

Random question, did anyone start with money? I started with zero spheres and I want to check that the GM isn't trolling us. I just need confirmation someone, anyone started with an amount of money greater than zero... 

[Flyingbooks]

Just now, Archer said:

Random question, did anyone start with money? I started with zero spheres and I want to check that the GM isn't trolling us. I just need confirmation someone, anyone started with an amount of money greater than zero... 

I started with 2 spheres.

[Quintessential]

2 minutes ago, Archer said:

This comment specifically stuck out to me as an implicit village read. In the process of trying to find it, I realized that you made that comment before you voted on me, not after you'd moved on to other targets, as I'd remembered. That's on me for engaging in revisionist history. 

Ah, that makes sense. I probably would have taken it the same way--though really it was more just me pointing out that Striker was voting you for something probably NAI, which is not the same thing as a village read coming from me : P

I started with 0 spheres ;-;

[+Whysper]

15 hours ago, Gears said:

Whysper votes Danex for shading people for incomprehension [@Dannex, here's your reasoning]

15 hours ago, Gears said:

The reasoning on Danex is slightly more existent, with actual points about how Danex was implicating people for NAI things.

Just to further expand on the reasoning for voting Dannex, here's what I said originally.

Quote

Dannex

Getting a bit of an Elim vibe from this. He pops in with this post that basically shades people for the misunderstandings. And in a hedging way at that. And then nothing more from him. I don't think Elims would draw such attention with a tactic like this since misunderstandings are easily cleared up by other players and by the host.

So it's really a combination of the shading for all the misunderstandings, plus doing it in a rather hedgy way. Then also that he only posted that and nothing else up to that point.

15 hours ago, Gears said:

The vote manip on Danex does not seem particularly AI. Villagers can think anything without any bearing on the alignment of others, and in a V/V situation, having one person be saved by vote manip strongly implicates the one saved, so an elim might take advantage of that.

And on the vote manipulation, even though Dannex didn't vote to self-pres, the fact that a Spokesperson saved them is indeed interesting. If it's V!SP, I'm wondering why they specifically chose to save Dannex over Illwei. If it's E!SP, then either saving an Elim teammate who couldn't be online to save himself. Or making Dannex look bad as Gears mentioned as a possibility. Which I guess would be rather clever to get us focused on him for the next day.  

EDIT: I started with 0 spheres.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Whysper
spheres

[StrikerEZ]

I started with a non-zero amount of spheres. And to be fair, I don't think what Archer did was NAI, I just also think that at this point I don't think he's an elim.

[Quivil]

I think Striker's evil! He's not telling us how many spheres he has!

Also, I also have a non-zero amount of spheres.

(Chaos Demon strikes again!)

[StrikerEZ]

32 minutes ago, Tani said:

I think Striker's evil! He's not telling us how many spheres he has!

Also, I also have a non-zero amount of spheres.

(Chaos Demon strikes again!)

I...I mean...is it so bad that I want to keep how many spheres I have somewhat of a secret? Like...you obviously do too. I'm just confused why you think that's an elim tell.