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[Toaster]

Then you probably shouldn't be playing Mafia.

[Darvi]

D:

[Mr.Person]

The general reason to read your role PM is that in a regular game when you're mafia, the advantages of working with other mafia members FAR outweighs the advantages of not being aware of one's alignment. And of course, if you're a third party, you pretty much have to be aware of that fact to be able to win.

[Bdthemag]

Bumping the thread to post a new idea. I was thinking of a mafia game where your role is determined by one post you provide, that you have posted on the forums.

[Darvi]

BYOP mafia?

[Toaster]

Interesting.  I have a couple ideas for that...

[Think0028]

In the future, I was thinking of running a cult mafia game. I'll save the question of 'is the board okay with me modding it' for when I actually want to run it, but until then, two questions about the balance:

1) I was thinking of starting with 9 players, 1 cult leader, so that the game is over with 3 mislynches. I'm still crunching the numbers a bit as there's an awful lot of possibilities as to what could happen, but does anyone see any imbalance issues with that?

2) I was also thinking about what power roles to add. I'm thinking two power roles: a jailer (both roleblocks the target and prevents culting) and something else.
a) A watcher that knows if the target visited someone (jailer or cult leader doing something) or if the target was visited (targetted by jailer or cult leader). I think this'd be interesting, but am I missing something here? Some game-ending problem? If no one has any particular complaints, I'd probably end up having this as the second power role.

b) An initial confirmed townie, inspired by reading the Cybrid Mafia game. Dunno how much this guy'd matter past D1, but the jailer protecting him could sustain him for long enough to screw over the cult. Then again, cult getting the jailer and then him could screw over the town. Any suggestions here?

[webadict]

The initial confirmed Townie is ACTUALLY less unbalanced than the Watcher, and I'll use statistics to show why in a bit.

[Think0028]

The initial confirmed Townie is ACTUALLY less unbalanced than the Watcher, and I'll use statistics to show why in a bit.

Thank you, that's exactly the kind of advice I was looking for, as I was having trouble with the statistics.

[Mr.Person]

I don't feel like typing up a whole lot, but lemme just do some quick numbers.

Contownie, jailer, and watcher all claim off the bat and become cleared D1. One-in-six chance of instant town victory instantly.

Let's assume the jailer or watcher get converted and that the watcher's inspection is either blocked or ignored.

One-in-five chance of town victory. Note that the cult controls one-fourth of the vote.

Let's now assume that both the jailer and watcher are subverted as any wise townie would assume.

One-in-four chance of town victory. Note that the cult controls three-sevenths of the vote. If the town misses here, it loses.

I dunno the odds on town victory vs cult victory. I suck at math.

[webadict]

It's simple precedent over practice, but we'll cover both cases.

You're right in assuming that both could claim and make it impossible, but I'll again cover both possibilities:

Let's assume no one claims in the confirmed Town situation:
There's a 1/8 chance of cult being lynched. This is pretty low, and isn't too bad for odds. The only downside is that someone may be lynched early, but even then it's pretty good odds.
At Night is when things get interesting:

The Jailer has a 2/8 chance of guessing correctly (They can both block and protect), but they're going to likely protect the confirmed Townie. So, assuming that, the Cult will probably use their 1/7 chance to try to recruit the Jailer.

After that, the game becomes increasingly more likely for the scum to win. Have 8 people alive and 2 cult means that the next Day would be lylo with 3/7 cult. And by lylo, I mean they need to lynch the Cult Leader or lose, which is 1/7 instead of 3/7.

Good news is that once the Cult Leader is lynched in lylo, they get 2 shots to correctly lynch the remaining cult.

But, yeah, it's probably about a ~50-65% chance that the Cult wins, which is much higher if they make it past Day 1.

The reason that the watcher makes it unbalanced is that there is no immediate target for the jailer, who is then given a much better choice of whom to protect. The confirmed Town is suspicious the Day after the first, and WIFOM plays heavily into it. The watcher has a 50% chance of finding the Cult with his inspection if it comes back true, and even then, the other 50% chance simply needs to have the Jailer counterclaim, and if he's not, then lynch the other guy.

Anyhow, the chance that the cult wins in this one is about 40-60%. Not much, but I think the other one is much more balanced, especially if you don't want games to end Day 2. The top one gives more suspiciousness through the town and that's a good way to play Mafia.

[Think0028]

Confirmed townie and jailer it is, then. Now to start writing up some flavor.

[webadict]

Another way to look at it is that the Watcher acts like a Cop while the Jailer acts like a Doctor. The Jailer doesn't confirm anyone but still helps protect the Town. The Watcher acts like a Cop that can't be fought by the scum. The upside is that they can't work together, but even then, it's still a force to be reckoned with. The confirmed Town however is a rallying point from Day 1 and then a point of suspicion afterward.

[Think0028]

Had bad code, now fixing.

[Think0028]

This script (actually) simulates how the game would run, and town has about a 28% success rate at the moment with random lynching, culting, and blocking, assuming the jailer doesn't claim. Putting in some smarter logic for town (they don't lynch jailer or confirmed townie until cult leader is dead) bumps that up to 34%.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

import random

win = 0
attempts = 10000
secondmember = False
jailer = True
confirmedTownie = True
jailerClaim = True
mustKillCultist = True #town prioritizes lynching cultist over lynching jailer or confirmed townie on suspicion of being culted
debug = False

for i in xrange(attempts):
players = ['webadict', 'Jim Groovester', 'Toaster', 'Vector', 'Max White', 'IronyOwl', 'Jokerman-EXE', 'Pandarsenic', 'lordnincompoop']
if confirmedTownie:
confirmedTownie = random.choice(players)
players.remove(confirmedTownie)
cultist = random.choice(players) #random cultist that's not confirmed townie
players.remove(cultist)
if jailer:
jailer = random.choice(players) #random jailer that's not the cultist
players.remove(jailer)
if debug:
print 'Cult: ' + cultist
if jailer: print 'Jailer: ' + jailer
if confirmedTownie: print 'Confirmed Townie: ' + confirmedTownie
print 'Town: ' + str(players)
if secondmember:
secondmember = random.choice(players)
players += [cultist] #add the cultist and jailer back in for lynching
if jailer:
players += [jailer]
cultmembers = [cultist]
if secondmember:
cultmembers += [secondmember]
if confirmedTownie:
confirmedTownie = [confirmedTownie]
confirmedid = confirmedTownie[0]
else:
confirmedTownie = []
confirmedid = ''
if jailer and jailerClaim:
confirmedTownie += [jailer]
players.remove(jailer)
while len(cultmembers) > 0 and len(cultmembers) < (len(players) + len(confirmedTownie) - len(cultmembers)):
protect = ''
cultify = ''
removed = []
if cultist in players and mustKillCultist:
if jailer and jailer in players:
players.remove(jailer)
removed += [jailer]
if confirmedid and confirmedid in players:
players.remove(confirmedid)
removed += [confirmedid]
lynch = random.choice(players) #lynch a poor bastard that's not a confirmed townie
players += removed
players.remove(lynch)
if debug:
print lynch + ' was lynched!'
if lynch in cultmembers:
cultmembers.remove(lynch)
if len(confirmedTownie) > 0:
players += confirmedTownie #confirmed townie no longer confirmed
confirmedTownie = []
if jailer in players and jailer not in cultmembers: #if the jailer's alive, protect/block random
players.remove(jailer)
if players:
protect = random.choice(players) #jailer might actually try to preserve a single target, should check how that changes
players += [jailer]
if debug:
print jailer + ' protects/blocks ' + protect
if cultist in players: #cult someone if cultist is alive and not blocked
for i in cultmembers:
players.remove(i)
if players:
cultify = random.choice(players)
if jailerClaim and jailer in players and jailer not in cultmembers:
cultify = jailer
players += cultmembers
if cultify != protect and cultist != protect:
cultmembers += [cultify]
if debug:
print cultify + ' is now in the cult.'
else:
if debug and cultify != '':
print cultify + ' was protected from cultification'
if len(cultmembers) == 0:
win += 1
print "Town won " + str(win) + " times out of " + str(attempts) + " attempts"


That seems a tad low. Should I be concerned and consider rebalancing, or should I not worry?