hmm.

 

Basically where I'm at right now: this is either Fluff's ideal world or Grape trying to get me to think that-- wifom aside Grape would probably be better off shooting me and convincing Keldeo to lynch Fluff, but since Keld had fluff over grape and i was trending down on Fluff I could see that being a play he'd do? I'll be rereading stuff.

@Fluffiness if you're a villager you're gonna need to step it up a level from what you've been doing so far this game.

@Grapefruit29 can you talk me through what was going on in your head yesterday? You came in saying iirc Keld was roughly in the same tier of your PoE as Cobalt, then disappeared while Fluff pushed Keldeo, before coming back when things were solidifying onto Cobalt and said you couldn't justify lynching elsewhere-- what happened in the middle/what brought you around there eventually?
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Mentions are kinda pointless at this stage, but I'm still a little upset at myself.

 

Please, if I were scum, I would have shot you and just let Keldeo and Grape fight it out in F3.
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At least show me a little respect in thinking that I won't actively play against my wincon.

 

@Cuthalion I realized that I really thought that spurt from Keldeo that made me initially town read him was a really strong reason to town read him. And that my lingering world building reason to like Sera was very weak and I had almost no read on Cobalt. Unfortunately I've been on autopilot for like a week and a half. But I intend to get this right.

 

I don't think taking the person who's been hard defending you all game into f3 is really "actively playing against your wincon", but fair enough.

 

I mean that arguement is works both ways to be honest.

Anyway I still haven't read but I'll try to today. Not sure how much I'll get done as we're breaking in a new office space today.

 

hmmm.
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Grape, can you explain what you meant in this post?

 

Sure I was talking about how embarrassed I was at my Don Quixote thing blowing up in my face in addition to the numerous grammatical and spelling errors I was making and being called out on. I was attempting to explain what I was trying to do and what I actually thought about tom.

Even more embarrassingly in retrospect, my one takeaway was wrong!
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Doing Fluff's ISO because it's much more manageable. First takeaway is that it's really light on content.

Second is that I clicked on 373 to see the context and that Waco's post below it looks coachy/buddyish, especially since Fluff bothered to reply to it in 401.

Something to keep an eye on: Fluff has expressed suspicion and voted for Sloth in the early going. Watch for an evolution of that read.

And all that's between that and EoD is moving the vote to Umami because they felt Umami's refusal to commit to a read was gross.
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867 is another interaction with flipped scum. But the whole thing is very awkward. Sloth doesn't really feel like he's pushing Fluff (doesn't cite the use of gross correctly) and Fluff kind of speaks to the letter of truth because they didn't refer to "gross reasons" but they did say Umami's lack of conviction was gross. It's just a really awkward misunderstanding that neither seems to follow up on with each other. Keldeo asked a follow up and Fluff answered it but no further conversation between Sloth and Fluff on that one. I don't think it's scummy, but it's weird. @Fluff Do you remember what was your thought process during that whole exchange?
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Looking at the EoD3? (I can't remember the day number the one where we got Sloth) and it's not as clearing for Cuth as I thought it was. M+ and Cuth move at the last minute to prevent a missed day. Given that Fluff had also posted in the last 10 minutes (bouncing back and forth between Waco and Sloth in 1677) it's clear that Waco's unvote wasn't part of a very firm plan to make the day end in a miss. If it was either could have stubbornly stuck to Waco and blamed Keldeo for not moving.
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This post is rough... I haven't read Cuth's ISO yet but I have a hard time seeing him making this argument knowing he's going to have to F3 with Fluff and not coming out stronger in this EoD. Like if his plan was to pocket fluff and win the F3 (a reasonable plan) I feel like there should have been some movement to push a case towards me. Needs further ISO'ing but this feels like it lacks an agenda.
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Anyway I finished Fluff's ISO and I just don't see much of anything to get a read on one way or another. I need to go back and check tom's read on Fluff. Cuth's is kind of worthless now since they're both here with me... Anyway I need a break. Will do more soon.

 

??????

Unless you're saying that Waco was also coaching Osieorb (post 340), Umami (348) and even you (post 332), I'm not sure how you get to that conclusion.

My thought process during the Sloth conversation was that IIRC I was mostly ignoring Sloth at that point because the previous time I went after Sloth people I townread assured me that my scumread was off, so I was putting off looking closely at him.

 

So your read on them never really evolved just stayed at a background scum read the whole game?

As for the coaching fair point. That's what I get for only reading your ISO and not the game in context.

Where is your head at? You leaning towards me or Cuth? And why?
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I keep bouncing off Cuth's ISO because work sucks. I really wanted to make sure I ISO'd both of you and Waco and Sloth but time is starting to be an issue.
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Well then. @Cuthalion where is your head at? Any questions for me?
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Alright brass tacks time. Cuthalion ISO is open.
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The paranoid part of me can look at this and see a wolf knowing I'm town and trying to backfill reasoning. But I think the second part feel more like a natural progression.
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295 starts off with a defense of that read on me. It's interesting in that it's largely based on assumptions about me as a player rather than anything I've done in the thread. That fits with the pattern that paranoid me is picking up of trying to backfill a town read of me. That said I love the next part of this post where he's talking to Keldeo about his processes feeling different. It might have been a bit early for that type of read but there is really good stuff in that wall.
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@Cuthalion how much weight do you generally put on meta reads? And how do you generally use them?
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448 is something that makes a lot more sense if he knows me/tom and Gemma/Fonti are all town. I have a hard time believing he felt the early game was uneventful. Tom/me ended up fizzling out but the reads on Gemma/Miner had massive impacts throughout the game and I think the inertia should have been obvious by that point.
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I guess publicly stating this is kind of useless at this point but it makes me feel better.

 

Good question, let me know if you find it. Today (and yesterday, albeit to a lesser extent) has been... blurry.

I'll try to read/post/talk more the rest of the evening, so that I can actually ask productive questions and solidify things in my head.

W.r.t. meta: I think it's perhaps the most important skill to learn in mafia. When people first start playing, the default is to go to very basic pattern recognition, and can often get stuck in this indefinitely. There are very few people for whom the standard "meta reads" of doing this specific thing or being so much more involved as a villager or what have you really apply across the board. So my approach to meta is to try to understand the player as a person, their approach to the game, etc, and then merge that with more general strategy and technical patterns. If you go around saying "x is probably a villager because they voted to save a wolf and the last three times they did it they were a villager" that's just building a model based on actual behavior, as opposed to saying "x is probably a villager because they've demonstrated a lack of confidence as a wolf (and typically as either alignment) in the past, so it would be surprising for them to make such a brazen move as a wolf". Gross simplification, but I think it gets the point across. I don't care for the former sort of meta, but the latter is necessary to make the critical distinction between whether something a random player does is ai or not. Good play, as I see it, is marrying that understanding of the why each person is bringing to the game to a good grasp of technical and strategic play.
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You're missing the point here. That post was talking about my level of engagement with the game, and I'm used to quite active games. There were... under 500 posts over (most of) three IRL days at the time of that comment and people were still checking in-- I think M+ really showed up with about 24 hours to go? I wasn't implying that those particular interactions weren't meaningful or didn't really count, but the game still felt like it wasn't in full gear yet.

 

That's fair wrt to meta but I'm having trouble making that use click with the way you kept linking back to MCU felt more narrow than that. The way you used it for Keldo was in line with that but overall a narrow focus on one game when trying to get a feel for how people tick, especially when that one game is an alias game feels wrong to me.

Your activity point is well taken though.

 

I mean, that game is my entire sample size for... over 25% of the players in this one.

 

Anyway I know I'm going to get to it eventually but after reading Fluff's ISO I didn't notice any particular uptick so what exactly changed your read on him?
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I'm curious because you and Sloth had a conversation about him that doesn't feel w/w at all but absent that your handling seems reasonable from a scum!Cuth POV.

 

Uptick?

 

Who didn't you know before the MCU game? Me and Keldeo I know. Anyone else?
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Uptick in Fluff's activity or change in behavior. Fluff pretty much felt the same to me from beginning to end so I'm curious as to what changed your read from voting them D2 to town reading them later.

 

Fluff and Sloth.
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I talked about this in the wall yesterday-- my town read comes mostly from his reaction under pressure from tom and me specifically on d2.

(his hmm'ing today isn't particularly inspirational, though)

 

Ahhh okay. Definitely more than I realized then. I thought you knew both of those two.

And thanks for the info on Fluff. I'm getting there slowly.

 

Collection of thoughts from rereading the game ctrl+f'ing grape:

If he's a wolf, waco and sloth grilling him for his use of the language is bizarre and also kinda amusing. I think the way they dogpiled on the whole don quixote thing is also probably a good look?

Sloth vote would indicate in a w/w world they agreed to distance d1-- pay attention to this moving forward.

Starts the umami wagon and lightly defends ("i don't really get the case") miner!slot, fits the narrative that the wolves were ok with getting another mislynch before hopefully getting miner the next day (see: Sloth).

Still grudgingly like this read coming from grape.

Was one of the earlier people reading Waco v.

Mafia is hard.

ehh

And then he votes Sloth for a counter.

The Miner vote there is weird, but both of Sloth/Waco jump on it again-- is it really likely that a wolfteam of sloth/waco/grape agree to hard distance basically all game?

the above two are back-to-back

But then he doubles down on v-reading waco at SoD.

And then walks it back a little before going back to it, but it reads pretty natural?

He pawns off responsibility for the Sloth vote on Rhand, which seems counter to the hard distancing theory.

This game made a lot more sense yesterday.

 

I am very skilled at this game! Especially if you're a wolf.

Anyway had lunch. Had delicious donated curry (perks of working at a hospital during an outpouring of gratitude to nurses and doctors) and feeling refreshed. Back to the Cuth ISO.