Mafia Balancing Guide

[John Snow]

The crazy kitchen sink games are the ones where you mess around and have some fun. The regular ones are where you get no aide for scumhunting - keeps you on your toes.

 

That's why I love the roled games so much atm. I'm still learning the game, I guess, and all that. Later I'll enjoy the skill contest more, once I've got some skill. I am excited about peace's game, it'll definately be interesting. I haven't played much as vanilla yet.

[Darthe]

Yeah, I like to make the odd roled games because it is fun from the standpoint of a moderator and the giant power contests are hilarious. With themed games they even make sense. However, the purists game is fun as well. My base mafia coming up on the DM mafia queue is completely roleless.

[RandA lThor]

I like to do roled game since I have been playing mafia since I was 5 and up until I came to DM, we played setups with all roleless but doc, or all roleless but doc and cop. Now with this whole new variety of roles, i feel like I have something more, I'll probably fall out of the phase soon, but for right now, I love it so much.

[Darthe]

Okay, OP will be updated with this info as well. For now let us give ratings to the basic roles of mafia as according to the mafiascum wiki (http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Normal_Game):

 

You should -1 for odd night/ even night or X shot. Inversely, +1 for strong willed.

 

Vanilla: 1

 

Permanent Godfather: 7

 

Serial Killer: 6

 

Sane Cop: 5

 

Jailkeeper: 5

 

Doctor: 4

 

Framer: 4

 

Selective Joat: 4

 

Nightly Vigilante: 4

 

Role Cop: 4

 

Roleblocker: 3

 

Daily Doublevoter: 3 (their power increases as the game goes on)

 

Innocent Child: 3

 

Gunsmith: 3

 

Mason: 3

 

Random Joat: 3

 

Neighbor: 2

 

Traitor: 2

 

Tracker: 2

 

Watcher: 2

 

Neighborizer: 2

 

Bodyguard: 1

 

Miller: 0 (their are two ways to play miller. Claim instantly or don't claim. The first will eventually lead to your death, the second probably will as well. You're a liability to the town)

 

Hider: 0 (the ability is so WIFOM inducing if the Hider doesn't reveal early)

[RandA lThor]

How is role cop lower then normal cop?

[Darthe]

Role cops attempt to catch people in lies, or find roles that are mafia only. Cop is an outright tell unless the other person has a role that conflicts or influences that viewing. So it is weaker.

[Darthe]

Any ratings that you all would disagree with?

[WWWwombat]

I disagree with the premise that any role has a constant, context-independent value to its side.

 

Balance in a mafia game is a lot more complicated than that. I have already provided a counterexample to your method (the slightly absurd setup I posted earlier in this thread is a trivial mafia autowin with the most common rules yet your method shows equal role value for the mafia and the town) and could provide more.

 

Let's just take what we used to call "standard games" alone for instance. Your method gives the mafia 12 points for being an informed minority and the town 9 points for the doc/cop combo. This means as long as I add 3 more vanilla townies than goons in this setup, your method will consider it balanced. If I add 18 vanilla townies and 15 goons, both sides will have 27 points and your model would consider the game balanced, but in practice, the mafia will almost always win because the town can only afford to mislynch 3 times, whereas the mafia can absorb 14 correct lynches.

 

In my opinion, there is no foolproof method to balance role-heavy mafia games. I did run some simulations a while back to find the most balanced setups with only cop/doc/vanilla as roles, but even those may not be entirely accurate as they are just simulations.

[WWWwombat]

Also, giving the miller a 0 value is pretty silly. It would mean that you can add an arbitrarily large number of millers to a game without helping the town. Miller is definitely less valuable than a vanilla townie, but overall, it does help the town, especially if the cop dies early or if the miller takes a nightkill.

[Darthe]

I will agree on both points, however I would probably vary the ratios when considering how abilities stack. The simplest purpose here is to rate individual roles rather than a collective and my examples use simple role mixes to keep me from having to explain that delimma because I didn't have much time. Obviously roles that work in conjunction or incongruous amount of a particular role can vary it's power and I think it is good that you pointed this out. As you said, mafia is not simple. In a game with three cops a mafia roleblocker is going to be far more valuable than in a game with no cop etc.

[Verbal32]

And that's why I never assign values to anything. The best laid battle plans don't survive first contact with the enemy.

[Darthe]

=) I think I noticed what got messed up there. This only works with an assumed 25% mafia and no more than 35% anti-town before you have to really badly change variables. Nonetheless, it is experimental and I think with the help of some other players that we can design one that may take a bit of early pressure off of DPR, yourself, and balance checkers.

[Verbal32]

In that light, I support whatever allows me to do less work.

 

*nodnod*

[Darthe]

Want to help get things set up? Input from everyone on everything will make this better. Perhaps even worthy of addition to the pinned board.

[RandA lThor]

I think we should start off by looking at already proven setups and see how combinations work with those.

[Darthe]

Fair, a comparison of several basic setups to begin with? Assuming 20-25% mafia and 25-33% anti-town etc.

[RandA lThor]

So like the 7 person setup, 3 vanilla town, 1 doc, 1 cop, 2 mafia

And other such generally accepted setups.

[Darthe]

Yes. Okay so let us lay out some basic setups and basic mafia rules.

 

Between 20 and 30% mafia with 22-25% being ideal.

 

Hammer game.

 

Basic setup.

 

Days are 72 hours, Nights are 24.

 

Vote in Red and Bold.

 

No PM Quoting, no outside communication etc.

 

25% mafia (rounded).

 

We can also revise the scale that we rate power roles on etc. IE: we could do 0-10 with no negative numbers etc.

[RandA lThor]

No 0s, negatives allowed imo, with 0, you can add as many as possible without upsetting the "balance"

[peacesells]

make em .5's

[RandA lThor]

make em .5's

 

this

[Darthe]

Fair enough so if I have this right then the scale is as follows:

 

-2, -1.5, -1, -.5, .5, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5, 5, 5.5, 6, 6.5, 7, 7.5, 8, 8.5, 9, 9.5, 10

 

Vanilla Townie = 1?

[RandA lThor]

Yeah Vanilla should be the base 1.

[Darthe]

Cop? Doc?

[John Snow]

Well cop and doc are interesting. 1 of each is good and all, but imagine putting in, say 2 cops.

1 gets close to lynch, claim, the other CCs. One gets lynched, flips cop, and the other gets speedlynched.

So does 2 cops actually lean towards mafia? Town does get 2x as many readings, but odds of a cop getting lynched increase.

Above is actually more of a question than to mess with your guide, as your guide is basic.