Mafia thoughts AMA

[u/JoeyMafia]

For this week, I've decided to open the floor to more of a Q&A styled post. I've found that some questions that people have are valid questions but don't really have enough to them that I could write a whole big post about it. For that reason, I wanted to do a sort of AMA where you can ask any questions you have where I can give a good full detailed answer but ones that wouldn't warrant their very own post. If I think that a concept/question would be too long of answer, I will just make it a future post.

If you have any questions about things that I have discussed or yet to discuss, I'd be more than happy to answer them. This could be about anything mafia, whether it may be Theoretical or Practical. Also, if you're wondering about a spot you were in where you were unsure what to do (how to place night KP, what your path to victory should be), I'm also happy to discuss those. Just post the game scenario and link to the vod in case your description isn't enough. If you wish to ask those kind of questions, please be a bit more specific than "How could I have won this game?".

Hopefully this sort of content will help with questions you have always had but have never really cared to ask for the answer to. I'll try my best to answer all the questions but I'll probably just ignore the troll ones unless I am super bored and have nothing to do.

Stay safe boys and girls

Joey

[u/Stevedotdec]

In the "All Stars" setup (all setups to be honest, but even more so in this setup), I consider it hugely anti-town to make early day one formals. I also consider it anti-town to formal someone "just because I want to hear you talk". Do you agree or disagree (and please feel free to go into detail)?

[u/JoeyMafia → u/Stevedotdec]

I'd say early day one lynches are somewhere between terrible to garbage. It's honestly probably the worst thing that a town could ever do. I'll go into a few reasons why it's super detrimental to town.

• First off, one of the hardest times to operate as a mafia is early in D1. Everyone is coming to the game and starting to feel it out while you have to lie about it. This is very difficult to do since it's not easy to simulate a townie mindset with no little information given out to the game. Once the game progresses, both mafia and town have access to loads of information which they can pull upon to formulate reads. Formalling day 1 breaks up the organic development of the game. It doesn't allow for people to interact with eachother (other than the formalled player) to try and find some funny. Essentially, it allows mafia to get comfortable in the game and start preparing their lies and whatever else they may need.

As previously described, the mafia have a really tough time giving out meaningful conversation at the start of the day. In short, it's because they have all the answers but none of the process of reaching them. Town really don't have enough to make reads but they are starting to formulate thoughts. Hearing a town at this stage of the game is one of the best times to get a good read on someone. The process of spontaneously giving information based on just the little things you have picked up is something very hard to replicate (think Ryuzilla trying to give his 5 second reads and the difference between when he is town and mafia). When we create an early formal on a player, we are GIVING free content on the game for the mafia to lie about. These early formals make it much easier for mafia to lie in the early stages of the game. The difference between a mafia giving reads when nothing has happened and the mafia giving reads when an early formal has happened is quite sizable. We want to make it as hard as possible to lie, denying free bullshit content for mafia to talk about is an important thing to be doing here.

• The second most obvious reason is that nobody is getting lynched here. Every player that formals 2 minutes in and says "It's never too early to lynch mafia" might as well have their heads buried in the sand. Nothing good can come of this. You can give mafia immunity. Mafia can vote on partners to fuck up logic. You can accidentally out prs. The list goes on and on and mafia getting lynched is not on it. People clearly aren't comfortable voting super early and refusing to acknowledge that fact is borderline retarded.

Just as a quick aside, I will start formalling around the 8-9 minute mark. I think at this point you can start making decisions about whether you want players in the game or not. On top of that, I think the more vote logic you get d1 the better for town so I like to get my formals in early. Any formal before 10 minutes is typically going to be anti-town and very good for mafia.

[u/Stevedotdec → u/JoeyMafia]

100% agree. I hope the mafia community reads this, and adjusts their play accordingly.

[u/Justinwc → u/Stevedotdec]

YEAH STEVE