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Post by colorlessgreen on Jun 10, 2009 16:50:16 GMT -5
And soylent raised a vaild point, you have to think like the mafia. But every person thinks differntly, and you have to figure out how a given person would behave in such a situation. (emphasis added) This perfectly illustrates the broad purpose of my question. On a non-arguing-with-WM-related topic, I've got a couple people who are looking ridiculously malignant at the moment. It's too early in the day to name names, though. -CG
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Post by water_moon on Jun 10, 2009 16:58:36 GMT -5
#1: In any contest, one should assume that one's opponent is intelligent. If it turns out they are not, it's a lot easier to backpedal and formulate a strategy to deal with the stupid people. Inncorrect. You confuse intellegence with wisdom for one. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, to store in the attic of his brain so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. It is far more important to know your own intellegence, for it is when you miscalculate this that you blind yourself to the possiblities.
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Post by merlin on Jun 10, 2009 17:01:33 GMT -5
@watermoon - Goltar is giving a specific reason why he feels the NK1 is odd, and offers some other, and in his eyes better, alternatives. Soylenthred gives a very elegant laydown of mafia thought, but I happen to disagree on one aspect of it, so I point it out.
I don't see how you arrived at the conclusion that I agree with goltar's list, given my answer, or that I disagree with soylents post. Feel free to enlighten me however.
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Post by soylentred on Jun 10, 2009 17:03:25 GMT -5
The mafia will try to get rid of the most dangerous players first, because it's going to be that much harder once the lynchtrain gets started. Who's more dangerous? the doc / cop or the smart player? Neither mafia or most of the town know who the doc/cop is but we have a fair idea of the smart player(s). Both are equally dangerous to the mafia but only one can be a target on the first night Water_Moon is a smart player. I am surprised to see her this morning.
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Post by FIREHORSE on Jun 10, 2009 17:04:52 GMT -5
I often wonder what the merit is in trying to second-guess the night 1 kill. It is only any use if there is an answer to the question: "who would have had motive to kill player x on night 1" that isn't every player in the game. I totally agree. They had to kill somebody. We'd be raising the same question no matter who was killed. Let's stop living in the past and focus on our lynch
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Post by water_moon on Jun 10, 2009 17:06:22 GMT -5
merlin: really? but goltar was brilliant at picking out mafia for about 4 games before anyone started even listening too him, they were all paying attention to Liquid or Sint or fights to pay attention. The ability to sway a crowd is valuable assest and one that must not be over looked, a Cassandra complex is a handicap that can be used to mafia advantage. Whereas a doctor or cop just has to survive and remember to send in PMs to throw wrenches in the mafia works.
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Post by colorlessgreen on Jun 10, 2009 17:15:50 GMT -5
In addition to just surviving, the doctor and the cop have to either find ways to receive the correct information about who the future NK targets will be or figure out a way to subtly describe the results of their investigations. This is completely aside from the fact that they are also townies and need to act as townies in order to (a) secure a victory in the long term, and (b) not appear to obviously be non-townie and therefore get NK'd.
-CG
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Post by colorlessgreen on Jun 10, 2009 17:17:02 GMT -5
And soylent raised a vaild point, you have to think like the mafia. But every person thinks differntly, and you have to figure out how a given person would behave in such a situation. (emphasis added) I just realized that my emphasis completely failed to be added - I'm too used to other forums. I had intended to bold this section: "you have to figure out how a given person would behave in such a situation." -CG
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Post by water_moon on Jun 10, 2009 17:18:05 GMT -5
I don't see how you arrived at the conclusion that I agree with goltar's list, given my answer, or that I disagree with soylents post. Feel free to enlighten me however. Your own choice of words. goltar - Given that the mafia follows a similar train of thought If something is a "given" it is a fixed statement of truth accepted by the communicator and those communicated too. You chose a word to indicate agreement, rather than a conditional such as "If" therefore you are stating agreement with a conclusion.
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Post by water_moon on Jun 10, 2009 17:32:08 GMT -5
@cg it is bolded, it's just in smaller print and less noticeable.
And the doc at least can wrench things with totally random chance, yes following along and correctly guessing helps, but even a dart board still has a one in eleven (now at 10%!) chance of beign sucessful. As for the cop, he's got a better than ONE in THREE chance of randomly hiting a baddie N1 (assuming the intellegence to post coherient words means he's not going to investigate himself.)
The theory that the mafia is going after smart players basied on Nac Runo's death is suspect. Nac Runo is far more likly to be a power player able to scliently cause problems than a player able to guide the town to a sucessful lynch. Survive? yes! he's very good at that, he's almost never lynched despite his guilt! but his retoric is lacking in casting suspicion.
Therefore it is logical that the mafia targeted some one they feared might be a power role or at least some one they could all agree on as a person not easily framed.
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Post by merlin on Jun 10, 2009 17:53:55 GMT -5
@watermoon - - The power of persuasion is the engine that drives the voting machine. Smart players are able to feed the correct data into that machine. The cop/doc has opportunities to help, but they have to be smart and careful in what they do, or their usefulness ends soon. But, as an important addendum, it's much harder to persuade people if you don't have a reputation as a smart player.
- The word Given, in the contexxt that I used it in, is a conditional one. It is stronger then 'If', since it lays more of the question on the second part. It's actually accepting one of the propositions in a syllogism, and then questioning the validity of the latter. But you are arguing grammar and semantics here, focusing on form rather then content. Not a very prudent course to walk, especially not if you remember that i am not a native english speaker
PS. : Goltar has, afaik, never been treated as the 'lone voice in the desert', or as Cassandra, as you wish. But I haven't kept a trackrecord.
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Post by soylentred on Jun 10, 2009 18:22:59 GMT -5
The theory that the mafia is going after smart players basied on Nac Runo's death is suspect. I hope that was not directed at me - I answered your question as to which is more dangerous for the mafia- a smart person or the doc/cop. My original answer to the question of who the mafia would target was that it was as varied as the number of players who could be the trigger and that sometimes the decision is made by the person who can sway and nothing to do with any of the rationale we might ascribe to the decision. Bottom line = we got bubkiss
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Post by goltar on Jun 10, 2009 19:46:13 GMT -5
While I agree N1 kills are baised on previous games (if at all) because that's all there is to go on, the rest of that assumes: 1. the mafia are good players. 1b. the mafia have played previously with us (we have a noticeable number of newcomers, and frankly, they are more suspect to me for lack of a comparative value, not to mention sclience) 2. the mafia isn't trying to frame a good player. 3. random is random While I would normally agree with number 3, there are some people who haven't been nice plain vanilla townies from the get go, and the sample is simply too small. (sorry merlin) From the mafia's POV, if they were to pick at random, the stats say go for one of the power role people and Nac fits that bill. (Thus why I think he was killed, nolecub) As for the others, #1 and #2 are in conflict with each other, thus CG's assumption is basied on faulty logic that will lead to useless conjecture at best and cost us a good player at worst. How are 1 and 2 in conflict? We have more than one good player, more than four even, so there's no way that they are all mafia, and highly unlikely that there are no good players among the mafia. It's not particularly hard for people to frame somebody, if they can play the crowd. I for one think that it has most to do with swaying power really. Agreed. However, that is not the point I was trying to make. The point I was making is that Nac could be framed more easily than others. I totally agree. They had to kill somebody. We'd be raising the same question no matter who was killed. Let's stop living in the past and focus on our lynch Did they really? I was under the impression that they don't have to kill anyone, even though it is in their best interest (usually) to get a kill every night. And the questions would be at least slightly different depending on who died. PS. : Goltar has, afaik, never been treated as the 'lone voice in the desert', or as Cassandra, as you wish. But I haven't kept a trackrecord. Not quite that extreme, but in several of my early games back on the SPF, I was near 100% correct on the mafia (I've unfortunately lost my touch recently) and was mostly (though not completely) ignored by the town throughout each of those games. It was extremely frustrating. Bottom line = we got bubkiss I'd say we've got something. We've had some very interesting discussion thus far today, and I'm developing some potentially useful ideas. Not enough to act on yet, but things are pointing in particular directions, and I'm going to watch to see how things pan out.
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Post by water_moon on Jun 10, 2009 19:52:45 GMT -5
But you are arguing grammar and semantics here, focusing on form rather then content. Not a very prudent course to walk, especially not if you remember that i am not a native english speaker [/i] [/quote] Which is why your choice of words stuck me, it's an odd one, not found in normal use. The way the statement was made was one of agreement, there was no if, no then, no but, no mentioning of the resulting conlusion being far fetched. You asked where I got that you agreed with him, and that was where. @soy: it was directed a shaky pre suposition. But the problem with suggesting that the reasoning behind chosing the N1 target is TOO hard to pin point is that while each individual is going to have their own reasoning and adgeda, the mafia is not an individual, it's a group. Groups make compromises and present their POVs to each other to sway the others. Just as we are doing now. Groups are predictable if one knows the criteria. The town's best bet has always come from putting the pressure on the individual mafia members and manage to see who else squirms.
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Post by water_moon on Jun 10, 2009 20:04:41 GMT -5
While I agree N1 kills are baised on previous games (if at all) because that's all there is to go on, the rest of that assumes: 1. the mafia are good players. 1b. the mafia have played previously with us (we have a noticeable number of newcomers, and frankly, they are more suspect to me for lack of a comparative value, not to mention sclience) 2. the mafia isn't trying to frame a good player. How are 1 and 2 in conflict? We have more than one good player, more than four even, so there's no way that they are all mafia, and highly unlikely that there are no good players among the mafia. Good mafia will try to frame a good townie player at some point. That's how they are in direct conflict.
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