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[UmbrageOfSnow]

Talking about theory is often seen as a waste of time during games.  Regardless of our opinions on that, out of a game, it can't be used as cover for scum and won't make rereads any harder.  I'd like to use this thread to talk about games that have recently ended, and the theory ideas proposed in them.

This post will serve as an index if the thread gets too long.  If there are any old games people have a burning desire to talk about, by all means bring them up!

[UmbrageOfSnow]

The thing that I've had on my mind lately is Ashersky's plan in Blitz ZM15: Time for Something Completely Different

I think three people should claim cop.

Here's why:

1.  We have a cop, but he's unprotectable.  Mafia wants to kill the Cop.  They have a 1/5 chance of randomly catching him.
2.  We have a doctor, but he can't protect the cop.  Mafia kind of cares, but not really.  The doctor can protect 3/6 other players, so a 50% chance of choosing someone protectable.

I think we want to WIFOM the heck out of mafia, who have a pretty sweet situation here.  2/7 is like starting off a regular game on D3.  They're trying to get us to lylo or worse as quickly as we can.

3 claimed cops basically forces mafia to kill among them.  Why?  Did the real cop claim in that 3?  We don't know.  That's the point.  I don't want anyone to suggest if the real cop should claim among three or not.  Did scum claim among the three?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

I think three players should claim to be the cop.  Then we should proceed normally.  Night actions should be taken according to the PRs' preferences.  But the 3 cop claims will add necessary WIFOM to the mafia decision, which will help town.

We ended up going along with this.  EFHW (VT) jumped in and claimed cop first.  Umbrageofsnow (an Macho-cop with possibly terrible timing) claimed second.  Nkirbit (Scum) claimed not-a-cop.  Sudgy (VT) Claimed cop.

I'd like to talk about two things, in relation to this plan:

1) Is this even a good idea at all?  Scum did end up guessing that either Sudgy or I were the cop, but Jimmmmmm (scum) thinks they would have been guessing that anyway.  I think that the best plan for scum in that situation is to ignore the claims completely, but I think human nature is to try to read into it, so I think there is some merit to this plan.

I suspect the best move for the cop is to flip a coin to decide whether to claim cop or not.  But if everyone is ignoring this, it could be totally pointless.

2) Regardless of it being a good idea, do you think there is much value in this for either helping scum find the cop, or confusing scum about who the cop is?

[UmbrageOfSnow]

I also noticed that no scum claimed cop.  I was thinking that if I were scum in that situation, I wouldn't claim cop, to give as many town-members room to slip up and claim cop in a coppy way as possible.  Which would make this a tool for scumhunting if Mafia follow that logic.  So where is the Nash-equilibrium, now that Mafia are thinking about this?  I'm not sure.  Isn't mafia fun?

[Archetype]

My opinion, if I were scum I'd ignore this all together when factoring in NKs. Sure it'd be in the back of my mind, but there is no guarantee that the Cop is in those 3 people, so I'd rather go for whoever is most advantageous to kill at the time.

[ashersky]

Given it was my plan, I'm obviously biased.  I'll share my thinking behind it, though.

I've always always always wanted to fake claim a town PR as town.  The problem is that, in a normal game (including blitz), if I claim Cop as a VT, then the real Cop counterclaims me, we caught a liar, but not scum.  And I outed the real cop.  That's obviously bad.

Fakeclaiming a PR as town serves purposes, though.  It keeps me alive, it makes me the NK while protecting the real PR, it creates WIFOM, it does a lot.  But the negatives are REALLY negative.  And I couldn't find a way to credibly PR claim while also telling the real one not to claim.

Hence the 3-Cop Plan was born.  It explicited called for town to fakeclaim to protect the real one.  It built in the WIFOM of "did the real cop claim or not" into it.  It was impossible to ignore, once done.  Impossible.  I don't care how much we say we'd just ignore it, we can't.  We read it.  It's there.

Was the plan awesome?  Nope.  Did it help?  Maybe.  I wanted to try something out that could allow for something I've always wanted.  It definitely didn't hurt.

[nkirbit]

For what it's worth, I didn't choose to kill Sudgy because I thought he was more likely the cop.  I did it because I thought he was more likely to cop EFHW.

I like plans, but I've found that I tend to actually wish that we didn't have them in games.. the discussion they lead to hardly ever seems fun to me.  My favorite games so far have been Back to Basics and ZM14.. both had absolutely zero theory talk.  I think the conciseness that lead to was a large part of why I enjoyed them.

[sudgy]

I have had one case where claiming PR as VT was a good idea.  I was the doctor, the cop had claimed, and I was saying that the doctor could protect the cop (this was before we realized follow the cop was broken).  If the cop could survive one more night, town would win.  People were saying, "What if the doctor isn't alive?" (we also weren't revealing roles upon death) and I kept insisting that the doctor could save the cop.  Someone else realized that I was the doctor before everybody else, and he claimed doc.  I knew he was innocent, as I had saved him earlier.  He got killed the next night.

Now, it would have been fine if I had claimed doc, because then the cop would have figured things out anyway, but at an earlier time in the game this might be better.

[ashersky]

I think the harder thing for town in regard to plans is that scum is right there while they're being formulated, argued about, and used.  Good scum will adjust to it.

Also, you don't really know if the plan is coming from scum or town.  As a mini-example, in Mean Girls, scum chose partners.  It was closed setup, so no one (not even scum) knew that Scum A chose Scum B who then chose Scum C.  In the game, Eevee chose me, I chose yuma.

What we did know was that scum chose their own teams, and whether or not we were part of choosing.  I proposed that we all list who we would have chosen.  I think Eevee said yuma, I said Eevee, and yuma said me.  We all listed each other, but had not chosen them.

The list itself wasn't a "plan" per se, but it was setup theory.  It got people talking, and generally led people astray.  It kept people from scumhunting, sort of.  And where scumhunting came of it, it was like "well, 4 people said mcmc, by far the most, he's most likely scum."

TLDR: you can't always trust the source of the plan/theory talk.

[Jimmmmm]

The thing that I've had on my mind lately is Ashersky's plan in Blitz ZM15: Time for Something Completely Different

I think three people should claim cop.

Here's why:

1.  We have a cop, but he's unprotectable.  Mafia wants to kill the Cop.  They have a 1/5 chance of randomly catching him.
2.  We have a doctor, but he can't protect the cop.  Mafia kind of cares, but not really.  The doctor can protect 3/6 other players, so a 50% chance of choosing someone protectable.

I think we want to WIFOM the heck out of mafia, who have a pretty sweet situation here.  2/7 is like starting off a regular game on D3.  They're trying to get us to lylo or worse as quickly as we can.

3 claimed cops basically forces mafia to kill among them.  Why?  Did the real cop claim in that 3?  We don't know.  That's the point.  I don't want anyone to suggest if the real cop should claim among three or not.  Did scum claim among the three?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

I think three players should claim to be the cop.  Then we should proceed normally.  Night actions should be taken according to the PRs' preferences.  But the 3 cop claims will add necessary WIFOM to the mafia decision, which will help town.

We ended up going along with this.  EFHW (VT) jumped in and claimed cop first.  Umbrageofsnow (an Macho-cop with possibly terrible timing) claimed second.  Nkirbit (Scum) claimed not-a-cop.  Sudgy (VT) Claimed cop.

I'd like to talk about two things, in relation to this plan:

1) Is this even a good idea at all?  Scum did end up guessing that either Sudgy or I were the cop, but Jimmmmmm (scum) thinks they would have been guessing that anyway.  I think that the best plan for scum in that situation is to ignore the claims completely, but I think human nature is to try to read into it, so I think there is some merit to this plan.

I suspect the best move for the cop is to flip a coin to decide whether to claim cop or not.  But if everyone is ignoring this, it could be totally pointless.

2) Regardless of it being a good idea, do you think there is much value in this for either helping scum find the cop, or confusing scum about who the cop is?

I don't think the claiming weighed into our decision at all. I know it wasn't in my mind. The big decision, of course, was to kill the Doc or go for the Cop. I was pretty sure EFHW wasn't the Cop, just based on how closed she'd been to getting lynched without claiming, so it was a choice between sudgy and UoS if we went that way. I probably would have gone for the safe kill of ash, but nkirbit took the gutsy move and it just didn't work out.

[Jimmmmm]

Given it was my plan, I'm obviously biased.  I'll share my thinking behind it, though.

I've always always always wanted to fake claim a town PR as town.  The problem is that, in a normal game (including blitz), if I claim Cop as a VT, then the real Cop counterclaims me, we caught a liar, but not scum.  And I outed the real cop.  That's obviously bad.

Fakeclaiming a PR as town serves purposes, though.  It keeps me alive, it makes me the NK while protecting the real PR, it creates WIFOM, it does a lot.  But the negatives are REALLY negative.  And I couldn't find a way to credibly PR claim while also telling the real one not to claim.

Hence the 3-Cop Plan was born.  It explicited called for town to fakeclaim to protect the real one.  It built in the WIFOM of "did the real cop claim or not" into it.  It was impossible to ignore, once done.  Impossible.  I don't care how much we say we'd just ignore it, we can't.  We read it.  It's there.

Was the plan awesome?  Nope.  Did it help?  Maybe.  I wanted to try something out that could allow for something I've always wanted.  It definitely didn't hurt.

I think this (VT claiming PR) is a cool idea that to my knowledge hasn't really been done. It'd be pretty hard (read: stupid) to do at this stage though. Would it be worth either trying to change our groupthink such that a false claim isn't necessarily scum, or trying to work the possibility into the setup somehow?

[chairs]

Given it was my plan, I'm obviously biased.  I'll share my thinking behind it, though.

I've always always always wanted to fake claim a town PR as town.  The problem is that, in a normal game (including blitz), if I claim Cop as a VT, then the real Cop counterclaims me, we caught a liar, but not scum.  And I outed the real cop.  That's obviously bad.

Fakeclaiming a PR as town serves purposes, though.  It keeps me alive, it makes me the NK while protecting the real PR, it creates WIFOM, it does a lot.  But the negatives are REALLY negative.  And I couldn't find a way to credibly PR claim while also telling the real one not to claim.

Hence the 3-Cop Plan was born.  It explicited called for town to fakeclaim to protect the real one.  It built in the WIFOM of "did the real cop claim or not" into it.  It was impossible to ignore, once done.  Impossible.  I don't care how much we say we'd just ignore it, we can't.  We read it.  It's there.

Was the plan awesome?  Nope.  Did it help?  Maybe.  I wanted to try something out that could allow for something I've always wanted.  It definitely didn't hurt.

I think this (VT claiming PR) is a cool idea that to my knowledge hasn't really been done. It'd be pretty hard (read: stupid) to do at this stage though. Would it be worth either trying to change our groupthink such that a false claim isn't necessarily scum, or trying to work the possibility into the setup somehow?

I think it gives scum more opportunity than town.

[Twistedarcher]

I was modding for Ash's plan, and I didn't really see the point of it. I think confusing town during lynches is a bigger downside than the upside of confusing town during nightkills.

Fakeclaiming PR as VT is a pretty good idea, if you think you can get away with it. I think it may be possible during a setup such as C9++ or JK9++ (or w/e it's called). That way, it's feasible that you could be that PR in town's eyes, and in scum's eyes, you are town so you aren't lying, and then you take the NK.

[Voltgloss]

I agree that the possibility of "there might be 2 of the same power role" - inherent in C9++ and JK9++ - gives a lot more room for a townie fakeclaim that won't immediately blow up.

However, the flip side is that it gives scum a lot more room as well!  See both M-IV and M-XII, were scum fakeclaims lasted a really long time and were, I think, a key piece in keeping town off-balance enough for mafia to win both games.

It's part of why I really enjoy that sort of setup.  And am working on a new one.  Oh yes.  ash and yuma know what's cookin'.   

[UmbrageOfSnow]

I really like the prospect of town fake-claims as well, but yeah it's stupid if you have a chance of blowing the real role's cover.   

[UmbrageOfSnow]

TLDR: you can't always trust the source of the plan/theory talk.

This is exactly why I think theory talk can be used to help scumhunt.

[liopoil]

I was just thinking about making a thread like this myself! I think that plan's like ash's can't help town. if I was scum in that game, I would roll a virtual 7-sided die and if it was a 1, 2, or 3 I would "claim" cop. then I would look for clues on who was the cop, and then if there wasn't anything, I'd forget about it. town wouldn't accomplish anything, and I might have caught a VT-slip or Cop-slip.

[liopoil]

Re: town fakeclaims, go ahead, do it, just don't get lynched, and don't out the real PR(s).

[Twistedarcher]

Re: town fakeclaims, go ahead, do it, just don't get lynched, and don't out the real PR(s).

You make this sound so easy

[liopoil]

Well, it was actually meant as a "don't do it" because you shouldn't do it unless achieving that IS easy, which it isn't at all in most cases.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

I was just thinking about making a thread like this myself! I think that plan's like ash's can't help town. if I was scum in that game, I would roll a virtual 7-sided die and if it was a 1, 2, or 3 I would "claim" cop. then I would look for clues on who was the cop, and then if there wasn't anything, I'd forget about it. town wouldn't accomplish anything, and I might have caught a VT-slip or Cop-slip.

Hurray!  I'm thrilled people want to talk about these kinds of things outside the context of a game.  I find them fascinating but in-game they get bogged down by alternate goals and trying to actually play the game itself.

Yeah, like a lot of things, I wouldn't be surprised if the ideal play is to make your decision randomly.  I'd think, as scum, you might actually want to weigh your randomness against claiming though, to potentially put more pressure on the real doctor if he starts to worry that a third town won't join him on the claim, or that only VTs are claiming, whatever.

See I think what Ash was getting at, and what I somewhat agree with is that the value of this plan isn't really in the claiming itself, it's in our subconscious desire to weight cop-slips differently based on other things going on.

In this game, I really do think nkirbit's lynch of Sudgy was the right play, because investigating EFHW outed the scumteam, and I really was going back and forth on who to investigate, while I got the impression Sudgy would have been more confident in going for EFHW.  They got unlucky.

And while we're on that topic, your telling me to investigate EFHW that day made it much harder for me to actually investigate her, since I was worried they'd kill her if she was town because of it, although in the end it probably contributed to Nkirbit's killing of Sudgy.  I'm not sure whether that was a good idea or not.

[Twistedarcher]

In that format, and most blitz formats, having confirmed town alive is awful for scum. Just awful. I think scum's #1 priority needed to be killing Ashersky, and then possibly counterclaiming any cop claim.

They would have been in alright shape if they killed Ashersky, but if they didn't NK you, it still would have been tough, since I think you would have won any argument against Jimmm or Nkirbit if they decided to counterclaim.

[Twistedarcher]

What do people think is the most believable counterclaim for scum?

Is it claiming early, or claiming at L-1? Or refusing to claim altogether?

It really depends on the situation, but I guess in general, the correct answer is "try to do exactly what you'd do if you really were that role".

[Voltaire]

It really depends on the situation, but I guess in general, the correct answer is "try to do exactly what you'd do if you really were that role".

You make this sound so easy

[UmbrageOfSnow]

That's something else that came up in that game: Ash asserted that the first claimant is usually the scum one, and I totally believe that for claims made at L-1, but what's the concensus on first claims when it happens mid-day or at the start of a day.  I believe Ash said it was still true, but I'm not sure I see it.  I'd think it could go both ways, depending on the personalities of the two players.

[Twistedarcher]

That's something else that came up in that game: Ash asserted that the first claimant is usually the scum one, and I totally believe that for claims made at L-1, but what's the concensus on first claims when it happens mid-day or at the start of a day.  I believe Ash said it was still true, but I'm not sure I see it.  I'd think it could go both ways, depending on the personalities of the two players.

grumble grumble...