Quintessential

@Elandera does Straw count for parity if he sides with the elims? I don't honestly think you're correct about you counting for parity, because you aren't an elim, you're a neutral. You have a completely different win-condition than the elims, and that won't change just because you've stated in the thread that you want to help the elims. So now, looking at the numbers for the case where you don't count for parity, see the following: Assuming there are five villagers (including a Dione and a Cambric), and there are 2 elims left with one being a vote manipper, then village-elim-DS is 7-3-2 right now. If the elims kill you and they get RNGd a non-vote-manip villager, that becomes 6-4-0, which is a +2 for them. If they kill you and get RNGd a vote-manip villager, it becomes 5-5-0, because the village loses 2 and the elims gain 2, so that's a +4 for them.So killing you has a 40% chance of a +4 and a 60% chance of a +2, essentially. Conversely, consider the case where they kill a villager; they know Liranil is Dione, but since everyone knows that, the Varvax Leader will almost certainly protect Liranil this cycle. So the elims won't target her. That means that they have four villagers to choose from, and of them, only one is a vote-manipper. Unless they somehow know which one, their odds are 75% chance of a +1 and 25% chance of a +2. So the worst outcome for them if they kill Straw is the same as the best outcome if they kill a villager. Additionally, the best outcome from killing Straw is more likely than the best outcome for killing a villager. I figure it's probably safe to put this here, without worrying that it'll tell the elims anything new, because if they realized last cycle that it was worth killing you then I doubt they would change their minds this cycle. Obviously if Elandera says that you count for parity, your numbers will be correct, but I don't think that she will because you could always change your mind at any time, so how would you count for parity?

...Straw, did you know Dannex was elim? Or were you just working against what the majority was attempting and hoping it wasn't elim-lead? Also, I think I know why the elims attacked you: in terms of actual physical votes gained or lost, it's the same to them whether you live or die. However, the DS doesn't count for parity so the votes you give them while you're alive don't get them closer towards winning, whereas once you die the votes do count towards the elim win-con. Additionally, there are either 4 or 5 villagers left and it appears that two of us are vote-manipers, so there's either a 40% chance or a 50% chance that the random villager gained when you die is a vote-maniper, which would increase their tally by 2 while decreasing ours by 2 (rather than an increase of 1 for them and a decrease of 1 for us), and would probably ensure victory no matter whom we exe this cycle. Edit: Also, I'm very glad that whoever the Varvax Leader was realized the elims would probably target Straw anyway. Listening to Straw last cycle, I thought the elims would never attack him; honestly as Varvax Leader I would have protected Liranil.

Well, Striker switched because I asked him to, and Somebody is a self-preservation vote, but you might be right. Still, I think a decisive vote is probably better than a tie or a close vote, since we have so many vote-manips in play...

Well, Dione is vote-removal, so @Liranil you should probably just remove Dannex's vote.

Yeah... neither of them seem like there's very much evidence against them. I wish we had something solid on one of them, or on anyone... but it looks like it's probably just going to end up being a shot in the dark, whoever we choose... Well, let's hope Dannex is elim, shall we? I don't have a preference, and since you're more sus of Dannex, I'll vote on them too so that you don't have to worry as much about spreading out the vote. @TJ Shade, @StrikerEZ could you be convinced to switch to Dannex as well?

Okay. Since you and Straw both confirmed it, I'm willing to believe you. And believe that you're village, for the moment, since if you hadn't removed that vote from Breaker, five people would have died rather than four. Liranil. If you're village, that means Straw's telling the truth about being the DS, since I don't see how else he'd have known you were Dione. So I won't vote Straw either, as I might have before he offered that proof (in the hopes that he was actually an elim and lying). I'm not sure what to think about Ventyl's train being all village, which is why I say I believe Liranil is village for the moment, but I guess that, as she pointed out, it is possible that it snowballed without elim help and that all six people on it were village. So that leaves the question of who to vote instead. I've been somewhat distracted for this cycle and the last one (I got a lot of Sanderson books for Christmas ), so I'm afraid I don't remember the exact arguments for SfS being elim. Could someone summarize for me?

Well, there are currently 8 non-Spy players. If there are 4 elims, then all the village has to do in order to not have lost yet is have one more vote-manipper than the elims. So long as that's the case, it's perfectly possible that there are 4 elims. At this point, the number of elims doesn't actually change anything, but still.

Wait... you're right, they did. I hadn't even noticed that, though if they're wrong all it means is that we're even more doomed.

Right, so basically we're doomed to fail now, huh? Unless we vote out an elim. 'cause if we vote out a villager we have - 1 village from exe - 1 village from elim-kill which makes 3 v 3 v 1. Fair enough, we're not gonna exe you then. We'll just... exe an elim and hope that you have no way of contacting the elims for future rounds, I suppose. Edit: though it's kinda tempting to vote you off anyway Edit edit: Wait what if Straw is an elim Dione trying to trick us into never voting him off? But... well that wouldn't make much sense because Straw isn't being suspected by anyone. And the real DS could just counter-claim... actually, what if it's a ploy to get just that to happen? I mean, elim!Straw claims DS and "aligns elim" to explain why he's not being killed off by the elims, uses logic to avoid the village exe-ing him, and then sits back and watches everything fall apart. If the real DS counterclaims, the elims either kill them or convince them to "align elim" as Straw has said he will. If the real DS doesn't counterclaim, then the elims have more or less saved one of their number in case we do manage to exe an elim this round. idk how likely that is but I don't see what the downside would be for the elims here... (I mean, except for "a villager somehow figuring out the plan"). Well, the downside would be "the villagers realize that Straw is elim" but by then it would likely be far too late.

Okay... so then why wouldn't we just exe you? That way, we are guaranteed not to hit another villager. The elims lose a +2 vote difference in you, gain a +2 vote difference from the village, and lose the villager death from the exe (because I'd be very surprised if both Liranil and SfS are elim, and the elims have at least one vote-manip on their side, possibly more if they can somehow coordinate with DS!Straw). So it's a net loss for the elims if we exe Straw. Also, how do you intend to communicate with the elims exactly? Do you have Heklo abilities in addition to Dione? 'cause somehow I doubt the elims are gonna be super eager to reveal their identities to you in-thread.

Wait, four of the six Ventyl voters have died? Huh, hadn't realized that... Anyway, I agree that it seems unlikely that all the Ventyl voters were village, so that means it must be Liranil. I know I'm village.

sighhh well I wish I'd gotten to play more than three cycles of this game... and use my Honorblade... Eternum how could you That being said, it was a lot of fun in the time when I was playing. It's already been said a bunch of times, but thank you to Ash for running it

Well don't go giving me away! No, I'm not the Spy lol. Though I suppose the elims might not believe that... if they kill me over this, I'm blaming you, Striker. Edit: 500 posts!

That's when an elim accuses another elim and convinces everyone else to vote them off in order to gain village cred.

I'll vote Breaker. His vote-hopping is really strange, and at this point he's my strongest elim read on top of that. I didn't vote in my previous post because I wanted to see how things played out and how other people responded, but so far there hasn't been much, and Breaker hasn't said anything to convince me he's vil, so now I'm voting.

*rubs eyes* oh right, that's this game. For some reason I thought the game with the weird elim win-con was one I read the rules for but didn't sign up for... (even though I haven't missed a single game since I started, so idk why I thought that...). Well that's good anyway. Though it means we have no idea when exe/lose is, since we don't know how many vote-manips we have on our side (does the DS count for our side?). Then again, the elims don't know either, so I guess it evens out. I'm not really sure I understand why the Spy would vote-manip, unless they were one of the people who was in danger of dying. Hmmm actually that makes sense. Of course, you're forgetting that they've only had two chances to scan, each scan has a... 50 or 75% chance of success, depending on whether the person is Cambric or not, and that's not including the fact that the Spy could easily have scanned only vanilla players. So I don't know how statistically likely it is that the spy actually has any abilities this soon, though I guess they could. (I don't know what my point with this is... whatever, might as well put it out there anyway)

Wait, but you also said you thought the Cambric is elim... so you think they have one of each? Oh. Er. That is exe/lose. If we exe a villager this cycle, then two non-elims will die. If the elims hit the DS they'll get an extra elim, meaning they'll have 5 vs the 5 villagers, and they'll win. Otherwise, the elims hit a villager and there are four elims and four villagers. The DS doesn't count for parity. So... ah. We have to exe an elim this cycle

Okay, so some of you may remember that I mentioned having an open PM last cycle? It was with Matrim. He never did claim to me, much less tell me the results of his scans, but he did say he had another PM open with someone who claimed Heklo, but said that they hadn't opened the PM between me and Matrim. So, confirming what we already knew, yes there were two Heklo, and one of them was in contact with Matrim. Which one--whether it was Ash or the as yet unidentified Heklo--I'm not sure. Archer thought there could only be one of each role, so he thought there must be only one Heklo. Right, I was actually going to say that. Before the end of last cycle, I hadn't seen him do much of anything sus, so I was willing to read his alignment based on my idea of what a new elim/new village player looks like. Since his voting patterns last turn were... ah, not great, I'm now reading him as elim. Or maybe that's just what they want you to think! In seriousness, though, I thought it was common practice for elims to kill people with incorrect reads to try to mislead the village. Is that not the case? I still think the list is useful, I guess, especially since we at least know Ash is village and wasn't deliberately ruling out elims to protect his teammates. I'm slightly confused why this doesn't look at Archer as well, seeing as Archer actually died from the vote... but whatever : P I'll read the rest of the vote analysis before complaining XD I mean, if Liranil's village she wouldn't know that BrightEyes was village, so idk whether docking makes sense? Regardless, I read her as village for now. I mean, to be entirely fair I've voted against self-pres before, or not voted self-pres (though in retrospect it was kind of dumb XD). However, the rest of your point is good. Breaker's voting was weird, too weird, I think, for it to be just his desire to fulfill a bet by dying before C3. Hmmm okay that makes sense. Given that, my read on Xino is now village. Also, there is a slim chance that the Cambric added the vote onto Archer earlier on at a time when it would have put him in the lead, or farther in the lead (does a time like that exist? I haven't actually gone back to check oof), and then the Cambric wasn't on to remove the vote when it became clear that there would be a tie. However, still probably a good assumption that the elims have a Cambric, since both the Dione removals seemed vil and I can't imagine there are three Diones... I'd love to be able to give a sophisticated "Hmmm I had noticed that as well" in response to this one, but unfortunately if Dannex is trying to avoid being noticed too much, it's working on me. I have him down as neutral right now just 'cause he hasn't posted enough for me to get a good read on him. Which could be the point... slight elim for Dannex. My updated reads: Village: Liranil, Xino, TJ (in-depth analysis post just now, makes good points, etc.) Neutral: SfS, Straw, Ghander, Striker, Mild elim: Snipexe, Dannex, Breaker I'm sorry for all these wall-posts : P the way the scheduling works out for me, I seem to be inactive due to sleep or family stuff when everyone else is popping off, so this is my way of catching up.

Er... I'm confused. If you're more sure about me than Snip, why did you read Snip as "mild elim" and me as "very mild elim"? Also, again, I didn't exactly bandwagon Archer. I had my own reasons for voting them, reasons that no one else had expressed yet and that I explained in my post. The reason I voted after the others is that the timezone I'm in prevents me from being on for the first nine or ten hours of each cycle, but I would have voted Archer regardless of how many votes were already on them.

Hmmm this perhaps isn't... the best situation. We now have one person with 3 votes and three people with 2. That means that if the elims have a Dione, they could cause a four-way tie, and if they have a Cambric they could cause a two-way tie. Also, any non-elim vote-manippers could, with all the best of intentions, cause ties between villagers. It's a precarious situation, so with that in mind I'm going to remove my vote. Archer I won't vote Breaker, because I still think they're village and I want to believe that the people who've voted for them will change their minds... But I don't want a four-way tie to be within reach of the elims, so I'm removing my vote on Archer. Hopefully that will help, and I'll be able to pursue my suspicion of him without causing a near-tie next cycle.

@Elandera can we get a vote count? SfS's vote on Breaker broke the tie I believe, but the vote is still close... (also Breaker, you can now, for a short period of time say: "The name's Breaker. Tie Breaker" XD I'm so great at puns)

*wince* that is fair. I've explained why I left my vote to when I did, but in retrospect I should have voted earlier. Still trying to find the middle ground there : P As for jumping on the Archer train, I'd like to point out that I voted Archer for different reasons than anyone else, reasons I explained in my vote post. I'm wavering a bit on that vote after the long analysis post that Archer made, but at the same time long posts does not equal village. Aside from that, I'm still somewhat confused by their reasons for voting you given that they read you neutral, and I still don't understand why a villager would try to save someone else on C1, especially since we didn't even have PMs to build up stronger reads and some amount of trust. Also, Archer is on the list of people who seemed likely to suggest an Araris kill, and they keep making assumptions about what the elims will act like that (coincidentally, or not) put the elim play they've exhibited before, and to some extent the way they're playing now, into the village category. So, with all of that being said, I think I'll leave my vote where it is unless it seems there will be a tie.

Well I was gonna put this part before all the quotes but now that I've added them I can't get the formatting to work so it'll stay here I guess. I haven't been on because sleep and finishing Oathbringer (forgot how satisfying the ending is), but I'm here now! I'll... attempt to respond to everything but there's a lot, if not in posts then in content. First of all, Ash is now officially my most village read. It's already been said, but this post is good, and it might end up being invaluable to us throughout the game, since unlike most of the other analysis done so far it doesn't rely on gut-read at all. Obviously there are some potential flaws, but I think Ash is right that there is at least one, and possibly more elims, in the final pool. Can't say I'm thrilled to be in the pool myself, but I get it--I do kind of fit the profile of someone who would suggest a kill on Araris (fairly new player, active from D1, have played games with him before, been suitably impressed by his skills, etc.). Given that Archer, my current vote, is in the pool, I don't see any reason to move that vote for now, but that might change as I continue to write since I've only skimmed the thread and this post is me working out what's been said in detail. Right, so Liranil does a good job of pointing out the flaws in Ash's reasoning, which means I don't have to! This post will be long enough as it is : P I understand the vote on Breaker, but I honestly think we should focus on the people in the pool first, since Ash's reasoning was solid enough that there's bound to be an elim or two in it. Once we've looked into the people in the pool more closely (including Ash, and of course myself), then we can widen our focus to everyone in the game, by which point there will probably be fewer people in the game as it is, and that will make it harder for any elims that are currently outside the pool to hide. I know people have pointed out that this seems sus to them, but I think most of them are missing the intended purpose: this isn't Matrim telling us who we should look at as a pool of potential elims, this is Matrim telling us who he's looking at and why. That's actually good--he's sharing his own thought process and being transparent. Mild village read on Matrim still. I... can't say I'm certain why most of the people having been voted for before would mean that there were probably elims involved in constructing the list. Many of the votes were joke or poke votes, and the ones that weren't were C1 votes, none of which were based on the Araris kill because it hadn't happened yet. By contrast, the list ignores reads, voting history, and previous playstyles and looks solely at each player's level of experience, their activity or lack thereof, and the fact that Araris was the C1 kill. I don't think the list is infallible by any means, that it catches all of the elims, or that we should exe everyone on it indiscriminately before looking outside the pool, but it's a good place to start. Awww you think I'm a leader? That's so nice of you Well, in finding the one who decreed Araris' death you may very well have also caught any and all people who, as elims, would agree to a kill like that. Already said what I think of Matrim's list--for that reason I don't think this is at all something to exe him for. Ah, and here's Matrim explaining what I said about his list. I didn't realize he had (like I said, I only skimmed the thread). I mean, we don't know that one way or another tho. But yes, metagaming is risky since you have to predict what level of meta people will act on if you want to use it, and then act on the next level up. And like. That's hard. (every time metagaming comes up I think of that scene in the Princess Bride...) Look, on the one had you're correct that saying someone is sus just because they think you're elim is sort of counterproductive, because villager reads and reasoning are wrong all the time. On the other hand, though, I don't think being defensive is actually a bad thing in general, since when someone accuses you of being elim and it looks like other people are starting to agree, you defend yourself whether you're village or elim. (unless you're Breaker during the first few cycles, apparently, in which case you attempt to act even more sus? XD) It's not really AI. Okay well time to tackle that monstrous wall of text I guess. I would respond to your vote on Xino but since your reasoning for it is (presumably) in the spoiler, I'll wait until I see that first. I'll include my final reads at the end of this post Well it appears Experience will be replaced by a pinch hitter this round, so even if they are a dud elim they hopefully won't be starting next cycle. I'd read them as pure neutral at this point, rather than village. I don't think it hurts anyone to say this: I currently have an open PM with someone, though I'm not Heklo and they claim that they aren't either. Since PM-opening happens after elim-kills, it can't have been Araris who opened this PM (that was the reason I asked about that earlier). Therefore there is in fact at least one other Heklo out there. While it's true that an elim wouldn't generally want to be seen directing the conversation, that doesn't mean elims don't do it (I mean, you in QF49 for example?). I currently read Snipexe as very mild elim, but mostly due to Straw's analysis of their post, which Snipexe responded to quite well. Hmmm so come to think of it I guess they're more of neutral to me too. The thing about directing the conversation actually relates to my response to part of your read on me as well--while I appreciate being read as village, I'd rather you considered your reasoning on everyone carefully, and that includes me. Specifically, in my case, talking a lot is basically NAI because I have talked a lot in previous games when I was village. If I stopped talking a lot, the people who've played with me before would note the drastic change in my playstyle, and they'd suspect that I was an elim trying to lie low. Therefore, since I've realized this, elim!me would make an effort to talk just as much as village!me (also I just like to talk a lot). I've skipped through the reads to Xino because this post is way too long as it is. If you read them neutral, why are you voting them? Yes, rules analysis is not very helpful as an indicator of alignment (anyone can think about the rules, and some people even write up their analyses before the game starts). However, rules analysis is useful to help everyone remember the rules and start thinking about the mechanics of the game, and it gets people talking in C1 when there's nothing much to really talk about. That gives us stuff to analyze later. Okay y'know what? I'm going to stop writing here. Oh, but I promised Archer a reads list (I don't usually have strong elim reads this early in the game, hence the elim category being "mild"): Village: Ash, Matrim, Breaker, Liranil (?), Brighteyes (?) Neutral: Experience, SfS, Straw, Ghander, Striker, Dannex Mild elim: Snipexe, Archer, xineo (for their insistence on there being three elims. Very very minor thing, honestly they barely even belong in this category). Edit: I am so so sorry... I didn't mean for this to get so long!

I think what Archer means is that they wanted to be able to PM someone this turn, but that nobody reached out to them. I would guess that there is in fact more than one Heklo. Also, @Elandera what is the order of actions for kills vs. actions? That is, if Araris tried to create PMs between two people other than themself, would that action have gone through? And do PMs stay open indefinitely? That was something I wasn't sure about from the phrasing in the rules, I think...

I guess it's possible that this vote-manip was a villager demonstrating existence, but since no one had PMs during C1, that would be harder--typically a person trying to prove themselves would say in PMs who they were going to remove a vote from beforehand. Unless they were just trying to demonstrate general existence? But we knew there would be a Dione in the game, and as Ash pointed out, this isn't necessarily AI... Anyway, I think it's more likely that the Dione in question removed one of the votes on Archer back when Archer was tied for most votes (since nobody actually moved off of them, the vote-manip would have stayed on Archer), and then wasn't on to cancel the action after the relatively last-minute swing onto Ventyl. That suggests to me that Archer, and the Dione, are more likely elim, if the Dione was willing to protect Archer D1, so I'll join you in voting Archer.