1.) Transparency -- A town team with players who are willing to state their reads clearly and frequently is going to have a much easier time locating like-minds and also utilizing process of elimination. Two things that seemed to spring onto The Syndicate (as far as I can tell given the general reception I witnessed) close to the time of the RYM influx were rainbow lists and plainly broadcasted town reads (sometimes these happen together). No townie without special information can ever be 100% certain that he/she is coordinating with someone else on the same team, but a little trust goes so far in Mafia. I have been burned a few times by placing trust in the wrong people, but far more many times have I been a part of a trust relationship that has played a key role in winning a town game.thellama73 wrote:I have a question for the group. I always hear people attack the "you have to be alive to win" condition on the grounds that it keeps the civilians from playing like a team and encourages every man for himself tactics. My question is his: what does "playing like a team" look like for civilians? How, specifically, is it different than what we see now? How can you play like a team when you don't know who your teammates are?
I don't think I've ever heard this explained.
........A.) "But doesn't this help the Mafia team(s) determine who they should kill?" -- It may, but that's simply not a big enough drawback to cancel the advantages that can be enjoyed. Mafia teams kill people for a thousand different reasons. Hell, if a town team can literally dictate their opponents' kill choices in any way then that is a meaningful advantage.
........B.) "I don't see how broadcasting town reads is beneficial to anyone but the bad guys." -- This is an argument I've seen repeatedly, and I think it is very misguided. All reads are important, whether town reads or mafia reads, and all of them have the potential to influence voting behavior and lynch results. I don't know how many times I've watched players get mislynched because a faulty case was built against them (either manipulatively or honestly) when it could have been avoided if a dissenting perspective was voiced more loudly and consistently. If I state "I am reading Player X as town", and anyone else thinks Player X reads more like mafia; then my stating that read is automatically justified. A discussion can then be had, and both players will be able to better qualify and substantiate their reads based upon the perspective offered by the dissenter. This is teamwork, even without the ability to have total faith in each other as being townies.
I don't mean to suggest those counterarguments are yours, llama -- I've just seen them before.
2.) Cover -- Sometimes townies know things that mafia do not know, or maybe they have strong hunches. Maybe a townie strongly suspects that another player is also a townie with a powerful role (more powerful than his/her own role). Laying down cover for that other townie is a crucial means of protecting them from night kills, and it might even mean self-sacrifice. This was a definitive characteristic of the Arrested Development game that just took place.
3.) Coordinated voting -- This is much less applicable in a game without vote changes, because those games dictate that players must vote when they must and not when they want. In a game with vote changes, players are able to work alongside those they trust most to ensure a tally is compiled that suits what they believe to be most likely in town's best interest. Recent games around here have seen more changeable votes, and one result has been highly mobile late-day tallies -- mass exoduses from one player and mass pile-ups on another. CFDs. Whirlwind posting rates in the final hour. These are all characteristics I associate with a teamwork-oriented town trying to use pressure and communication to mount the best lynch possible.
4.) Leadership -- It isn't essential that a town team have someone playing in a "leader" role, but it can be very good. This worries people in Mafia games because they can't shake the fear that their leader(s) is/are duping them as baddies. Sometimes that's true, but it usually is not -- and a willingness to trust players who are trying to lead, especially those who are otherwise not suspicious, is a huge component of the kind of town teamwork I pride myself in pursuing. And that back-of-mind concern can always be applied by checking the content of leaders against thread evidence; it is the job of any town to make that decision wisely.
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Some of these might not be totally absent from stay-alive-to-win games, but I do think they're significantly less prevalent. I do think it's harder for the civilian faction to win the game if not all of them are promised the win together, and that any game with that rule in place needs to acknowledge that and have counterbalances to weaken the baddie teams and/or otherwise strengthen the town.
