Mafia Go #1: Finished!

[Marcus]

White resigns.

[Phelan]

That's 2 votes for resign, one for g2.

The Black team wins, by resignation!

Teams were:
White
Kirby 2D
Joaz Banbeck 1D
fwiffo 4k
prokofiev 5k
Jordus 10k

Black
topazg 1D
daniel_the_smith 1k
Marcus 4k
MountainGo 5k
Chew Terr 7k

I picked a reduced komi after seeing that there was a slight difference in the teams' average rank.

Hope you had fun playing or reading!

I'm looking forward to your comments on the experience. I had one ideas to try next game:
-Having chaos and/or order teams, where chaos is going for a skewed result and order is going for a balanced result (doesn't matter which side wins).
-I probably should have made one team stronger but with fewer players, to balance it out in a different way.

[Chew Terr]

Yay, go us. High five.

I think, from a metagame perspective, that you should probably pick teams randomly in the future. The metagame is more important than a few ranks here and there, since I could tell who was playing suboptimally for one side or the other. I had a hunch fairly early as to topazg and Kirby's allegiances, and if I can do it, most of the players can. I'm sure I was also at least as obvious based on how I played. Anyhow, I was able to discern that Jordus was on the white team just because he and I were the weakest two players and I was black.

Also, something that I think would be fun is this: instead of voting people off, let the two weakest players vote people off. For example, if Jordus and I were weakest, we would know that he was white and I was black, but it would be a matter of us reading through the gaming and metagaming skills of the stronger players. Obviously in that situation, the voting players would have to be immune. Really, this would work if the strongest players (or any players of equal level) were the voters, instead. That might speed things up a bit, by reducing voting time, as well as adding some interesting complexity to it.

Mountaingo: You were the hardest person to read. I kind of had to just vote for people I was certain of, and hope you were on my team.

[Harleqin]

Who were the remaining players in the end?

[daniel_the_smith]

Interesting experiment. I thought Kirby was on my team, and topagz not, for quite a while. Sorry I got MountainGo kicked off, guess it didn't really matter which of us went

I think the format needs to be tweaked somehow. I think Joaz was pointing out that the game isn't stable as soon as people start figuring out who's on what side-- with the same number of players on each side the first few vote-offs (which are kinda random) will determine which side has superior numbers when everyone figures everything out. As soon as the side with a numerical advantage realizes it the game is over.

I don't think having one side weaker but more numerous would fix the problem, either (the weaker players have a winning strategy: vote off someone stronger than you. This strategy doesn't hurt you if the sides are balanced so there's no reason not to do it).

[prokofiev]

It was an interesting game.

My thinking at various points: I guessed Joaz was white (this is before he revealed stuff) and people seemed to be voting for reasons not related to which side people were on, so suggesting Kirby seemed the best shot as he'd made some comment about being uninterested in continuing. My two other reasons in that post in which I vote for Kirby were mostly filler (I couldn't tell which team he was on, really). Then when nobody really changed their vote, it seemed best to go with that as Joaz was leaving anyways (unfortunate that Fwiffo changed his vote too!).

Next, I decided danielthesmith was on team black based on one or two of his moves, and perhaps this could be used as Joaz had publicly guessed he was on team white. So I voted for him. Maybe I should've dealt with that differently, but in the end it turned out we voted out someone on team black anyways.

I didn't know it, however, and after that, I was sure we'd already voted off two players from the white team (as perhaps did everyone else?), and black seemed to become more confident and gained the upper hand in the game, I think. Finally, Fwiffo and (by this time it was definitely all over) Kirby went due to out-of-game reasons.

Thanks for running this, Phelan. I think there's a good deal more merit in it than I did originally (though I still like the variants I suggested in the other thread a while ago).

[Phelan]

Who were the remaining players in the end?

From the first post:
Chew Terr 7k
topazg 1D
prokofiev 5k
daniel_the_smith 1k
Marcus 4k
Jordus 10k


By the way, when I talk about changing the way teams are balanced, I would always include some randomness, or some other unknown factor to keep people guessing.

Chew Terr, your voting variant would only reduce time during vote offs, and most time is spent during move votes. Maybe reducing the voting requirement closer to 50% would help, but it would advantage the bigger team.

We can try your variant next, prokofiev.

[topazg]

Great game everyone, I had fun metagaming and guessing the metagamers. By the time the game had finished, mountainGo was the only person I hadn't worked out was on our team, and I'd kept our team informed of who was on who. I would gladly do another one of these on a bigger board

Fun game!

[Marcus]

It's rather hard to hide your allegiances when you're on so small a board, I think.

I know I kept trying to throw curveballs about what team I was on, but I don't think I succeeded very well. I laughed when Joaz indicated that he wasn't sure of what team I was on. I'm a horrible poker player, so to speak.

[prokofiev]

and I'd kept our team informed of who was on who

Using pm's doesn't seem fair! I guess Phelan didn't explicitly forbid them, though. (Or is that not what you meant?)

[Harleqin]

I think that the votes (both for moves and shooting someone) should be made privately and then revealed simultaneously. If there is no single most voted move then, the vote is simply repeated.

Reason: a late voter in the current system has to overcome peer pressure if he wants to vote differently.

Another modification would be to anonymize the players, so that there is no strength information initially.

[topazg]

and I'd kept our team informed of who was on who

Using pm's doesn't seem fair! I guess Phelan didn't explicitly forbid them, though. (Or is that not what you meant?)

Yeah, that's what I meant. I figure the rules are the rules, and anything outside them goes in Mafia Go

That said, doing it can really backfire. If I pm'ed Daniel and he was on the other team, I could guarantee being voted off pretty much.

[Chew Terr]

That said, doing it can really backfire. If I pm'ed Daniel and he was on the other team, I could guarantee being voted off pretty much.

Or being played and tricked into voting off your ACTUAL teammates.

[prokofiev]

and I'd kept our team informed of who was on who

Using pm's doesn't seem fair! I guess Phelan didn't explicitly forbid them, though. (Or is that not what you meant?)

Yeah, that's what I meant. I figure the rules are the rules, and anything outside them goes in Mafia Go

That said, doing it can really backfire. If I pm'ed Daniel and he was on the other team, I could guarantee being voted off pretty much.

Fair enough

[Joaz Banbeck]

I'm rather disappointed in this one. And, no, not because I got voted off early. ( That's a chance you take when you join up. It is like walking onto a baseball field - if you are not willing to take a bouncer in the face, you shouldn't walk on. )

The rules of the game were substantially different than a normal game of go, and the majority of you never really explored this. You treated it almost like a normal game. You voted off guys because they were willing to go, not because you thought that it would help you win the game. Nobody but me explored the strategies of using voting to win the game.

My dissapointment was particularly acute near the end when it was obvious that white was doomed. At that point the only rational attempt by white players to win the game was to start voting for bad black moves. But nobody did. It was like watching a 29K play a ladder all the way across the board, one doomed move after another, with no attempt to understand what is going on or to change it.
You remaining white players did not know if you were the majority or not. But you knew that you could not possibly win on the board with normal moves. Your only chance to win was to vote for a bad black move and hope that you had enough votes. And you didn't even try.

What is the point in playing a game like this if you are not going to try to win with all the tools that you have? Would you play chess but refuse to move your queen more than one space? Would you play basketball but never try a 3-pointer? Those used to be the rules: the queen moved one space, and a bucket was two points. But when new possibilities were added, people used them.