XCOM Mafia [Concluded]

[crimson_snow]

Got home, probably going to crash. I'll be around tomorrow.

Are there generally anti-claim mechanics on this site, or is it safe to full claim? Obviously while respecting the game rules.

[Manasi]

Wait, what? You seemed very present and attentive at end of day. Here are some sample posts:









After a lot of collective hand-wringing regarding Jowy, you repeat your lame defense of him. Surely you knew he was up for a lynch?

Moreso I didn't really know he was like a viable lynch candidate.

I didn't know he had that many votes and it wasn't like, just a scum read as opposed to a "let's lynch this guy today," because those are two different things.

[novice]

Got home, probably going to crash. I'll be around tomorrow.

Are there generally anti-claim mechanics on this site, or is it safe to full claim? Obviously while respecting the game rules.

Should be safe.

[novice]

Moreso I didn't really know he was like a viable lynch candidate.

I didn't know he had that many votes and it wasn't like, just a scum read as opposed to a "let's lynch this guy today," because those are two different things.

What flip did you think Pizza was waiting up for then?

[novice]

I said I haven't read a thing in the first post I made after subbing in. I meant what I said.

Seems true, and earned a town read from me, because as scum I would read the quicktopic before doing anything else.
Of course now that I think about it, not reading the QT seems like an excellent idea.

[novice]

Thanks. I can't dispute that.

You made up a read?

[novice]

El Barto, I still haven't seen you explain this: Why did you specifically call Fredwood's attention to your vote on him, but then not follow up his (intentionally scummy, according to him) response afterwards? Instead you moved on to Dp without further comment.

[Montmorency]

Seems true, and earned a town read from me, because as scum I would read the quicktopic before doing anything else.
Of course now that I think about it, not reading the QT seems like an excellent idea.

It was pure WIFOM frowny face. Good night.

[novice]

Vote: El Barto
Don't like him brushing off Fredwood, and if Dp is town his behaviour towards Dp on day one is bad also.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Manasi, and probably Pizza.

Woah there cowboy, I just said you're maybe not scum.

I didn't go as far as to call you town. I just said we shouldn't lynch you. Maybe not until all the scumbags have died even.

That's an older read, but I haven't had that much reason to change it.

You look very self-focused even for you, only superficially interested in the mafia v town struggle. I think your main concern is survival and not pissing off the mafia faction.

That's how I arrived at a neut read on you. It's also how El Barto pushed himself out of being a neutral read, because he did the opposite.

I rarely even have neutral reads, but the last two I had in games each found a serial killer, and I specifically called them not mafia but not town.

I'm risking the streak by calling you of all people a neut, based only off of one and a half days of a game.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

If that read turns out to be correct, I'm going to make my signature line "greatest newt hunter of all time".

I don't honestly have high hopes of that, but it's a tinfoil that I'm kind of rooting for. I'm gonna be sad if I have to reverse it.

But if you "get better" I'll swallow that read and tell everyone.

[Csargo]

You made up a read?

No, I can't argue against your opinion. I didn't make up the read, was my thoughts at the time.

[Askthepizzaguy]

You look very self-focused even for you, only superficially interested in the mafia v town struggle. I think your main concern is survival and not pissing off the mafia faction.

Bonus points:

I think Monty still thinks I'm scum and is deliberately working with me on the chance that Pizza-scum doesn't nightkill him.

I can't do it, Monty. I don't have the power.

I get the feeling like he looked for the scummiest person, which is typically me in Monty world, and decided it would be safer offering to work with me after calling me scum, which is a very neutral non-townie thing to do. And not a scummy thing to do.

Well, 3p scummy maybe.

This tinfoil is real, btw. I know how the difficulty rating involved in this read being right. But I guessed someone was townie once after having gotten what amounts to a guilty scan result on them. I am not scared of trying to make trick shots.

Besides, the more important aspect of that read is whether or not Monty is mafia-team scummy. I don't see that. So even if he's just a townie, as long as that aspect isn't wrong, the read is good.

Why are you neut hunting pizzaguy - because my brain can't not accept that possibility when I see it in a game that might have them.

[Askthepizzaguy]

I actually forgot the mtgs game where I found another serial killer, but that doesn't count because I was mafia at the time and dude was scummy. That's more of a gimme. I'm going to only count "reading neutral/3p as town" as part of the streak.

[Sooh]

I like how Manasi's vote is on me and she's ignoring everything I say in the game.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Looking for counter-indications to my scum lean on Fredwood, from this phase:

So don't make wall posts cus none of you moths read them, because I've cleared like 4 people already, and have said I'd like to clear a few more but have concerns.

I doubt I'll be scum hunting this phase cus you guys are meanies and the last time I scum hunted I was treated like the lady at the Supermarket that starts yelling about the potatoes not being arranged properly.

BRB going to therapist.

"Anybody know a good therapist?"

So had a mod moment. Could the lack of the NK be kind of representative of the XCom game. So much of the game is about setting up the ambush and getting the positioning just right. Maybe they couldn't kill N1, and will have multiple kills on other nights. That's more of a "this would be cool" workshop type thing then really a helpful thing, but it was a thought.

I had the point on DP, (1) but felt the Bart's vote on him cleared DP for that phase and that post was just a bad one.

I also had Csargo as a town lean, (2) and you specifically on your insistence that you were forcing yourself to go to bed but still kept posting. Tonally felt like genuine excitement about the game.

It was a lengthy post where I said them, so formatting the names in bold in big posts is probably advised.

I tend to give more credit to my town reads then my scum reads in general though.

I also posted a bit of a wall after the Jowy flip where I TR a few more.

Also my definition of clearing may be different then yours, my process is more looking for positive then negative, so if I'm mentioning positive leans or even if I say slight leans I'm typically clearing them for that phase.

I did get pinged by Bart and tried something a bit foreign to my playstyle, maybe it contributed to the awkwardness of the interaction, maybe it didn't and Bart is actually scum and I just broken clocked him.

Maybe but at the time you said 0 solving. Semantics aside I was not going to vote for you, CS or DP last phase. I don't see how it's exaggeration, especially with the caveat that I didn't have a lot of reads because Day 1 was a lot of meta analysis that I didn't have enough reference to weigh in on. so from my POV it's rather significant given the both the situation and the nature of most day 1's. So I do think the reverse of what you say about me and exaggeration can be said in regards to you about (3) minimizing a person's contribution.

As for DP, to me as long as Bart is alive, I will not vote for DP. Yes it's not a town read per say, it's a contingent town read I guess.

I wasn't posting my post Jowy flip post as justification I was posting it as reference to what I view as a similar post even after you said I had done 0 solving, why would I ever lynch even my slightest of town leans? I doubt I'll be hardclearing many people this game non-mechanically because this is my first time playing with all of you.

Also, I just like arguing and talking about me. Answering this has less to do with me viewing it as pressure as much as it does with me being full of myself.

Aside from sleep and just buying CIV VI no, not really...I have an eclectic sleep schedule because of my work, so I tend to be active when I am active.

The game state as in what, in regards to other places I've played? P. standard day 1 more meta dependence then usual which is why the low post count (though I could have probably had like 10 more if I broke up my walls). That probably dies down as the game goes on though, which would mean I have more things to post about.

(4) Well it's early? Good position, day 2 and we're only down 1 townie. Why has yet to be seen, I'm going to tinfoil my mod workshop thought though. You're leading the phases but have enough pushback on you so you're not uncontested so it's a balanced domination, which is my preferred scenario. Good amount of info out there to dissect once we get that scum flip.

Well, tbf it's just been me you and novice having a cas q&a sess for the last few hours, so nothing has changed aside from enforcing what I felt. I read the EOD 2 times, probably 3 times while I was compiling my thoughts. I had no interaction or read on Jowwy before he was even voted for. But I'm afraid I'm already suffering from a little group think and would be parroting there, so I'll observe with interest DP's and Novice's threads about that.

Novice has graduated to probably my strongest town read currently. I'm still paranoid about buddying, so that's in the back of my mind when seeing some of his posts. I do feel the effort is genuine and is less likely to be a case of buddying the new guy then Sooh because his content has been high effort this phase.

My plan is to try to get a better read on nulls, primarily Manasi (though I have a feeling that might be a lost cause) and logic, which I think won't be.

Oh and if in regards to you, I don't know I'm at a weird place. I'm still giving you a ton of credit for the tonal read I got earlier, but have concerns about your reads borne out of what I think was an (5) inaccurate representation of mine and possibly a few others

There goes Bart, misrepresenting and conveniently leaving out contradictory data again.

You're really bad at setting up mislynches huh? Literally said I was going to focus on townclearing and not try to scumhunt.

I can tell you one person who I haven't cleared.

I feel better about Sooh, (6) at the very least there's effort in appearing townie which could be exploited. Manasi still is a bit null but I have a feeling she's the queen of null reads. There is the push on Sooh, but the pressure isn't aggressive or confrontational enough to eliminate the possibility of a W/W scenario and just setting up a contrarian IG relationship. So not willing to extrapolate a read on the other based on one's flip.

Winston and Montgomery seem null but have context and content that's been generated, (7) Winston seems to be more analytical of the meta but did self-clear Pizza and Cuth in a concise and specific manner, so giving him pluses.

The Monty interactions have been interesting this phase. Amusing at the very least.

I should have questions, the only ones I have are to someone I'm washing my hands of. So, I'm just kind of blankly staring at the screen currently.

You're literally quoting the reaction test to see Bart's response. (8) I was purposefully exhibiting what I thought was scum behavior to try and read his response for something that felt off to me. There was none, not even a mention and later switched. The reaction, or the lack of one, is the basis for my scum read on him, within the thread the progression should be obvious.

None...I have a tinfoil mod brain theory about trying to incorporate flavor into the game, and think N1 was a ambush set up phase. I'm hoping i'm wrong but it would mean multiple kills in a single night phase.

Ok before I get into what's good about the above, the concerns I still have.

a) "Not going to scum hunt this phase" - mild but real lingering concern. Still, that's bold and I can see how it can be a real thought. It was initially very problematic though.

b) Still feels a bit reachy in terms of "clear" versus "slight town lean". The initial post where claims credit for 3 clears was definitely inaccurate and read hugely scummy to me at the time. However, seeing more of fredwood's process is helping to manage that concern, even if it hasn't vanished.

c) I feel like Fredwood is under-performing what he could be doing as town. He was more engaged in his champs game, but that being said, this is a crappy meta-read. I don't know Fred and he's not matching some of my snap impressions of him, and that's one game, and it's also one unusual game for him. I'd say he's doing about 1/4 of his effort in that game, but it looks similar in style. I did not finish the iso of him because I got extremely tired and I knew at that point the read wouldn't be very accurate. Besides, it's only meant to supplement my impression of his style and methods. Comparing involvement levels to a champs game is a bad metric.

I feel like if he's scum he could be caught by those kinds of tells. So that's where a lot of my general suspicion on him comes from and I have yet to see enough from Fred to do a full reverse to a strong town read. I don't know if I ever clear fredwood non-mechanically.

Being said, here are the counter indicators.

1) That matches what I've seen of his process. I sometimes do something similar, like backing off dp for a phase to see what he does with it, or choosing between pairs until one has flipped. The fact that it seems to be something he does with several people indicates this isn't just something he was pulling out of nowhere. It's probably really part of his actual process. He would then of course know to fake it when wolfing, I'd imagine. But it's a townier process that doesn't make itself apparent at first glance because it's subtle. And at the time, looked like fence-riding which is often scummy.

2) That's a real method I've used before. Basing his read of me off of that specific thing resonates with me as a real process with real weight, not just a scum checking off generically townie things a person does in order to look like they're forming town reads. This is weighty for me.

3) I do that, deliberately. I have to be an especially harsh critic of someone's work when I'm pushing them as a scum-read, because often times, scum mistakes are subtle and I want people to psychologically feel as though they've been caught dead to rights. Sometimes I even believe it because it's a tinfoil. I want to be right, so I'm a bit invested in it.

4) That was the correct feeling a townie should be having. This post might have been my strongest indicator so far that I'm being a dope about Fredwood, if he's town.

5) see (3). Note how he's not using it as an excuse to flip his read of me and push me. It's so easy to fake a case against someone based on such a concern. If I'm scum in Fredwood's slot, I would almost always push the guy in pizza's slot based on misrepresentation accusations, which can convince some people it's scummy, and best of all, gives Fredwood an excuse to leave less spew in case he still dies. Maybe he's got a whole different approach to scumming but I'm expecting scummy behavior here because it's so tempting if he's scum, and I'm not seeing it.

6) Is a townie thought, approach, and phrasing.

7) "Self-clear" X in "concise and specific" ways are two things that ring true to me of what Fredwood-as-town would use as a metric. He can fake this as scum but this, like his read on me, both ring true, because it's a specific thing that resonates with him way more than most things in the game. Instead of a scummy gradient of "This guy's really town, this guy's kinda town, this guy's a little town...." He has a few very specific strong reads and not a smooth gradient at all. That indicates it's more natural and less artificial, to me.

8) Often times I find the "I was reaction testing" thing to be a terrible excuse for explaining actually scummy behavior. By default, I'd be lynching Fredwood here based on that, and the above (a+b+c) concerns. If I was at all interested in causing a mislynch, I could bury Fredwood here in a heartbeat, without any question. He'd be dead as a doornail. If only because I took the time to look for reasons he's townie do I hesitate and ask, is it scummy here? This is tough, but I think it might actually somehow be part of Fredwood's day one process. He got voted by Barto and decided to feel out his accuser. I know I am always interested in the folks that vote me d1. I don't really do reaction testing of the kind where I act deliberately scummy, as I feel that's harmful to the team. But here, I think it's quite plausible this is a real process, and I don't say that often. So that was extremely difficult for me to read as townie. It goes against a ton of experience.


Tl;dr:

Fredwood is not lock town, but has successfully and ably cleared the hurdle, and has cleared the hurdle by more than the minimum.

Fred, if you want me to lock you town, I need more. Make this your second chance at Champs glory, if you feel like investing that much.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Next scummy in line:


Vote: Novice

[Askthepizzaguy]

I will roomba the ever living fudgsicles out of this game if people keep engaging.

[Askthepizzaguy]

I feel specifically pocketed by Manasi.

I cannot tell if it's because she's scum or if because she's just easily read me town and is also town. It's a bother.

[Sooh]

Novice?

[Askthepizzaguy]

You're right, that is awkward.

Hi though. How and where do you normally play this game?

The start of novice's bad opening. Should have been followed up with a vote.

Epic.
And you just demonstrated enough self-awareness that it's completely NAI. Hugely entertaining, though. :)

This post makes me feel like he knows I'm town, but can't admit it.

You should be careful with irony in multicultural communities...

Telling townies how to play the game is scummy.

How do Night 0's work anyway?
Yes, agreed on both counts.
And if he isn't joking, he's scum because...?

Click for context. Particularly the third line made me feel terrible about novice.

So everybody's awkward, but it means different things?

In consecutive fashion, he's looking for weaknesses or distancing. Too many small suspicions or picking-at questions in a row. Also it seems like he's defaulting to critical impressions of people, not looking for positives.

Then he picks Logic as his target and invests in that. By page 3 and 4. he drops off. So, a flurry of activity which doesn't look very townie to me, is how novice opens the game.

Page 5 puts Jowy as townie and I don't see how he arrived there even if it was right. Of the people who read Jowy, novice's conclusion always felt artificial or PIS. He just said Jowy "felt normal". That's not specific, and he put Jowy as one of his top town reads. Crimson and Jowy were his top 2. Crimson was at that point a gimme read, imo.

The Jowy read is correct, but formulated incorrectly.

I'm going to Vote: Cuthilius for that misrepresentation of Monty, for lack of better ideas.

By now I can tell that novice's impression of the game is mostly critical of like 7 people, and he's struggling to find new town reads that look natural. I'm going to be cruel and say that Jowy was his only town read that wasn't a gimme, and it was formed badly.

He's also deliberately uncharitable in interpretation to most people in the game so far.

For me it's that he's interacting intelligently with the thread. Maybe it shouldn't be alignment indicative, but it's giving me warm fuzzy feelings.

What's so scummy about Jowy?

Not specific enough, and for such a "strong" town read, he should be more convinced of his own read. Even my shitty Champ snap-read had a specific reason I could give. Novice says the behavior of his strongest town read shouldn't be alignment indicative, which is kinda early to be backing off of it.

Instead of finding positives and pushing them convincingly, he trends negative toward too many people and is generic with his positives.

Then his vote on Cuth he's easy to push off of, not grounding himself firmly invested in any scum read.

The pattern so far is that he'd like to have reasons to vote people, not reasons to clear people definitively, and not cases on scums that he fully owns the consequences of responsibly.

Not quite the riposte I was expecting from Jowy, but close enough I suppose.

Actually let me mediate a bit here. Or fuel the fire, we'll see what transpires.

Jowy, explain how your behaviour matches your process. How can you scumread Dp, taunt him as he tries to defend, and then decide that we're done bullying him? What is your agenda?

Seemingly deliberately playing both sides against the middle here. Now his "top town read" is one which he's throwing some pizza-supplied fire at, without voting him.

Actually I get the feeling that Pizza is overreaching a bit.

Both sides against the middle.

I never got the Csargo townread either, not that I'm sure anyone but Pizza has actually townread him? Maybe Champ did?
Apparently he's very towny compared to his history of games.

Not giving his own impression why he thinks Csargo shouldn't be townread and not giving him a scum read either.

champ is suboptimal low-info lynch today

But oh so satisfying.

Cuth much townier than Novice. Champ townier than novice, tbh.

we're still not doing it

Cuth looks pretty good here especially if Champ/GH is town. He's got no reason at all to buddy the Champ slot or defend it. That slot should be an easy mislynch because it can't defend itself or town clear itself. No offense champ.

Cuth may not know how to read me, the newspaper that says "Pizza gah-zette" is entirely blank, but he looks town this game.

Okay, El Barto: Not much to say, keeping things fun, but his Dp vote really is bad. Both for reasons outlined by Fred, but also because of poor justification, and the timing seems aimed at pushing Dp over the edge.

Looks like buddying dp and Fred and playing both sides against the middle.

Csargo vote is terribad.

Ok, I agree with this.
Vote: Csargo

This is a really limp way of offing Csargo during the best day one Csar has ever had. Click for context, he basically just took Cuth's justifications and ran with it.

It's the scummiest way of killing townies by lynch.

And that puts Csargo in the lead with 3 votes, by the way. The 2-2-2 tally must have been uncomfortable.

And as soon as he does that, he says good night and dips out.

That's Novice's really scummy and not at all a little bit townie day 1.

[Askthepizzaguy]

(snips)
Question/analysis task for everyone, really: How did we end up lynching Jowy after Pizza repeatedly promised to vote Dp101?

Why am I the only one who engaged with Fredwood regarding his theories? I think his case on El Barto was perfectly valid, but it seems people are trying to hush it up.

That question should have been directed at me. Instead he's playing to the crowd.

Next, buddying Fredwood, someone I suspected.

Playing people off of each other.

Two townies and a town lean, nice. Waiting for people to go offline and then starting lynch wagons on them is not the best process.

More buddying of Fredwood, and his undercutting is passive-aggressive, just as the rest of his game has been.

After a lot of collective hand-wringing regarding Jowy, you repeat your lame defense of him. Surely you knew he was up for a lynch?

After undercutting me, he's using my own critique of Manasi against her.

He's just being a scummy parrot.

I completely agree with this description also, which is probably what's feeding our paranoia. But there's a strategic difference between scumming like this on day one and in the late game. Early days you generally want to narrow your footprint as scum. (I guess I'm parroting Winston here but whatever.)

He's even self-conscious about being a scummy parrot.

Vote: El Barto
Don't like him brushing off Fredwood, and if Dp is town his behaviour towards Dp on day one is bad also.

Buddying 2 people at once.


That's Novice's day 2.

He should not get a day 3.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Teal deer summary for the wall-impaired

1) Terrible opening flurry for reasons stated above.

2) Parrots many people's reasoning so he can hang in the background in plain sight, not be responsible for other people's pushes while supporting them.

3) Buddying

4) Awful process arriving at his "top town read" Jowy for utterly generic reasons, a townread which he then doesn't defend, but helps me attack.

5) Vote Csargo, peace out, using Cuth's justification.

6) Nothing at all townie about him found.

[Fredwood]

I think the 1/4 effort as opposed to champs is accurate, if not completely correct by the percentages. I was tryharding in champs and I'm more casual now, when I nomad I experiment more and try to learn things from the experience. On top of that everyone in champs was in the same boat I was.

To the reaction test, there would be validity to that push if I wasn't the first person to even mention the post and say that it was a test. It was a gamble; I was lucky no one paid attention to it at the time. I will say this was my first significant reaction test, so it's not an existing part of my process.

[Askthepizzaguy]

I think the 1/4 effort as opposed to champs is accurate, if not completely correct by the percentages. I was tryharding in champs and I'm more casual now, when I nomad I experiment more and try to learn things from the experience. On top of that everyone in champs was in the same boat I was.

To the reaction test, there would be validity to that push if I wasn't the first person to even mention the post and say that it was a test. It was a gamble; I was lucky no one paid attention to it at the time. I will say this was my first significant reaction test, so it's not an existing part of my process.

Snap impression of my wall on novice?

I'm about to call for a Megazord comprised of myself, Barto, Autolycus, and Csargo. I have no idea how many power rangers there are and I had to look up what the term was for the Megazord, but if you wanna be number five let's do this thing.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Monty can be the purple one.

[Fredwood]

Snap impression of my wall on novice?

I'm about to call for a Megazord comprised of myself, Barto, Autolycus, and Csargo. I have no idea how many power rangers there are and I had to look up what the term was for the Megazord, but if you wanna be number five let's do this thing.

Before it he was town lean. Have I told anyone in the last 5 minutes how scared I am of buddying (Probably the biggest weakness in my game is being susceptible to it), but I didn't catch the DP buddy. I'll have to do an ISO to see if I can confirm or contradict....if only I knew how to do an ISO here.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Go to the gameroom page, click on the number of posts in the thread, it becomes a pop-up listing everyone's post count.

Inside that pop-up, click on the number of posts by the individual. That becomes a search iso for that person for that thread.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Also:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Fredwood]

Also why Auto?

[Askthepizzaguy]

Multicultural? We are a multi-species community, not merely a multicultural community. You must be XCOM :P !

Vote:Novice

Because autolynchus voted a scum in 100 percent of his posts so far, making him the best townie in the game.