Re: The Evil Auction Game Over! Town and Survivor Win!

[Chickenfish]

So I've never played with a survivor before - do they tend to be good/bad/neither for town? My logic says they work with the town early but will just claim and work with mafia later - is this accurate?
Also, do you think it's worth sharing the values of our failed bids for scum so we can have a gauge of scum's health?

[roband]

Survivor will do anything to get what they want. So, if they die, it's alright. If they live, it's alright as long as scum don't get within one player of their majority

[Chickenfish]

Survivor will do anything to get what they want. So, if they die, it's alright. If they live, it's alright as long as scum don't get within one player of their majority

Well I got that far
Does this mean it's in our interest to out and lynch the Survivor to avoid later risk (obviously scum or SK would be preferable), or are we just wasting our time even thinking about it?
Also, no thoughts on my bid claim for scum roles?
FoS: roband

[BoomFrog]

I could tell you what is best for the survivor to do but its not best for town so I won't.

So did anyone successfully pay to be a miller? If a towny won a bribery they should claim it, also any other powers that are only useful to scum although I can't think of any off the top of my head and phone posting so I can't check.

Claiming our failed bids helps scum figure out who got what which I'm sure they can use. And it would out the cop and doc who can't truthfully claim bidding on scummy powers so that's terrible. Preview edit: Oh scum role bids, sure should be good. I'll post mine later when not on a phone.

Matt's impatience seems genuine and townie or indy.

[mpolo]

I didn't bid on any of the scum roles, even though the statistics thread said that I do better as scum than as town. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake.

There are a large number of powers, obviously. I tried to put at least small bids on a good number of the "useless" powers to keep the Lonely Collector from being wildly overpowered.

I kind of realized that the Groucho (my idea, by the way) is probably going to be a dependable source of twenty energy per day, unless the user slips up, so put in a fairly big bid for it and didn't win, so it seems that someone is banking on that power…

[roband]

Also, no thoughts on my bid claim for scum roles?
FoS: roband

Ahhh, and so it begins. I made that post at 8:08 from my bed. I had to get out of bed at 08:10 to get ready for work. I made the post which I had time for, to say what I had time to say.

On failed bids for scum roles.. I didn't read this thread much before making my choices for bids - and bidding on scum roles didn't seem like a priority to me. Now I /have/ read the thread, I can see why it might have been.
So, I wouldn't have had anything to say on the matter anyway

BF - I can see your point about Matt, but those sort of posts always make me paranoid. Then I start thinking, would Lataro have mentioned the fact that "scum need time to talk" if town had asked that question? Like I said, paranoia.

[BoomFrog]

Hmm, two no-bids for scum, interesting. I'll post mine after ChickenFish, his request seems like a way for him to try and post his bids late, I want him to reveal first.

As to Matt, I agree Lataro is self-aware enough that he would make approximatly the same reply whither Matt is scum or town, but Matt's post itself I think feels like he is not someone participating in the mafia chat. It's definatly weak, but it's a place to start.

[Chickenfish]

Hmm, two no-bids for scum, interesting. I'll post mine after ChickenFish, his request seems like a way for him to try and post his bids late, I want him to reveal first.

Well it seems due to the supposed no-bids that my idea has already failed. It's no longer in anyone's interest to tell the truth after a few more come out, seeing as if one or both of the no-bids are scum, they've preemptively implicated others. However, I'm more than happy to post my bids - i'll be home in an hour or 2 and do it then. I've got some analysis I wanna do on it, as well as page 1 comments, and that's too hard on my phone.

[Chickenfish]

Holy crap, there's a lot of hard to valuate powers... which is good, and fun, but this might take some pondering.

When I first read this, I immediately suspected BoomFrog of being the Lonely Collector going for a misdirect.

Oy, I've got a headache now, but at least that's done.

This is consistent with my suspicion. However, I'm also wary of this line of logic, as both of those are perfectly sensible statements for someone with a bidding role to make, too (obviously).
However, this came along not much later:

If I may make an abvious suggestion: Don't vote too competetivly for obviously town powers, just bid enough so that if scum outbid you they would have wasted their energy. We don't need to compete with eachother.

Everyone should pick a few random(ish) scum powers such as the kill powers, flux capaciter and birbery and bid fairly high on two or so of them. That way we can deny them from scum or at least make sure they paid for it.

This reads very much like good advice on the surface, but if we all followed the advice given, there would be an obscene number of unbid-for powers.
I think the last line is fairly scummy under scrutiny as well, because scum already have at least 70 damage per night. It seems much more likely that scum would be interested in picking off the cop/doc/utility roles so that town had a harder time identifying their teammates, and just use their factional kill. I think it's also unlikely that the mafia newbie will have bid enough for the role to die to a lynch first time (unless they went crazy on the powers and set their limit low), so it's possible it's quite some time before we get any solid evidence on identities, making the NK enough of a weapon for scum.

So this leaves me with my paranoid pre-game analysis of BoomFrog making him leaning scum/survivor (or maybe even vampire with the same logic as scum above - make everyone fight amongst themselves then win), and given that if BoomFrog's survivor he has this to say:

I could tell you what is best for the survivor to do but its not best for town so I won't.

I will
Vote: BoomFrog

As for the bids it's in my interest to share:
Lonely Collector: 82
Mafia Kingpin: 42
Mafia Thug: 12
Mafia Newbie: 12
Ancient Vampire: 62

So these numbers are the least that people could have paid for their roles (not much help on the scum-front I don't think, but possibly for the indies. Quite possible that our Lonely Collector's sitting on 168 I think, unless this was a highly-valued role.

I think the AV is by far everyone's biggest threat, to be honest. So many of those powers make him/her ridiculous.

mpolo - do you mind sharing how much your failed bit for Groucho was?

roband - can you please explain this:

On failed bids for scum roles.. I didn't read this thread much before making my choices for bids - and bidding on scum roles didn't seem like a priority to me. Now I /have/ read the thread, I can see why it might have been.
So, I wouldn't have had anything to say on the matter anyway

Why wasn't bidding on scum roles a priority, and why does rereading the thread change your mind on that?

[roband]

I didn't mean scum roles. I meant scum powers.

Sorry, the double bidding thing confused me. I thought all along I would bid for one thing (that's what happens when you don't read the thread - evidently) and that's what my role (including a power would be).

So, I didn't bid for any scum powers. Which now I have read the thread, maybe I should have done.

[BoomFrog]

First of all, first of all, no one should claim what powers they bid on because you are narrowing down who could be the doctor and the cop and they are our two most valuable townies. I do think claiming a bribery is an exception to this because if town got both briberies that eliminates a ton of wine, but any other power bids succesful or failed should not be claimed.

Secondly, ChickenFish, your basically voting me for posting frequently, but whatever, I guess I can't criticise a flimsy early vote. Did you post those numbers from memory? How much have you been obsessing about this game?

[roband]

Did you post those numbers from memory? How much have you been obsessing about this game?

The 11 year old in me wants to say "Ohhhhh ZING!" but I won't.

I think that knowing what the scum life levels are could be useful, but agree with BF that we shouldn't claim everything, as exposing town powers is a bad move.

[Chickenfish]

First of all, first of all, no one should claim what powers they bid on because you are narrowing down who could be the doctor and the cop and they are our two most valuable townies. I do think claiming a bribery is an exception to this because if town got both briberies that eliminates a ton of wine, but any other power bids succesful or failed should not be claimed.

Anybody who is a towny is a potential cop or doc, just like any other game.
The problem with claiming briberies is that we can't actually tell if town got both of them. I suppose a cc is possible, but then all we've really got is 3 people who probably aren't the collector...

Secondly, ChickenFish, your basically voting me for posting frequently, but whatever, I guess I can't criticise a flimsy early vote. Did you post those numbers from memory? How much have you been obsessing about this game?

It's actually on the content of your posts, but I suppose it's directly proportional, considering that the more somebody posts the more likely I am to be able to pick at something they've done. Either way, we're still very much in RVS, no?
Also I just looked up the values in the PM I sent when we were asked for bids... seems like the obvious way to go...

[Chickenfish]

Also thought this was in the above, but apparently not!

I didn't mean scum roles. I meant scum powers.

Sorry, the double bidding thing confused me. I thought all along I would bid for one thing (that's what happens when you don't read the thread - evidently) and that's what my role (including a power would be).

So, I didn't bid for any scum powers. Which now I have read the thread, maybe I should have done.

I'm confused as to how you reached this logic, based on the fact that we were PMed our role and told to bid on powers. Is this an accidental Collector claim, or are you another role and didn't bid on any powers?

Also interested to know what you think are 'scum powers'. I think all of them are in scum's interest to have, seeing as they can all be categorised as for/against scum, or utility, so scum would want to control all of them.

[roband]

Also thought this was in the above, but apparently not!

I didn't mean scum roles. I meant scum powers.

Sorry, the double bidding thing confused me. I thought all along I would bid for one thing (that's what happens when you don't read the thread - evidently) and that's what my role (including a power would be).

So, I didn't bid for any scum powers. Which now I have read the thread, maybe I should have done.

I'm confused as to how you reached this logic, based on the fact that we were PMed our role and told to bid on powers. Is this an accidental Collector claim, or are you another role and didn't bid on any powers?

Also interested to know what you think are 'scum powers'. I think all of them are in scum's interest to have, seeing as they can all be categorised as for/against scum, or utility, so scum would want to control all of them.

Yep, I was PM'd my power. But that was at a time when I was very inactive on the forum. I am not intending to claim any role with what I've said so far.
I came back and re-read my role PM and then realised there was a second lot of bids. So I then bid on powers which I felt would be best.

[Lataro]

I believe I may have made a mistake here, please pause for a moment while I sort this out.

[roband]

Just in case it's what I've said that's fucked up something, I need an EBWOP:

Yep, I was PM'd my ROLE*. But that was at a time when I was very inactive on the forum. I am not intending to claim any role with what I've said so far.
I came back and re-read my role PM and then realised there was a second lot of bids. So I then bid on powers which I felt would be best.

My bad.

[Lataro]

Unpause, it has been sorted out. I messed up a bid, and parties involved have been notified of changes.

[Lataro]

The secret word was "the" and has been used thus far over 20 times.

[mpolo]

It might be interesting to see who has not used the word "the" today. (Or not yet posted in order to avoid it.)

Since I already admitted bidding on Groucho, I can say that it cost more than 55.

[Silknor]

Interested I am in not wasting other's time, so claim I will. Groucho is my pick, and it is a narrowly won one at that. Besides, my prose will no doubt be odd, and I wouldn't dream of making others question why. I shall not shy away from challenging words (this will be just like my role in Asylumafia, wherein I avoided any use of a single letter, that which came fifth in my native tongue's alphabet).

Boomfrog makes a decent point on why claiming every power you bid on is bad. But this does not apply (much) to claiming a single power won and I feel in claiming Groucho there are benefits here which outweigh any costs that could be incurred.

[TheMaskedGecko]

Chickenfish: frequent poster. Trigger happy, fosing roband after one short post (and tim before the game even starts), voting bf with very little reason. Idea to try and work out scum strength through our bids makes sense. I believe something similar happened in the other auction game. Seems to be spending an unusual amount of time on the collector role-maybe it's him, or maybe he's scum/vampire trying to distract the conversation from them.

Not really enough from everyone else to analyse yet.

If anyone still cares, I bid 40 for kingpin and thug roles and 0 for newbie mafia. Not that i think it matters that much, as we have very little idea what powers they bid for.

Also does anyone think it's worth sharing the info got by powers like the scouter and weapon detect or is it best if people keep them to themselves?

[fearless]

Geez, I got such a useless power. Was my fault really. Too lazy to read through everything - LUCKILY! Public holiday over here tomorrow so I'll go through all the powers and whatnot. I see mister gecko is back to his usual analytical self.

[Mostlynormal]

So I lost a huge post. Here's the highlights (the post was, in the first place, a list of interesting things that stuck out to me. This is the condensed version since I don't have time to write it out again):

Chickenfish seems unusually obsessed with the survivor. There's no reason to actively go for lynching a neutral independent.

Bf seems confused about the bribery role. It's not a miller, town could just decline to use it.

Chickenfish's early vote is funny. Boomfrog made good suggestions. There were roles out there that were definitely useful for scum (such as flux amplifier or Vote Rigger). Town wants to keep those out of scum hands.

Chickenfish's play reminds me of PyPokemafia, but there are no jesters here.

Silknor has Groucho. Are you sure you have to talk like that even after the word is revealed?

By the way, here are my bids for scum roles. FoS: Silknor and fearless for not posting theirs right away.
Mafia Kingpin: 53 Energy
Mafia Thug: 52 Energy
Mafia Newbie: 51 energy
Ancient Vampire: 50 Energy

[BoomFrog]

Police Chief: You are here to flush the mafia out of your city. Due to your pull within your organization, your bids count for 20% more, rounded up. towards all powers that have anything to do with determining someone's role, alignment, energy, or what they did/what was done to them last night. (Final value of X.01 would result in a X+1 value.) However, you may not bid on any powers besides the type described above.Chief Surgeon: Your extensive background has afforded you some position within the medical field. As such, your bids count for 20% more, rounded up, towards all powers that have anything to do with preventing energy damage to others, or willfully transferring energy from one person to another. Willfully is defined as the person losing any energy, including yourself, who gives consent to the act of it being transferred. (Final value of X.01 would result in a X+1 value.) However, you may not bid on any powers besides the type described above.

Daughters sick, more content later, but claiming even one power won or bid on is quickly narrowing the field for where power town is hiding.

[Chickenfish]

Police Chief: You are here to flush the mafia out of your city. Due to your pull within your organization, your bids count for 20% more, rounded up. towards all powers that have anything to do with determining someone's role, alignment, energy, or what they did/what was done to them last night. (Final value of X.01 would result in a X+1 value.) However, you may not bid on any powers besides the type described above.Chief Surgeon: Your extensive background has afforded you some position within the medical field. As such, your bids count for 20% more, rounded up, towards all powers that have anything to do with preventing energy damage to others, or willfully transferring energy from one person to another. Willfully is defined as the person losing any energy, including yourself, who gives consent to the act of it being transferred. (Final value of X.01 would result in a X+1 value.) However, you may not bid on any powers besides the type described above.

Daughters sick, more content later, but claiming even one power won or bid on is quickly narrowing the field for where power town is hiding.

Very good point BF, hadn't looked at it from that perspective.
Also, the only reason I've been talking about the Survivor is because it's the role of which I think would be easiest to determine the owner, and because a bunch of things BF said pinged me as Survivor-esque. Not concerned if it goes nowhere, but the only way to get info is by sharing our ideas, right?
PS phone posting sucks, so this is in response to more than just the quoted (obviously)

[Chickenfish]

By the way, here are my bids for scum roles. FoS: Silknor and fearless for not posting theirs right away.
Mafia Kingpin: 53 Energy
Mafia Thug: 52 Energy
Mafia Newbie: 51 energy
Ancient Vampire: 50 Energy

Did you win any of them?

[ConMan]

My scum bids were all relatively low, but then so were my other ones. That said:
Kingpin: 25
Thug: 14
Vampire: 11

I will claim that I'm not Vanilla Town, but I'm also not one of the particularly well-powered townies either. And I probably paid too much for my powers (and don't have much in the way of means of getting energy back, bleah).

[matt96]

If we are going with claiming our role bids, the only bid I made was 15 for chocolate townie, and does anyone feel like it might be useful to claim the number of powers we successfully got, or the fraction of the powers that we won compared to the number we bid for or something like that, because on average each person will have gotten about three powers(not counting multiple instances of powers), but it might be bad because it would help scum and the ancient vampire know who is strongest power wise and has the least energy, but from what people are saying they bid, I under valued everything.
Although it might help find the townie power roles, it probably won't limit it down that much assuming people are not getting like 6 or more powers or something like that, but other than bids and powers, what do we even have to work with day 1?

[Chickenfish]

Guys, stop claiming things!
Claiming Scum bids is valuable because it gives us a vague idea of what energy levels scum are working with. Claiming non-scum bids and specific roles, as BF said, only helps scum find the cop/doc. While those players aren't necessarily the ones with the powers that will make it hard for scum, they're more likely to have them and are still better targets for scum.
As for claiming powers/power bids, that only encourages the cop/doc to lie about what they won/bid for to not make their identity obvious - and encouraging lying only clouds information and makes us more suspicious of potentially the wrong people.

[mpolo]

Agreed. I only claimed my bid on Groucho because I had already let slip the fact that I had bid. Unless there are other good reasons to do so, we should not be claiming any more in the near future.

[fearless]

Quick question: What does "A C: before a power means it counts for the cop to bid for it" mean? Does it mean the mafia can't bid for that role? Or does it mean if a town bids and wins it that person gets extra energy? Suppose I should have asked this during the bid phase... but I really only saw it now

Secondly, this "survivor" role - is it the Lonely Collector or the Vampire? Both talk about surviving till the end...sorry for the noob questions. I've never seen these roles before.

Also, do you think it's worth sharing the values of our failed bids for scum so we can have a gauge of scum's health?

I don't see how this is going to work. Sharing such values will give us an approximate feel of their starting energy at the beginning of phase 3. It doesn't give us any indication of their starting energy *now* because we don't know what powers they went for or how many they've succeeded in winning. Personally I see little point in this, or am I missing something here?

@MN: Whoa way to jump the gun. I got home late last night, and didn't have time to dissect the thread. I didn't even know about the sharing values suggestion until this morning o_O And I'm not convinced it is the smart thing to do. After all, the whole reveal thing in HP Mafia totally backfired so I'm going to wait a bit and see what the others think.

Ok, a request: Can we please stick to the terms used by Lataro in the first post? I just searched for "miller" and didn't come up with anything so I don't know what role Boomfrog is referring to.

[Lataro]

Quick question: What does "A C: before a power means it counts for the cop to bid for it" mean? Does it mean the mafia can't bid for that role? Or does it mean if a town bids and wins it that person gets extra energy? Suppose I should have asked this during the bid phase... but I really only saw it now

Secondly, this "survivor" role - is it the Lonely Collector or the Vampire? Both talk about surviving till the end...sorry for the noob questions. I've never seen these roles before.

First, It means it's a power that the police chief gets their bonus on, and is allowed to bid for.

Second, the vampire is a SK, the collector is a survivor. The vamp can only win if they are the last player alive at the end, the collector wins if town or mafia wins and they are still alive.

[fearless]

re: Claiming the bribery role - struggling to see the logic here. I mean, let's say it went to a mafia. He can then just claim to be townie? How would we know? The expedient cop takes 3 nights, and it costs energy. and then he'd have to reveal the finding (thereby exposing himself) - even then, the rest of us may still wonder if it's a true claim (by the cop) or not.Would be more beneficial if he investigated the person who's the most scummy, as opposed to investigating someone who claimed the bribery role just so we can eliminate some wine.

re: Matt. Yeah quite the keen bean but doesn't really ring my suspicion bells. Although he has been relatively quiet since the start of phase 4. Probably due to real life commitments, so not too worried yet.

Whoa, reading silknor's post makes me feel like I'm in 18th Century England or something o_o

thanks for clearing up the roles lataro

[Chickenfish]

Also, do you think it's worth sharing the values of our failed bids for scum so we can have a gauge of scum's health?

I don't see how this is going to work. Sharing such values will give us an approximate feel of their starting energy at the beginning of phase 3. It doesn't give us any indication of their starting energy *now* because we don't know what powers they went for or how many they've succeeded in winning. Personally I see little point in this, or am I missing something here?

Well we now know scum paid at least 50 for their roles (assuming MN isn't scum, and that he didn't lie...). Now, if anybody bid, say, 80 for an ability that would be good for scum and didn't get it (for reasons other than it exceeding their set limit...) then that person personally knows that any scum that has it would have a maximum of 120 energy. Minor place to start from, but better than nothing?

@MN: Whoa way to jump the gun. I got home late last night, and didn't have time to dissect the thread. I didn't even know about the sharing values suggestion until this morning o_O And I'm not convinced it is the smart thing to do. After all, the whole reveal thing in HP Mafia totally backfired so I'm going to wait a bit and see what the others think.

Slightly different, but I understand your hesitation. This is more a way to attempt to get information only about scum... there's almost literally no way scum can get info about us (unless I've missed something - somebody let me know!)

Ok, a request: Can we please stick to the terms used by Lataro in the first post? I just searched for "miller" and didn't come up with anything so I don't know what role Boomfrog is referring to.

Miller is a terrible way to describe bribery... that's almost the worst possible use for that ability. I'd FoS him if my vote didn't already imply that...
Furthermore:

re: Claiming the bribery role - struggling to see the logic here. I mean, let's say it went to a mafia. He can then just claim to be townie? How would we know? The expedient cop takes 3 nights, and it costs energy. and then he'd have to reveal the finding (thereby exposing himself) - even then, the rest of us may still wonder if it's a true claim (by the cop) or not.Would be more beneficial if he investigated the person who's the most scummy, as opposed to investigating someone who claimed the bribery role just so we can eliminate some wine.

Totally agree that outing bribery is a terrible suggestion... made by the same BoomFrog who said we shouldn't claim bids. He did add the exception of bribery, but through absolutely terrible logic. I'd FoS him again if I'd done it in the first place...

[t1mm01994]

*yawn* alright, so, I'm in the middle of 2 test weeks, I'm modding a game, and playing this thing in which I've just won a small bag of useless.
Any more bid claims by now would make very little sense, as there are more than enough values to fly under the radar for everyone not having claimed yet.
Apart from that, I'll try to post, but don't expect too much from it.

Ah well, at least I'm a punching bag full of energy...

[Chickenfish]

*yawn* alright, so, I'm in the middle of 2 test weeks, I'm modding a game, and playing this thing in which I've just won a small bag of useless.
Any more bid claims by now would make very little sense, as there are more than enough values to fly under the radar for everyone not having claimed yet.
Apart from that, I'll try to post, but don't expect too much from it.

Ah well, at least I'm a punching bag full of energy...

Tests: Damn
Modding game: Why don't people just win already?
This thing: pile of null tell!
Agree on the no point bid claiming though... I feel like those 50s set a good enough guess at a benchmark.
I'm concerned though... it sounds like mafia either did really well in the power phase and we're all going to die a horrible horrible death, or people are downplaying their powers. I really hope it's the latter...

[t1mm01994]

@ null tell, I think we can all agree that it's in no-one's favour to claim their own roles this early on, or to give tells, for that matter. If mafia, or vamp, feel like it, be my guest, but I don't think that will happen.
I'm very much interested in where In tune with Nature went. It's in potential a very strong power, as it locks down the amount of players that can be vampire (+25 means that he'll be up a bracket for sure). Other possibilities of increasing are only Gambler and Investor.. And Gambler is /very/ likely to be on scum, too. Roughly, if we see someone's energy increase, lynch them.

[Mostlynormal]

Wait, what's a null tell? Like a scumtell except neutral? That seems to apply to most posts in mafia anyway. I don't get it.

As far as people downplaying their roles, I think that stuff is pure wine. Those with good roles would want scum to beleive they had bad roles to avoid being nightkilled, and those with bad roles might try to sound like they had a lot to attract a nightkill. But then WIFOM kicks in so I'm not sure the point of talking about how much you got.

I don't agree with lynching people who's energy increases. There seem to be plenty of "good" powers that do that. Specific amounts, however, would be telling. If someone's energy ever goes up by exactly 25 points then we can be pretty sure they're the vampire.

[t1mm01994]

"Plenty"? Until day 5 there are the exact HUGE amount of... Two powers. Yes, two. Investor and Crooked Politician, where Crooked Politician is more of a late game power. Day 5 Top Hat joins the list, but that's pretty far away.

You sir, have just earned your self a completely free, one-time offer Finger of Suspicion! It costs no energy yet.