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Long Game 75: Alethi Politics


Mat

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Cara took a deep breath. She closed her eyes and mentally went over what she needed to do. Cara loved her eyes. They were a rich shade of gold that with the right attitude and attire made her able to pass as both a lighteyes and a darkeyes. Tonight she would be darkeyes. Cara stepped out of the shadows and sauntered into the tavern, acting like she was supposed to be there. Which, even though she felt like she had know idea what she was doing and this was her first time trying anything like this, she was. Cara mingled with the crowd. She needed to learn more about each Highprince. She needed to know which of the idiots were trying to kill the king, and which of the idiots were loyal. The one thing she already knew was that highprinces as a whole, were idiots.

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4 hours ago, Archer said:

Democracy is a way to get half-priced knives into the hands of elims

This is wrong, btw. Random Bystander, thoughts on how we should use the events? What sequence would you prefer? And what about items?

On 3/17/2021 at 7:00 AM, Matrim's Dice said:
  • Democracy!: All items, with the exception of the knife, are at half-price for the duration of the cycle.

And I disagree that villagers should horde contracts by the way. It'll take a while for the elims to get their hands on a knife and there's possibly only one assassin with only one kill. To say:

5 hours ago, Archer said:

I'll state the obvious that buying contracts of peace is a good idea. I think one highstorm would be enough to get a few people to five spheres,

It would be a massive waste of village spheres for nothing in my opinion. 

@Matrim's Dice, can we have two events during the cycle in which we have normal Highstorms? If the HPs choose Democracy! is N2 as the event for the next day, does it mean we'll have both Highstorm and Democracy! during D3?

And what kind of actions can we see while Spying? Can we see what kind of items they purchased from the market? And can we see item use as an action? I'll probably be focusing on action scans. 

For Events, wait, huh HPs cannot vote for Highstorm in N1, because then there'll be Highstorms in two consecutive cycles - D2 and D3 (natural). Don't know if event Highstorm and natural Highstorm can occur in consecutive cycle. Mat, confirm please.

If we can, and if natural Highstorm isn't considered as an event, then we can have - Highstorm (D2), N-Highstorm + Democracy (D3), Vengeance (D4 and D5) [if we have multiple suspicion or need to CC lower actives], Highstorm (D5), N-Highstorm + Anarchy (D6), Financial Crisis (D7) [hopefully by then we'd have bought the items we want].

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9 hours ago, Archer said:

I'll state the obvious that buying contracts of peace is a good idea. I think one highstorm would be enough to get a few people to five spheres, and then we should avoid making people much richer if we don't need to. Spying might also be a legitimate use of funds? Past that point, everything the highprinces trigger will be better for the elims than the village, in my opinion. Democracy is a way to get half-priced knives into the hands of elims, anarchy and political vengeance make using the exe harder, and financial crisis blocks the purchase of peace treaties. I'm not looking forward to whatever result is voted on there. I understand that the village can use some of the pricier items too, but still. Kills scary. 

Contracts of peace are 1) single-use and 2) is automatically used after purchase.

Edit:

@Matrim's Dice Are spies single-use?

Edited by Tani
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Okay, clarifications and stuff so far so that everyone's aware:

The way Highprince events work is in sets of six cycles. During the first six cycles, they must use each event once, and can choose to repeat one event. During the next six cycles, they must again use each event once, and one event a second time, but which event they double up can change. 

The Highstorms that occur naturally are totally separate entities from the Highstorms that the Highprinces cause, and do not affect the Highprinces' ability to vote for Highstorm. Also, the natural ones give 2 spheres instead of 3. (sidenote: if this ever gets run again, the Highprince storm should be renamed lol)

I agree with Gears' order of events, personally (for reference, it was Highstorm, Vengeance, Highstorm, Democracy, Crisis, Anarchy). It allows everyone to get 8 spheres before Democracy (one natural highstorm and two artificial ones, 3+3+2=8), so they can buy things they otherwise wouldn't be able to, what with that many spheres and the price reduction. Nobody will be able to afford the knife at that point, since the max. number of spheres anyone will have is 11, but apart from that we could each buy any item we wanted--there's nothing that costs 16 spheres, after all. It then shuts down the market the cycle after a lot of people have spent their spheres, thus minimizing the harm that event does because fewer people would be buying that Night anyway. Having Vengeance between the two Highstorms both fills the gap between them and allows us to get any extra killing we do out of the way early (plus, death-ties often lead to more information than RNG-ties, so they're useful early on). Finally, Anarchy is what's left over at the end.

The cost of Knives does not fall during Democracy, which means that no matter what happens, no one will be able to purchase one before the second natural Highstorm on C6.

@Matrim's Dice can you purchase multiple items in the same cycle, or is it one item per action (and thus, one purchase per cycle)? If the former, then during Democracy we'll be able to spend our stockpiled spheres on multiple items (anyone would be able to purchase both a legal document and a spy, with money left over for a slipped note, for example). If the latter, ignore this because you can only buy one thing; choose wisely

Contracts of Peace are used automatically upon purchase, and since they don't protect from the elim kill they're generally going to be less helpful for the village than the elims. tbh I wouldn't use my spheres on this. 

Slipped notes are... probably not worth your spheres either tbh (speaking to villagers I mean). Your vote will do more good if you actually place it on the person you suspect, since then other people see that your suspicion is serious and may join you, or at least start a discussion. But of course, if you place your vote where you want it to be, you'd have no reason to anonymously change it. 

Basically, from a village point of view, the useful items are the Legal Documents (protect yourself if you're worried about a misexe), the Armor (protect yourself if you're worried about the NK), and the Spy (catch an elim in the act, can also act as a rolescanner). Well, that and the Knife, but no one will be able to afford it before C6, and most of us won't survive that long, realistically, so... yeah.

Oh, and @Tani I believe the Spy is single-use.

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5 hours ago, TJ Shade said:

@Matrim's Dice, can we have two events during the cycle in which we have normal Highstorms? If the HPs choose Democracy! is N2 as the event for the next day, does it mean we'll have both Highstorm and Democracy! during D3?

The natural Highstorm that comes every three cycles doesn't count as an event, it's its own mechanic. I really shouldn't have named those the same thing xD

(Also, I appreciate you tacking that ! on the end of Democracy! :P.)

Edited by Matrim's Dice
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[A flashback probably.]

The boy’s head dipped down. Filico lifted his hand and placed it on his chin. “I’m Filico. You’re welcome to stay with me. I’ll tell you about your father.”

“My name is Dalar,” the boy said, raising his head.

Filico cocked his head to the side and stared at Dalar. He spoke, but as if he didn’t understand what he was saying. “Are you deaf, boy?”

 “Of course not.” Dalar pointed behind Filico. “It was in this house.”

“And you’re the son?”

“My sister did not want to raise me,” Dalar said.

***

I’m impressed, the program I’m feeding Mat’s former RP into to make Filico’s stories came up with the name Dalar on its own. Somehow I doubt he’ll be a recurring character though. :D

Alrighty, I have corrections to make. Last night, I made some very wrong assumptions. Specifically:

-I believed that the only source of new spheres was Highprince-triggered Highstorms

-I believed that the game would therefore end before anyone could get more than nine spheres (a starting three, and six from the sky)

-I believed that the knife could therefore only be purchased during the half-price sale bonanza

-And I believed that the peace contracts could block elim kills

Based on that, I thought that the best course of action was for the village to use peace contracts to negate all elim kills, and prevent the elims, who would have cash to spare because they would not buy peace contracts, from getting a knife, because extra kills by the enemy are bad.

In retrospect, I should have wondered why Armor was a thing if that all was the case, but I thought maybe it was for elims to buy.

Having re-read the rules, even the boring bits, I now realize that controlling the monetary supply will be rather difficult. :P Since we’re more likely to have a higher village to elim ratio near the start of the game, I now agree that we should make everyone flush with cash asap. Bring on the storms!

10 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

Step 1 of my plan that I wrote before we started the game: Stab(TM) Vote Archer.

I'm curious how the mechanics of this plan work. Would you be willing to move your vote to Ashbringer? Specifically Ashbringer. :ph34r:

Generally, how do we feel about Highprinces claiming? It could lead to greater accountability. It would also let us use scans and process of elimination to figure out who the people with named roles are. Trouble is, the elims could do that too. I'm thinking we should go all or nothing on this front, because we'd be at a disadvantage if the elims abuse knowledge of who the highprinces are to kill them off and gain a majority among the group. 

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1 minute ago, Archer said:

Generally, how do we feel about Highprinces claiming?

I'm Ruthar (who apparently is a Diagramist in this alternate universe).

 

1 minute ago, Archer said:

I'm curious how the mechanics of this plan work. Would you be willing to move your vote to Ashbringer? Specifically Ashbringer. :ph34r:

My plan does not allow for my vote to be moved onto Ashbringer at this moment, nor does it permit an explanation at this point in time. However, it does indicate that I should give some justification for my vote on you. Essentially, your vote seemed very safe. However, you are targeting a demographic that could very easily not contain any elims.

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1 hour ago, Matrim's Dice said:

The natural Highstorm that comes every three cycles doesn't count as an event, it's its own mechanic. I really shouldn't have named those the same thing xD

(Also, I appreciate you tacking that ! on the end of Democracy! :P.)

You could call them Highstorm and Perpendicularity (because Dalinar the highprinces decides when perpendicularities highstorms come but not when actual highstorms come) :)

 

Edit: I'm the first one on the new paaayyyge! :):):)

Edited by Tani
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I swear I already edited this back in to my first post. Uh.

5 hours ago, TJ Shade said:

[1] And what kind of actions can we see while Spying? Can we see what kind of items they purchased from the market? And can we see item use as an action? I'll probably be focusing on action scans. 

[2] For Events, wait, huh HPs cannot vote for Highstorm in N1, because then there'll be Highstorms in two consecutive cycles - D2 and D3 (natural). Don't know if event Highstorm and natural Highstorm can occur in consecutive cycle. Mat, confirm please.

[1] I'll say that if you target someone purchasing something you'll just see that they're purchasing something, but if you target someone using something it will specify the item.

[2] Again, the natural Highstorm cycle has no bearing on the Highstorm Event. Sorry :ph34r: 

4 hours ago, Tani said:

@Matrim's Dice Are spies single-use?

Yes.

1 hour ago, Quintessential said:

@Matrim's Dice can you purchase multiple items in the same cycle, or is it one item per action (and thus, one purchase per cycle)? If the former, then during Democracy we'll be able to spend our stockpiled spheres on multiple items (anyone would be able to purchase both a legal document and a spy, with money left over for a slipped note, for example). If the latter, ignore this because you can only buy one thing; choose wisely

One item per action.

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okay

hi

I'm here

yay.

Not a ton of thoughts yet, but I'm kinda surprised at how many misunderstandings there have been. I found the rules to be rather clear. excluding the highstorm/Highstorm thing.

maybe all the 'mistakes' and 'misunderstandings' are part of a meta elim tactic to spread confusion? to waste time n stuff? probably not. but maybe. 

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Just now, Quintessential said:

...does anyone ever hope to accomplish anything with poke votes, really? : P

...

Yes? :P.

They're pressure to either get that person here or try to get them to do something or whatnot :P. If you're not trying to accomplish something with Poke votes then why poke the vote? :P. 

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1 hour ago, Archer said:

Generally, how do we feel about Highprinces claiming? It could lead to greater accountability. It would also let us use scans and process of elimination to figure out who the people with named roles are. Trouble is, the elims could do that too. I'm thinking we should go all or nothing on this front, because we'd be at a disadvantage if the elims abuse knowledge of who the highprinces are to kill them off and gain a majority among the group. 

The elims could also narrow down the possibilities for who Dalinar and Elhokar are.

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1 hour ago, Archer said:

Generally, how do we feel about Highprinces claiming? It could lead to greater accountability. It would also let us use scans and process of elimination to figure out who the people with named roles are. Trouble is, the elims could do that too. I'm thinking we should go all or nothing on this front, because we'd be at a disadvantage if the elims abuse knowledge of who the highprinces are to kill them off and gain a majority among the group. 

What accountabilty? And why do Highprinces need to claim that they are highprinces if we are to hold players accountable for their actions? We can do that by just stating the actions (including everyone, not just HPs), there is no need for the HPs to claim that they are one. 

@Matrim's Dice, can we carry over the action from the day into the night. That is, can we use two actions in the night if we haven't used one during the day? And if we can use two actions in the night, what does the Spy action do? Give both, or give one randomly?

Gut elim read on Dannex and Books.

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1 minute ago, TJ Shade said:

@Matrim's Dice, can we carry over the action from the day into the night. That is, can we use two actions in the night if we haven't used one during the day? And if we can use two actions in the night, what does the Spy action do? Give both, or give one randomly?

Nope, just one per turn.

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"You are much smarter than I thought." Filico looked at the child quizzically.

"Very well, sir, you win this time. Come here and have a piece of the crown. "

Filico put the hordeling ball into his mouth and swallowed it whole. Filico walked towards the child and took the crown from him. As Filico started to glow, the child began to cry, begging for his crown back. Filico then spoke, in his usual whisper. "But not yet, little one.

***

So Araris isn't voting in alphabetical order. Or they have a limit of one vote per cycle. Thanks for the explanation though, it'd have been frustrating if you voted for secret reasons and refused to justify them. On that note, 

19 minutes ago, Illwei said:

Araris is village

@Archer, what did you home to accomplish with your poke vote on me?

I'm hoping you'll confess to being an elim and give up now. Barring that, my vote is less of a poke and more of a placeholder I am content to act on if it comes to it. I chose you out of the pool of people who signed up late and said they'd have low participation rates. If I get a village read on you, I'll switch to a different one of those people. If I get an elim read on someone, I'll move that voting that person. Right now, I've got a neutral read on everyone, but give it a day and I might get a lead and move. 

4 minutes ago, Flyingbooks said:

The elims could also narrow down the possibilities for who Dalinar and Elhokar are.

That's kind of where I'm at too. So if I have any role, named, highprince, or otherwise, I will not be revealing it. Might as well keep the suspect pool broad. Having the named guys around may be useful when the elims near parity. 

2 minutes ago, TJ Shade said:

What accountabilty? And why do Highprinces need to claim that they are highprinces if we are to hold players accountable for their actions? We can do that by just stating the actions (including everyone, not just HPs), there is no need for the HPs to claim that they are one. 

Here's a situation I can imagine. It's halfway through the game and you're in the highprince doc. Everyone says 'Let's make money fall from the sky!!!'. But when the votes are cast, three princes dissent in a seemingly coordinated fashion and choose to do Anarchy instead. That sure looks like the elim doc decided to try to change the princely effect of the day to one that suited their goals better. But we don't know who those princes are, so we can't act on our suspicions. 

More subtly, elim princes might regularly advocate for effects that don't help the village as much as other ones would. We might get elim reads on them because of it, but not be able to act on it because we don't know their identities. 

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3 hours ago, Quintessential said:

I agree with Gears' order of events, personally (for reference, it was Highstorm, Vengeance, Highstorm, Democracy, Crisis, Anarchy). It allows everyone to get 8 spheres before Democracy (one natural highstorm and two artificial ones, 3+3+2=8), so they can buy things they otherwise wouldn't be able to, what with that many spheres and the price reduction. Nobody will be able to afford the knife at that point, since the max. number of spheres anyone will have is 11, but apart from that we could each buy any item we wanted--there's nothing that costs 16 spheres, after all. It then shuts down the market the cycle after a lot of people have spent their spheres, thus minimizing the harm that event does because fewer people would be buying that Night anyway. Having Vengeance between the two Highstorms both fills the gap between them and allows us to get any extra killing we do out of the way early (plus, death-ties often lead to more information than RNG-ties, so they're useful early on). Finally, Anarchy is what's left over at the end.

Thanks for this. It's a good explanation behind the mechanics/reasoning for the order, so now I understand it better.

27 minutes ago, Flyingbooks said:

The elims could also narrow down the possibilities for who Dalinar and Elhokar are.

This is a good point. We shouldn't have the Highprinces claiming.

6 minutes ago, Archer said:

Here's a situation I can imagine. It's halfway through the game and you're in the highprince doc. Everyone says 'Let's make money fall from the sky!!!'. But when the votes are cast, three princes dissent in a seemingly coordinated fashion and choose to do Anarchy instead. That sure looks like the elim doc decided to try to change the princely effect of the day to one that suited their goals better. But we don't know who those princes are, so we can't act on our suspicions. 

More subtly, elim princes might regularly advocate for effects that don't help the village as much as other ones would. We might get elim reads on them because of it, but not be able to act on it because we don't know their identities. 

Hmm, can't any claims wait until such a situation occurs? I mean, I have a feeling that any Elim HPs aren't going to do anything so obvious anyway. They will probably just go along with the suggested order of events.

EDIT:

4 minutes ago, Illwei said:

Good thing I'm going to be in the anon doc in this game! I'll figure everyone out dw peoples.

Haha, reminds me of that one game where we were on a spaceship and had the anon doc for people controlling that one entity and you were PMing everyone to get info to figure everyone out. :) 

Edited by Whysper
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8 minutes ago, Archer said:

I'm hoping you'll confess to being an elim and give up now.

oh ho ho not when I have an anon doc to be in later!

4 minutes ago, Whysper said:

Haha, reminds me of that one game where we were on a spaceship and had the anon doc for people controlling that one entity and you were PMing everyone to get info to figure everyone out. :) 

;).

Edited by Illwei
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7 hours ago, TJ Shade said:

Random Bystander, thoughts on how we should use the events? What sequence would you prefer? And what about items?

(I'd be offended, but I know that you're poke voting me.) Anyway, I think the Highstorm should be one of the first used, and Political Vengeance should be one of the last. Especially that last one. If that one is used later on, we have a higher chance of getting rid of Elims. If we have it in a two way tie, and one is an Elim while the other is Village (this might sound a bit unsenstive) it would beneficial, because the Village most likely outnumbers the Elim team by a lot. And other than that, I don't really think it matters with the order of events as much. I'm assuming the Elims are most likely to go for the Legal Document or Slipped Note (Especially the Slipped Note). Honestly, the Slipped Note seems kind of useless if you aren't on the Elim team. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Random Bystander walked down a path, happily breathing in the familiar scents. Ah. It's good to be home. Even if I did accidentally get involved in the nightmare that is politics. She continued walking. She felt lighter than she normally did, as she was normally on other worlds. 

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1 minute ago, Random Bystander said:

Political Vengeance should be one of the last. Especially that last one. If that one is used later on, we have a higher chance of getting rid of Elims.

Unfortunately, it also gives the elims the opportunity to get villagers voted off twice as fast. See QF50, Breaker's actions after the rest of the elim team died. One of the reasons he came as close to winning as he did is that he convinced the remaining players to tie two villagers every cycle (it was a game where all tied players died). Obviously that's possible and even probable earlier on, but it's also less harmful then, and it gives us more information. Or at least that's the theory : P

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Just now, Quintessential said:

Unfortunately, it also gives the elims the opportunity to get villagers voted off twice as fast. See QF50, Breaker's actions after the rest of the elim team died. One of the reasons he came as close to winning as he did is that he convinced the remaining players to tie two villagers every cycle (it was a game where all tied players died). Obviously that's possible and even probable earlier on, but it's also less harmful then, and it gives us more information. Or at least that's the theory : P

Oh dang. I didn't think about that. Okay, yeah, I don't know anymore.

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31 minutes ago, Archer said:

Here's a situation I can imagine. It's halfway through the game and you're in the highprince doc. Everyone says 'Let's make money fall from the sky!!!'. But when the votes are cast, three princes dissent in a seemingly coordinated fashion and choose to do Anarchy instead. That sure looks like the elim doc decided to try to change the princely effect of the day to one that suited their goals better. But we don't know who those princes are, so we can't act on our suspicions.

And that's why we have our HPs figure out elim-y seeming HPs. Though since it's a limited PM game, they'd either have to get lucky to get PMs or have to be sure enough with their reads to out themselves. 

23 minutes ago, Random Bystander said:

Political Vengeance should be one of the last. Especially that last one. If that one is used later on, we have a higher chance of getting rid of Elims. If we have it in a two way tie, and one is an Elim while the other is Village (this might sound a bit unsenstive) it would beneficial, because the Village most likely outnumbers the Elim team by a lot.

Hmm, you say PV should be used last, which would be in effect for D7, but then you say it's important because we can put up a v/e train to find elims cause villagers are expendable as there are a lot more villagers. But, at D7, that's not the case, if the game's not done by then, it would very likely be close to the end, and there definitely will not be a lot more villagers than elims at that point. So if the train ends up v/v, that essentially is a loss. Especially since elims can fake their vote using the slipped note. 

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