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Janitorial 2.0

Zhuorb
almost 7 years

There's always a lot of bad decisions being made in janitorial games, especially with night actions and basic logic. I’m looking to clear up some of these mechanical fallacies with this thread:

Statistical arguments provided in small text, skip them if you agree with the intuition.

Guilty Testing

Lynch in cop claims if you have two. Lynching the guilty is a cop out(no pun intended) used by bad, unconfident players to avoid taking blame in case they lynched the wrong cop. You get confirmed reports for the rest of the game along with a clear PR.

Situations + reasoning against guilty testing:

Uncc’d Cop

Why it’s a bad idea: you don’t know the janned role. At best, you lynch the lawyer; which is useless anyway since the cop dies right after (doc janned). If the cop’s fake and manages a lucky guilty on the miller you’re pretty much in autoloss. You also lose the ML.

  • P(RealCop) = 0.5 P(GuiltyMafia) = 0.66, 1/3 mafia is lawyered and a miller possibly alive. => P(GuiltyMafia & RealCop)= 0.5 x 0.66 = 0.33 ; i.e. 33% chance of the guilty being mafia
  • P(FakeCop) = 0.5 Even if the guilty’s mafia, there's still mafia in the pool outside.

Cc'd Cop

Why it's a bad idea: the real cop either has a guilty on the miller or the lawyer (nilla is lawyered). On the other hand, the janitor may have a lucky guilty on the miller, or bus his nilla. There still is reasonable doubt on who the real cop is.

  • P(RealCop) = 0.5 P(GuiltyMafia) = 0.5 => P(GuiltyMafia & RealCop) = 0.5 x 0.5 = 0.25
  • P(FakeCop) = 0.5 P(GuiltyMiller) = 0.2 => P(GuiltyMiller & Fake Cop) = 0.5 x 0.2 = 0.1 ; to put this into perspective, this happens once every ten games.

Cops With Contradicting Reports

If the cops have an innocent/guilty on the same player, only test the guilty if the miller is naked. The janitor might be bussing his nilla, and the real cop could have an innocent report on the same guy.

N1 Save

Always lynch day one after a docsave. The setup is balanced around the janned role n1, which means one can never be 100% certain on any situation. Lynching janitor takes away the mafia's ability to hide a role, making the setup extremely townsided. Even if the cop's uncc'd, you lynch day one for the lawyer/janitor. Getting either is a near autowin. You have at least two clears the next day, with a hypothetical five- cop, oracle, doctor, save, innocent (if the lawyer's lynched)

Oracle Decisions

  1. Always orc cop if someone was janned. It confirms his reports to be legitimate and allows for report-deduction. Cop reports are extremely useful on LYLO.

  2. If there will be another clear alive the day you die (say, the doctor), always orc your townread. If there's no clears alive the next day, orc your scumread.

  3. A continuation of the previous point, always orc your scumread when there's only one mafia alive. Your TR might still mishammer on LYLO, but revealing mafia gives you a guaranteed win.

  4. Sometimes, a player in the table brings up the 'oracle testing' strategy. This involves lynching the uncc'd oracle to reveal a cop claim, and sounds very appealing to new players. At least it's not as bad as guilty testing because you're now certain, right? Not really; you've still wasted the ML and lynched a PR. Now you're going into 3way with no clears at best. At worst, your doc was janned and the cop dies the next night, leaving you with 3 back-to-back LYLOs, one report, and zero PRs.

  5. Even when not 'oracle testing', someone will always try to fish the oracle even when there are cop cc's. The oracle should claim only if the cop's uncc'd. Don't allow yourself to get fished, and don't unnecessarily roleswap with someone you don't particularly have a townread on.

Report Mechanics

  1. Straight off the bat, any innocent is clear if the lawyer is last mafia alive. This is a very important deduction, and sometimes results in autowin on LYLO.

  2. The number of the day is an indicator of how much more important a report is. The same report is thrice as important on day 3 than on day 1, assuming the player is still alive.

  3. You can narrow down on mafia with reports on later days. Sometimes, there are 2 innocent reports alive on LYLO with 5 players. The oracle is usually still alive, which gives a direct cc between the two non-reported players (one is confirmed lawyer for sure). They could both be mafia too.

I'm pretty sure I had more situations in mind when I started writing this out, but that's all for now. Do post anything you think I've missed out on, I'll add it to the thread.

tl;dr:

  • guilty testing is not a smart idea
  • lynch if the doctor saved n1
  • use your brain as the oracle
  • basic logic applies to reports
MisterPresident
almost 7 years
Literally everyone needs to read the part about guilty testing because I was lambasted for trying to explain why guilty testing was a bad idea and anti-town
PatrykSzczescie
almost 7 years
If you lynch guilties of uncc'd cop
- the chance of fake cop being lucky guiltying miller is: 1/6 [chance the jan'd role is cop (cop,doc,miller,3villagers)] * 1/6 [chance by random guiltying town (miller,3villagers,doc,orc)] = 1/36. It means guilty-testing for mafia autowin is 1/36. On top of that, as basically random guiltying gives 1/6 to guilty the miller, it gives town some meta reads on the person who basically random guilties every game with jan'd cop being successful on average once per 6 games.
- the chance of real cop having guilty on miller is still 1/3 and mafia 2/3. The probabilities of uncc'd cop being real or fake is not fifty-fifty though, your maths are wrong.
Guilty-testing on inno-guiltied nilla/miller (assuming that nilla flip is read as guilty no matter what) may result either on town favor, where cop is real and they get more exact reports (2 more reports) or cop getting lynched on a mislynch, resulting in straight fifty-fifty lawyer cc'ing someone else on 3way with a clear, unless orc nakes into town autowin.

Always lynch after N1 save.

Oracle strat responses:
1. Naking uncc'd cop is not recommended by me. I prefer orcing cop when you have opposite read on cop to the town (i.e. town scumreads him when you think the cop is real, town townreads him when you fos cop). Also, naked cop with miller on lylo is more likely a town loss than naked blue or mafia. If people go with orcing uncc'd cop, I would win more games with my strats, tbh.
2. Agreed.
3. Agreed.
4. It depends on orc's prudence. I feel uncomfortable as town with coinflipping orc on lylo.
5. Kinda agreed.

Report mechanics are OK. Remember guilty is never clear even with lynched lawyer&janitor. Mafia could no-law if it was optimal for them. If there are more villager claims on inno reports than possible for this setup - there's scum in inno reports. (i.e. doc save N1, jan'd confirmed pr, 2 villagers dead and 2 inno reports claim blue - one of these inno is mafia)
Zhuorb
almost 7 years
Ahhh epicmafia, never change
mandevian
almost 7 years
I just played a few games after reading this. Told town to read this thread. They did the opposite and i won as maf 3 times.
JM123
almost 7 years
Of corse having knowledge of mechanics is good and also mandatory
Zhuorb
almost 7 years
I think having a working knowledge of setup mechanics ensures that you don't toss autowin, or know how not to get into autoloss.
We can't really expect players to read the game anymore, competitive mafia is just RNG nowadays.
JM123
almost 7 years
Didn't read anything but here's a pro tip:

Always read everyone. Never stop reading.

I see many people looking for mechanical excuses to shut their brain off and make the game progress. That's just being lazy and not a good player.
mandevian
almost 7 years
Thanks. I will follow.