I think you should let me finish. I have a whole chapter for you. 
1 Like
Part 2 (of ???): The Knave of Swords.
At the hut, several oh-so-familiar faces started to arrive. Viscount @yebellz entrance, though, was noticed immediately, what with his big axe and boisterous demeanor.
Leira couldn’t help but wonder whether he has had any change of heart. A settlement, a whole settlement, had been sent into what could very well be a suicide mission, at his behest.
Maybe the viscount was merely using this opportunity to force what he perceives to be an enemy into a perilous position. Whether that position gets attacked or remains alive, it poses no threat to him. And even if it wasn’t an enemy, he’d gain information to do something else in his own turn.
The thought of this ambivalence put a smile on the hermit’s face.
So far, I’d seem to be providing damning evidence against myself. In the previous table, I am Settler-faction only one third of the time. Strictly speaking, that is true for an outsider that does not consider any kind of circumstantial evidence.
So, let’s do that, starting with what, in my opinion, is the most reliable assumption. There is no reason for any Settler-believer to claim to be a spy. Such action would only hurt their own team. If they were a settler, the rebels would know they are lying. If they were the amnesiac, the rebels might believe them to be a spy. Either way, it would be a really bad decision. Not even a gambit or a trick play.
Therefore, I will present two different perspectives.
Assumption 1: yebellz is not a Settler-believer. I call this the “Weak Yebellz Hypothesis” (WYH) because it is the least constrained assumption. Here are the results:
Total Scenarios: 137 (click for details)
| Player | settlers | rebels | spy | amnesiac |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leira (black) | 20.44% | 52.55% | 2.19% | 24.82% |
| Barbanaira (white) | 64.23% | 16.06% | 13.14% | 6.57% |
| Jon Ko (red) | 46.72% | 30.66% | 8.76% | 13.87% |
| NeilAgg (yellow) | 46.72% | 30.66% | 8.76% | 13.87% |
| Vsotvep (blue) | 64.23% | 16.06% | 13.14% | 6.57% |
| richyfortytwo (green) | 46.72% | 30.66% | 8.76% | 13.87% |
| Gia (pink) | 46.72% | 30.66% | 8.76% | 13.87% |
| MystWalker (teal) | 64.23% | 16.06% | 13.14% | 6.57% |
| yebellz (orange) | 0.00% | 76.64% | 23.36% | 0.00% |
Incidentally, yebellz and I would be on the same team on 106 of those 137 scenarios, or 77.37%. Admittedly, this is not exactly the situation we were 2 moves ago, but it is not that far (also consider that, from my point of view, which I haven’t included here, that number looks higher). I’m merely stating why my previous move made sense.
Of course, it is also beneficial for me from a machiavellian to split yebellz from merchant @Vsotvep. Yebellz knows this, therefore why he should be cautious. I say this matter-of-factly, for I actually loathe to use this kind of tactics. This time, they align though.
Assumption 2: yebellz is indeed the Spy. I call this the “Strong Yebellz Hypothesis” (SYH) because it constrains further. I personally find this scenario very likely and it is the one I will keep using from this point forward.
My reasoning is that if yebellz was a rebel, the spy would have decided to hide (the gambit denied). By this point, yebellz has huge leverage over the game, meaning that the counter-gambit would have failed. The “true spy” should have decided to reveal themself by now, and they have not. This is an overtly convoluted way to say what I suspect all other players believe.
Here are the results.
Total Scenarios: 32 (click for details)
| Player | settlers | rebels | spy | amnesiac |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leira (black) | 50.00% | 37.50% | 0.00% | 12.50% |
| Barbanaira (white) | 50.00% | 37.50% | 0.00% | 12.50% |
| Jon Ko (red) | 50.00% | 37.50% | 0.00% | 12.50% |
| NeilAgg (yellow) | 50.00% | 37.50% | 0.00% | 12.50% |
| Vsotvep (blue) | 50.00% | 37.50% | 0.00% | 12.50% |
| richyfortytwo (green) | 50.00% | 37.50% | 0.00% | 12.50% |
| Gia (pink) | 50.00% | 37.50% | 0.00% | 12.50% |
| MystWalker (teal) | 50.00% | 37.50% | 0.00% | 12.50% |
| yebellz (orange) | 0.00% | 0.00% | 100.00% | 0.00% |
As you can see, @Vsotvep and I are exactly tied in this scenario, with the exact same probabilities. It truly is a coin-toss. Of course, his point of view and mine can be directly conflicting, and that’s why I have included neither, yet.
I hope merchant Vsotvep does not take my statement as a direct attack on his credibility. In fact, since @Mystwalker and @Barbanaira are also on Team V, all three are interchangeable in the previous paragraph, and the same logic remains. In fact, @Jon_Ko, @NeilAgg, @richyfourtytwo and @Gia are also interchangeable with each other (so far).
Interesting to note that, at this point every other player is also tied with 50% settler, 37.5% rebel, 12,5% amnesiac. We’re all in the same proverbial boat. So, for your own benefit, I’ll use the same bayesian trick once more to show you not what I see, but what you see.
I’ll use duchess Gia for my little demonstration. Please duchess… if you can step… yes! Over here! Thank you.
Sor Juana came in with her book of divination. She rolled her eyes until only the white part was visible. Then started reciting her different visions of the future.
Assuming Gia perceives herself as a Settler-believer, this is what she would see. The same would be true for Jon Ko, NeilAgg, or richiefourtytwo, respectively.
Total Scenarios: 20 (click for details)
| Player | settlers | rebels | spy | amnesiac |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leira (black) | 65.00% | 30.00% | 0.00% | 5.00% |
| Barbanaira (white) | 35.00% | 50.00% | 0.00% | 15.00% |
| Jon Ko (red) | 50.00% | 40.00% | 0.00% | 10.00% |
| NeilAgg (yellow) | 50.00% | 40.00% | 0.00% | 10.00% |
| Vsotvep (blue) | 35.00% | 50.00% | 0.00% | 15.00% |
| richyfortytwo (green) | 50.00% | 40.00% | 0.00% | 10.00% |
| Gia (pink) | 80.00% | 0.00% | 0.00% | 20.00% |
| MystWalker (teal) | 35.00% | 50.00% | 0.00% | 15.00% |
| yebellz (orange) | 0.00% | 0.00% | 100.00% | 0.00% |
4 Likes
If you are a Settler-believer, then I would say that you have roughly a 50% chance of actually being a Settler, from my perspective, and maybe also from your perspective, if you also believe that Leira is likely a Rebel and I’m the Spy.
I think your highest priority should be to publicly confirm which team you are on.
I think what you’ve said is entertaining, but I’m waiting for more substance about how you feel we should help the Settlers win. Your apparent stance of hedging your bets on potentially being the Amnesiac and playing for yourself does not seem so effective toward the Settlers cause. I believe the best course of action is seek certainty about factions and then coordinate to leverage our numerical advantage to win.
3 Likes
Well, my dear viscount. You’re a bit impatient but I’ll indulge you. My claim is that we can soon stop wasting moves, let alone playing on such small fields.
There are more effective ways to fish out who’s who. Point in case, you may disagree with my methods, but they have so far yielded more information, and more quickly than either you or @Vsotvep could, with your plans.
Edit: Do you think I should change the title of my post to “The Fool” instead?
3 Likes
If you wish. Would be fitting since that is my avatar picture.
2 Likes
Currently I think it would be good to wait for the Hermit’s analysis to conclude and to ask the stars and a mathematician for confirmation.
1 Like
Let me give an analysis of my own.
Suppose we were to play a lottery where only one person could win the price, which happens to be an enormous amount of wealth, and only person is told who won it, not necessarily the winner of the lottery. We’d all have one ninth chance of winning, and only one in 81 chance of both winning and knowing about it.
Thus we may as well assume that nobody will both be wealthy and know about it. Yet, Hermit Leira seems to have started construction of the largest cathedral known to mankind just a day after the lottery was held. He keeps claiming that there’s only a tiny chance of him having won the lottery, having switched his donkey for a noble steed, therefore we should all believe he’s as poor as ever, as his new personal servant poors him some more wine, “truly, the numbers don’t lie,” exclaimed the clergyman as he tightened his new satin gown.
We have more to work with than only percentages, my friends.
4 Likes
I am looking forward to your suggestion on how we will do this.
3 Likes
Haha, I like your metaphor, even if mistaken.
Ok. Let’s skip to the end (I’ll post the rest later I suppose, but it is actually tiresome, I’m quite drained). Anyway, I have applied the following assumptions:
1 @yebellz 
is a spy
2 @richyfourtytwo 
is a settler-believer
3 @Vsotvep 
is a settler-believer
4 Leira 
is a settler-believer
I have my reasons and reservations for these, but, as I said, I can’t put it all together just right now. This leaves only 4 scenarios. I think you’d agree that this is quite manageable by hand.
In fact, I’ll grant you that we can ignore the percentages. I think we shouldn’t but it won’t make a difference in this case.
These are my 4 scenarios:
settlers: Leira (black), Jon Ko (red), NeilAgg (yellow), richyfortytwo (green)
rebels: Barbanaira (white), Gia (pink), MystWalker (teal)
spy: yebellz (orange)
amnesiac: Vsotvep (blue)
settlers: Leira (black), Jon Ko (red), richyfortytwo (green), Gia (pink)
rebels: Barbanaira (white), NeilAgg (yellow), MystWalker (teal)
spy: yebellz (orange)
amnesiac: Vsotvep (blue)
settlers: Leira (black), NeilAgg (yellow), richyfortytwo (green), Gia (pink)
rebels: Barbanaira (white), Jon Ko (red), MystWalker (teal)
spy: yebellz (orange)
amnesiac: Vsotvep (blue)
settlers: Barbanaira (white), Vsotvep (blue), richyfortytwo (green), MystWalker (teal)
rebels: Jon Ko (red), NeilAgg (yellow), Gia (pink)
spy: yebellz (orange)
amnesiac: Leira (black)
I’m pretty sure they don’t differ much from yours, because yours differ only on who’s the amnesiac (within the same team) and my assumption about Richard XLII (I can fully explain this one, if you feel inclined to hear the reason, which has nothing to do with me).
Now, Gia can attempt to capture M11, but it is likely a waste of time. It would only discard one of my scenarios, and leave the other 3 intact. Now, I don’t oppose that she tries, still I think we might be able to setup something better (at least more probable in my opinion). Let me think about it. *
But more importantly, I think yebellz should maintain a balance of forces. Yebellz and richie, I must say, which I believe are on the same team. Allowing Team White to expand unchecked is, simply speaking, a very risky thing to do for yebellz.
The board is still somewhat open. In fact I have always wanted have full information with the board still open. I don’t want a nasty surprise at the end, where I cooperate blindly with one team and then, boom! I lose.
This is the major flaw with your strategy (or one of them, I should say). It basically waits until yose to disambiguate. By that point the board is completely settled. And I simply can’t believe that you didn’t plan for a safety hatch, should you turn out to be amnesiac. I truly want to believe that you’re a self-aware rebel. You’d have known True Placement from the beginning and proposing a plan that seems so plausibly neutral would actually be a clever ruse if the initial placement and/or order of play was favorable. Hats off, truly.
But calling your own plan “perfect” was something that defied belief, at least for me. And declaring the game almost-solved was a bit unreal. It truly makes me question your rebel-believerness
* Actually, I have thought about it and you have the answer at L10. If you’re truly committed with knowing, someone from Team White should make a throw-in. That splits possibilites neatly in half. If the capture occurs, then Red and Pink are on Team Black and your friend is either Yellow or Green. If not captured, your friend is either Pink or Red, and Yellow and Green would be on Team Black. Also don’t ask me to make the throw-in, in all likelihood the stone would just survive and we learn nothing. Besides, I made a bajillion throw-ins already.
3 Likes
Why are you making the assumption that @richyfourtytwo or @Vsotvep, in particular, is a settler-believer? These arbitrary assumptions greatly narrow your scenarios, and weaken your logic deductions.
Of course, like everyone else besides me, it is in your best interest assert that you are a settler believer. However, for others to accept your reasoning, they would need to also accept that assertion as an assumption. Thus, you cannot expect everyone to simply accept the same four scenarios that you do. Even if they did, those four scenarios are not even the only possibilities fitting your assumptions.
Thus, your eventual argument:
should not be persuasive to @Gia, unless both you and her are both “Rebel-believers”, where then it would make sense to feign being persuaded by such flimsy logic in order to have an excuse not to help the settlers gain more information.
As an aside, “Rebel-believers” seems like a bit of a mouthful and has an awkward construction with “bel-bel” in the middle. How about we shorten it to something else, like maybe just “Beliebers” [sic] instead?
4 Likes
Part 3: The Knight of Wands
Sir Richard, the XLII of his line, had long been waiting to recover a fortune of which he saw very little in his own life.
Though the dice had rarely been in his favor, he’d soon discover that Fate had never intended him to be a lowly pawn, but a mighty knight.
Yeah, I was going to go from strongest assumption to weakest. This assumption, I believe is quite reasonable but my reasoning kind of spoils the game a bit. It’s a glitch in the rules. I was hesitant to use it, but, here we go. Excuse the meta analysis.
I want to emphasize this phrase: “So the settlers (in the same team as the spy) would gain some information, while the rebels would gain nothing from it.”
This is patently false. In fact is quite an absurd claim unless you misunderstood the rules.
A few posts later…
Fair enough, I also misunderstood the rules, at first. I believe @Gia also said something to that effect. Not unlikely, no shade to DM @martin3141 , they were a bit convoluted, or at least, unfamiliar.
Now I’m going to make a few claims:
-
While you can always misread the rules, rebels become aware of their mistake the very moment they receive instructions (it is entirely possible that they privately asked for clarification, but my point still remains).
-
Nobody had publicly said anything about misunderstanding the rules before Sir Richard.
-
Not understanding something is more likely to trigger shame over being the only person who got it wrong than it is to trigger the realization that probably many people got it wrong as well.
-
Therefore, sir Richard must be telling the truth. If he was lying, he’d have to have realized the rules were convoluted and have thought of the idea of saying something absurd to exploit the possibility that others also got it wrong. I find this level of machiavellism extremely unlikely, and kinda scary to be honest.
3 Likes
Oh no, surely not. I realize though, that they are almost equivalent, except for a possible permutation of the amnesiac. My proposal of Team White playing on L10 is true regardless of what you believe about my assumptions. It also can be performed within the next 2 turns.
With @Vsotvep, it is mostly a courtesy, in honor of the truth, to him and specially to other players. If I don’t then my own probabilities of being a settler appear super-inflated, on the order of 92%. However, I don’t think other players have any more reason to believe I’m a settler-believer than they have to think Vsotvep is a settler-believer. Or viceversa. In either case, the only change is that the chances appear more inflated one way or the other.
At this point, who actually is the amnesiac doesn’t matter all that much. If you allow for that extra consideration, just take the same 4 scenarios I proposed and rotate the amnesiac amongst the rebel-faction. You’d get 16 scenarios that are functionally the same.
3 Likes
Your scenarios don’t seem to take into account the case where you are rebel-believer, which I currently believe to be a likely possibility. Your line of thinking may be correct from your point of view, but only if you indeed are a settler-believer. It is true that I don’t know my faction with certainty, but in trying to convince others of a common strategy, I should include the possibility for myself being a rebel-believer (even though I myself know I am not), or it will be hard to trust.
I also find it still highly suspicious that you only come with major computations and quite convincing arguments after three opponents have been revealed. Your information is valuable and would have served the settlers better if it had been revealed earlier, for example before you silently made your reckless move in the aquatic neighbourhood.
Finding out whether @Gia 
is on the Black team or the White team allows for testing @Jon_Ko 
with certainty as well, since a player of the opposite team of @Gia could throw in at L10.
As said before, unless a confirmed team member claims that I am a rebel, I will assume that I am a settler and play for revealing the most information. If I’m the amnesiac, please tell me before I end up being a disproportionate burden to my own team.
3 Likes
You make another convincing argument with assumption 2, but I can’t just go ahead with assumptions 3 and 4. And both are needed to rule out, that Richard XLII anyone but the Merchant or you is the amnesiac.
4 Likes
But, this is a little quite unfair, my dear merchant. Precisely, I have thus far only shown you the perspective of an outsider. I can accept your mistrust of my word, but not for you to say something untrue.
I have shown you my calculations progressively, and including my own perspective was something I wasn’t going to do until the very end (until I was rushed to ignore all of it and state my conclusions). Other adventurers would choose on their own where in that line of reasoning their own beliefs ended.
@Vsotvep , why do you refuse to make the throw-in at L10? This does not depend on my calculations at all. Your team only has one more ally among Yellow, Green, Teal and Pink. Your fifth ally could only be @yebellz , if at all. My proposal yields the most amount of information with one move.
@Gia can go on and try to capture my Fanatics at M11. These are not mutually exclusive.
My suspicion is that you refuse because you don’t want to make any sacrifices yourself. You just wanted map control, as I’ve stated before.
Unlike those who falsely claim an undying conviction of being settler, this is my safety hatch. It is convenient for me to reveal this now, but no sooner. I have been using these calculations for my myself thus far.
Please, don’t grasp for straws when trying to poke holes in my words. If you want to disprove me, please show where I have lied.
1 Like
Part 3 (continuation)
The meeting extended overnight.
The hermit retired to his chambers for some sleep. Some of the adventurers had probably brought their own accommodations in their wealthy caravans. Anyone else was welcome to sleep in the barn or under the stars, if they so desired. It was a frugal life up here.
Assumption 3: @richyfourtytwo is a settler-believer. For the reasons already laid out. I call this the Naive Richard Hypothesis (NRH)
This is what the results looks like with Strict Board Logic (SBL) + SYH + NRH (as before, I have not included my own point of view).
Total Scenarios: 20 (click for details)
| Player | settlers | rebels | spy | amnesiac |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leira (black) | 65.00% | 30.00% | 0.00% | 5.00% |
| Barbanaira (white) | 35.00% | 50.00% | 0.00% | 15.00% |
| Jon Ko (red) | 50.00% | 40.00% | 0.00% | 10.00% |
| NeilAgg (yellow) | 50.00% | 40.00% | 0.00% | 10.00% |
| Vsotvep (blue) | 35.00% | 50.00% | 0.00% | 15.00% |
| richyfortytwo (green) | 80.00% | 0.00% | 0.00% | 20.00% |
| Gia (pink) | 50.00% | 40.00% | 0.00% | 10.00% |
| MystWalker (teal) | 35.00% | 50.00% | 0.00% | 15.00% |
| yebellz (orange) | 0.00% | 0.00% | 100.00% | 0.00% |
Part 4, coming soon.
3 Likes
If an honest person is called naive these days, well, so be it: naive I am.
3 Likes
In a good sense, my friend.
I meant that it is the hypothesis that is naive. The hypothesis assumes that you’re not an evil mastermind.
1 Like
I don’t refuse, in fact, if Gia is allied with you, I suggested as much with my last post.
As said, my mind is currently mostly occupied with picking he—, hunhm, negotiating with my business partners. I might have missed a request to play at L10 because of that. I will be able to respond properly within one day.
3 Likes
I probably missed this as well.
Please don’t rush yourself. I give my report in a non-antagonistic fashion. You can then dissect it to your heart’s content.
2 Likes