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26

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: September 19, 2018, 11:55:38 am »

Had a talk with someone about how in a couple of decades, people will be able to fairly accurately guess someone's age by which Star Wars films they saw first.

This got us talking about other benchmarks to measure someone's age.

First Batman
First James Bond
First Doctor
First Tim Currey character

Though my measure of Doctor is a bit off because I didn't start watching until Matt Smith. If I had watched Doctor Who as a youth, I'm sure Tom Baker would be my first. Doctor Who isn't quite as mainstream as the other benchmarks.

Hey, I can actually answer those...that's not normal for these kind of measures for me.  I'll be a test subject for the accuracy of this age-measure:
Keaton (the Batman)
Brosnan (Goldeneye)
Eccleston
Butler in Clue

27

Dominion Articles / Re: Castles

« on: April 09, 2018, 09:59:54 am »

I feel like this might be due to a certain lack of precision in the Castle Sniper... I could not implement something that checks the number of Castles left in supply, so I did "lowest supply pile". But in a game where the opponent hardly ever buys Castles (and your "Castle" strategies may easily lead to games where they never buy Castles), the lowest supply pile will be Province or Duchy, leading to suboptimal decision making.

Either you misread my strategy or I misunderstood how the simulator works.  I put Castles above Provinces in the buy rules, and always gave them the same money cut-off (except when I gave a smaller one for castles).  My understanding is that it should always buy castles first, then provinces if it can't afford a castle (or the castles are out).
Geronimoo's simulator can check castles left in supply...so I went ahead and implemented that version...so the updated rules for the sniper are:

Castles if count in supply Castles < 3
Provinces if total $ in deck > $18
Castles if count in supply Castles < 7 and > 3
Duchy if count in supply Provinces < 5
Estate if count in supply Provinces < 3
Gold
Duchy if count in supply Province < 7
Silver
This does about the same (57-40 vs buying castles-then provinces at $19+).
In a sample game, the Castles strategy picked up, 2 Estates, 3 Duchies, 4 Provinces, and 5 of the Castles, while the Sniper got 2 Estates, 2 Duchies, 4 Provinces, and 2 of the Castles (Grand and King's...he bought Small as well, but trashed it for King's).  So I'm pretty sure these buy rules are accurate.  The Sniper in the sample only got 1 province before the castles strategy started in on them, but he got both the really big Castles.

28

Dominion Articles / Re: Castles

« on: April 06, 2018, 03:10:37 pm »

I'm pretty sure in a BM game, mostly-Castles-and-some-Provinces beats Provinces-first-and-Castle-sniping-late. This should be reasonably simulatable because it's Big Money, I'd be curious to see the numbers.

Well I have done some simulation, though it's not optimized.

The Castle-countering strategy was fairly simple. It would always compete for Grand and King's Castle, and competes for Opulent, Haunted and Small Castle if it cannot afford a Province.

For the Castles-centric strategy, I have tried to implement a strategy that goes for Castles earlier than Provinces (BMU goes for Provinces with $19+ in deck). I fiddled around with the number of $ needed to start buying Castles, but I got the best results leaving it at $19+ as well, and then it still loses to Castle-sniping 33-64.

Another way to do Castles is to dive straight in. Surpringly, a strategy that always prefers Castles over Silver (i.e. that would open Small/Crumbling on 3/4) performs better! But it still loses to the Castle Sniper 41-56.

Feel free to come up with better bots!

I'm not sure what you did for the Castles-centric strategy...when I tried it, I got castles winning over the sniper you posted 57-40.  (I just added a Castle buy-rule above Provinces with the same $19+ requirement).

I wondered from discussion in this thead, if waiting longer would be better.  Increasing the wait time for provinces/castles beyond $19 improves things a bit, but hurts the mirror match.

So if we take the buy rules to be:
Castles if total money in deck > $X
Provinces if total money in deck >$18 and >$X
Duchies if Provinces < 5
Estate if Provinces < 3
Gold
Duchy if Province < 7
Silver

Increasing just the province start-money has minimal impact as far as I can tell.  I haven't played much with decreasing it below castles.

then for X=$18 I get: 57-40 over sniper (70-27 over BMU)
for X=$20 I get: 59-38, so it does just a bit better.  (but loses 48-50 vs X=$18)
for X=$22 I get: 61-36 vs sniper, but loses 47-50 vs X=$18.
Dropping X below 18 doesn't improve things much though, unless you drop it to 0, but even then it's barely squeaking out against X=$18 at 50-47.  And loses to the Castle Sniping (as noted by faust, 41-56).

29

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Game Over! Town Wins!

« on: March 29, 2018, 10:27:55 pm »

Thinking on it more, even if I could somehow avoid getting lynched I'm pretty sure I had still lost...
You only needed 3 unlynchable players and a vig to win it.

There were 3 possibilities for me:
1. Space investigated me...I had already lost
2. Space investigated vanilla townie.
In this case you had:
2 confirmed towns (schadd + other result).  + guaranteed 2 of 3 honest vig, cop, blocker.
Suppose 1 player in this game is scum...you lynch outside the pool of 5.  Then vig the remaining player, and roleblock the cop (who cops roleblocker).
Suppose vig is scum. If he shoots anywhere else, then he's guaranteed scum...so, lynch him. 
Otherwise, cop verifies he was roleblocked, and it's either vig or cop, 5 players, so lynch them both and win.
Suppose cop is scum.  He got blocked, if he claims "blocked" it's situation 2 above (cop or vig).  If he claims roleblocker is scum, then it's between the two of them, can easily kill both (even have an extra vig shot)
Suppose blocker is scum. If he shoots anyone, he's revealed as scum, since this is the only possible 2-kill situation.  If he doesn't shoot, cop copped him, and with 5 players you can lynch cop and blocker.
So, regardless of who the scum is, town wins.

3. Space investigated the vig.
In this case finally you only have 1 confirmed town.  You have 3 claimed PRs, and 1 of them might be scum.  Then there are 3 other players, and one of them might be scum.  I'm not sure town can guarantee the win here.  Let's see suppose they lynch an unconfirmed-VT, vig another, cop the last one and roleblock the cop.
Then if there are 2 kills overnight, the cop is known town, and the vig is known town.  If the extra kill is the vig, then the cop says if he was roleblocked or not.  If not, the roleblocker is scum, if so, the remaining VT is scum.  If the extra kill is the cop, simply lynch the roleblocker, and vig the remaining VT.  So, in this case town wins.
If there is 1 kill overnight, then if cop says he's blocked, it's either vig, cop, or remaining VT.  Lynch the VT, vig the cop. If town didn't win, lynch the vig (he was scum, so only 1 kill).
If cop says he wasn't blocked.  It's either the cop or the blocker. Lynch one and vig the other.

I'm pretty sure that covers all cases.  I could have waited for Space's claim, to know if it was the easy case, or the hard case...
blocking the cop is unintuitive, and so scum might be able to trick town into thinking that they can't confirm everyone and get to a 50-50 lylo (with 4 players and no vig).  But I feel less bad about missing the fact that townies needed to consider that a claimed PR might be scum.  Since in fact, they could win if they co-ordinated regardless of who the scum was.

30

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Game Over! Town Wins!

« on: March 29, 2018, 09:33:00 pm »

Ooh, glad to see my cop softclaim drew attention. Would've gotten me NK'd N1 had scum shot, which was the idea behind it.

And in the end it's still why I shot you...so it worked even better.

31

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 3

« on: March 29, 2018, 02:57:22 pm »

Forgot that I could argue for the potential of a claimed PR being a scum fake-claiming.  Oh well.

32

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 3

« on: March 29, 2018, 02:53:33 pm »

Oh, I guess they weren't technically ICs...oops...that was dumb.

33

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 3

« on: March 29, 2018, 02:45:17 pm »

gg town, sucked that datswan didn't submit a nk order night 1, and I missed the deadline by like a half-hour.
Then SK hitting scum n1 and town hitting SK day2.  Perfect storm, well-played everyone.

34

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 3

« on: March 29, 2018, 02:43:41 pm »

Yeah, sorry, I'm not willing to drag this out.
I'm scum, I surrender, town wins.

If I counter-claim anyone I'm lynched tomorrow at best.  So, I'm forced to claim VT.
At which point, you have 4 ICs and 3 unknowns.  You don't even need to use any powers to win.

35

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 3

« on: March 29, 2018, 01:40:36 pm »

I'm fine with the plan to mass-claim at this point.  I am however going to be out of town Sat-Tues, so that could easily mess things up if people end up having to wait for me.  I can claim before I leave tomorrow whether it's my turn or not I suppose.

36

Forum Games / Re: Vacation/Limited Access announcements

« on: March 28, 2018, 07:55:56 am »

VLA from Mar 31-Apr 3

37

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 2

« on: March 27, 2018, 08:21:08 am »

That was a super-scummy lynch of Robz.  I should have pushed my scum-read of Galz instead of getting distracted by the schadd thing.

38

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 2

« on: March 27, 2018, 08:00:04 am »

Or...maybe mcmc's reaction is relevant because it is what inspired my scum-read, whereas I don't particularly remember anyone else's reaction.  But lending credence to a town-read is a whole different ball-game IMO than lending credence to a confirmed town player.  Regarding your conversation with TWM, I dunno, it didn't seem like there was a need to interject into it?  I think my points were already made, none of them changed.

i disagree that it is a different ballpark, the probability of a townread being town is p high. even a not-townread

i mean you asked me a question. did you think anything about the several walls of text i posted essentially in response to that question

...

I think I'm just failing to explain...you posted something not answering the question, I re-posed the question, and started a separate discussion with you and with space.  Then, you answered the question, and had a back-and-forth with TWM while I was not around.  When I returned I addressed the bits of conversation directly addressed to me.  I then went to bed, I didn't feel like there was stuff there that I had a response to that would add anything beyond what TWM was saying and what I had said previously.  To me your response was basically, "Yeah, I didn't have any good reasons"...and I don't have a response to that.  If I accuse someone of doing something scummy, and they say, "yep, that was scummy", I feel like that ends the conversation.  I do not feel like there is a point in adding to that.  At that point, the only question is whether other people think it's scummy enough for a lynch.  Now maybe you don't feel like that's what you said?  But that's how it read to me.

39

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 2

« on: March 26, 2018, 10:03:02 pm »

My scum-read of mcmc, not my scum-read of schadd...to clarify above post.

40

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 1

« on: March 26, 2018, 10:02:29 pm »

I'm not sure I follow what you're "interested" in.  My original collection of thoughts is just the things that seemed salient from the previous day as I considered each player (and scanned their posts to remember what happened). One of those facts is that mcmc thought there was scum in your argument with witherweaver.  My reaction to that fact, given that mcmc is town, is to temper my original reaction, because I have no particular reason to believe that my read of the situation was in fact the correct one.  I'm not embracing mcmc's reaction, because I have no particular reason to believe that his read was in fact the correct one.

It feels like you accused me of taking mcmc's read and deciding you must be scum because of it, and so I explained the "value" judgments in my reasoning (i.e. recognizing mcmc's alignment reduced my town-read, looking at the rest of the day turned it into a scum-read), but then you accused me of not making a value judgment? I'm not sure what kind of "value" you're expecting...unless you just mean the original post?  I didn't offer much value there for anyone until the conclusion...I think you're just stuck on a style thing.

you seemed to me to be cherrypicking

mcmc said ww and me might be tvs. your reaction was that it was tvt, datswan's reaction was that it was tvt (and you seem to think he was town), space's reaction was that it was tvt (idk there is a decent chance they are town, you can care about someone's read without them being even likely town)

your reaction upon seeing mcmc's post was "nah i disagree" and the fact that you said you tempered your reaction after his flip suggests you wouldn't have been especially convinced by him initially; it seemed more likely to me that you were looking for a way to drop your townread of me and noticed "oh hey mcmc disagreed with me and flipped town" than that you had become convinced by mcmc's claim (especially since your wording didn't suggest you were specifically lending credence to him, e.g. that he is a competent town player or something. that is what i was referring to with a value judgement)

as well you had a rather confident scumread of me because you thought my place on the mcmc wagon was weird but twm and i have been talking about that for a while and you haven't seemed to be interested

vote: theorel

Or...maybe mcmc's reaction is relevant because it is what inspired my scum-read, whereas I don't particularly remember anyone else's reaction.  But lending credence to a town-read is a whole different ball-game IMO than lending credence to a confirmed town player.  Regarding your conversation with TWM, I dunno, it didn't seem like there was a need to interject into it?  I think my points were already made, none of them changed.

41

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 2

« on: March 26, 2018, 01:16:40 pm »

Deadline is tomorrow, FWIW.

And we still have 5 (PPE: 6) total players even willing to put down a vote.  Well, I guess I'll move my vote to a more productive place, but I'd be happy to switch back to Galzria, if anyone else agrees that his behavior seems off this game.
vote: schadd

42

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 2

« on: March 26, 2018, 01:10:46 pm »

Vigilante shots are roughly equivalent to a lynch, just with less argument.  Vigilantes should always shoot, because it effectively doubles the number of town-directed kills which greatly increases the chance that town wins.

Limited-shot vigs, and parity situations can change this, but vigs should shoot in general. 

Consider an 11-player game, by day 3 with no vig town got 3 lynches, and scum got 3 kills.  There are 5 players left.  With a vig by day 2 there are 5 players left, town got 2 lynches, and 2 kills, scum got 2 kills...so 4 possibly scum-deaths versus 3 possible scum-deaths.

43

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 1

« on: March 25, 2018, 10:49:55 pm »

...

schadd: He has that argument with ww, which now known-town mcmc thought included scum.

i mean you thought it didn't and if you are town you know yourself to be town

True, but now I know that mcmc actually found one of you scummy rather than just trying to get one of you lynched.  So, I'm dialing back my town-v-town read on that interaction some.  Then I scum-read you for the rest of the day, which included that odd "wanted to see what galz did" post.

what i'm interested in is that you haven't seemed to make a value judgement of mcmc's reads
...

I'm not sure I follow what you're "interested" in.  My original collection of thoughts is just the things that seemed salient from the previous day as I considered each player (and scanned their posts to remember what happened). One of those facts is that mcmc thought there was scum in your argument with witherweaver.  My reaction to that fact, given that mcmc is town, is to temper my original reaction, because I have no particular reason to believe that my read of the situation was in fact the correct one.  I'm not embracing mcmc's reaction, because I have no particular reason to believe that his read was in fact the correct one.

It feels like you accused me of taking mcmc's read and deciding you must be scum because of it, and so I explained the "value" judgments in my reasoning (i.e. recognizing mcmc's alignment reduced my town-read, looking at the rest of the day turned it into a scum-read), but then you accused me of not making a value judgment? I'm not sure what kind of "value" you're expecting...unless you just mean the original post?  I didn't offer much value there for anyone until the conclusion...I think you're just stuck on a style thing.

44

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 2

« on: March 25, 2018, 10:30:00 pm »

...

Sorry I missed your direct question earlier. I must've overlooked it in the ceaseless torrent of new posts in this game or something :-P

Yes, it's quite possible that i failed to show my full working in terms of where my thought process was going. I wanted to look for possible scums by seeing whether I thought there were scums on the wagons of the two other people who had multiple votes. In Joseph's case, I think he's got two towns on his tail, so I might have expected a scum to try joining at some point if Joseph is town, therefore I'm not so sure he is. I wasn't feeling confident enough to pay a vote down, and I figured some targeted re-reads may throw up something that I felt more sure about. I certainly haven't stopped considering him potential scum, but I have to weigh that against how easy a mislynch he is for scums to push.

I townread you and schadd to varying degrees, but WW is more of a null, and was so even before my re-read, so he seems to be the other wagon that might be built on scum. It wouldn't surprise me if one or other of WW and Galz is scum, though I wouldn't expect them to be the same flavour of scum because I don't think scum has any real need to bus here. Anyway, I thought hearing more from WW that might be alignment-indicative would help me colour in my wagons a bit better, and my suspicion of him pushed him up my re-read order. I think Galz ought to be next, now I've done you, though it will help if he says some useful alignment-indicative things first...

PPE 1

Makes sense, it wasn't the lack of a vote (though, really, this game is a little low on voting players right now), but rather the fact that the pivot turned into a ww re-read.  At the time, I thought he was the only player you were re-reading, which seemed odd.

45

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 2

« on: March 23, 2018, 11:32:48 pm »

Actually, after saying that Awaclus is no more unlikely to be scum, I thought if he might be SK, and remembered (and re-checked) that the SK was not just bulletproof, but 1-shot NK-immune (meaning he couldn't die at all the first time he's targeted).  So, Awaclus and Datswan were guaranteed not the SK.  And, of course, one potential reason for the missing death last night is if the SK was targeted.

46

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 2

« on: March 23, 2018, 11:26:29 pm »

Here's a snapshot of the game at #178:

  Joseph2302 (2): mcmcsalot, DatSwan
  Witherweaver (2): schadd, Galzria
  mcmcsalot (4): The_Wine_Merchant, Witherweaver, theorel, SpaceAnemone
  theorel (1): pingpongsam
  schadd (1): Joseph2302
  Not Voting (2): Robz888, Awaclus

If we assume Awaclus was a vig kill, and Swan a scum NK very likely to have landed on town, then we have two towns on Joseph. I'd expect scums not to bus as much in this setup than a standard one, just because there's so much less benefit when we don't get clear colours for wagon-reading. So the fact that Joseph's wagon is quite green-looking makes me think he's more likely to be scum, but with pretty low certainty.

If one of those shots was from a vig, then town might actually know the alignment of someone, which might help someone out there with wagon analysis if I point out wagonny things. I don't think it's anti-town for me to show my thinking in this game in particular, because it helps town if scum can PoE each other and take each other out.

Anyway, this and another few other D1 voting states make me think that WW is another interesting person I'd like to hear a lot more from. Awaclus joined his wagon later, too.

Galz points out that Awaclus is not more likely to be town...but I think the reason that even comes up is because you pivoted from Joseph's wagon to ww's with no real explanation.  Joseph had definitely 1, likely 2 town players voting for him.  Witherweaver had votes on him by 3 players that I think have read pretty scummy this game, with no particular reason to believe any of them are (or were) town.

So, why did you decide to re-read Witherweaver, and why did you ignore Joseph after that first line?

47

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 1

« on: March 22, 2018, 11:02:12 pm »

Reason is that he has stayed completely away from the mcmc wagon. It is obviously the biggest thing going on in the game, but he hasn't voted for him or defended him. He has just ignored it except to say "reasonable" to me and someone else that voted for him.

If mcmc is town then schadd stays off the mislynch wagon. If mcmc is scum, then I don't expect schadd to act this way, but I don't really think mcmc is scum.

i wanted to see if/how galz would leave ww

i asked mcmc what he thought was not tvt

vote: mcmc L-1 people don't tend to defend scum partners on this site, or even avoid voting them really

i townread swan

To clarify, this is the post I'm talking about.

48

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 2

« on: March 22, 2018, 11:01:24 pm »

schadd: He has that argument with ww, which now known-town mcmc thought included scum.

i mean you thought it didn't and if you are town you know yourself to be town

True, but now I know that mcmc actually found one of you scummy rather than just trying to get one of you lynched.  So, I'm dialing back my town-v-town read on that interaction some.  Then I scum-read you for the rest of the day, which included that odd "wanted to see what galz did" post.

49

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 2

« on: March 21, 2018, 09:41:06 pm »

prod: Galzria he also has not yet posted today.

50

Mafia Game Threads / Re: M114: Wheel of Time II - Day 2

« on: March 21, 2018, 09:39:26 pm »

I generally go to the sign-up post, grab the list of players, eliminate the dead ones, and make sure I know what everyone is doing.  I don't like to overlook the things that people are doing, it makes it too easy for scum to slip under the radar.