ESPIONAGE: Round Three (Spies & Informants Win)

[bash7353]

I think you're mixing things up here, dumytru. What you're referring to is probably Jd- talking about possible later rounds in which teams may be secret.

But here they're not secret. So one team is the Detective, one team is the Spy, and one team is the Informant. All the other teams are Civilians. You are not Detective, Spy, Informant, or Civilian as individual player, you have that role as team. That means the Spy team doesn't kill a player, but a team, and also we all vote for a team and whatever team receives the most is arrested.

Even though the Spy team consists of two players, they can only send one kill order. They have to agree on that and can do so using private messages. The same way every team only has one vote that they have to agree on, again that's what communicating with your team mate using private messages is for.

[dumytru]

Teams work like units, that means you vote together, die together and get arrested together

Okay.

I think you're mixing things up here, dumytru. What you're referring to is probably Jd- talking about possible later rounds in which teams may be secret.

*finds Jd-'s post*
Yup that's right. Sorry about that

And finally--
About going for a tie. We can vote in circle; that meaning we vote for the team in front of us. Team #1 votes for Team #2, #2 for #3, etc.
Though will everyone actually do that? And even if they did, this would be a great change for the Spy to kill 2 teams at once.

Waaait a sec-- then it'd be obvious who's the spy & informant.
So they have to comply.

[Kleene Onigiri]

But that way to make a tie, like Fuji also said, won't give the detective any information on the list that the civilians have D:

[Fujiwara]

Well, it's certainly getting very lively now.

You're reasoning's off, though, Fuji. You're saying that the Detective being arrested has a chance of less than 20%, which is technically correct. But then you're saying that the Spy is probably very pleased with that, without knowing how much less it than 20% it is.

Actually, what I was trying to say was that there is a chance of about 20% of the detective being arrested and/or killed.

But your calculation is wrong imo, or more like, doesn't show what random voting actually affects. Since the spy will kill someone anyway, meaning the 1/9 chance that the detective dies after the first phase is there anyway. Which you doesn't really need to consider, since that won't change whether you vote randomly or not.

I thought I made it clear which part of my calculation was related to random voting and which one wasn't, but maybe I didn't. ^^* It's true that the 1/9 = 11% chance of the spy killing the detective remains no matter what we do, but I still included it because I wanted to point out that the combined probability of the detective getting taken out of the game one way or another is 20%. By taking out random voting we can reduce that to 11%, which is quite an improvement. Ignoring the kill and saying that random voting has a ca. 9% chance of taking out the detective, while true, doesn't tell the whole story, in my opinion. I didn't mean to imply that random voting is the sole factor in those 20% though and I'm sorry if people misunderstood me.

Also, in your calculation, the detective dies 2x :x One for getting voted (1/11) and once getting killed by the spy (1/9) :x Which you can't add up just like that.

Ah, you're right. It's been a while since I did this sort of stuff. The calculation for non-mutually exclusive events is
P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B) - P(A and B)
Which means I'd have to amend my calculation as follows:
P(arrest or kill) = 1/11 + 1/9 - 1/99 = 19/99 = 19%

So instead, you'll only consider what happens when we random vote. Since the kill from the spy happens anyway and you can't prevent it (as long as the spy sends in an action).
Now, you could say there is 1/11 chance that someone actually get's lynched and it happens to be the detective. But it's actually lower than 1/11. Because a tie could also randomly happen which would mean that no one was arrested. (but calculating it exactly would be too much work now :x). So there is less than a 9% chance (probably more like 6%) that the detective would be arrested because of random voting. Which doesn't sound so big anymore.

Ah, true, a tie could occur in random voting, I totally didn't consider that. Yeah, I'm actually not sure of the chances of that happening. Still, better to aim for a tie than to hope for one to happen, I say.

Still, trying to go for a tie could be nice but that would mean that the spy and informant also do that :x

As dumytru pointed out, if everyone agrees to go for a tie, anyone deviating from that makes himself very suspicious, so that doesn't seem like a good option for the spy. We could also say that we'll arrest whoever deviates from the plan the next day, for example.

About going for a tie. We can vote in circle; that meaning we vote for the team in front of us. Team #1 votes for Team #2, #2 for #3, etc.
Though will everyone actually do that? And even if they did, this would be a great change for the Spy to kill 2 teams at once.

Waaait a sec-- then it'd be obvious who's the spy & informant.
So they have to comply.

*nods* Yes, that sounds like a good idea.

[Stopwatch]

If we want a tie we have to get confirmation from every separate team to go along with it otherwise at least a third will just go random anyway and we've no way or reason to hold them responsible given they could easily be from either side and just not paying attention. So, decide on how you want the tie before Day 1 starts, secure agreement from everyone, and then implement the plan while trying to pressure others into revealing their hand.

[dumytru]

But that way to make a tie, like Fuji also said, won't give the detective any information on the list that the civilians have D:

Then I guess it's either random voting, circle voting, or nominee voting.

Hmm.. Then let's do this: every team nominates another team, but based on the previous nominated teams, so that's it's tie.
So if Cider & me nominated KleeneOnigiri & Miaka, then they shouldn't get nominated again.


Edit: Just looked at the poster and realised we're team #10 and you're #11. That was not on purpose.

[Fujiwara]

But that way to make a tie, like Fuji also said, won't give the detective any information on the list that the civilians have D:

Then I guess it's either random voting, circle voting, or nominee voting.

Hmm.. Then let's do this: every team nominates another team, but based on the previous nominated teams, so that's it's tie.
So if Cider & me nominated KleeneOnigiri & Miaka, then they shouldn't get nominated again.

I'm not sure if I understand your proposition correctly. If everyone names a team they're going to vote for (and then votes for them) and no one is allowed to name teams that have been named before, how exactly is it different from circle voting? I mean, if everything works out, every team should have one vote in the end in this case, no?

Not saying I'm completely against it, but it doesn't give us any more information than circle voting, as far as I can see. Maybe I'm missing something?

Here's another idea that might actually give us some information while still leading to a tie:
Everyone announces who they'll vote for, with the limitation that only a maximum of 2 votes can go to the same team. We keep track of who intends to vote whom and assure that
a) either 0 or at least 2 teams get 2 votes and
b) no team gets more than 2 votes

This way some teams will get 2 votes, some 1 and some 0, thus giving us some list data if people choose someone from their list (highly recommended), but we still get the desired tie.

What do you guys think?

[Iwamoto Yuri]

Welcome to the latest round of Espionage!
Day One starts now!


Phase changes will be daily between 4 PM and 5 PM EST.

PM ME, YURI IWAMOTO, THE GM OF THIS ROUND, WITH YOUR VOTES AND ACTIONS, AS WELL AS ANY QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE. ONLY ONE PLAYER FROM YOUR TEAM HAS TO SEND IN ACTIONS FOR EACH PHASE. IF BOTH DO, WHICHEVER WAS SENT LAST IS COUNTED.

[Jd-]

This is kinda confusing for me.
We can vote for teams but we can also vote for a single player.
Also Jd- said something about "trying to keep you partener alive", so this means only one player gets arrested/killed, and not a team, right?
If that's so then the chance of the Detective being arrested are really low.
Since there are two detectives, even if we arrested one of them, there's still one alive remaining.

Just to clarify: As dumytru posted later, this was in reference to another variant and isn't related to this one. In this one, you'll live/die/get arrested together. All the same, you'll be voting for teams as a whole.

---

Now, I was thinking coming into this round that--at least for the early phases--it would be beneficial to do public vote nominations in order to avoid random arrests. The "circle voting" idea is a really effective way of putting it. But, an important caveat:

If we want a tie we have to get confirmation from every separate team to go along with it otherwise at least a third will just go random anyway and we've no way or reason to hold them responsible given they could easily be from either side and just not paying attention. So, decide on how you want the tie before Day 1 starts, secure agreement from everyone, and then implement the plan while trying to pressure others into revealing their hand.

This is always the problem we end up facing when trying to arrange coordinated voting efforts in Mafia. I'm not entirely sure what the answer is, because in this, we're not even allowed to PM the players to nudge them to read a certain post/reply/participate/etc. So if someone does go random, we can't really consider them having run afoul knowingly.

Of course, an alternate and dangerous strategy is for everyone to no-vote, but that opens up a lot of danger to the Detective team specifically, because all it takes is one random vote that appears to be an honest mistake and the game's over before we know it. One problem that people will bring up over this is that people don't like being told who to vote if they haven't had their chance to give their say, so anyone that wants to voice an opinion should feel free to do so now.

I'm definitely in for helping arrange a safe vote. What I expect will happen is that the Detective/Spy teams will have the most reservations about this. They have the most to lose with a team accidentally jumping in and going random, but there is a degree of protection for everyone (them included) in arranging a tie vote.

One significant thing that did come to mind: This will provide some predictability for the vote, but it will nullify one aspect that helped establish allies in the previous round. Before, we felt comfortable exonerating people based on them voting for the victims. The Spy team could always pretend and vote for their kills to hide their identities, but if we do arrange a safe vote, there won't be a great deal of leads that come from the results. It's a tricky situation, but I think an arranged vote is our best bet (though we should really, really get everyone actively involved or else Day One may be a painful one that makes it hard for us to work together in future phases).

---

All in all, it's going to be a hype round and I hope to see a lot of new strategies emerge as with the previous two rounds. Even so far we've had some interesting propositions come up, so it'll be interesting to see where it goes from here. I'm super excited to work with KL again, too, as we once had a round of Mafia where we singlehandedly took out the Black Org team with our cop-cop combo, with the round ending with four straight successful arrests. Naturally, if this team round is a success, we can try the secret teams variant as Espionage 5 or Espionage 6 I'd wager.

Let's have a good round everyone! Get hype!

[Togop]

Actually, we don't need the full cooperation of all teams to arrange a tie. It would be enough to select two teams, give each of them three or four votes (that would need arranged voting by six-eight teams) and ask everyone else not to vote for these two teams. That way, if someone hasn't confirmed participation and misses the request, chances are (9/11) that they'll not mess anything up anyway as they'll vote for another team. It's possible that four others vote for the same team, but that's even less likely. If some team does mess up the tie, we'll have solid grounds to arrest that team, as chances are low it happened on accident. Plus, we could have nominations for the two teams to arrange the tie between, which would give info to the detective.

If we were to go with that, I'd nominate Team 1 for tie.

[Fujiwara]

I really like Togop's idea and am fully in favor of implementing it. There's less chance of messing it up and the nominations can actually reveal a bit of data for the detective. Having been a detective last round, I can only stress that the detective can really use help like this!

As such, Raifuu and I would like to nominate Team 7 (Kamite and breva) for tie.

[shinichi'sapprentice]

... One problem that people will bring up over this is that people don't like being told who to vote if they haven't had their chance to give their say, so anyone that wants to voice an opinion should feel free to do so now.

THIS IS ME. not for reasons mentioned by the poster, but because i vote based on who i think should be voted.

---

my mind exploded with all those probability discussions. i did not expect everyone will get hyped up even before day 1 begins.

anyway, it's day 1. only three posts so far, it is hard pointing out suspicious posts that may contain signals identifying themselves to the spy. all i got is bolded words, parentheses, and hr.unless the informants made the initiative to create a distraction before day 1, then that's interesting. or,...... they could just be regular civilians trying to make things right.

[Jd-]

I really like Togop's idea and am fully in favor of implementing it. There's less chance of messing it up and the nominations can actually reveal a bit of data for the detective. Having been a detective last round, I can only stress that the detective can really use help like this!

As such, Raifuu and I would like to nominate Team 7 (Kamite and breva) for tie.

To avoid raising anyone's ire, I think we should probably make sure the two teams we nominate with this idea are people actively participating in the discussion. The others may not like having their lives put on the line without their say. One thing we could do is have it like this:

- Fujiwara/Raifuujin vote for Togop/Conan-chandesune.
- Jd-/Kaito Lady vote for Togop/Conan-chandesune.
- [To Be Determined Team] vote for Togop/Conan-chandesune.

- Togop/Conan-chandesune vote for Fujiwara/Raifuujin.
- [To Be Determined Team] vote for Fujiwara/Raifuujin.
- [To Be Determined Team] vote for Fujiwara/Raifuujin.

This, so long as no one accidentally votes for those two specific teams, should give us a safe tie since both teams are involved in the voting idea itself. All we need to do is to enlist three other teams to fill the above slots. What do you guys think?

[dumytru]

It should be safe. Or at least, just as much as circle voting.

I agree.

[Conan-chandesune]

Also, in your calculation, the detective dies 2x :x One for getting voted (1/11) and once getting killed by the spy (1/9) :x Which you can't add up just like that.

Ah, you're right. It's been a while since I did this sort of stuff. The calculation for non-mutually exclusive events is
P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B) - P(A and B)

I thought about that the second i saw your post. Good times. Simple times.

Also, if Togop's fine with it, i am too.