Post
by Deadman » Wed Aug 20, 2008 9:08 pm
The thing is to view all villagers as expendable. Basically we had a group of people that knew who the sage was and who they could trust. Having a cabal gave us an advantage.
Then we had a group of people we couldn't trust. We wanted to eliminate that group from suspicion before too many of our cabal members died. Eliminating them from suspicion includes killing them as well as scanning, even if they're innocent.
On night 1 a random killing only gives the group a 2/10 chance of killing a wolf, and has an equal chance of killing the sage or bodyguard. If the sage confers with a villager they've scanned and they manage to avoid implicating themselves they still only have a 2/8 chance of getting a wolf.
The odds are that the wolves won't kill the sage, the person they've scanned, or the person they're going to scan overnight. So on the second day you're probably going to have the sage and two villagers working together with only six possible suspects. Now a random guess is more attractive. 1/3 odds. And even if you kill a villager that also works in your favor. Because you've just reduced the number of suspects from 6 to 5, and that night your sage eliminates another. And it's possible the wolves themselves will kill another one of the suspects.
In the morning you either have 50/50 odds, or 2/3 odds of killing a wolf. And even if the sage got killed, well, 2/5 aren't that bad odds either, especially since by this point you should have some clues as to who is a wolf or not.
The important thing is leaving the sage alive long enough that they can build a coalition and avoid getting randomly killed. By day 2 they should have enough people working with them that they won't get randomly killed.
Obviously this changes if they find a wolf, but that's only a good thing. And if they find the bodyguard they can take more risks, since the sage doesn't risk being killed overnight.
None of this applies when there is no PMing allowed though. The sage can't build a coalition without revealing themselves. At a certain point though, perhaps giving the villagers a list of people they can trust would be worth getting killed that night. I wonder how game 5 will play out!