Mid-Range Game 53: Unmade, Remade

[Mat]

I don’t think you should give me that much slack honestly  I have more time than that made it sound.

[Droughtbringer]

9 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

I don’t think you should give me that much slack honestly  I have more time than that made it sound.

I mean, having time and having time that you are able to spend on SE are two different things. Like SE is fun, but it's not relaxing for me the way other things are. So having the time to type up analyze, type up a coherent post, make sure you aren't painting yourself as an Elim (whether or not you are an elim) and everything else... it just a lot of work. So... yeah  

[Mat]

Just now, Droughtbringer said:

I mean, having time and having time that you are able to spend on SE are two different things. Like SE is fun, but it's not relaxing for me the way other things are. So having the time to type up analyze, type up a coherent post, make sure you aren't painting yourself as an Elim (whether or not you are an elim) and everything else... it just a lot of work. So... yeah  

Thanks, then  But I do want to come up with something, I probably owe that after my random takes and whatever I’ve done so far lol

[Droughtbringer]

1 minute ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Thanks, then  But I do want to come up with something, I probably owe that after my random takes and whatever I’ve done so far lol

I'll be waiting for it! 

[---]

Personally i think matrim should be given a pass for this day :P. 

EDIT:

This is obviously a completely unbiased opinion and have everything to do with his play this game and nothing outside of it yesyes :P. 

Edited September 24, 2021 by Illwei

[Droughtbringer]

Just now, Illwei said:

Personally i think matrim should be given a pass for this day :P. 

Why?

[---]

Just now, Illwei said:

Personally i think matrim should be given a pass for this day :P. 

EDIT:

This is obviously a completely unbiased opinion and have everything to do with his play this game and nothing outside of it yesyes :P. 

 

Just now, Droughtbringer said:

Why?

 

[Kasimir]

10 hours ago, Illwei said:

Also, for everyone saying it was the right call to vote kas yesterday: youre wrong. You can argue whatever you want but in the end the d1 lynch is about getting information. And we have no more information than last cycle. Oh, whats that? We know kas is down a life? Well woohoo! If hes village hes down a life and is an easier nk and if he's not then hes still not dead and everyone is village reading him for it. Woo. Hoo. 

Here's the thing.

So why didn't Village Illwei point this out last cycle?

It's all and very well for Illwei to point this out now as though it's suspicious for everyone else to not notice it. For the record, it was in my mega-post late last cycle, as I was weighing the odds between accidentally getting people off my case, and seeing if I could fake Sja out.

We know Sja went for a conversion play. While you don't find this informative, this is informative to everyone else who expected a kill play. It is logically and statistically impossible for all of Mat, Araris, TJ, and myself to be Sja and convert, so your position is not as intuitively or immediately obvious as you insist it is, and if you stringently objected to terminating discussion, you should have:

A. Actively fostered discussion C1,

B. Spoken out against this.

This reads like a belated and half-hearted attempt to deflect suspicion and collect Village credit and I'm back to thinking I shouldn't have given you a pass for the moment just for being in the DG suspect pool. You don't get to complain about it being an awful plan or bemoan the lack of discussion if you weren't bothering to call it out or foster any. That's performative.

You know what? Frick it. Araris, Illwei.

And Az makes a valid point about you voting beside me as well.

10 hours ago, Illwei said:

Still people dont interact with what i think is the most important point which is that if sja has a teammate, they can FUNCTIONALLY SILENCE TWO VILLAGE VOICES EACH CYCLE

Conversions are limited, and burning charges wantonly burns Sja's lynch resistance/NK resistance and increases Sja's team profile and trace. That's a consideration as well - lynches are less informative when there are fewer connections to be drawn. That is something Sja has to take into consideration too. This is the whole fecking point. That there is no straightforwardly, obviously correct strategy, and your suspicions are based on the fact people disagree with you on this.

You complain that people are not engaging with you. We have pointed out other considerations that matter or should matter to Sja. You continue to kick and scream we are not interacting with you. You dismiss - in the process - these points as well and then accuse people of not interacting with you. At this point, it is nothing more than self-congratulatory foot-stomping. You think some considerations are more important to Sja. So be it. Clearly, other players disagree with you. I don't see a way to resolve this because there is no fricking interaction - you're just restating your points again and again and dismissing any attempt at engagement as being pointless. So be it.

If you do not want interaction or engagement, if you do not want to actually take a shot at points, if you just want to repeat your point instead, then you do not get to blame people for refusing to interact with you.

I'm not going to waste further time on you or this.

3 hours ago, Droughtbringer said:

Okay, fair. Maybe Sja is going for the Serial Killer game, but I just don't see that being a valid play. Converting someone is a way to multiply your power.

See rejoinder to Illwei: it is, but it also makes it easier for you to be picked up on and presents connections. Conversions do not set the Village very far back when there are no reads and trusts. It sets the Village further back when these have solidified.

At this point, I still don't understand why you are trying to dispute this. Illwei's basis for suspicion is ever-shifting but at one point, appears to have been because people don't share her take on how Sja would play - specifically, the people who expressed the thought Sja would kill C1 instead. My suspicion of Illwei has been based off of Illwei specifically building in a defensive assumption into her wargaming rather than the more natural Villager assumption of fog-of-war: it has nothing to do with the conclusion she reached, or I would and should have also been suspicious of you and Elan. My point is that this assumption flows more naturally from an Elim mindset, as seen by how you aren't actually reaching the same conclusion via that assumption.

I am, in any case, further triggered by the points I have mentioned above, so I'm shifting my vote yet again apparently.

In fact, as you point out, Villagers can and do disagree on strategy, so that should be a further point against @ing the entire <Araris, TJ, me, Mat> set on the basis of "I don't see that being a valid play", because the point is not about which of us is right or what we see, or what we hope the game will be played like, but what most accurately captures Sja's mindset. The point of trying to accurately model or profile Sja is to be able to identify Sja. Identifying the true, correct optimal strategy for Sja is a distraction because we are not in the business of doing Sja's job for her and that's counter to what we want, so I'm not inclined to get baited into further fights about this.

[Mat]

There’s just no way this thunderdome isn’t v/v

Like this is the kind of post that makes me look stupid after a few flips but I stand by it xD

[Kasimir]

6 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Like this is the kind of post that makes me look stupid after a few flips but I stand by it xD

Are you trying to say we should lynch you if it's E/V >>

[---]

33 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

so I'm not inclined to get baited into further fights about this.

I'm not baiting you into fights. Me saying "I'm not going to interact with Kas on this anymore because he's in some sort of wierd OMGUS tunnel on me" isn't baiting. 

33 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

you're just restating your points again and again and dismissing any attempt at engagement as being pointless. So be it.

You can't say that "Illwei should have brought this up earlier if she was village" at the same time as "You can't keep repeating the same points over and over again"

33 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

bemoan the lack of discussion if you weren't bothering to call it out or foster any. That's performative.

MY comment was a direct indirect response to Chantara's post talking about how you made the right call. It seemed more indirect but that was intentional to try and let other people interact with it easier if they wanted to.

Since when did I say that set was in my suspicions? you're putting words in my mouth. I don't appreciate that. 

33 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

You continue to kick and scream we are not interacting with you.

And I don't appreciate that. 

--

Kas and Tani are town

Drought is >Town

6 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

I somehow read this as Illwei’s original voting post and was very confused.

The various exchanges with Illwei have made me lean towards agreeing with Kas; I already had different conclusions about the convert/kill decision than Illwei (which I mentioned briefly), and the point about coming from the POV of Sja being threatened fits with that difference. If it comes down to an Illwei/someone else vote at the end of the day, I’ll likely vote Illwei. But I’m going to chill on Tani for now.

I haven’t really thought through how Sja!Kas might play the game, but I doubt he would a gambit like he would have had to do here, if only because it doesn’t mesh with quiet RP that well. Honestly, putting yourself in the spotlight D1 is a great way to end up dead fast, and Kas is generally a rational fellow (except when porches are involved), so that doesn’t really fit with him being elim (and probably not a great conversion target either, at least not yet).

Specifically this post doesn't sit right with me. Mostly the bolded sentence. it's the nonchalance.

--

Kas you're making me want to punch you and that's not ever a feeling I've felt towards you before.

Edited September 24, 2021 by Illwei

[Kasimir]

Just now, Illwei said:

I'm not baiting you into fights. Me saying "I'm not going to interact with Kas on this anymore because he's in some sort of wierd OMGUS tunnel on me" isn't baiting. 

I'm not saying you baiting me into fights on this, intentionally. I'm saying the initial fight was bait and I took it, and I shouldn't have, because it's ultimately a distraction. You are further being disingenuous here on two counts. First, a tunnel is not a tunnel simply because you assert it is one. Second, you saying you refuse to interact because of what you claim is a tunnel on you, has nothing to do with: A. the ongoing fight about Sja's strategy, since more players than just me have already stated we feel Sja would take a different approach, and B. I was talking to Drought, not to you.

1 minute ago, Illwei said:

You can't say that "Illwei should have brought this up earlier if she was village" at the same time as "You can't keep repeating the same points over and over again"

No? Why can't I? It's perfectly consistent for you to have in general repeated the same points over and over, and at the same time, to have said nothing at all last cycle about worries of shutting off discussion, and at the same time, to have refused to foster the discussion you claimed was shut down.

There is no contradiction here, and it is disingenuous of you to insinuate that there is one. In fact, this is a new point against you from me - that if you don't bring this up last cycle and brought this up only this cycle and this late, it is insincere and performative; it reads more like an attempt to rack Village points than serious concerns about discussion.

If you want to fight this on a literal level, I am happy to concede it is literally untrue that you are repeating the same points over and over. I am also happy to argue you are not substantively introducing new points. The very fact that a decent chunk of your posts this cycle are complaints about tunneling, non-interaction, and that Sja would have killed C1 already points to this. And this is deflection: the point remains that it reeks of raw performativeness to only have qualms about discussion now and to have done nothing at all about it when given the opportunity to actually change the state of affairs you so lament.

9 minutes ago, Illwei said:

MY comment was a direct indirect response to Chantara's post talking about how you made the right call. It seemed more indirect but that was intentional to try and let other people interact with it easier if they wanted to.

Okay, but then why didn't you last cycle?

9 minutes ago, Illwei said:

And I don't appreciate that. 

Good, because I assure you I don't appreciate your dismissiveness either.

10 minutes ago, Illwei said:

Since when did I say that set was in my suspicions? you're putting words in my mouth. I don't appreciate that. 

Sure: you expressed suspicion of Mat and me for expressing our thoughts that Sja would kill C1. If you prefer, you can express suspicion of Mat and me for expressing our thoughts that Sja would kill C1 and at the same time, think that Araris and TJ - who have mentioned the exact same thoughts - 

On 9/23/2021 at 4:20 AM, Illwei said:

Well looks like mat was converted

Obviously kas wasnt going to kill someone on when he himself is that much closer to death.

This goes for everyone playing sja-anat: they wouldnt want to kill someone N1. Day 1 is when people have the least amount of info and are the least of a threat. If you kill (semi-randomly) on n1, then you need to get a convert in sometime later, and the later you get in the game the more you want to be killing people because the more information they have. The fact that Mat and Kas expressed that they would kill instead is ??

- are perfectly hunky-dory. The question would then be why.

[---]

I'm gonna be gone for the rest of the cycle. 

Kill me or not idc. Don't kill Kas, Tani, Drought, or Mat. I'd reccomend Araris or Chantara personally. 

[Ashbringer]

12 hours left in the cycle! Get your votes and actions in!

 

Vote Count:

• Illwei (2): Elandera, Kasimir
• Tani (2): Matrim's Dice, Araris Valerian
• Matrim's Dice (1): Droughtbringer
• Araris Valerian (1): Illwei
• Kasimir (1): Tani

[Droughtbringer]

7 hours ago, Kasimir said:

See rejoinder to Illwei: it is, but it also makes it easier for you to be picked up on and presents connections. Conversions do not set the Village very far back when there are no reads and trusts. It sets the Village further back when these have solidified.

At this point, I still don't understand why you are trying to dispute this.

My intent with the prior post here had been missed, I think I lost it along the way of writing it. 

I had been just intending to try and explain why I had been focused on a Sja that was converting, but somewhere along the line I got lost in arguing with you. My apologies for that. 

The only line that I posted, and that I should have expanded upon, was "could be playing a serial killer, fair" or something similar and then just left it at that. 

Essentially what I was wanting to say and then forgot about was "hey, I'm blind sometimes and tunneled in on just converting, here are my reasons. Sja playing as an SK is a fair argument and something we should also be keeping in mind."

So... sorry that I wasn't make clear, and I will endeavor to be more so in the future. 

[Quivil]

Araris Kas

Now that that's out of the way, there was some mention earlier today of making the thread your PM. Why not just ask for one?

Also, I got a PM.

As to my suspicion of Kas, I just misread something and tunneled on the misread, thinking Kas was changing what he was saying about Sja's charges and being NK'd, when really he wasn't. Apologies.

Wow this looks bad with it's proximity to Illwei. I probably shoulda said that earlier, when I first noticed that I'd misread.

*awaits digging noises*

[Elkanah]

Wow, there is a lot of thread in this thread. sorry for my low engagement, it's been a busy week. 

I don't think Kas is Sja (as much as I think he deserves a quiet rest on his porch).

Mat and Drought read good to me... or at least not Sja. Either one is a decent conversion and drought is suddenly more active... I want to village read Drought for this cycle. I have liked his posts. Next cycle, who knows.

I want to go through and quote Illwei's posts line by line. They have many inconsistencies and assumptions, and I want to point each out individually. However, Kas has done a decent job of that and I really just don't have time. Their activity and content are completely NAI to me. I honestly can't remember playing a single game with Illwei where they weren't an elim. These posts all sound normal to me for Illwei, so I naturally suspect them. Who knows though. Oh wait! I should amend that. I don't think I can remember a game where Illwei wasn't an elim, but survived the first day. We've killed them day one before, and they were always village. 

All that to say I'm not willing to seal the casket on Illwei just yet. 

Outside those reads, I'm not sure. It looks like it's a three-way tie between Araris, Illwei, and Tani. That's just the way I like it and I think the way I'll leave it. If there was a vote for Chan, Xino, Mint, or myself, I'd probably add on to one of those to make it four ways.

[xinoehp512]

Prolly not going to do much this cycle

RL stuff

[Chantara]

24 minutes ago, Elkanah said:

All that to say I'm not willing to seal the casket on Illwei just yet.

I agree with Elk. I'm not quite sure how to feel about Illwei yet, but I'm not ready to lynch anyone else either. I'm not really suspicious of anyone yet (besides just the general paranoia). Then again I still have some time before rollover, so maybe I'll change my mind. Right now I'm leaning more towards letting the fates decide who goes.

How many roles have enough charges to survive a lynch or attack (i.e. stormspren), do we know? I can look it up.

[Kasimir]

Alright. Last committed attempt for the cycle:

Sja’s alignment stays fixed. Anyone else can be a convert. In other words, there are two senses in which Sja will be the one we are most likely to catch: first, because Sja will be the Evil player most likely to have a consistent gameplan, and second, because Sja is the only Evil player who can convert and must* therefore either survive a lynch, or be protected by her convert.

(*It is possible for Team Evil to not really care; they could play it that way too. But Sja gives Team Evil a certain advantage and at least early on, I think they aren’t likely to just sit there and let Sja get hit.)

In other words, it makes the most sense to go on a Sja hunt. Taking out Sja early tactically weakens the Elim team. She is – in any case – the Elim we are most likely to be able to catch, and how players respond to Sja coming under threat will likely help us profile and identify converts. That being said, any Elim is good - if we have the opportunity to pursue a convert subject, definitely we should go for that anyway. Any Elim we takes down punts Team Sja further from their nefarious goals.

As I alluded to earlier, I was set up with a PM at start C2. I had initially assumed that the Other (I will refer to them as Spook) was an Envoyform, but interestingly, Spook denied setting the PM up. My initial assumption was therefore that Spook could be safely removed from the pool of Sja candidates, but this has turned out to be untrue. Now, of course, Spook has incentive to do so, regardless, but suppose Spook is truthful. The implication is that Dai-Gonarthis (henceforth DG) has been the one to set up a PM, and likely set up a bunch of them in order to blend in and to KGB this game.

Either way you slice it, by OoA and rules, the PM starter had to be a Villager.

My profile for potential DGs include up to four players. I’ve noted that I consider Spook to be one of them. I think it is possible that Illwei is another.

A. Conversion Prospects

Well, let’s take a brief aside. Who could Sja go for, as a convert?

Quote

 

[ACTIVE THREAD]

Illwei, Mat, myself, TJ, Drought*, Elk*

 

I asterisk Drought and Elk because I think that filing them in this category depends on whether you’re going off C1, or whether you’re running off a different knowledge base. Clearly, Sja isn’t prescient and therefore wouldn’t know that Drought would return C2. I would file Drought here without hesitation anyway, but my read of Drought’s profile is unfortunately based off QF29. Essentially, these is the player set you look at if you’re going for thread control.

Quote

 

[LOW PROFILE]

TJ*, Elk, xino, Tani*, Chantara, Az, Mint, TUO, Araris, Drought*, Elan

 

I asterisk TJ – he’s not always low profile but has been slightly lower in this game and the previous one. These are players who can be considered to dodge a decent chunk of suspicion. Illwei, Mat, Quinn, and I think a whole bunch of players have commented about how players who stick their heads above the parapet C1 tend to get shot real fast. These are the players who know how to survive. I asterisk Drought depending on which game you profile Drought from.

Quote

 

[DECENT ACTIVITY]

Mat, TJ, Illwei, myself, Elk, Araris, Elan, Mint, xino, Drought*

 

Spook brought up a good point. The point of exercising the conversion mechanic is for Sja to have a hand in directly selecting her teammates. In other words, Sja is likely to choose someone to minimise the risk that her teammate will go inactive, or the risk that she will have to roll the dice on pinch-hitters.

There are exceptions. For instance, if Illwei is Sja, going with Az might not be an issue as she knows his activity level better, and might be able to feed off the team synergy. But in general, I think Spook is correct: Sja is unlikely to want to get an inactive teammate, and unlikely to want to roll the dice on pinch-hitters. The whole point of choosing your convert is you get to choose: willingly surrendering that to RNGesus and risk getting a pinch-hitter to plays completely differently to what you intended to look for would be a bit odd.

I think decent activity will be something Sja looks for, no matter what. The real question is whether Sja will convert among the [ACTIVE THREAD] set or the [LOW PROFILE] set. I think it makes more sense for Sja to go for a [LOW PROFILE] player in order to minimise her footprint and to let the more active players tear each other apart, but Sja may not have the same strategic priorities. It is also possible that Sja will convert in such a way as to cover her own deficiencies.

B. Who is Sja?

Let’s return to talk of my lynch from early to mid-cycle.

On the assumption that I am Village and unconverted (otherwise, there’s really no point in me doing this analysis), I’ve indicated it’s unlikely to me that Sja would actively push my lynch. The one exception is Illwei, due to her chaotic tendencies. But let’s leave Illwei aside for now.

There are really two – technically three – paths for Sja and convert to plot through the discussion at that stage. We have built into this assumption that I am Village and I am unconverted. The corollary is that Sja wanted to leave me alive as a distraction. The obvious question then is how this fits into Sja’s play for the cycle.

There are two ways Sja can benefit from this:

First, Sja can choose to quietly slip onto my lynch as a second or third voter, leaving most of the attention on the noisy early voters. Relooking at the cycle, Illwei was first voter – Mat flirted with the idea but never committed. Tani banded on, and Az was third. I think Mat mooting the idea and sort of leaving it there but not committing could fit with a Sja/Sja Convert that wants to make sure the Village takes the bait, but not wanting to get blowback. I think Tani and Az both had opportunistic extra votes. It is unlikely that both Sja and convert are on the same train, however.

Second, Sja can choose to oppose my lynch, or push back against it. In this category, we have Drought, who makes a big post on this, Araris with a side-vote on Tani and a lukewarm “Maybe don’t kill Kas this cycle”, and Elan, who joins my vote on Illwei. I feel like Drought’s big stand is not likely to have so much pay-off for Sja, as it risks drawing attention. It’s fine for a convert, though. I am divided about this as I think in general that strategies to gain trust (e.g. challenging bad lynches) aren’t as rewarding in a game with ongoing conversions. (Basically, what blocks the ‘Surely Sja must have converted X’ reasoning from destroying that trust the next cycle?) This means of this category, Araris and Elan stand out as potentially more suspicious to me. TJ suggests scanning me: I’ve pointed out this sounds great in theory but could end up exposing our action scanner unnecessarily, making it a poor trade-off. It’s worth noting that TJ has also been non-committal – I don’t think I’ve seen him vote this cycle but could be wrong.

There’s complete non-interaction too: Chantara, who admittedly needs to catch up, and we haven’t seen xino show up, I don’t think. Same for TUO, Az, Elk, and Mint (who is being replaced, so understandable.)

What’s really interesting is that of the complete non-interaction group, there’s just Elk and xino who are likely to fit an activity profile search from a conversion-minded Sja.

I think Sja would be more likely to be in the opposition or non-interaction group, with the exception of Mat flirting with the idea and veering off onto Tani. I think Araris is another option: but I do not have a particularly strong suspicion of Araris and as such am happy to lock in a tie between both of them. I do not really want to cast a killing vote for Illwei when Illwei is not here and when we're this pissed off with each other as I think it bad form.

10 hours ago, Illwei said:

Kas you're making me want to punch you and that's not ever a feeling I've felt towards you before.

I apologise unreservedly for making you feel this way. If it is better, I shall endeavour to ignore you from this point on.

In the spirit of pre-rollover honesty, this is exactly the same reaction I've had to your posts on me since C1 and I've never felt this way towards you before either.

[Elkanah]

... and there's my comfortable four person tie 

 

Illwei

[Mat]

Wait what's the vc

I will self pres lol I am not vanilla

[Droughtbringer]

49 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

but my read of Drought’s profile is unfortunately based off QF29.

Hey! I didn't even realized that QF29 had started by the time it had ended! The weird start delay and then start completely through me off and I was busy with work and figuring out school at the time. 

Since I know this games started I'll be quite a bit more active then... nothing. 

 

 

1 minute ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Wait what's the vc

Illwei (2): Elandera, Elkanah

Tani (2): Matrim's Dice, Araris 

Matrim's Dice (2): Droughtbringer, Kas

Araris Valerian (2): Illwei, Tani

I believe. Could be wrong there, it's a bit hard to find this from mobile 

 

[Elkanah]

By my count

• Illwei (2): Elandera, Elkanah
• Tani (2): Matrim's Dice, Araris Valerian
• Matrim's Dice (1): Kasimir
• Araris Valerian (2): Illwei, Tani

Subject to being miscounted 

 

Edit: ninjaed by Drought's definitely wrong vote count

Edited September 24, 2021 by Elkanah

[Mat]

2 minutes ago, Droughtbringer said:

Hey! I didn't even realized that QF29 had started by the time it had ended! The weird start delay and then start completely through me off and I was busy with work and figuring out school at the time. 

Since I know this games started I'll be quite a bit more active then... nothing. 

The QF I ran was definitely not QF29  I think Kas is referencing an old game.

Araris

I hate it but I shouldn't die here

Edited September 24, 2021 by Matrim's Dice