Stargate SG1 - game thread

[Bilirubin]

from a town perspective, killing bilirubin was not a good call. That's an example of why trolley tracking, and not using your own judgement once you've decided which side you're going to align with and going by some kinda consensus scheme is not ideal.

I plan to keep this in mind if I'm ever in similar SK shoes

Agree with this. If bili had been scum, I'd have resolved never to play another game with him on account of him being too chillingly evil. He was saying things townies say, and I was agreeing with his votes and analyses, even if I was worried he might be scum.

I recall the first thing Damian said after I got killed overnight during my first scum game, "holy shit". Got cocky and sucked to high heaven the next iirc. and hopefully I've worked the special tells out that Ob would twig on right away.

Speaking of which, any comments on the special hunting discussion in my WoT to Zigmen?

[oblivion]

Really, please stop trying to pattern match. Raven is good at it. Not too many others are to be frank. Focus on solid tells.

Quite agree with the many folks who try to pattern match. I think that pattern matching is an advanced technique that many players aren't terribly good at because it takes a particular person to be effective, and its not easily taught. Folks should focus on objective scum tells until their games get solid.

I'm a bit skeptical about the usefulness of simple, depersonalized ("objective") scum tells such as reverse cheerleading, revenge voting, etc. They are among the easiest things to argue about in the game thread, but they don't seem to me to be the most informative in terms of alignment. Do you really rely on such tells as much as your game thread posts suggests?

Both the TR and Ratz communities have very heterogenous communities in that expectations of others' play is very personalized (e.g. some players get away with 2 posts/day, others don't; some players get away with being very inattentive, others don't; etc.) in a way that I think forces reliance on personalized "tells". The closest I've come to depersonalized inferences are probably looking back at the end-of-day vote counts from previous days (day 1 non-voters here at Ratz are annoying confounders, though) and the 2nd closest would be interaction reads of player pairs that I take to decrease the odds for some of scum-scum, scum-town, town-scum, town-town.

The latter scenario is more how one should learn to scum hunt exactly, and from there pattern matching becomes easier. But patterns are broken every game, and TBH the number of games one needs to observe to gain statistically significant samples... Ob and I have talked about this at some length. It's my opinion that because she has mentored so many here (myself included) that her style is frequently emulated by players who are either too inexperienced or just incapable of it because they have a different orientation.

The first time I formally mentored someone, I learned that I can't teach the type of scumhunting that I did. I had to learn the objective style of scumhunting in order to be any use at all as a mentor. I'm sure that some of what I do still comes through in what I discuss with new players, but it's not intentional.

tbh, these days I usually feel like a raving lunatic when I try to describe in detail how I scumhunt. Fortunately, I get some slack simply because what I do usually works for me, even if it doesn't translate very well into how others approach the game.

[oblivion]

from a town perspective, killing bilirubin was not a good call. That's an example of why trolley tracking, and not using your own judgement once you've decided which side you're going to align with and going by some kinda consensus scheme is not ideal.

I plan to keep this in mind if I'm ever in similar SK shoes

Agree with this. If bili had been scum, I'd have resolved never to play another game with him on account of him being too chillingly evil. He was saying things townies say, and I was agreeing with his votes and analyses, even if I was worried he might be scum.

I recall the first thing Damian said after I got killed overnight during my first scum game, "holy shit". Got cocky and sucked to high heaven the next iirc. and hopefully I've worked the special tells out that Ob would twig on right away.

Speaking of which, any comments on the special hunting discussion in my WoT to Zigmen?

the special tells that I used to pick up on weren't obvious in the GoT game. I'm not sure if other tells have replaced them. And I'm not sure if they're really gone, or I just wasn't picking up on them in that game. Something about your play made me trust you enough to contact you via the neighborizer role.

[Linus]

Isn't mafiascum really stupid? Like they actually use things like "3rd on a vote" as scum tells?

they used to. some of the best players there include statistics in their analyses of what is going on. and statistically, 3rd and 4th votes do turn up scum more frequently.

I guess it also depends a bit on the voting mechanics/conventions (does a vote majority end the day? is there a consensus in the community that two---not one, not three---main BWs each day is the best for town? does the community consider it scummy to vote outside the main BWs?). The best is maybe to understand the psychological rationale/community convention behind such scum tells, so that one can adapt them to the game & context at hand.

[Mantisdreamz]

nicely done r.c and scum. i thought charlou was the last scum too

[Nightson]

Scum tend to avoid the beginning and end of bandwagons. This isn't one size fits all, but it's usually a good idea to keep an eye on who's in the middle and watch for scummy behavior.

Edit: I have no idea if this holds true in timed games though.

[Magicziggy]

The beginning of a bandwagon is not a bandwagon. It is a single vote.

[irretating]

Scum tend to avoid the beginning and end of bandwagons. This isn't one size fits all, but it's usually a good idea to keep an eye on who's in the middle and watch for scummy behavior.

Edit: I have no idea if this holds true in timed games though.

I tend to avoid avoiding doing anything that people think scum tend to do. Reverse psychology and that.

[Magicziggy]

Scum tend to avoid the beginning and end of bandwagons. This isn't one size fits all, but it's usually a good idea to keep an eye on who's in the middle and watch for scummy behavior.

Edit: I have no idea if this holds true in timed games though.

I tend to avoid avoiding doing anything that people think scum tend to do. Reverse psychology and that.

I avoid doing anything that Irre thinks scum like to do. Reverse psychology with a half twist.

[irretating]

...and thus I will always conclude (mostly correctly) that you are scum

[Magicziggy]

...and thus I will always conclude (mostly correctly) that you are scum

Scum would like you to do that.

[irretating]

...and thus I will always conclude (mostly correctly) that you are scum

Scum would like you to do that.

...and that's why I do a triple pike reverse flip and will appear to put you in the townie pile.

[gib]

Isn't mafiascum really stupid? Like they actually use things like "3rd on a vote" as scum tells?

they used to. some of the best players there include statistics in their analyses of what is going on. and statistically, 3rd and 4th votes do turn up scum more frequently.

I guess it also depends a bit on the voting mechanics/conventions (does a vote majority end the day? is there a consensus in the community that two---not one, not three---main BWs each day is the best for town? does the community consider it scummy to vote outside the main BWs?). The best is maybe to understand the psychological rationale/community convention behind such scum tells, so that one can adapt them to the game & context at hand.

i don't

iirc almost all the recent games have featured a stage where the true townies are unsaitified with the main BWs, one person breaks away, then others follow, often successfully

[gib]

also did we ever work out what triangulation actually consists of?

[Magicziggy]

also did we ever work out what triangulation actually consists of?

strangling triangles