Root Mafia (Game Thread - Mafia Victory)

Thanks. I was nervous on day 1 as I thought I would be lynched straight away and that would be disastrous for Eerie, but relaxed after that. I actually had you as the leading candidate to be my team mate as you were giving me lots of help and even on day 4 I hoped it was just a ruse for a while that you were trying to lynch me.

I think Eerie really needed a mechanism to link up later. Even if Smiles had neighbourised me, I wouldn’t have said anything as he was seen as lock town.

Overall, pleased to make it to day 4 and at least I didn’t lynch a team mate but my reads were terrible. The 4 I were suspicious of were all town.

I really wish town had taken my offer. If you had killed Arakhor then I would have likely killed Esooa and been killed by Woodland, leaving 3-1-1 and an interesting finale.

 

For what it's worth I also thought he was town, although I thought that all three of him, Ras, and Renata were about equally likely to be deepwolfing it hard, I mentioned guessing 4 scums to pzelda after I died because that's how many I thought there were, if I knew there was 5 my 5th guess would have been 1 of those 3 with no strong leaning towards any of them

You were obvious town, Ace was obvious town once I thought about it for more than a few seconds, and Radishes blended into the background before D3, when he became obvious town.

 

I assumed that I would probably somehow inherit the kill if Loderingo died (like a factional kill that gets passed down the chain), in hindsight I should never have allowed Loderingo to be chopped even if I had to out myself because our team would always have lost as soon as he was.

 

That awkward feeling when it dawns on you that Loderingo might be your teammate and you just buried his fakeclaim.

 

You can find it in the epilogue: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...d-mafia-victory.667693/page-118#post-16042253

 

Ok, some notes on the balance. I think the factions were fairly balanced for the game I planned to originally host. Announcing Feline Empire in the thread was a last minute change I made, because I got scared of other factions outing themselves in the thread and just getting destroyed by numerical superiority of cats. The gimmick of cats was cannon fodder without them being an announced majority faction. With that the balance shifted slightly. The game still was fine in case of 1 on 1 with every faction, but as a town faction, they numbers were too low. I should have solved this by making the Woodland Alliance only a 2 player team or by adding another 2 vanillagers. Making numbers of players in factions public would help too.
I made several smaller modding mistakes, but the one obvious was that I didn't announce mylo. That gave the Woodland Alliance another advantage.

Now, let's talk about faction design.
Feline Empire has the numbers, but in order to succeed they need to coordinate in the thread, yeet other factions and ideally manipulate them to kill each other at night. Fairly straightforward, but they needed dead players from other factions soon to keep control over the elimination. Giving them a jailkeeper was a nice bonus, but not really a key player in their strategy.
Eerie Dynasty consists of a friendly neighbour, bulletproof and vigilante. They don't know each other and the vigilante can target their allies. All three roles are strong, but without a possibility to communicate, they're playing a tricky game, because with every dead bird, their get significantly weaker. This requires an advanced play from players. Keeping yourself slightly under radar, signaling to your comrades and ideally finding yourself via the neighbourhood chat.
The Woodland Alliance as a classic mafia faction had an obvious advantage over birds and that was their chat and factional kill. Their main win con was to kill all Eerie Dynasty players and that was the reason I gave them a faction cop. I also gave them 1-shot strongman to counter protective powers. They could coordinate themselves better and outside of trying to kill blues, their strategy wasn't any different from a regular mafia game.
The Vagabond was a true 3p, who needed to find a balance between helping town to make the game longer and siding with wolves to prevent themselves from getting killed at night. Also, they started with two powers: an ability to steal (copy) a power and an ability to commute. Commuting would make them literally impossible to target at night. They needed to balance these two to stay alive, while having enough time to collect three powers. A fun role imho.

 

I think the ties and the no voting = self voting, made it really hard to coordinate as town, and gave mafia a huge advantage, because they always had more control at EoD, taking away any real chance to for town.

Something you should consider for future games.

The lore and idea was great, but this game made me realize, that I dislike playing in this forum for multiple reasons, that I could discuss privately, but I think I will just continue to play in our subforum for now on.

Thanks for hosting Pzelda.

 

I disagree mafia had to much control with 3 consensus votes and 3 lone votes.
If Renata rb the wrong person D1 it was game over for town.
Town needed an almost perfect game to win. Even without the ties.

 

tbh, both self-votes and ties could be used in town's favour. In general wolves struggle to vote more than town. This can force them to make sketchy votes. I haven't seen the mechanic to backfire and kill at least slightly active player. Ties are circumstantial and you probably shouldn't try to avoid as town both days you forced them. They are good for tying a group mid-game, which includes at least one wolf. Sometimes, a player trying to snipe a tie in lylo/mylo can out more mafia, but town needs to be quicker and prevent it than it was here.

 

I disagree with what you said here and in DVC about town balance (faction design section, I agree with the beginning of your post): town didn't had the numbers. As for coordination, SOD2 half living players were not town aligned and by EOD2, the game was over. Sure the game was winnable for every sides, but not balanced. Town lacked numbers, PRs, and that tie thing was hard. I don't think the JK was a bonus lol. I do think a scum neighbour was somehow bastard and should have been mentionned (together with LYLO lol). Same can be said for Eeries, who had an hard time even if LoS played it nicely.

Anyway, this is just input for discussion. This was good fun, and you hosting was great (awesome flavour). Thanks pzelda.

Su around.

 

Pretty much, especially with our kill being tied to a single role. It was more like having 3 neutral survivalists who also needed to avoid killing two others they didn't know about than a true mafia faction, our slightly stronger abilities than you didn't remotely make up for our total lack of ability to coordinate.

 

With two killing factions, there is no time to use commuter. I had to steal each Night to reach that wincon.
The fact that my steal wasn’t really a steal and the owner of the role keeps their power anyways is something you should have told me.

 

And on top of that you, as it turned out, would have had to copy a power basically every night and you had no real guarantee of hitting anyone.

 

Hey everyone, sign-ups are open for Mario Mafia Two on the MU Subforum. We need several more players so I'd appreciate it if you are able to play.