Long Game 87: Choose Your Own Manywar

[Sart he/him]

Arthas understood that math was important. Understanding how strong the various factions were could be the difference between life and death. However, it was all going over his head. These theories were interesting, but he couldn't see how they were producing any fruitful discussion.

What they needed to do was focus on the Infiltrators. Most people here were interested in seeing Hallandren thrive, but the Infiltrators only wanted to watch it burn. He had no doubt that they would attempt to kill someone tonight, disrupting the fragile balance between the various groups. The Infiltrators would have an information advantage, because they would be in more than one doc, and they would be ruthless with their kills. They needed to be cut down to size, and ignoring them to focus on inter-faction politics would be their demise.

Therefore, Arthas voted for Samuel (Matrim's Dice). He was the first one to bring up distributions. Plus, he also gave this bit of double speak.

15 hours ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Either way, we all have a common goal, and that’s the infiltrators— I think they can be caught by watching how loyal everyone is to their faction goal. So people should watch faction members in that regard. I don’t think the Infiltrators will be obvious about it, of course, but we should keep in mind that they have an ulterior goal.

He states that everyone has a common goal of the Infiltrators, so far I agree. But then he says that the Infiltrators will not follow their faction goals. Technically true, but it implies that the proper behavior is to focus on your faction goal. However, he just said we have a common goal in the Infiltrators. What's the correct behavior for a player? Is it to focus on the common threat, or to focus on the long term goals? In my opinion, it should be the former, but he implies the later. This will only divide us further, which we cannot afford.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Sart

[JNV]

Note to self about factions

Hawks must kill Revolutionary Infiltrator plus any secret hostiles outnumber Doves keep Royals

Doves must help one of the secret factions outnumber Hawks keep Royals

Revolutionaries must kill royals

Infiltrators must kill royals outnumber other 

Revolutionary infiltrator great synergy especially if already infiltrtaed hard to ally with secret factions cause hidden royals 

Hawks low to no synergy cause no trust with secrets and have to kill everything to a significant degree

Doves limited synergy with secrets cause need one to win could try ot ally with everything I guess 

The only knwon faction thats really definitely anti infiltrator is Hawks and Dvoes areo nly kinda against in that they cant win together but they dont need total eradication and revolutionaries are great with them and  the secrets are secret so who knows 

Its late Im tired so thoguths are all wobbly sorry 

Matrims thing about the infiltrators feels wobbly cause no we dont have a common goal thats the whole point infiltrators are only bad if youre a royalist and a large chunk wouldnt be also theres no reason why an ifniltrator doesnt want at least a little the goals for each the revolutionaries just have the same goal the hawks want to murder and the doves want to murder hawks which kinda goes agains tthe name but oh wel also the statement just sorta feels like obvious for the sake of saying it like of course the infiltrators have an ulterior motive theyre the eivls 

In hindsight everyone could have won if all the royals joined the revolutionaries and no one joined the royalists but that would probably be unbalanced and wobbly

Im not going to read into the exact wording of the names but if theres a single person faction odds are that person is a royal cause royasl get first dibs so that kinda automatically opposes infiltrators plus if theyre a serial killer thats kinda hm number wise 

Im going to sleep no bad decisions at night wait for morning to make bad decisions see you to morrow have fun bye

[Mat he/him]

52 minutes ago, Fifth Scholar said:

How would we feel about a Contribution Crusade shrekking this cycle? Since faction exes are largely contrived reasoning anyway, unless someone has a very good reason they think another player is an infiltrator, I’d be fine killing the inactives or lurkers who aren’t posting as a compromise. There’s a few to pick from but I’ll start with a stab vote for Araris. He’s normally more vocal and I’d like to hear from him.

I’m good with that. My doc is mostly me so is have little info besides the thread and I haven’t really seen anything with killing for. (Stick)

Dunno if I’d pick Araris. Though idk who is pick at all :P.

43 minutes ago, Sart said:

Therefore, Arthas voted for Samuel (Matrim's Dice). He was the first one to bring up distributions.

…So starting discussion is a crime now? There’s nothing abnormal about bringing up distro talk, check any game over the last long time.

In fact, it’s to our benefit to talk about the distro— the infiltrators will no doubt have a better idea of it, so it’s to our advantage to nullify that advantage of theirs as much as possible. Really not sure what you’re getting at here.

47 minutes ago, Sart said:

Plus, he also gave this bit of double speak.

He states that everyone has a common goal of the Infiltrators, so far I agree. But then he says that the Infiltrators will not follow their faction goals. Technically true, but it implies that the proper behavior is to focus on your faction goal. However, he just said we have a common goal in the Infiltrators. What's the correct behavior for a player? Is it to focus on the common threat, or to focus on the long term goals? In my opinion, it should be the former, but he implies the later. This will only divide us further, which we cannot afford.

Slow way down. I said two statements that aren’t contradictory, and you turned it into three that are maybe contradictory. I never stated my opinion on the question you posed, so you’re putting words in my mouth.

Obviously, there’s a balance between the two. The common threat is important, but I’m not about to lose the game for myself just to kill all the Infiltrators— if keeping them alive is for my advantage, I will, and if killing them is for my advantage, I will. Not saying that either of those are the case, they’re just examples, but you have to remember this is a faction game. You can’t see it as a simple kill-all-the-infiltrators-the-end because that’s not what it is.

The same goes for everyone here, including you, I would think— no one would throw the game for their faction for the sake of the infiltrators. In my book it’s faction first, infiltrators second. Often those goals align but they don’t necessarily have to.

Again, I’m not sure what you’re getting at here, or why this is inherently suspicious. You never made that clear, you just made an assumption of what I believe and then said it would ‘divide us further’ when there’s no evidence of that being the case.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

The bothersome thing about this game is that I can’t just vote on someone random and justify it by saying things like “we need a D1 exe” (though that is true) and “you’re as likely to be an elim as someone else” (though also true), because this is a faction game. My general D1 philosophy is that the greatest sin is to draw attention to yourself (paradoxically, trying to avoid attention by not posting tends to draw even more attention, like Fifth’s trademark-violating vote on me), and there’s the whole issue of angering an entire faction by voting off their doc-mate. So yeah, that’s my pitiable excuse for not having voted yet.

I’m going to join Sart on Mat. I don’t see things the exact same way as Sart does, but I think Mat’s post basically comes out to fluff and “use your judgement” sort of thing while trying to seem like something more. I also think that there are at least 3 faction goals that the elims would very much want to (at least on the surface) pursue, since they involve killing other players.

[Mat he/him]

1 minute ago, Araris Valerian said:

but I think Mat’s post basically comes out to fluff and “use your judgement” sort of thing while trying to seem like something more

It wasn’t supposed to be anything more though. It was a suggestion on how we might catch the infiltrators, and that’s it. I really don’t get the hyper fixation on that post all of a sudden when I don’t think it should stand out alongside the other ones like it lol

I’ll claim if I need to but it’s D1 and I’d really really rather not >>

[The Unknown Order he/him]

Sart, that post felt super off, but I also agree with Araris’ point. Plus, the roleplay might be putting off the feeling. 

Mat has now posted while I'm writing this, and I really don't like the tone of that post. But that also insinuates he has an important role. So no vote for now, but slight sus of Mat and an iffy read of Sart.

[Mat he/him]

Just now, The Unknown Novel said:

Mat has now posted while I'm writing this, and I really don't like the tone of that post.

Welcome to Mat Defending Self tone  Ask Kas to confirm that if you really want to. I do my best to not let it come through but I obviously failed, and the slightly unhelpfulness of it is why I generally don’t defend point by point. But I found Sart’s post to be blatantly flawed enough to point it out.

[The Unknown Order he/him]

4 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Welcome to Mat Defending Self tone  Ask Kas to confirm that if you really want to. I do my best to not let it come through but I obviously failed, and the slightly unhelpfulness of it is why I generally don’t defend point by point. But I found Sart’s post to be blatantly flawed enough to point it out.

I agree with you on Sart's post. But Araris had a good point.

[Mat he/him]

7 minutes ago, The Unknown Novel said:

I agree with you on Sart's post. But Araris had a good point.

Araris’ point is better but tbh I think JNV had the best reasoning of the three people that independently converged on the same random post I made  They kinda missed the point of the point I made but their point makes more sense to me.

But I’m me so take that with a grain of salt lol

[The Unknown Order he/him]

43 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Araris’ point is better but tbh I think JNV had the best reasoning of the three people that independently converged on the same random post I made  They kinda missed the point of the point I made but their point makes more sense to me.

But I’m me so take that with a grain of salt lol

JNV writes like a madman scribbling gibberish on the walls, so I didn't even realize he talked about you, let alone the quality of his analysis. 

[Kasimir he/him]

2 hours ago, Matrim's Dice said:

I’ll claim if I need to but it’s D1 and I’d really really rather not >>

I feel like claiming D1 is not going to solve anything unless you intend to claim a role several factions want dead >>

In which case, yeah, please just don't even interact with this statement >>

Of course you could faction claim, but that has the same issue in terms of where other factions see their interests lie.

For the record, I'm not really getting any strong vibes one way or another off your posts just yet, but I've never been much for reading posts without voting history. I don't feel particularly like there's a compelling reason to vote for [Edit: you, and the post reads feel very D1 which tracks with the fact that we're on D1, so maybe that's behind my ambivalence.]

3 hours ago, Sart said:

What they needed to do was focus on the Infiltrators. Most people here were interested in seeing Hallandren thrive, but the Infiltrators only wanted to watch it burn. He had no doubt that they would attempt to kill someone tonight, disrupting the fragile balance between the various groups. The Infiltrators would have an information advantage, because they would be in more than one doc, and they would be ruthless with their kills. They needed to be cut down to size, and ignoring them to focus on inter-faction politics would be their demise.

What's interesting is that this is compatible with being a member of a faction who'd rather everyone focus on the Elims - the question then is: what faction flourishes or thrives if attention goes primarily on the Elims? Getting weak SK type playstyle vibes off this, which feeds into my concerns about potential SK presence in this game.

But I think this is compatible with Sart being right.

I've said this in a few PMs: in MR1, we kept to our own docs and refused interfaction communication, though the lack of PMs absolutely did not help. The result was that Sart, Wyrm, and their teammates murdered us all, and they didn't even have a kill at first! Their infiltration and information advantage was just that strong, as was our laser focus on inter-faction warfare first.

Between a SK and an Elim, I'd go for an Elim first, due to threat prioritisation, but I wanted to flag this anyway.

I'm fine with the current state of the votes.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Kasimir

[Archer he/him]

8 hours ago, Fifth Scholar said:

That’s the thing though; a cult is inherently one maniac convincing everyone else that they’re right about something with no evidence. A conversion-flavour faction with one member tracks harder with this than the Adjuncts, who are a group serving a group of people. They’re more likely to be plural. Similarly, I could see an Edgli figure for her faction being able to convert Returned or something. Of course, most of this speculation is rather baseless, but I do think the factions will mostly stick to their flavour if possible. 

Hello @Archer, and welcome. Since you’re a pinch-hitter, I’m not gonna vote for you on this, but I am very curious why you are bringing action questions to the thread before your faction—it feels a bit performative and I’m not sure if it’s evil-indicative. I think someone with only one doc would be more likely to take it there. But this is more of a bookmark than anything. 

Weird take because I also imply I didn't consult my doc about who to kill or have a strong understanding of the faction system in general, which suggests I didn't read the brief in my doc at all, not I ignored them in favor of evil directions. The GM added me to the GM PM but I missed it and at the time of posting was unaware of my assignment and more interested in sparking conversation while I killed time before the killing time. The way I see it, my behaviour differed between having no doc and having a doc, but I don't see why having one doc would be distinguishable from having two. I'd talk in both, AND the thread, wouldn't I? 

10 hours ago, The Unknown Novel said:

If you have more than ten breath and therefore 1st and higher Heightenings you should probably research a command. You could also do a Heightening related action, but the more we research, the faster the game ends. Not sure if that's better or worse.

Thanks! 

8 hours ago, Sart said:

Therefore, Arthas voted for Samuel (Matrim's Dice). He was the first one to bring up distributions. Plus, he also gave this bit of double speak.

I'm trying to decide if this is borne out of 'it's D1, kill anyone not on my team' logic, or 'it's D1, those fools will kill anyone not on their team' logic. 

[Kasimir he/him]

Xino

Mat

[Young Bard he/him]

I feel guilty about this, but Mat. To be blunt, better him than someone in my faction, and I could use the Breath if I get it. Plus, it's D1, so I don't have anything better.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Young Bard
Bolding vote to make it easier for Steel

[Mat he/him]

Hi I’m going to claim now >>

I am a member of the Followers of Edgli. I have one teammate. We win if, when the game is ended by another faction, at least one Returned is still alive. We have a protect ability every Night.

As you can see, killing me does nothing to help anyone. It doesn’t hurt you (unless you’re Returned. If you’re Returned, contact me and I will keep you alive) but that’s an extremely low bar when there’s a lot of other options here. It feels bad being victim of he’s-not-from-my-faction, but I thought I should let you know that this also does literally nothing to advance any wincon. 

I’m basically a survival role, but I have to find the person that I want to survive. I have no kill, can’t end the game, and have no reason to ever want anyone dead.

So pick someone else  I can almost guarantee that anyone else would be better for you.

[Kasimir he/him]

Mat

Xino

[Young Bard he/him]

Mat, Xino

[Steeldancer he/him]

Quick GM Note before I hop on another plane: my preference for how researching actions are submitted are: research [command (not the AFFECT of the command, the command itself)], [insert number] breath. From there, the results will be 1. Success 2. Incorrect command 3. Not enough breath. 

[Mat he/him]

Should probably vote Xino

[xinoehp512 he/him]

I don't think this is my first faction game, but it has at least been a long time since I played one and my brains are bleeding out of my ears XD

Mat (3): Stick, Araris, Xino
Xino (3): Kas, Bard, Mat
Araris (1): Fifth
 

Mat for self-pres.

So from what I understand, the "main" factions are Doves, Hawks, and Revolutionaries, all of which are hostile to each other. The Revolutionaries are the "choose to be an elim faction" (but they don't get a kill haha)

One six commands are researched:

If a Royal still lives:
The Hawks win if they outnumber the Doves and the Revolutionaries (plus potential hostile secret faction)
The Doves win if they outnumber the Hawks (they don't care about the Revolutionaries) and a secret faction has achieved their win-con. (All of the non-secret factions are hostile to the Doves.) 

If a Royal does not live:

The Revolutionaries win if they outnumber the Doves and the Hawks
The Infiltrators win if they outnumber everyone.

If any elim wound up in the Revolutionaries doc they have undoubtedly struck a bargain by now. That is potentially a very powerful bloc.

Edited July 9, 2022 by xinoehp512

[Elandera she/her]

Why Xino, though? I get why not Mat (interesting claim, though I'd like some verification eventually), but why Xino?

7 minutes ago, xinoehp512 said:

Mat (3): Stick, Araris, Xino
Xino (3): Kas, Bard, Mat
Araris (1): Fifth

Stick has no votes, since Mat moved to Xino.

How about Ashbringer

[Mat he/him]

1 hour ago, Elandera said:

Why Xino, though?

I think it was a contribution crusade, which obviously doesn't work anymore. I don't really care who's killed at this point as long as it isn't me, my teammate, or a Returned.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

2 hours ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Hi I’m going to claim now >>

I am a member of the Followers of Edgli. I have one teammate. We win if, when the game is ended by another faction, at least one Returned is still alive. We have a protect ability every Night.

As you can see, killing me does nothing to help anyone. It doesn’t hurt you (unless you’re Returned. If you’re Returned, contact me and I will keep you alive) but that’s an extremely low bar when there’s a lot of other options here. It feels bad being victim of he’s-not-from-my-faction, but I thought I should let you know that this also does literally nothing to advance any wincon. 

I’m basically a survival role, but I have to find the person that I want to survive. I have no kill, can’t end the game, and have no reason to ever want anyone dead.

So pick someone else  I can almost guarantee that anyone else would be better for you.

My accusation is that you are an elim, i.e., an Infiltrator. So this claim (which nobody should be taking at face value anyways) doesn't really impact my vote at all. I'm also going to say that I'm getting Aman vibes from your claim, in the sense that it sounds nice, but is altogether too convenient.

So, I still think you are an Infiltrator, I have doubts as to whether you are part of the Followers, and even if you are, I doubt you have accurately portrayed your goals/abilities.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Araris Valerian

[Mat he/him]

1 hour ago, Araris Valerian said:

My accusation is that you are an elim, i.e., an Infiltrator. So this claim (which nobody should be taking at face value anyways) doesn't really impact my vote at all. I'm also going to say that I'm getting Aman vibes from your claim, in the sense that it sounds nice, but is altogether too convenient.

So, I still think you are an Infiltrator, I have doubts as to whether you are part of the Followers, and even if you are, I doubt you have accurately portrayed your goals/abilities.

Why would I claim a faction I’m not in? That’s asking to be exed. And it’s all well and good of you think I’m an Infiltrator but surely there’s better reasoning for someone besides me trying to start discussion.

[Stick. she/her]

Sart I didn't think much of your post initially but the more I go over it the more it feels off. I don't entirely see/agree with the point that you're making there, and the string of votes that followed that post only set off more alarms. I don't like it.

Mat's claim doesn't seem made up to me. While I'm inclined to believe the claim at least tentatively, I agree with Araris that Mat could still very well be an elim. Don't really want him dead today though. The xino train made sense at first cuz CC but at the moment not so much.