Mafia II - Story of the Iron Edge - Ship Deck

[Eetion]

A sudden switch in peoples votes, now points towards Kawe? Interesting as i cannot see how Kawe have been acting out of Imperial interest. He's gone deep into some matters and pointed some strong things out, namely his post agaisnt TTaM, yet now people see him as to be lynched?
Has this something to do with the Imperial discussion trying to make 2 Aces instead of having a player like Kawe sit with Captaincy and aswell being byfar one of the strongest players in the Pool?
also noticed something that might connect..
Both Doomslay and Delling have recently changed their votes to Kawe, and both Supported Delling as Captain, along with Veilas, speaking of veilas he's gone for the "neutral" vote in Arches? I dont know if theres some sort of link but could be..
I'm aware that Delling has changed support to Emptyy, but is could just be a matter of "tagging along"

[Chippen]

Ah, I didnt make myself clear enough. I'm not voting cause anybody can be a rebel, I'm just not voting on emptyy ATM because i think his stunt is too much of a clever rebel tactic then actual imperial helpiness, Atm my vote wont do anything anyway, so I rather not put it down before i've really decided. As I said earlier, I rather lynch a imperial, then vote in a rebel captain.

[Emptyy]

Shiftey, I like how you're targeting individuals, one at a time and pointing out their suspicious/odd posts. This allows the focus to go from person to person, and helps us make up our mind about persons based on facts. Also, we get to see who's immediately defensive or if they respond in anoter weird way. We should keep on following this procedure.

Kawe (and others), I know I haven't posted a lot. Will try to make some more summarising posts during this game, next one after captain has been elected. I will also probably be more 'aggressive' when I feel I have more to go on.

I would argue that people that are being very certain on who's what already on day 1 smells like rebel to me. People have different tactics and approaches, some people write in a way that gets easily misunderstood. We will hopefully be able to draw some better conclusions after the first night.

Votes for lynching and captain speak louder than words.

I will try and have another look at the thread with 'fresh' eyes, and perhaps re-vote and re-support during the evening. I encourage all of you to do the same, and not just tag along with what seems to be 'mainstream'.

[Starbrow]

Just putting my thoughts on the forum now that I?m back from university and less hung over. I will not try to analyse every single person, but focus on the people who have actually spoken up the most and are now getting votes from others. That is of course not to say this clears less frequent posters of anything, I?d just prefer not to hint at anything I have even less to base such hints on.

With respect to answering accusations, I would personally prefer it if people used reasons rather than questions as it is too easy to just bounce the ball on if you answer with a question. For example: ?Why would someone see that post as framing??  is was less constructive than ?My post is not a framing because he said these two things that are incompatible: ??. Is it not the general idea that rebels will sooner or later start to be inconsistent, which is easier to spot if we all use less questions in answering? (See what I did there (Twice (?)?)?)
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A few words about the Captain role: The power to instantly lynch a single person is of course powerful, but in relative terms it isn?t a catastrophe if we give it to a rebel in the early game where we still outnumber them by a large margin. If a rebel gets it and uses it quickly before there?s a general consensus on who to lynch, he?s exposed and we just use the ordinary lynch to dispose of him.

I propose that we agree on some sort of criterion on how we as a group, including the Captain, would like to see the ability used, for instance treating it like an extra daytime lynch or something else (feel free to chip in here). If the Captain doesn?t follow this agreement, we lynch him/her.
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Before I get to specific persons, I?d like to comment on a few things that people consistently use as indications of suspiciousness that I do not agree with:

• When making lists of people one suspect might be a rebel, I do not see the problem in that list having more than six people. One is bound to get it wrong on most counts, so I would wager that as long as you try to make a prioritized list, having more than six candidates is not in itself inconsistent or stupid.
• I worry that some people are reading too much into posting activity or lack thereof. I can see that the rebels might like to stay out of the spotlight, but at the moment there are so many people who are not posting much due to real life activities that I think it is impossible to see trends yet.

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The people I have anything to say on, in alphabetical order are:

• Archz: Sorry to say, but you?re still a pretty good candidate for a blind lynch in my book. It mainly rests on the fact that you screwed the village pretty badly in the first game, and your play so far doesn?t indicate that you learned much from the critique you received for it.
  
  
• Kawe: The full on attack on Kesh just doesn?t sit well in my guts. I think several of the points in the post are just results of over analysation.  This does make sense if you are trying just a little too hard to make the pieces ?fit? to incriminate Kesh. In relation to the general points made above, I think you jump a little too hard on Kesh poking/prodding more than six people. As it was stated, prodding people randomly to see how they react is a good way of exposing the rebels, and that was really what Kesh did with his first post. Hell, you even pointed fingers at four people (Shiftey, Shanks, Chip and Vorte) in your very first post, yet when Kesh does it he?s suddenly a rebel?
  
  That said, I agree on some of the other points made about Kesh and his defense of Chippen and I approve of the effort you make to get people to post more and use the forum instead of IRC. It could be that you just have a really good reading on Kesh that I don?t see, so if we lynch him and it turns out he is a rebel you?re well in the clear in my book. If it turns out that he isn?t, I personally wouldn?t eat an apology of it being a just mistake, as your post then looks like a very clear framing in rebel interests.
  
  In other words: If we lynch Kesh and he is not a rebel, I would suggest we lynch you in the following day. If we lynch Kesh and he is a rebel, then I will offer my admiration of your analytical capabilities with respect to Kesh.
  
  
• Mouseh: The way in which she has been put forth as a candidate could be viewed as suspicious by some, but I think it was so indirect and done by multiple people who are generally otherwise speaking against each other that I feel relatively safe supporting her as Captain. See above note on the role.
  
  
• Shiftey: I think you over analyse everything so much that it is flat out hurtful to the Imperial progress. In your post about Mouseh you criticize her argument that Tyler badly analysing people in the previous game means he shouldn?t be Captain in this one. In my book that?s actually anything but a weak argument. The Captain gets the power to instantly lynch a person of his choosing, and if anything that power should either rest in the hands of a person that has demonstrated the ability to reach correct (or no) conclusions rather than wrong ones? As for the excuse for lack of time, see above. The trend of strange logic continues throughout the post.
  
  And fucking hell, using an excuse for bad English to imply that she?s a rebel? It?s beyond stupid in my book. I don?t really think you?re a rebel, but I find your logic so lacking that it hardly matters.
  
  
• TTam: Prodded a few people, but I don?t really see him being overly suspicious. The reply to Kawes accusations is pretty good in my book, if nothing he has the same reservations with respect to Kawes logic as I have.
  
  

Somewhat unrelated, I liked the idea of Emptyys post and the extended functionality of Kesh?s bot, but I miss a time resolved log of when people set and switched their votes. Hence I made the graphic seen below. Please be aware that I made it by looking through the posts manually, so I might have made mistakes on timings or even missed some votes. I also made one for the Captain vote, but it isn?t finished. Will add asap. I?ll update them as we go along, at the pace I am able.

##Support: Mouseh

[Archz]

Archz: Sorry to say, but you?re still a pretty good candidate for a blind lynch in my book. It mainly rests on the fact that you screwed the village pretty badly in the first game, and your play so far doesn?t indicate that you learned much from the critique you received for it.

Care to ellaborate on how I screwed over the village?

[Starbrow]

Captain votes attatched. Not counting when people stated they would run.

[Vdti]

That's a pretty decent post Starbrow, especially the spreadsheet.

I've been pretty busy at work today, and I've been catching up on the posts made just now.

When it comes to the captain I don't think either mouseh or emptyy is a bad choice. I feel both of them have shed some light on the entire situation and I don't think any of them are rebels. As for my self, I'm not really that eager to be the captain, and won't try to swing the votes in my favor. I simply think I'm not decisive enough to have that role. So far I have a hard time pointing out any obvious rebel and don't really have time to overanalyze the posts done here.

Now, for the lynch votes, I've seen both Kawe and TTaM as suspicious for most of the game, but as I've thought about it for a while, it starts to look like maybe none of them are rebels. They're both pretty aggressive in their accusations and defense points, but I think that is partially due to them firing each other up. One point is certain, if none of them are rebels, the rebels them selves is in a dream situation as this issue seems to be splitting the empire.

My current vote is still for TTaM, as I don't really see a good target for lynching. Hopefully the discussion tomorrow after the captain has been elected can reveal some more details.

[Shiftey]

I would like to thank Emptyy for finally seeing my strategy I've been implementing since the start. Going from person to person, aggravate them and see if they respond. And I got results.

However since everybody is considering me as a retard or terrible and that all I say is wrong. My attempts on doing my part for the empire are just blindly dismissed. You know what, I do not care one bit. I am not basing my arguments on some random hunches or made up lies like some people already started to, but on guides with step by step approach how to attempt at revealing mafia.

At least I am trying... unlike most of people so far.

No matter what people say, I shall continue my work as I think the job has been well done so far. At least I have one consistent approach I apply to everyone. Not a random scattershot policy.

[Doomslay]

Unless i'm missing something on the spreadsheet starbrow I didn't change my support, very nice work though indeed!

[Sintrael]

@ Starbrows word on rebels getting the captaincy.

Dude the captain is voted in by all of us, and hopefully it will be a majority vote, this means we arent about to go lynching our captain, meaning if he's rebel he can keep his 1 hit for as long as he likes, ie. hit a blue if he wants or turn the tide of the game when the numbers dwindle substantially. Methinks it wld be pretty stupid to just whack a random green early on. Not to mention the double vote, again, late game, very important.

I'd say that giving the captaincy to a rebel would be a pretty fuckin big deal indeed.

[kawe]

That's a pretty good post Star. A rebel with the power to lynch anyone during the day is actually very dangerous, especially if they go unnoticed for some time. I see what you're saying though about early game.

One thing I found a little odd is that you've accounted for what happens if we lynch TTaM, but not me. I think this is very important too, because I think that lynching someone because they were wrong is terrible - if we lynch me, any decision to follow up with a lynch on kesh, if it's based purely on me being innocent would be terrible. Looking at people's posts is far more important.

Regarding what you said about my post pointing at what made kesh suspicious, that is easily the best critique of it - and more what I would have expected from Kesh himself as a defense, and this is also another point on which I disagree with you. I found Kesh's response to it extremely charged and self-preservatory. His conduct following my post and continued reaction surrounding it has been, I think, far more of an alarm-bell trigger than anything in my post, by a very long ways.

Other than that, the chart along with Emptyy's post are very good tools for quickly seeing the activity levels of various players. Speaking of Emptyy, I should say that the post I made never once labelled kesh as a 100% certainty, but I was pretty damn proud of it; there's no denying it feels good when you've got a plausible situation.

Mapping out potential scenarios, by the way, is something I'd encourage, and then if you disagree with them, point out the flaws sensibly, as has been done by Starbrow. Shooting them down by simply calling it stuff like 'doublespeak and lies' (hi kendo) smacks rather instead of a kneejerk reaction.

[Gaeios(Graxlos)]

Starbrow referring to the last mafia game. The people posting less than others were either blue or mafia. It makes just as much sense for a blue to keep out of the spotlight as a mafia.

[Palmar]

If Goza is available at 00:00 the count will be right then. If not, i will be available around 03:00 to do it. I'm sorry for the delay.

Any votes or changes cast after 00:00 will NOT count, even if the results are delayed.

[Gaeios(Graxlos)]

Also I must support Kawe's statement about not reading too much in to the first set of votes.
We killed 3 innocents last game, mainly based on the fact they were wrong in the preceeding lynching.
I think we have to look at trends and group dynamics more than single people being wrong. I havent read anything resembling a smoking gun yet. We have to decide what strategy we think the mafia is using.
Are they sacrificing the captain position in order to cover their tracks in the rest of the game (quite a sensible move imo), or are they risking getting exposed by affiliation in order to get the extra kill and vote.
The lynch vote is more important since mafia will work hard to save another mafia since a dead mafia puts the a lot closer to defeat.
An imperial captain can potentially help them as much as a rebel captain since imperials have no "real" knowledge.

[kawe]

Yup - this is why the ideal situation for the rebels is to have something Delling suggestd having earlier; a 'puppet' captain. Even if the captain is innocent, he is possible to be swayed, perhaps especially by those who voted for them. Additionally, the rebels suffer greatly minimised risk, for a potential gain that would of course cause yet more chaos and confusion at their whim.