Mafia-style Go

[Kirby]

Kirby, my intention was to have a tie break with the result. As in, if one black and one white player remain, the game decides who wins. I thought it could be too long, though.

Of course you can.

I don't understand, though. If the main game is decided by if only black or only white remain, what is to stop somebody from making bad or random moves to not get eliminated? Your chances seem pretty good if you don't get eliminated, because there may not be a tie.

[Jordus]

if you end up with only black team members, or only white team members, then i guess the team who remains wins at that point. consider it win by resignation?

[fwiffo]

If you make bad moves you might get voted off by your own team members.

[daniel_the_smith]

People who make bad/random moves for white will be eliminated by the (EDIT: white) team, no? Your best bet might be to make medium good moves for both sides...

[Phelan]

So, how many people are interested? We could start with a 9x9 or a 13x13 to be faster.

[Chew Terr]

Or you could have the worst player (lowest rank) on each team be known, and immune to elimination. That way, every time you eliminate a player from the other team, their team's strength will get a bit worse. If one team retains a 5d while the other is down to a 12k, the game itself will be affected directly and strongly. But that way, the game will always decide who wins the metagame.

Secondly: players already know part of the composition of the other team. For example, everyone who has posted here will be playing, so if Kirby's not on my team, I know he's on the other side. What if this team captain (The lowest-ranked player) selects one move suggested by the stronger players, then each turn, the other team gets to guess who suggested the move. If they guess right, that player is out of the game. If the lowest-ranked player is scared to lose a teammate, they can just pick a move themself.

[Kirby]

if you vote every 20-25 moves then the chances that the game finishes normally will be much greater.

If you have N players, take an expected game length - say 300 moves - and divide it by say (N-1) to get a number X. Every X moves, eliminate a player.

So if you have 6 players in total, take 300 and divide it by 5 to get 60. Eliminate a player every 60 moves. So at move 60, 120, 180, and 240 players get eliminated. In whatever case, allow the remaining two people to play the game to the end to decide the result.

It's one possibility, anyway.

[Kirby]

If you make bad moves you might get voted off by your own team members.

People who make bad/random moves for white will be eliminated by the (EDIT: white) team, no? Your best bet might be to make medium good moves for both sides...

I don't see why, because there is no incentive for your own team members to want to "win the game" on the board. If you don't consider the game result, nobody has any incentive to win anything, so you can't really make much of a strategy that says "it's bad for me if he plays move X", because move X has no effect on the result. With the current rules, the only thing that matters is that more of your own team keeps from being voted off. But the choice of who gets voted off is arbitrary when there is no incentive toward winning the game on the board.

[Jordus]

If you make bad moves you might get voted off by your own team members.

People who make bad/random moves for white will be eliminated by the (EDIT: white) team, no? Your best bet might be to make medium good moves for both sides...

I don't see why, because there is no incentive for your own team members to want to "win the game" on the board. If you don't consider the game result, nobody has any incentive to win anything, so you can't really make much of a strategy that says "it's bad for me if he plays move X", because move X has no effect on the result. With the current rules, the only thing that matters is that more of your own team keeps from being voted off. But the choice of who gets voted off is arbitrary when there is no incentive toward winning the game on the board.

but the fact that you don't know who your team members are means the best way to win is to try to win on the board.

[Phelan]

Or you could have the worst player (lowest rank) on each team be known, and immune to elimination. That way, every time you eliminate a player from the other team, their team's strength will get a bit worse. If one team retains a 5d while the other is down to a 12k, the game itself will be affected directly and strongly. But that way, the game will always decide who wins the metagame.

Secondly: players already know part of the composition of the other team. For example, everyone who has posted here will be playing, so if Kirby's not on my team, I know he's on the other side. What if this team captain (The lowest-ranked player) selects one move suggested by the stronger players, then each turn, the other team gets to guess who suggested the move. If they guess right, that player is out of the game. If the lowest-ranked player is scared to lose a teammate, they can just pick a move themself.

The idea is not to know who is on your own team too. You only know your colour, and so have to guess who has your colour and who has the other.

As for balancing the game it's not guaranteed that the strongest players have to be on different teams. I've given it some thought about how to balance the game so it won't be easy to find out who is on what colour besides paying attention to moves.

Kirby, interesting analysis. Can you find a way to avoid that? Maybe just taking the final score of the game would work?

I still think the best way to work it out would be to play a game. I'd start a thread, ask for sign ups, and then distribute the players among the colors.

[Kirby]

If you make bad moves you might get voted off by your own team members.

People who make bad/random moves for white will be eliminated by the (EDIT: white) team, no? Your best bet might be to make medium good moves for both sides...

I don't see why, because there is no incentive for your own team members to want to "win the game" on the board. If you don't consider the game result, nobody has any incentive to win anything, so you can't really make much of a strategy that says "it's bad for me if he plays move X", because move X has no effect on the result. With the current rules, the only thing that matters is that more of your own team keeps from being voted off. But the choice of who gets voted off is arbitrary when there is no incentive toward winning the game on the board.

but the fact that you don't know who your team members are means the best way to win is to try to win on the board.

Actually, with an even number of people, it seems the opposite to me.

Let's say that there are two teams of 4 and 4. I'm on team black. So there are three other people on black, and four on white. If I make a really good move for black, then if my team cares about winning on the board (which they don't have to), three people will not want me to leave. But the four white opponents would want me to leave since I made a good move on the board. If I make a bad move for black, there are only three black people and four white people, so it seems that I'd have better chances (since there are more people on the white team to vote for me).

I don't see the problem with playing for the actual game result. This way, people will want to play good moves so that their team can win. At the same time, they don't want to play *too* good of moves so that they don't get voted off by the other team (which at least at the start, has more voting power to vote you off).

[Kirby]

...
Kirby, interesting analysis. Can you find a way to avoid that? Maybe just taking the final score of the game would work?

I still think the best way to work it out would be to play a game. I'd start a thread, ask for sign ups, and then distribute the players among the colors.

Yes, exactly. The final score of the game will work in my opinion, because it provides incentive for "good moves" because you want to win, but not "too good moves", because you don't want to get voted off (and have less ability to play "good moves" in the future).

[Kirby]

It'd also be cool to have hide tags to give the audience an idea of our psychological analysis.

[Phelan]

I think the temptation to look under the hide tags would be too great.
Since there is a gamemaster anyway, the analysis could be sent by PM to him, and then he'd post it at the end.

I'm going now, but if people are interested, I'll start a thread for a game tomorrow.

[fwiffo]

I'm in.

Another idea might be to make move suggestions and votes pseudonymously. Players would post under some sort of secondary account with an assigned name. That way nobody knows the identity or true strength of the other players. The would be voting off Mr. Green or Mr. Blue instead of Fwiffo or Jordus.