Finishing the Hat (Numbers and Balance)

[Frank]

OK, so to this game. The players are clamoring to start, so I'm going to have to get into gear with finishing PMs. I'm going to respond to your points and suggest some potential solutions, then spend a bit of time this morning cleaning the PMs already written and filling in the blanks (I am in a meeting that I do not need to attend but am required to attend, and if I'm typing a lot it will look like I'm taking minutes or something).

Hopefully by later today I can suggest a few possible choices for the remaining three roles, and then try to finish up the balance stuff this afternoon, tonight, and tomorrow.

Dec 7, 2009 17:02:24 GMT -5 sachertorte said:

I'll try and focus on this game now.
regarding recruitment: I forgot the voluntary aspect of recruitment, so I think that might prevent the icky-factor from rearing its head. Town that had successfully gotten a good read on scum are less likely to switch, BUT! I think the fact that the recruiter can send free-form text to the recruitee negates that balance. Even if Town has scum cornered, the recruitment should still flip the game because the free-form message can outline the game state to the recruitee and guarantee the scum win (and win for the recruitee). I'm not sure if I like that. I think it would be a terrible end to the game if Town had IDed the remaining scum then wind up losing due to a late recruitment (plus is it possible for scum to kill AND recruit on the same Night? That would make for a really yucky endgame).

A few things:

1. Only Captain America can recruit;
2. He cannot kill or protect if he is attempting recruitment.

So if the Town got it down to just Captain America and identified him, he could offer recruitment that Night, but it would be in conjunction with no Night kill - thus negating half of the mislynch he'd gain from a successful recruitment. Plus, in such a situation, the Townie would be plumb stupid to accept the recruitment offer no matter what CA said; the game is over and the Townie has won at that point.

Here's the biggest risk, I guess: we're down to five players total, three Town and two Scum. Town has identified one of the two Scum; the other is CA. Town lynches the other Scum, making it 3 Town vs. 1 Scum. That Night, CA offers recruitment and it is accepted, making it 2 Town vs. 2 Scum as the next Day dawns. The Scum should easily be able to pile up and reach the threshold before the Town does, thus forcing a mislynch and the Scum win. This wouldn't be optimal but would it be all that incredibly icky? Captain America would have had to have had enormous guts to hold on to the recruitment option for that long.

Yeah, I'm still leaning towards pushing for an early recruitment. I also think recruitment should be more deterministic. How do you expect to balance the game in light of a failed recruitment? Or a successful one? If the game is balanced in such a way that scum have a decent chance to win, then with recruitment, they should be unstoppable.

I dislike recruitment, but I think if you are going to have it, you need to control it more. In other words, the game should not be won or lost simply as a result of the recruitment being successful or not.

Fair point. OK, well, how about this as a general option. Say we give one of the Scum - possibly CA, possibly the undefined fourth Scum - some sort of extra power that activates only in the event of a failed recruitment. Then we balanced the game such that it begins tilted somewhat pro-Town (not drastically so, but somewhat). Ideally the balance would be:

1. NO RECRUITMENT ATTEMPT EVER MADE - Game leans somewhat pro-Town
2. RECRUITMENT ATTEMPT FAILS - Game ends up exactly balanced
3. RECRUITMENT ATTEMPT SUCCEEDS - Game leans somewhat pro-Scum

We might be able to supplement this with an additional Town role that gains power in the event of a successful recruitment.

I think this sort of fits. If the Town plays well enough to deny the Scum even the chance to recruit - if they find and lynch Captain America Day One, for example - they get an advantage (as they should). If the Scum executes recruitment, they get an advantage. If the Scum are able to make their attempt but it doesn't work, the game corrects to be even.

Does this make sense? Sort of a dynamic balance that accounts for recruitment, and lessens its impact in either direction.

[sachertorte]

Dec 8, 2009 8:33:27 GMT -5 Frank said:

1. Only Captain America can recruit;
2. He cannot kill or protect if he is attempting recruitment.

But if CA is alive with another scum, scum can recruit AND kill in the same night: Imagine 6 Town 3 scum: very far from lynch or lose (or at least it appears so). Town kills scum. scum recruit AND kill at Night. The result is 3 scum versus 4 Town, which scum can theoretically win with the majority minus one lynch condition. Not good.

I think there are several interesting ideas here, but the combination of those ideas create situations that favor scum and can be gamed by scum more effectively.

So if the Town got it down to just Captain America and identified him, he could offer recruitment that Night, but it would be in conjunction with no Night kill - thus negating half of the mislynch he'd gain from a successful recruitment. Plus, in such a situation, the Townie would be plumb stupid to accept the recruitment offer no matter what CA said; the game is over and the Townie has won at that point.

Town would not know that Captain America was the last scum. I see no reason to discount a recruitment at this late stage. If anything, Town often feel more behind than they really are.

Here's the biggest risk, I guess: we're down to five players total, three Town and two Scum. Town has identified one of the two Scum; the other is CA. Town lynches the other Scum, making it 3 Town vs. 1 Scum. That Night, CA offers recruitment and it is accepted, making it 2 Town vs. 2 Scum as the next Day dawns. The Scum should easily be able to pile up and reach the threshold before the Town does, thus forcing a mislynch and the Scum win. This wouldn't be optimal but would it be all that incredibly icky? Captain America would have had to have had enormous guts to hold on to the recruitment option for that long.

I don't think it would be hijackian, and the spoiler reveal would show the low probability play that occurred to pull out the win, but nevertheless I think Town loss on a correct lynch is a weakness.

Fair point. OK, well, how about this as a general option. Say we give one of the Scum - possibly CA, possibly the undefined fourth Scum - some sort of extra power that activates only in the event of a failed recruitment. Then we balanced the game such that it begins tilted somewhat pro-Town (not drastically so, but somewhat). Ideally the balance would be:

1. NO RECRUITMENT ATTEMPT EVER MADE - Game leans somewhat pro-Town
2. RECRUITMENT ATTEMPT FAILS - Game ends up exactly balanced
3. RECRUITMENT ATTEMPT SUCCEEDS - Game leans somewhat pro-Scum

We might be able to supplement this with an additional Town role that gains power in the event of a successful recruitment.

I think this approach makes sense. Switching an entire player from one side to the other is a very large shift in the game. It is at least equivalent to starting the game with a whole additional scum. A game of 20 with 4 scum is very very different than a game of 20 with 5 scum. Balancing such that scum take a hit for successful recruitment and get something shiny for a failure will close the gap.

I think this sort of fits. If the Town plays well enough to deny the Scum even the chance to recruit - if they find and lynch Captain America Day One, for example - they get an advantage (as they should). If the Scum executes recruitment, they get an advantage. If the Scum are able to make their attempt but it doesn't work, the game corrects to be even.

Does this make sense? Sort of a dynamic balance that accounts for recruitment, and lessens its impact in either direction.

I think we re-invented the wheel. I vaguely remember having this conversation before.

Possible ideas:
Scum Captain America is told that upon recruitment failure, he gains power X.
X should be something tantalizing such that gaining this power early will balance the benefits of waiting. Maybe Godfather status?
Scum powers are hard to add since they are inherently more powerful than town powers. Maybe the roleblocker can't roleblock until recruitment fails? We have options here, I'm just not sure which one is best.
Actually, I shouldn't worry about the powerfulness of the power since a successful recruitment would give scum a potentially very powerful role!

Alternative:
Scum is told that upon recruitment, scum must sacrifice something. Maybe a player? That seems harsh, but if someone was caught (going to be vigged at night or lynched the next day) then scum still benefit from the recruitment (fresh scum with no scum trail) but must sacrifice something of value. And if scum manage to get into a situation where the sacrificed player is going to die anyway, then scum haven't lost anything at all. I can also see scum sacrificing someone who is getting heat just to start fresh.
The weakness of this approach is that it pushes scum to delay recruitment as much as possible.

[Frank]

Ooh, this is potentially quite interesting. What about this:

If recruitment fails:

* Captain America becomes a Godfather (as he is no longer trying to win converts, he can concentrate on hiding himself more effectively)

* The Punisher gets... something, I don't know what. Something a little bit better than what he has.

* Cable gets buffed investigation ability (I had planned to give him the choice to either Watch or Track each Night; maybe if recruitment fails he gains a straight-up role investigation ability)?

* The fourth Scum, who will almost surely be a role-blocker of some sort, gets some new or buffed ability.

If recruitment succeeds, Captain America does not get to be a Godfather, Cable stays as-is (Watcher/Tracker combo only), and Punisher gets no extra ability. Plus, one of the two missing Town roles gains an ability.

----

So now the Scum have a choice: recruit and fail and get shiny things, but don't recruit; or recruit and succeed and get nothing shiny except for the power of the recruited player.

[Frank]

Here's a summary of Town powers, by type:

PROTECTIVE

1. Penance (Doctor - starts with 2 protections, can earn more)
2. Lady Deathstrike (Deathtrap, doesn't actually protect)
3. Green Goblin (total of 2 protections, effect is delayed by one day)
4. Spider Man (self only, one-shot)
5. Venom (once bonded, can protect one member of bonded pair)

INVESTIGATIVE

1. Black Widow (Alignment)
2. Spider Man (Tracker)
3. Justice (Coroner)
4. Deadpool (Recruit Cop)
5. Goblin (Can Identify One Killer)

AGGRESSIVE

1. Goblin (max: 1 kill, max: 2 role-blocks)
2. Lady Deathstrike (Deathtrap; see above)

OTHER

1. Iron Man (Preconfirmed)
2. Commander Hill (Lynch Management)
3. She-Hulk (Vote Charger)
4. Venom (Mason Creator)
5. Bishop (Keeps Leash on Goblin)

SO:

Critical Town-Related Questions:

1. Too much or too little protective ability? Should one of the missing roles have a protective element? Should Spider-Man's self-resistance to Night kills exist?

2. Should there be any more Town-directed kills?

3. Should there be a pro-Town role-blocker, however limited?

4. Are we comfortable with the investigative role structure? Only one alignment Cop, but Deathpool can find a recruit, Justice could be pretty useful in his own way and there IS a Tracker.

[sachertorte]

1. Too much or too little protective ability? Should one of the missing roles have a protective element? Should Spider-Man's self-resistance to Night kills exist?
Protection roles are pretty innocuous on the whole. It is rare that a doc pulls off a save. Of the protection roles, Penance and Goblin are the only 'true' protectors. Spiderman is self-only and he is a Miller isn't he? That's not a terrific combo for Town (balanced).
Also Bonding protection is balanced by the 'both die' aspect. For that, the protection is a wash.
I think Protections are OK.

2. Should there be any more Town-directed kills?
Only if you want more death/faster game. I would say you need more town directed kills if the lynch burden of the town is high. I think you have 4 scum + 1 recruit + 1 possible PFK. Expected Lynch burden is 5. That is kinda on the high side for a 19 player start (which is actually only 18 due to the non-aligned player).
Allocated mislynches is less than 5.
I think there is an imbalance regarding lynch burden. Town will need to lynch correctly 5 times to win. Scum need 4 mislynches to win.

3. Should there be a pro-Town role-blocker, however limited?
Town Roleblockers are anti-Town in my opinion. At least in the early game. I'm still amazed that town roleblockers choose to act on Night One, especially with our trend of no/low vanilla games.

4. Are we comfortable with the investigative role structure? Only one alignment Cop, but Deathpool can find a recruit, Justice could be pretty useful in his own way and there IS a Tracker.
It certainly isn't underpowered.

[Pleonast]

Hi! I've skimmed through everything, except some of the PMs. This looks to be a fun game to play.

I think the analyses are missing two important things:

1. Town win via confirmed pool. That is, when the number of townies in the unconfirmed pool is less than or equal to the number of mislynches remaining. A godfather and recruitment reduces the effectiveness of this, but we still need calculate the likelihood. I'll read through the role PMs carefully and see how likely the town can build a confirmed pool.

2. Town win via mass claim. I prefer that a mass claim does not necessarily benefit any side (but allow for poor claims). What defenses do scum have against a mass claim? I'm unfamiliar with this color; will players be able to guess alignment based on role name? I can't do this analysis at all.

[Frank]

My intention is to provide the Scum with fully-realized cover roles - but not four fully realized cover roles. They'll receive seven cover names, two cover PMs with full background including one with cover powers. The rest they'll have to fill in for themselves.

There will be one Townie with a canon role that is definitely Scum in the canon, plus several Townies and at least one Scum with names that are not definitively either side at all (Spider-Man played both sides of the fence in the comics; most of the villainous types, including Venom, Goblin, and Lady Deathstrike are bad guys and were mostly out for themselves; the fourth Scum is probably going to be Nick Fury, who was in hiding for the entire Marvel Civil War and didn't really choose a side).

[Pleonast]

Building a confirmed pool...

Ironman: self-confirms.
Bishop: confirms Green Goblin.
Venom: creates weak two-player Masonry.
Black Widow: if she claims early and is protected, while create one confirmed player per cycle (or reveal scum). Penance gets two freebie protections, the rest require charging.

Deadpool: mitigates uncertainty due to possible recruitment.

If everything goes town-ways, then they can build a confirmed fairly quickly, possibly 6 confirmed town on Day Three. If the setup is 14-4-1, then after 2 mislynches and 2 Night kills and assuming unaligned replaces a townie, town could be at 10-4, with 3 mislynches. The unconfirmed pool would be 4-4; that's one more townie then mislynches left. However, if the town decides to trust the Black Widow or Bishop, that would reduce the unconfirmed pool to 3-4 and guarantee a town win (absent powers the scum may use).

Of course, it's fairly unlikely everything goes the town's way that early. Typical town play doesn't go all-out to confirm players at the beginning. But I think this analysis shows the town has the potential to easily win via the confirmed pool. There's not much scum can do to prevent it either, since the confirmed pool is created by four sources (unlike a classic Mafia game with two sources: one investigator and one mason group). The primary obstacle is coordination among the confirmers.

[Frank]

Hm.

Well, the existence of a Godfather and/or recruiting mechanism surely adjusts the above analysis a bit, right? I mean, if the Scum successfully recruit, then any of the putatively "confirmed" Townies could no longer be truly viewed as confirmed. Deadpool can adjust for that a bit, if Deadpool survives, but it would still create some chaos.

I do think Widow would have some major issues. If she claims Day One, then again, I suspect Penance will protect her Night One, and the Punisher will kill Penance. She'll get one confirmed Townie (or out one Scum) and then on Night Two, the Scum will kill her. She'll confirm only one Townie by dawn of Day Three, and thereafter be dead.

Venom's confirmation does work as long as both are believed. But this is really just a two-man Masonry (throw in Iron Man, I guess).

And then there's Bishop/Goblin. Bishop can vouch for Goblin, I guess, but the only way the Town can trust this vouching is if Bishop dies, and if Bishop dies, the Goblin suddenly becomes part of the Town's enemies.

Ooh! Except, Penance can self-protect AND protect Widow Night One, so I see your point.

Any reasonable way you can think of to ameliorate this? I can make the Punisher's extra kill thingy not blockable (ie, if Penance self-protects but protects Widow as well, and if Punisher targets Widow, Penance dies anyway).

[sachertorte]

Dec 8, 2009 14:00:05 GMT -5 Pleonast said:

Venom: creates weak two-player Masonry.

Not only is the word "mason" never used, the two are bound to each other in such a way that either both live or both die. They will never be 'confirmed.'

[Pleonast]

Well, it's unlikely that Black Widow will claim on Day One and that Penance will do exactly what's needed to protect both. And if Black Widow doesn't claim, then she's unlikely to be able to investigate. But maybe BW will try to collect votes and be forced to claim. Hmm. I think there may be enough possibilities that it's unlikely the town-optimal particulars will happen with respect to BW.

But we still have the 4 confirmed from the other sources. As a group, they are weaker than 4 masons, since they (mostly) have no knowledge of each other.

If I've done my calculations correctly, the town winning when the number of unconfirmed townies is less than the number of mislynches is equivalent to the number of confirmed townies greater than the number of unconfirmed players. So if scum do not eliminate any of the 4 "masons", they'll lose when the game is down to 8 players, after 5.5 cycles (about Day Six if there's no extra kills except the third-party becoming town). Each confirmation by BW moves that a Day forward, but each confirmed kill moves it back a Day.

That doesn't sound too unbalanced.

Dec 8, 2009 15:24:36 GMT -5 sachertorte said:

Dec 8, 2009 14:00:05 GMT -5 Pleonast said:

Venom: creates weak two-player Masonry.

Not only is the word "mason" never used, the two are bound to each other in such a way that either both live or both die. They will never be 'confirmed.'

You're strictly correct, but as townie, if two players publicly announce that they know the other is town, I'm inclined to believe them until there is contradicting evidence. If town is not going to lynch someone, they're confirmed in terms of finding scum among the unconfirmed pool.

But it's good to point out that they die together. That means the scum can eliminate two confirmed for the price of one kill.

[Frank]

OK, so over on Idle's boards they're expecting this game to start tomorrow, with PMs going out today, and I think we're close but we're not there yet. Let's take a step back. I'm going to finish off Captain America's PM and Cable's PM, and write the Scum cover section right now. I'd like to see if we can't establish roughly what the three remaining characters will be, leaving color out altogether until we settle the powers. Once I have powers, filling in color to match should be easy.

1. TOWN13
Probably a combination role-blocker and role-block preventer, or else just a plain vanilla role-blocker.

2. TOWN14
No idea. What do we feel Town is missing? Sach, you had suggested that they should maybe have a Town-directed kill, to balance the number of require mislynches vs. the number of required lynches. The only problem with adding a Town-directed kill is that the Scum can use it for nefarious purposes if they recruit the killer. How about this: if the power is used at any time during the Day, then the player with the second-most votes in a Day is killed along with the vote-leader, but only if the vote leader is of the same alignment as the killer. So it would allow Town to potentially manage a competing role-claims situation in an unusual way, but be useful for Scum only if they're already getting one of their own killed (basically it's a Bomb in Scum hands).

3. SCUM4
Also, probably a role-blocker or combination role-blocker and role-block preventer. I think one of the sides should have the latter, I just can't decide which.

So what do you think? Once we settle these three roles, I can write them PMs and then we can settle what I'd consider the final issue (how recruitment should work).

[sachertorte]

1. TOWN13
Probably a combination role-blocker and role-block preventer, or else just a plain vanilla role-blocker.
I'm of the opinion that a Town Roleblocker is not a useful role. Which is fine. I like the idea of a role-block preventer, which is also mostly useless, but not as anti-productive as a role blocker.

2. TOWN14
No idea. What do we feel Town is missing? Sach, you had suggested that they should maybe have a Town-directed kill, to balance the number of require mislynches vs. the number of required lynches. The only problem with adding a Town-directed kill is that the Scum can use it for nefarious purposes if they recruit the killer. How about this: if the power is used at any time during the Day, then the player with the second-most votes in a Day is killed along with the vote-leader, but only if the vote leader is of the same alignment as the killer. So it would allow Town to potentially manage a competing role-claims situation in an unusual way, but be useful for Scum only if they're already getting one of their own killed (basically it's a Bomb in Scum hands).
My concern was that if Town only has lynch as a means of eliminating their foe, then they must correctly lynch approximately 5 times to win, which is bordering on the high level, especially since the game starts with a smaller number of players.
The powers you propose looks very bad from a balance point of view. Giving scum any extra kills is extremely bad. The only possible way I can see to maybe mitigate this is to publicly reveal who killed the second vote-getter. Scum could do it, and under the right circumstances, they could push a win by doing so. But in the general sense, scum are at risk in doing so. I still don't like it, but it is slightly better.

Also, I'd like to point out that you must be careful of scum recruiting a power that lowers the lynch buffer by 1. You've already lowered it to M-1. Allowing scum to win at M-2 is a mistake in my opinion.

I'd rather you add more Town players than allow scum to recruit an extra kill.
Essentially, you need more Town power roles that are useful to Town, but useless to scum. Unfortunately, pretty much every power (except alignment cop) is always more powerful in the hands of scum. Perhaps you should change some of the protections to be protections from specific kinds of attacks. In other words, make the protector protect from the scum kill. Then if scum recruit that player, they are essentially vanilla.

3. SCUM4
Also, probably a role-blocker or combination role-blocker and role-block preventer. I think one of the sides should have the latter, I just can't decide which.
I think role block preventer would be more useless to scum. It makes most sense to have scum have a roleblocker and town have the preventer.

[sachertorte]

I do not feel the game is balanced. Looking over the roles and powers, I see that most Town powers are hindered in some way from their classical incarnation. Only two scum roles are written out. The 'godfather' is also a protector which is more powerful for scum than usual. Punisher, I think is okay, but I still don't like giving scum extra kills.

[Frank]

Hm. OK, so let's troubleshoot:

In addition to the fact that the limitations on most Town powers creates a balance problem in one direction, I think it ALSO creates a balance problem in the other direction. If the Town twigs to the fact that every one of their roles is modified in some fashion, but the Scum are claiming simpler roles (the Scum role-blocker would presumably just claim "role-blocker," right?), it might cause a break if they decide to go with a mass claim.

So here are my troubleshooting suggestions:

1. Eliminate the requirement that the Black Widow have two votes in order to investigate. She becomes an ordinary Alignment Cop, but a Miller if she is tracked.

2. Eliminate EITHER the Godfather or the protective power assigned to Captain America. We could then make this power the prize for a failed recruitment.

3. Add a role-block preventer to the Town side, with a limited number of charges. Do NOT have a Town role-blocker at all.

4. Make the Scum role-blocker limited in some way. Maybe can't role-block the same player two Nights in a row?

5. Cable, I was planning to make a watcher/tracker (he chooses one or the other each Night). This doesn't seem excessively powered, does it?

6. Eliminate the protection against recruitment afforded by Iron Man's existence. This should push for earlier recruitment, which may net out to a plus for Town.

7. Move the deputy threshold-setter power to Maria Hill, and make her unrecruitable.

8. Eliminate She-Hulk's vote-charge power and replace it with something else altogether.

Would this address some of the balance issues from your perspective? Still creates issues in that I need to come up with two more Town roles that won't throw the whole thing completely out of balance (probably two one-shot abilities). Well, let me do some PM writing and see where it all goes.