Civilization Mafia - Town Victory!

[Samlen]

wait i'm a derp nag investigated fircoal. I mixed it up because of chu....

[nagerous]

Skittles you are reading too much into it. The lynch has happened what is the point of voting too

[Skittles!]

I just want ga7 to be slaughtered with votes tbh

[Minister Masket]

ga7 - 5 (Skittles, strike, Fircoal, Ragian, Samlen)

8 Alive. First full Day was Sat, so it still takes 7 to Lynch!

Certain individuals in the FB chat had assumed it was a lynch already.

[madmitch]

vote ga7

[ga7]

Vote ga7 FREEEEDOMMMMMMMM

[nagerous]

vote ga7 semper fi mother fucker

[TimWoodbury]

no posts for 2 days is this dead or did it end or what happened? ps im a ghost jsut curious what happened

[Fircoal]

Masket update your game.

[Minister Masket]

ga7 - Barbarian Brian (Mafia Godfather) has been lynched!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

strike wolf
Skittles
Ragian
Samlen
Fircoal
nagerous

Your civilisations will go down in history as the survivors. The explorers. The conquerors. The victors.

For millennia, your peoples have endured the many trials and tribulations of our planet, your allies, and your enemies.
Among them, your scientists, builders, politicians, teachers, artists and many others paved the way forward for the generations yet to come.
Now your empires stretch beyond seas and mountains, and your many cities with their great Wonders dazzle and illuminate the masses.
May you strive ever forward for Humanity, and take the next step into the glorious future that awaits...




-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Town has Achieved Victory!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Night Actions:

Night 2:
Skittles roleblocks ga7
Fircoal Watches ga7
Tim tracks ga7
nag roleblocks Hotshot
mafia kills madmitch - BLOCKED

Night 3:
ga7 kills Skoffin!
madmitch tracks dakky
skittles roleblocks DJfireside
Ragian AND nag AND tim guns dakky
Fircoal watches Nag
Samlen investigates ga7!
dakky blocks Skoffin, blocking her watch on Fircoal

Night 4:
strike and dakky are at war!
ga7 kills Tim
skittles roleblocks strike!
Samlen investigates Tim
Ragian checks on Skittles
nag checks on Tim
Tim checks on Ragian
Chu watches Ragian
madmitch watches strike

Night 5:
ga7 kills Skittles, but is blocked by him!
Ragian investigates Samlen
nag investigates Chu
Samlen investigates Ragian
Fircoal checks on Ragian
madmitch tracks Samlen

Buildings List

Hospital (2) - Doc - Skittles N5, madmitch N5
Spy Network (2) - Cop - Samlen N1, Ragian N4, nag N4, Fircoal N5
Hunting Lodge - Tracker - Tim N1, madmitch N2
Lighthouse - Watcher - Wing N1, Fircoal N1, Skoffin N2, skittles N2, dakky N3, Ragian N3, nag N3, Tim N3, madmitch N3, Samlen N5
Brothel - Roleblocker - nag N1, Skittles N1, dakky N2, Ragian N5
Arsenal - Gunsmith - Ragian N2, nag N2, Tim N2, Skoff N3, Skittles N4, Samlen N4, Fircoal N4
Bunker - Protection from Nuke - Benga N1, aage N1, Ragian N1, strike N1, Fircoal N2, Samlen N3, Skittles N3, Tim N4, madmitch N4
Eiffel Tower (4) - DJ N1, strike N2 (1)

Those in strike-through naturally were offed before their building could complete, while those 4 in bold were building PM's that I either accidentally deleted or forgot about. Yes I did keep track and hold myself accountable!
And of course those started during N5 were never built. Strike would've had his Wonder built had he not been at war late on. Oops!

As for role PM's, there's no need to post all the town ones as apart from the leader name, they're all the same!
I'll post one of them and the three slightly varying mafia role PM's tomorrow as I don't want to clutter up this post too much....but I do want to have some...

Post-Game Mod Thoughts

I'm very happy!
In fact this game's second half reminded me a lot of my last Valkyria mafia game where the mafia were getting on top before some excellent deductive town work put a stop to it and pulled through.
On that note, commiserations to ga7 and his rather savvy solo mafia play. An excellent try sir if nothing else.

It's not all been smooth sailing though. There have been complaints and for those I kindly direct you to mandy who did all the game balancing before launch...errr I mean send him some of the abuse at least. =L

ga7 in particular has not been a happy bunny behind the scenes, and I have many messages of moaning going back to Day 1. As if it's MY fault his scum mates got themselves killed early on
I MEAN mainly because I didn't provide the scum fake role claims because apparently looking up a few of the DOZENS of game Civ nations was too hard
I MEAN this is actually the first game where not using fake claims has been an issue. I've certainly never used them in the past.
I did eventually provide one in Day 3 I think if only just to stop the whinging once I had my notes on hand. Yes, I DID initially give a role that had been taken but luckily I caught it before it became an issue.

I would especially like to hear thoughts on:
The Countdown Lynch Method, and
The Role Building idea

The latter I'm particularly proud of for not only fitting the theme pretty damn well but also proving a unique spin on town power choices. mandy and I spent a lot of time discussing the balance and we think we got it right in the end, but let us know. A shame that Wonder was never built though...

[IcePack]

From an outside perspective, this is probably one of the most interesting mafia games I've had the pleasure to read (as a Civ fan) it ALMOST made me wanna play mafia...

[Minister Masket]

From an outside perspective, this is probably one of the most interesting mafia games I've had the pleasure to read (as a Civ fan) it ALMOST made me wanna play mafia...

Why not go one step further and join one? If you're active then it's a right ol' jolly jape full of good lark if I'm not the mod.

[IcePack]

From an outside perspective, this is probably one of the most interesting mafia games I've had the pleasure to read (as a Civ fan) it ALMOST made me wanna play mafia...

Why not go one step further and join one? If you're active then it's a right ol' jolly jape full of good lark if I'm not the mod.

I've joined one from time to time, but mostly just get told I dont talk enough.
I'm active enough (read everything, respond when I have something to add) but generally get told cuz i dont write pages upon pages I'm not a good player.
The reception here in the past anyway has been pretty lukewarm.

[HotShot53]

Thanks for running this game MM, it was a good concept. However, honestly, I don't see how mafia could have won this. To start with, only having 3 scum in a 16 player game is low, especially when town will all have power roles. I (and most town through the game) would have expected 4 scum out of the 16. The main issue though was that without having any idea of the basic mechanics that all town were aware of, it was pretty easy for town to pick us off early on when they could all use things from their PM that we would have no way of knowing, and that made us obvious to them. If they wanted to, all they had to do was something like name a building and how long it takes to build, and they would create an unbreakable known town circle. As a recommendation, if implementing a completely new concept such as this, just send a copy of the town PM to scum, then it makes it impossible for people to play off the PM rather than the game.

As for the lack of fake claims, as you could see from mine and benga's attempts at faking our claims... just because there are lots of available options doesn't mean there are a lot of available good options. Pick any civ too minor, and you're outed as faking it (see benga's claim)... pick any civ that's important and you are counterclaimed (see my claim). That is why most themed games on here give fake claims to scum, at least a name, because there is no possibility of something like a no-name VT claim as in normal mafia.

Good job to ga7 for sticking it out a while solo, having a good fake claim and getting investigated saved him for a day (he would have been lynched that day otherwise)... but because town had a known town circle because of the PM knowledge, there wasn't really anything he could do to actually survive long enough to win.

I do like the countdown mechanic btw, it keeps the game moving, and makes shorter days later in the game when you don't need as long of days anyway. I wouldn't wait a week before the countdown on day 1 though, seems to make a really long day 1 when everyone just runs in circles usually.

[Skittles!]

Congrats town on the win. I think the idea that were 4 mafia rather than 3 is what took so long to narrow it down to just ga7 left.

Thanks for the game Masket, I really enjoyed myself and I liked the mechanics that you introduced. If you were to do this again, I would suggest changing a few things.

1) make 5 scum, rather than 3. Have the godfather be a city-state rather than a barbarian, and give them a list of buildings that can be built, but not how many days they take to build. Maybe make it so the godfather cannot communicate about the buildings to the other mafia. Have a barbarian usurper to balance out the high number of scum, and tempt them to actually usurp by saying they'll learn more knowledge about the mechanics of the game.

Another thing with mafia, and something I theorised about in the game, is allow them to make a wonder. I don't know what it could grant, maybe another power or a winnable objective (to kinda reflect the actual CIV series with winning from multiple approaches).

2) lessen the powers in the buildings OR give each building another night to actually be completed. As Fircoal said in FB chat, town was OP by night 3 with all the different actions that could be done.

3) instead of having 5 mafia, make a survivor/cultish like role with a city state who can decide who to attach to, giving them more leeway with how they want to play the game. They can also build buildings but give different abilities (bus driver etc). This would add another dynamic to the game.

Overall, the countdown mechanic I thought was a good idea. It kept the game moving but it still did slow down. The War/Friendly declarations, I'm not sure about. In the middle of the game no one really utilised these, and the person who did utilise it were seen as not working with town. I don't know what you could change to make it work differently.

As I've already said, role building was a good mechanic. But it made town a bit too OP, too quickly.

[strike wolf]

Gg. Out of curiosity, what would the Wonder have done?

I almost voted GA day 5 but I convinced myself that Dakkys behavior was bad for town regardless of alignment and with an inno investigation, I decided not to let Dakky manipulate two lynches in a row.

[madmitch]

gg town, really enjoyed the set up MM,nice going, thanks all for playing.

[Djfireside]

I really wanna know what the Wonder ability was I have been waiting patiently for this thing to end to find out even if its a PM cause you dont want to let it out

As for retrospective, I think the buildings were a play over for town. I was trying not to use it cause I saw the power in it and it just didnt seem fair. If this were to be modified to clear that impediment, you could make it different. You can either build towards Military, Cultural, Religion, Wonders, Exploration and name those from the get go so noone can say oh Im building this what are you building. You just say Cultural and based on the age you would get a different building and if you do it two turns in a row you get a stronger one etc.

Otherwise this gave alot of freedom in what you would want to play and as you stated, you could be anyone but the buildings did hamper mafia.

And since two of us got burned, as with any time based thing, it needs to be noted but I liked the mechanic I thought it was a good thing to play with.

[Samlen]

I really enjoyed the setup but yeah, the mafia were at a pretty big disadvantage. There are a lot of ways to balance this, some of which were already brought up. You could tweak the buildings a bit and make a it a free for all, each building furthering a civ's progress towards a typical civ victory. Or, you could try a similar setup to this one but make the mafia also civs. Adding in a third-party or two in the form of city-states would make it more balanced as well.

[ga7]

The library is officially built and open!

So, this was the most frustrating game I ever played as scum, and I don't want to bury Masket alive here (well, not too much) but let this be a lesson for anyone regardless of experience because apparently having a lot of experience is not enough to avoid being an useless co-mod (hi Mandy ).

First of all, I dunno if anyone else noticed but Mandy actually slipped up in The Lion King signup thread:

C'mon guys, let's lynch the Chu and we only have two more mobsters left.

TLK is 16 players. This guy takes it for granted that 16 player games have 3 scum. 3 scum for 16 players is less than 1/5. WTF??? I hope you guys never try to bake a cake ever.

This is the first major balance issue. But while in theory having this proportion would be possible with the right power roles balance, here it was also lopsided in town's favour.

Benga was supposed to learn which buildings someone had, which was useless even if town didn't talk because by day 6 most people had a lot of buildings.
Hotshot was a terrorist which is somehow more useless than a bomb, but he could suicide on someone only starting day 5.
I was godfather, but not bulletproof (not that it mattered because the ONE power town didn't have that would have probably helped me was vig).
Meanwhile, most townies were overpowered JOATs. One night without actions doesn't counter this. I was kinda glad some people picked the wonder to build because at least that meant they had less action options.
Come day 3 I knew it was only a matter of time before an action caught me, because I would have needed to avoid roleblocks and tracking from everyone else while also picking a target that wouldn't be watched.

As if all this wasn't enough, as made obvious by day 1 we had 0 info. ZERO. I asked about fakeclaims before the game started since Indigo was a recent example of complicated mechanics and scum being given a fake claim to actually understand how the game worked, and was told this was a fairly classic game. Are you fucking kidding me?!
We were only given the flavour claim of Persia at night 2, Hotshot decided to let me use it later. While the character was important it was VERY secondary compared to not knowing any mechanics town was using.
Basically, we were bound to slip up from the get go, and I regret town talking so much about their powers early on because that would have been a much shorter game with all scum lynched in a row if some hadn't given away all the info I needed. I eluded to it several times during the game, but sharing everything is rarely a good idea even (especially) if you're town. Of course for this game it didn't change anything, but keep it in mind!

So, in summary: we were ridiculously outnumbered, we had lame power roles, we had no idea how town worked, and we somehow were the only faction opposing town (not counting dakky ). That obviously means we never had a chance, and while there are some roles like SK that have less winning chances than most, it is an accepted idea. The whole mafia having no chances to win is harder to swallow.

The main takeaway is don't do it at home, kids! It felt bad, and in the context of the game theme with stuff evolving I was really expecting Masket to throw me a bone at some point. But hubris/stubborness is strong with this one
Balance can be hard to tune especially with lots of power roles, ask for someone to take a look at your setup (except Mandy ), it just helps getting another opinion sometimes. I think this particular game might have made more sense with everyone having to build and some random civs being mafia for instance.

PS: Kudos to Skittles for being irrationally suspicious of me the whole game even though I was a pro-town hero

[Ragian]

I liked the game, but I played poorly it must be said.

Cheers for modding, MM. I reckon that people's points on the balance are justified. I'm just happy that I didn't have to run this. Seems overwhelming.

[TimWoodbury]

im assumeig i got the result i got when i traked GA was because he was godfarther?? so aye at least i was correct about 1 person this game

[Fircoal]

First of all, I dunno if anyone else noticed but Mandy actually slipped up in The Lion King signup thread:

C'mon guys, let's lynch the Chu and we only have two more mobsters left.

TLK is 16 players. This guy takes it for granted that 16 player games have 3 scum. 3 scum for 16 players is less than 1/5. WTF??? I hope you guys never try to bake a cake ever.

He also thought it was wise to fit a game with 30 players with 3 scum. Maybe really likes the number 3?

As if all this wasn't enough, as made obvious by day 1 we had 0 info. ZERO. I asked about fakeclaims before the game started since Indigo was a recent example of complicated mechanics and scum being given a fake claim to actually understand how the game worked, and was told this was a fairly classic game. Are you fucking kidding me?!

Scum had no fake claims in Indigo.

Anyway I agree with the French scumster for the most part. 3 mafia is too few for a game with 16 players. Even worse is that basically all the town players became superpowered as long as they choose the right actions. We'd be all able to get cop powers and all of that which is well OP. Just think even if everyone couldn't do crap for 2 nights, but suddenly everyone became cops, would that be fair? Of course not. Because cop powers are great. I am partial to watching powers myself. These are all great powers. Why wouldn't it make up for the useless night?

Also please let this be known for all theme mods in the future. You need to give the mafia relavant information or else it's going to become lopsided quick, as well as just not fun. I had this same problem in Indigo (although that partically due to my own crappy play) but it's not really fun to play a game of WHO KNOWS THE SECRET GOODS. You also need to find them fake claims because how are they supposed to know whose in the game or not. In this case Masket picked all Civ 1 civs, so anything later would stand out, while anything in the group would be too risky. If fakeclaims are hard they just need to be provided. Or just run obsecure setups and watch them bs random claims and still get out of it because no one cares to look it up and realize their shitty claim is shit. (I still don't know how you won that pmchung)

Also I find it funny how Day 1 went for so long. I didn't want to say anything because I hoped the lynch would give me town cred but it was actually in everyone's best interest to be on that lynch.

Town likes it because survivor doesn't help them and there is a good chance that he could be scum making their risk minimal and their reward large.

Scum likes it if he is a survivor as that means one more day that they don't get killed while they can blend into the town.

Scum don't like it if it is a scummy but have to do it anyway. They know it's a baddie lynch so they end up hopping onto the lynch so it'll happen and give themselves town cred in the process.

Basically for everyone it's a survivor claim is a good lynch. The only time it doesn't make sense is when one is 90%+ sure that they're a survivor.

[Minister Masket]

I may post a big Self Defence post later when I'm not at work, but I think people here have missed a few very big points. (Wished I had posted the role PM's yesterday now).

Overall I agree that the mafia were at a disadvantage and that I should've given a fake claim from the start.
Was it more of a disadvantage than benga with the scum ability to find out about buildings getting himself lynched on Day 1? NO

You can't blame the mod for that in exactly the same way I don't blame Fircoal for I making exactly the same mistake (though I lasted a wee bit longer) in Indigo Mafia - posting about a game mechanic on Day 1 (Pokemon trainers there, barbarians here).

[Fircoal]

You can't blame the mod for that in exactly the same way I don't blame Fircoal for I making exactly the same mistake (though I lasted a wee bit longer) in Indigo Mafia - posting about a game mechanic on Day 1 (Pokemon trainers there, barbarians here).

My mistake in that game was actually not using the role pm stuff until it started to get too late. I mean there were some key mistakes Benga and hotshot made (claiming survivor really?) but I do think the scum needed more.