Live Action Mafia
http://mafia.mit.edu/

Strategy discussion
http://mafia.mit.edu/viewtopic.php?f=420&t=6424
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Author:  ksedlar [ Sun May 06, 2018 11:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Strategy discussion

Some thoughts from front rooms:
- Spirit search is clearly the best item, even ignoring price. We want to try to get rituals such that the chance of a person in the ritual having made the kill is about 50%, but unlike in regular set investigations, we want the larger half to be in the set, because a random person in the ritual set gets the result, and we want to maximize the chance of the person who got the result to be innocent. Probably most spare coins should be converted to buying spirit searches, though we might want to leave room for tasers. We probably don't want to buy tasers before needing a taser though.
- Honey jars are not very exciting.
- Shovels cost only 1 coin to use instead of sell, because you can sell shovel handles.

Author:  brunnerj [ Sun May 06, 2018 11:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Strategy discussion

Item passing:

generally people should muddle where items are by making some random passes, this makes it harder for mafia to target a player for having a certain more valuable item.
However, limited item tracking is still useful; in particular, if you pass an item on to someone you should make sure that 2 other people know of this interaction so that town can trace where items went when we want to use an item and need to figure out who has it.

Author:  brunnerj [ Sun May 06, 2018 11:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Strategy discussion

Actually item passing to muddle things for mafia is not very important here because basically everyone has approximately equal value of items on them.

Author:  brunnerj [ Sun May 06, 2018 11:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Strategy discussion

Item tracking really is important; in particular we need to verify where all the items are about once a day to prevent certain mafia shenanigans.

This is especially important early game; it's less relevant after day 3ish as there will be too many people that the mafia killed and took the items from.

Author:  sammyluo [ Mon May 07, 2018 12:38 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Strategy discussion

We should talk about how good it would be to make mints. It's strictly worthwhile to make them right now if we think we can keep them in town hands until night 4? And weakly worthwhile if we can keep them until the end of night 3. This is tricky in a game of this size but maybe worth trying?

Author:  brunnerj [ Mon May 07, 2018 1:32 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Strategy discussion

It's definitely worthwhile if we think that we won't need to buy an item to use with the spare coins on day 1 or day 2.

Author:  brunnerj [ Mon May 07, 2018 3:05 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Strategy discussion

I think that we won't need to spend the coins days 1 and 2, so we should go buy mints.

We should decide if 3 honey jars are better than 1 spirit search. I am not sure which direction is better, but if one spirit search is better we should sell all the honey jars now.

A honey jar's best use is probably randomly using it on another player and not telling anyone who you used it on; it produces about 1 pair investigation of value I think:
breakdown of value for various roles:
pair investigator: 2 pair investigations.
priest: an extra pair of lists, worth about 2 pair investigations while lists are size 2
secret admirer: worth an extra admire, worth about .1 * value of SA trigger, which is about 0 i think
splitter: worth an additional 2 pair investigations from an extra split
roleblocker: an extra roleblock is an extra not-guilty, worth about 1 pair investigation I think
vigilante: worthless
planeswalker: about 1/2 the value of the best honey jar usage

total: (2 + 2 + 0 + 2 + 1 + 0 + 1)/7 = 1.1 which is about 1.

So 3 honey jars are about 3 pair investigations, plus some bad effects which are hard to measure from being more trappable.

I am leaning slightly in the direction of 1 spirit search > 3 honey jars. If we decide this is true, the honey jars should be sold immediately so we can but a mint with the coins.

If we sell the honey jars, we will be buying 4 total mints. Otherwise it is 3 total mints.

By item tracking, I mean that we want to know
(1) that mafia haven't sold their starting items for malicious purposes
(2) what items mafia have obtained from killing town that they could convert to coins for malicious purposes

This mostly just amounts to people not secretly passing off or using items, and once a day demanding everyone show their items to someone else to verify they still own them.

Author:  ksedlar [ Mon May 07, 2018 10:15 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Strategy discussion

I don't think we should put all of our money into mints. In particular, I think we particularly want to use spirit searches earlier in the game, because their relative advantage compared with pair investigations decreases as the game gets smaller. I think we want to aim to use at least one spirit search per death, and we expect three deaths in the first two days, which suggests that we want 3-4 spirit searches (4 in case of a spirit search holder dying) in the first two days.

Also, somewhat tangentially: it's much more likely that mafia will mtp (fake themself being innocent) rather than frame (fake a townsperson being guilty), because there are three roles that do the former and only one role that does the latter. So spirit search ritual sizes should be a bit larger than we would otherwise expect.

Author:  rusch [ Mon May 07, 2018 10:16 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Strategy discussion

Honey jars have some downsides.

1. It allows mafia vigilantes to kill town without dying.
2. It doubles a mafia role blocker
3. Makes town extra trappable.

I think for #3 the same protocol mentioned for item transfers should be used: Telling one person that you were splashed with honey. If everyone knows you were splashed with honey, mafia trivially traps you. If no one is told that you were splashed, mafia can trivially use honey to trap people. I'm not entirely sure if this would be worth it for mafia though.

I'm assuming that it doesn't double the once per time abilities for mafia, which would make it even worse for us.

Anyways, I vote selling the honey.

Author:  ksedlar [ Mon May 07, 2018 10:49 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Strategy discussion

Note that only #3 actually matters; mafia will almost certainly have enough money to do #1 and #2 if they want to (they probably aren't using money for much else), regardless of what we do.

Author:  brunnerj [ Mon May 07, 2018 1:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Strategy discussion

If we buy 3 mints today with all our coins, we can buy 2 more spirit searches tomorrow.
At the very least, we should first get all the coins into groups of 3, so that we can buy either a spirit search or a mint today with each group of 3 coins.

@ksedlar, you mean buy 3-4 more spirit searches with coins, for 5 total spirit search uses today and tomorrow?

We don't have to decide until later tonight if we are buying all mints.
I think we should buy at least 2 mints, but it might depend on deaths and spirit search results.

Author:  brunnerj [ Mon May 07, 2018 4:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Strategy discussion

We should buy 3 mints with our coins, and hold 3 coins/jars for tomorrow.

1 mint was bought by EC already.

2 mints will be bought at ET today. This will require selling 2 jars for coins.

This will leave us with 2 coins and 1 honey jar for tomorrow.

Author:  ksedlar [ Mon May 07, 2018 4:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Strategy discussion

I hear that Mollie will be on campus until late. If so, that means she + an EC person should make a mint, and ET can only make one mint tonight.

Author:  ksedlar [ Mon May 07, 2018 6:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Strategy discussion

Julian says that a secret admirer's investigation is no longer infallible. Spirit searches + the small size of game make set investigations less valuable, so IMO it's better for secret admirers to not admire anyone. I think it's negative utility for the ability to trigger.

Author:  rusch [ Mon May 07, 2018 6:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Strategy discussion

spirit search op plz nerf

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