[Advanced] Settlers of Catan Mafia - Game Over

[Nolder]

The sun set once again as the villagers went to bed. They were terrified of what would come tomorrow but they needn't have worried. Tomorrow wasn't going to come for the remaining villagers of Catan. Awwwwhhoooooooo! Awwhhooooooooooooooooooo! Two wolves howled in the night. This didn't wake anyone up but the sound of a door being knocked in did. By then it was too late though. The sun rose again over Catan but this time it was emptier. There were no more villagers, no more people. The evil in Catan had cleansed the island of settlers as it always had before.

 

 

Wombat, Catan Villager, has been brutally killed.

Verbal, Catan Priest, has been noisily massacred.

 

Ishy, Werewolf, and BFG, Werewolf, have won alongside the departed Despothera, Alpha Wolf, and Goldeneyes, Wolfmate.

Awwwhhooooooo!

[hazelkrs1]

HOOOOOOOOWWWWWWLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

[hazelkrs1]

GG town, great job Ishy and BFG. I had nothing to do with either of you being converted, but obviously I still take credit for leading my team to victory

 

[csarmi]

Some great plays in here.

[Nolder]

Well played everyone. I saw some really impressive thoughts and tactics from both sides.

Before I'm ripped to shreds I'd just like to apologize, again, publicly.

This game was swingy to say the least. My meddling mid game may have made this even worse.

I honestly thought I had a really solid setup going into this game and it just kind of fell apart.

I'll take it as a lesson of never being too sure, next time I think a game is good I'll have someone look over it anyway just to be extra sure.

But anyways I hope you all still had fun regardless and I hope some of you will show up for my next game (Basic) which will be Matrix themed.

[Nolder]

Dead thread: http://www.quicktopic.com/50/H/nAYmnNnvXeP

 

Contains the setup and in depth explanation of how the roles all worked. I am particularly proud of my Apothecary role.

One thing that was kind of funny and also kind of sad is Verbal never realized or thought to ask if his power could do more than protect until pretty much the very end.

He thought he was a regular doctor when in reality he could have cured Ishy and BFG if he'd used his power on them before they turned.

 

If you have any questions about roles or possibilities that aren't addressed in the first few posts of the dead thread just throw'em at me.

[Nolder]

Werewolf QT: http://www.quicktopic.com/50/H/E7nejh3fP7p47

[hazelkrs1]

Yeah... even tho my team won I still think it was def unbalanced. Really, the only reason we won was because there was a mechanic which allowed a town PR a way to turn himself into scum, and really I don't think mechanics like that should exist. We got lucky this game, no doubt. I think we played well, especially towards the end, but town played better than us and deserved to win. But without that mechanic, I think it would be extremely difficult for the scum to win in this setup with any sort of regularity. Both town PR's were fairly powerful, while I myself could only recruit or kill, and had no say in which of those happened. In a way I kind of like that scheme, makes you have to weight the risk vs. reward thing. But starting off just by myself, things could have easily gone crazy bad for me from the start, and a couple of things DID go pretty bad for me. Hit a trigger, and should have helped me in some way, but instead of making it a 100% recruit instead of kill or something, it makes my recruit an "instant" recruit, which still didn't help me when it decided to kill instead (and was stuffed by Wombat's BPV potion). Just too many ways that my recruits could have been countered by the town PR's and mechanics of the game, and starting off as a lone scumster, this made things extremely difficult to say the least. I also think the QT restrictions were super lame, would have been nice to continue conversing with my team. I don't think it offers much advantage, just lets people coordinate better and work together, which is essentially one of scum's intrinsic properties.

 

Altogether I don't think it's a terrible setup, I like the Apothecary and Priest roles and the kill/recruit mechanic. I think it should have been tweaked a lot more before it started however. Starting with two wolves, an Alpha and Wolfmate, allowing one recruit on a night we don't kill, plus keeping the QT more open, and taking away some of the negative utility of the Apothecary role would have made the game much less swingy, and generally more balanced imo. And more fun to play. And really I think this is an important lesson for you Nol: I've seen you scold other mods for not keeping their setups more open so they can play with more or less players, but I think if you design a game to be balanced for a certain number of players, it should stay that way. Introducing more or less players can have obvious effects on the game's balance. This setup would have been much better with like 8 or 9 players imo, and it looks like it was balanced more for around that number.

[hazelkrs1]

And you know, something similar happened last game too, now that I recall. One player dropped out at the last second, and instead of filling the spot, you just removed one of the vanilla townies, which had even more negative effect on town's chances that game. I don't think most setups thrive with last minute changes, essentially the only kinds which can be more fluid to the number of players are more basic setups imo.

 

Also, if I was town, I would have def been genuinely pissed with that really short deadline day 1. I know activity up to that point wasn't great, but town had just had a replacement, so def could have used more time imo. And yet the flip side to that was that town got WAAAAY too much time on another day, when GE was lynched, and the deadline extension for them was gross considering it had already been such a long deadline and they hadn't done anything with it. You pretty much prodded town there Nol, and I don't like that at all, made you seem impartial for a moment. Like you didn't want town to lose because of a missed deadline, when that would have been their fault.

 

Anyways, I could prob keep going but I might as well just stop now lol. Still had some fun in the end.

[Blackhoof]

Good game :)

 

Terrible play on my part, Des was mafia and ishy was the apothrcary :P

[hazelkrs1]

Lol it's cool Hoof, I was buddying you somewhat subtly, mighta been part of why you felt like that initially

[_CLOUD]

My lynch was total bs

 

 

GG everyone. It was a fun game.

[Verbal32]

Blah.  I should have asked more questions.  I usually do - I blame the holidays.

 

Even if I had, though, I would be firing into the crowd with no clue who was converted or not.  This town needed a Cop of some sort - once the wolves gained a couple members, we had no chance.

[Verbal32]

@Nolder:  what did you meddle with in the middle of the game?

[Pralaya]

Well, a bit confusing game but it was fun.

 

Why were the two mod-killed?

 

Also, this game is a perfect example of lynching what is obviously in front of your eyes rather than complicating things with wifom :)

[Nolder]

And you know, something similar happened last game too, now that I recall. One player dropped out at the last second, and instead of filling the spot, you just removed one of the vanilla townies, which had even more negative effect on town's chances that game. I don't think most setups thrive with last minute changes, essentially the only kinds which can be more fluid to the number of players are more basic setups imo.

You're talking about my Kingdom Hearts game.

Let me remind you it was originally designed as a 14 player game.

It was a VERY vanilla game, aside from the random variables which pretty much all went in mafia's favor.

IIRC in order to compensate for the extra players I added 1 or 2 Goons to the mafia.

It was that simple. The fact that a VT dropped out was not a big deal. Did it put a little extra pressure on town?

Of course it did but it wasn't an unbalanced amount pressure. We had 4 and 1/2 (symp) mafia vs 12 townies.

That's about 25% scum which is roughly how the numbers should be balanced in a vanilla game. In fact most people err on the side of 30% IMO.

 

Now, coming back to this game, I don't know what you expected me to do.

Balance was already shot due to the swingyness of yours and Ishy's roles.

Did my little attempt at trying to correct that just a little bit even matter in the long run?

No one got the Diseased role like I wanted and in fact you got a powered up infection attack...which was foiled.

So it didn't make any tangible difference on the game.

 

Unless you're talking about the modkills?

I address that with Pral lower in this post but if you are I don't know what else you expected me to do when my rules, put in place to protect the scum team, were violated.

 

Also, if I was town, I would have def been genuinely pissed with that really short deadline day 1. I know activity up to that point wasn't great, but town had just had a replacement, so def could have used more time imo.

Yeah well I didn't expect Leelou to drop.

She had some sudden family issues and had to be replaced at the drop of a hat.

She had an important role so I couldn't just modkill her and move one.

So when Goldeneyes replaced in I didn't think it was fair to anyone to have him come in with all those votes on him.

So I removed them. I see now that that, in conjunction with the deadline wasn't the best of ideas.

On the other hand I have seen people rise to the occasion with 24 hour deadlines in the past. I'm not going to tolerate inactivity from a town.

If townies are going to squander what time they've been given then they are going to get strict deadlines yes and if they miss those the mafia is going to tear them apart. I don't feel bad about this at all. It's unfortunate that the Goldeneyes thing happened at the same time and looking back I would have given town a little extra time (even though they didn't deserve it) but I didn't so we'll just have to live with that mistake.

 

And to be clear what I am saying here is that I feel my methods are justified.

In this specific case I messed up a little bit. Sorry.

 

And yet the flip side to that was that town got WAAAAY too much time on another day, when GE was lynched, and the deadline extension for them was gross considering it had already been such a long deadline and they hadn't done anything with it. You pretty much prodded town there Nol, and I don't like that at all, made you seem impartial for a moment. Like you didn't want town to lose because of a missed deadline, when that would have been their fault.

It was one hour.

One hour in which I was busy/away from my computer IIRC.

And, IIRC, the final vote came within 1 minute of the new deadline.

I know that sucks for Goldeneyes and for the scum team but considering the state of the game yes I did throw town a small bone there while I was away and they barely made use of it. And look what happened anyway, your team won in the end.

 

Anyways, I could prob keep going but I might as well just stop now lol. Still had some fun in the end.

Feel free to keep going if you want.

 

@Nolder:  what did you meddle with in the middle of the game?

The trigger thing mostly, and the extended deadline for Goldeneyes.

That was me trying to boost activity while also trying to inject a role (diseased) I took out that I wanted back in somehow.

I didn't even think Des would be the one to hit the trigger but when he did I realized it wouldn't be fair not to give him something so I did, although it turned out to be pointless which was a relief.

 

Why were the two mod-killed?

Here is an example of the Villager PM

You are a villager of Catan. You chop wood, grow wheat, lay bricks, quarry rocks, and breed sheep.

You also are in the process of building roads to different parts of the island. You lead a boring life.

 

You are powerless town.

You win when all threats to the town have been eliminated.

Aside from the way I worded their actual role and win conditions everything was all the same. That is to say, the flavor bits were just copy/pasted to every villager.

This is why I explicitly put a rule in place not to discuss PM's because I didn't want anyone to even be tempted to talk about them and inadvertently get themselves killed.

When Player and later Andrej confirmed they both had "boring lives" I had no choice but to modkill them. It was either that or allow pretty much the entire town to know these people started out as allies, and then if that was allowed what was to stop anyone else from doing the same thing? It wouldn't have been remotely fair to the scumteam so I modkilled.

[WWWwombat]

Despo is insane.  Didn't think I'd see him complain about balance when he won, but here he is.  This game was swingy, but did not lean town at all.  It actually leaned scum a bit.  Town had to go up against a cult without a dedicated Cop or Vig.  Without a vig, the best you can hope to do is keep pace until you kill the CL.  Without a cop, even that is extremely hard.  Against a cult, everything you do except for lynching the CL is one step worse than against a mafia.

 

Lynching a regular cultist is equivalent to no-lynching against a mafia.

No-lynching against a cult is equivalent to mislynching against a mafia.

Mislynching against a cult is equivalent to mislynching and then no-lynching against a mafia.

 

 

Despo's recruit may have been unpredictable, but all that requires is a switch in strategy from targeting people you want to have to targeting people you don't want the town to have.  In the end, there were 4 cult members in a game which lasted 5 days, and in which the cult leader had been lynched on D3.  Des would like to ignore the Ishy thing because he thinks it shouldn't have existed, but it did exist, so you can't ignore it in analyzing the game.

 

As for deadlines, Nolder gave us a 6 hour deadline while some townies were asleep on D1.  On one of the other days, he inexplicably moved the deadline up 12 hours.  And Despo is complaining about him moving a deadline back an hour while he was AFK?  Unbelievable.  Deadline inactivity works both ways.  Nolder is right that a town shouldn't expect a deadline extension if they aren't active, but neither should a scum team expect to win by stalling the game until deadline.  That is not only boring, but it is crappy scum play and one of the reasons I prefer not to set deadlines if I can.

 

Overall, I think that besides the D1 deadline, Nolder ran this game well.  And even that wasn't a huge deal imo.  The game was a bit swingy, but I expect that from Nolder's games and often enjoy it.  Comparing this game to Nolder's KH game does him a disservice.

 

I think the proof that Despo is wrong lies in the fact that he said that the town outplayed the scum until near the end of the game and the scum still won, but he still thinks the game was slanted against the scum.  A statement like that is clearly indicative of bias.

[WWWwombat]

As for the modkills, Dap and AJ earned them.  They broke the rules.  Especially AJ.

[Verbal32]

I agree 100% with everything Wombat posted above.

[Leelou]

Same. And really sorry for dropping out, I had a family emergency. 

[Verbal32]

No need to apologize.

[John E. Kelley]

Even with the win, I'll say it one more time:

 

I hate Cults.

[John E. Kelley]

But GG Nol. I'm balance-illiterate, so no griping from me.

[WWWwombat]

Also, gg everyone.  This was really well-played by a lot of people and really fun.

[Verbal32]

Even with the win, I'll say it one more time:

 

I hate Cults.

 

I'm ok with them as long as a Cop/Vig exists to eliminate the #s before they get out of control.  With my role, I had no idea (had I thought of it early like I should have, lol) who to go for - completely blind.

 

With a Cop, town would have had a chance.  As it stands, unless Des went down D1, town loses.