Stargate SG1 - game thread

[oblivion]

Ironically, the game I mentioned, town would have won if I had silenced bilirubin instead of myself on the final night.

[Zigmen]

Isn't mafiascum really stupid? Like they actually use things like "3rd on a vote" as scum tells?

I didn't see you as too scummy this game, Matt.

But, you do seem to be a low-poster as well as a low-contributor. Also, you can sometimes be almost blind to what's going on in a thread.

No offense . . .

IMHO, a player like that often gets killed early because Scum may thin they're a special, and Town might think they're Scummy or at least a poor choice to have involved in endgame.

Altering one's game is often difficult, and met with suspicion. I just got lynched at TR for trusting a player who looked to me as if they were on their Town game. I had even announced that I was going to be trusting good players who seem like they are pro-town, hehe. It's a double edge sword.

For you, I'd suggest asking players about votes that seem odd or ill-defined. I'd read, rather than skim. And, if you get behind, just announce that rather than try to play without all the facts.

For me, I see a Town game that is unlike a normal Town game as a bad game. I can work on that.

I'll probably get FoSed for it, though.

But, that's what happens when your game improves; you'll look suspicious.

[amok]

Amok, you weren't rude.

You should have heard what I was saying in my head!

[divagreen]

Thanks for the game, Oblivion!

Sorry town, but to be honest I don't think we could have lost to a better player. Great job, r.c.

I final voted when I did (after the thread was up for 15 hours...didn't really see any discussion happening) because I did not know if I was going to be around for the 2:00 pm endgame.

And not to the Zigboys...so sorry I doubted you! I think I started to channel Teeth there for a while.

[oblivion]

Isn't mafiascum really stupid? Like they actually use things like "3rd on a vote" as scum tells?

they used to. some of the best players there include statistics in their analyses of what is going on. and statistically, 3rd and 4th votes do turn up scum more frequently.

[Don't Panic]

Thanks for the game Ob, great fun while I was in it.

Isn't mafiascum really stupid? Like they actually use things like "3rd on a vote" as scum tells?

they used to. some of the best players there include statistics in their analyses of what is going on. and statistically, 3rd and 4th votes do turn up scum more frequently.

The point I was trying to make at the start of the game about tells like this and self voting for mayor is that scum know these things, therefore they can avoid them, always be wary of intelligence available to your opponents, they can manipulate it to their advantage.

How hard is it for scum to jump in second on a vote, or wait until 5th, or just vote someone else, or even not vote, and then point out the town players at 3rd or 4th as being scummy.

[charlou]

^ yup

[oblivion]

some scum, anyway. the reason why some scum tend not to be early on a bandwagon is hesitance. they think things through more than town does, and they worry about looking waffly if they change their votes too much. good players can often avoid the 3-4 position.

the position alone is not definitive. it's shorthand. and that's why it gets dismissed imo.

Matt's votes often look scummy because he worrys a lot about appearing scummy and that leads to scum-like hesitance.

Ironically, just about the only time he comes off looking decisive is when someone votes him and he declares votes on him are scum tells and revenge votes.

In this game, a (hesitant, waffly-looking) scum player voted him. he went after the town players who voted him, because he didn't pick up the town vibes behind their votes.

[gib]

mafiascum seem to be aware they are trying to nail a constantly evolving target:

While it would be wonderful to say that going against the advice on this page should only be done at one's own peril, it would be wise to remember that this was conceived by a single notoriously opinionated person and approved by an experienced subset of the current Mafia-playing population. Your mileage may vary, but probably not by much. Similarly, this page was written within a metagame - changes in the trends of how Mafia gets played may cause some of this page to go out of date. Again, this has been considered in writing this and the effect of meta shifts should be reined in.

http://mafiascum.net/wiki/index.php?tit ... e_At_Mafia

[r.c]

Isn't mafiascum really stupid? Like they actually use things like "3rd on a vote" as scum tells?

I know ... but look at this game..
The third vote on gonzo was athene
Mine was the third vote on athene.

[Bilirubin]

You certainly did that. Well done, r.c ... and congrats to scum.

Indeed, special congrats to Athene and r.c. Played it v well.

[gib]

^^^ the girls' avatars are made of sugar and spice

[irretating]

from a town perspective, killing bilirubin was not a good call. That's an example of why trolley tracking, and not using your own judgement once you've decided which side you're going to align with and going by some kinda consensus scheme is not ideal.

I plan to keep this in mind if I'm ever in similar SK shoes

Agree with this. If bili had been scum, I'd have resolved never to play another game with him on account of him being too chillingly evil. He was saying things townies say, and I was agreeing with his votes and analyses, even if I was worried he might be scum.

[Bilirubin]

Really, please stop trying to pattern match. Raven is good at it. Not too many others are to be frank. Focus on solid tells.

Quite agree with the many folks who try to pattern match. I think that pattern matching is an advanced technique that many players aren't terribly good at because it takes a particular person to be effective, and its not easily taught. Folks should focus on objective scum tells until their games get solid.

I'm a bit skeptical about the usefulness of simple, depersonalized ("objective") scum tells such as reverse cheerleading, revenge voting, etc. They are among the easiest things to argue about in the game thread, but they don't seem to me to be the most informative in terms of alignment. Do you really rely on such tells as much as your game thread posts suggests?

Both the TR and Ratz communities have very heterogenous communities in that expectations of others' play is very personalized (e.g. some players get away with 2 posts/day, others don't; some players get away with being very inattentive, others don't; etc.) in a way that I think forces reliance on personalized "tells". The closest I've come to depersonalized inferences are probably looking back at the end-of-day vote counts from previous days (day 1 non-voters here at Ratz are annoying confounders, though) and the 2nd closest would be interaction reads of player pairs that I take to decrease the odds for some of scum-scum, scum-town, town-scum, town-town.

The latter scenario is more how one should learn to scum hunt exactly, and from there pattern matching becomes easier. But patterns are broken every game, and TBH the number of games one needs to observe to gain statistically significant samples... Ob and I have talked about this at some length. It's my opinion that because she has mentored so many here (myself included) that her style is frequently emulated by players who are either too inexperienced or just incapable of it because they have a different orientation.

[Bilirubin]

from a town perspective, killing bilirubin was not a good call. That's an example of why trolley tracking, and not using your own judgement once you've decided which side you're going to align with and going by some kinda consensus scheme is not ideal.

I plan to keep this in mind if I'm ever in similar SK shoes

No I had to go because something had to snap those in too deep of tracks to get out of on their own back to attention.

Shizzle did you not notice that I defended you even after pointing out those two named tells in one post?