Making Yourself Unreadable: A Debate // "Wolf Strategy Discussion"

[lastchance]

[ QUOTE ]
LC, you made a post once about how you did something as a villager for your wolf game for later. That is terrible.


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Yeah, I probably agree. Seriously, I will say that I make a bunch of postgame posts to improve my wolf game by making some image on here. And it really isn't deliberate. Something I just picked up from shortline, lol.

As long as villagers remember what you do in current games, and make player-specific reads, IMHO, you have to play wolf with future games in mind and with how other people read you.

If people clear you as a villager for lynching a wolf, that's obviously a weakness in your wolf game. If people clear you for any reason as a villager, that's probably a weakness in your wolf game. Of course, you have to make sure that people don't accuse you correctly as a wolf first, but yeah.

Also, if people read you correctly for clearly false reasons (which, IMHO, happens a lot to my wolf game), I don't care that much, because those attacks are dodgeable. Even if that may be -EV in the current game, if I try to adapt my wolf game so that Patton (or village in general) calls me a villager for reasons that are false, I'm going to be readable the next wolf game (and maybe that wolf game). It's far more important to my wolf game to make sure I cannot be read, than try to be read as a villager and in practice, probably be read as a wolf.

[chim17]

I don't disagree with anything you said there. My only point is if you do something for a future situation which is not the optimal play for your current team that is really bad.

Obviously as you play you need to keep in mind how you are playing so you are able to play well in the future. But you should never ever make a non optimal play for future games.

Everyone should just try to win.

[lastchance]

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Also, if people read you correctly for clearly false reasons (which, IMHO, happens a lot to my wolf game), I don't care that much, because those attacks are dodgeable.

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This is clearly -EV for your current wolf game, but it's not something you can rectify in the long run because it's going to make you readable and you're going to have to change to a wolf game that focuses on being unreadable, not clearing yourself.

Then again, I guess all of the stuff I'm saying is fine, you can definitely try to clear yourself when you're a wolf.

But you can't constantly keep doing it, because it's not long-run sustainable.

[Neil S]

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This also applies to Seer. Changing your Village game to improve your Seer game is wrong.

[/ QUOTE ]Here's the proof of this, by the way, that seer hinting as village is for your VILLAGE game, and not your seer game:

Imagine if your roles were not entirely random, and the Flying Great Pumpkin intervened to ensure you would never be seer again. Suppose that you know this, but others do not. Would you still hint as villager?

I say the answer has to be yes, because the actual seer on your team still needs cover every single game.

[Stephen H]

You have to be careful with doing things as a wolf to "improve further wolf games". You should be trying to win THIS game, and then next game, build on what you did last time - not hurting your current game to have a good wolf game later. This is true for several reasons:
For one, the EV you trade today for your future EV isn't your own; it's your whole wolf teams, and they won't be there to reap the rewards.
Also, it's difficult to make sure you're getting as much or more EV in your next game as you're losing in the current game.
And the problem with setting yourself up for one good wolf game is seers. You could have set it up so over half the village is convinced you're not a wolf in a future game my wrecking a series of previous games...and then there you are, in the future game, cruising along, and BAM you get peeked and you've lost all that work for no reason.

As an example, say Neil is pretty sure I'm a wolf; I might do something that Neil thinks is a wolf tell of mine to reinforce this tell. I may not think I'm costing us much, as Neil already thinks I'm a wolf, and I might gain an edge on Neil later when I don't do the "tell" as a wolf in a future game That's pretty narrow, though, as absence of a tell does not make a very good read, and probably I'm better off just convincing Neil I'm a villager, or at least letting him follow other suspects for a while rather than cementing me as his #1 wolf. Or I could get Neil lynched. (My option of choice)

I believe that, in almost all cases, if you're worried about "how will this affect me in future games" before you do something, as a wolf OR as a villager, you're probably making a mistake.

At the base level - you don't lynch villagers on purpose as a villager so that when you lynch villagers as a wolf you aren't suspicious. Instead, as a wolf, you lynch villagers while making it look like you're trying to lynch wolves but are wrong.
In the same vein, you don't just say "I'm a wolf" when you're a wolf so that people will believe you when you're a villager. You also don't do it so that in a future game you can say "But I can't be a wolf, I would have said so!" just to improve a future wolf game.

[lastchance]

Stephen, I'm not trying to set myself up for one good wolf game. I'm trying to make sure that I have a mindset as a wolf that I can play every single game and make that play overall good (even if it's bad in a vacuum, because everyone remembers who I am and what I do).

Ok, 1) I'm talking about only things you do as a wolf to improve your wolf game, not things you do as a villager.

2) Neil, yeah, that's because no one else knows about it. It's a +EV for future play which works now because people can't read you as the seer or not based on hinting.

I think I have this.

As wolves, people try to do things that they wouldn't do as a villager to clear themselves. This doesn't work. It makes you readable. Many wolves do it (maybe without even realizing it), but they do, and it MAKES YOU READABLE.

There are 3 categories of things you do:
A. Actions as village which you don't do as wolf
B. Actions you do both as a village and wolf
C. Actions you do as wolf but not village

The list of things on A should be precisely 0, and as a wolf, one of your main goals is to keep the list of things on A as absurdly low as possible. Anything that makes you a villager barring a seer peek should be something you emulate as a wolf.

B is self-explanatory, no matter your role, your hunting wolfy people, making notes, etc. Your wolf game should resemble your villager game like this.

C will happen. C exists because villagers getting lynched > wolves getting lynched. C exists because I don't want to lynch Boiler in Turf wars even though I know it makes me readable. C exists because you might be seer-peeked, at which point, you do not devote any more effort to making yourself unreadable than it takes to get villagers lynched. People will do C to clear themselves and fool people about being wolves. That will make you readable. And it doesn't provide much benefit anyway.

So, here is LC's list of things to do:
A: Nothing. There are some things I do less as a wolf than I do as a villager. But if I can emulate something I do as a wolf that I do as a villager, I will do it at some point, even if it is the primary cause of getting fellow wolves lynched.
B: A bunch. If there's something I do as a villager, I AM doing it as a wolf.
C: Faking seer obviously, metagaming so I don't clear villagers on the way down, lynching (not voting) a wolf over a villager even though I can get read for it.

My metagame is an ongoing thing, an ongoing process that I must maintain and exploit as a wolf so that all of my wolf games will be good, not just a single one.

In a vacuum or against players who don't know you, you can get away and use a lot of C to "clear" yourself AND to get villagers lynched. My wolf game should not even remotely resemble my villager game in a vacuum.

But this doesn't work on 2p2. Even if some C type actions are useful for the game you're playing right now, those are tricks you cannot do in the long run as a wolf. In fact, the simple act of making C-type actions to clear yourself is a C-type action that is going to get you lynched.

And all of this applies to villager-seer as well. If you play villager faking seer to get NKed (and do things you wouldn't do as the seer), you aren't going to fake well. But if you metagame for your seer game, you will be like an unreadable wolf, and people are going to either kill you or not kill you for all the wrong reasons, and it's going to let seers rip wolves apart.

So, that's my essay. I hope I'm explaining myself better, but that's what I think.

[Neil S]

Some solid theory there LC, I think.

[LuckayLuck]

ingenious

[FCBLComish]

I think a good example of this is every time I said "Traz, tell them I am a villager" it worked, and then when I was finally a wolf, it worked again. It will not work in the future though.

You need to find those things and duplicate them. AS8 is pretty good at it.

[clowntable]

Wow, you all need to understand this game some day.