Mneme's Guide to Vote Analysis

This information is probably out of date, and needs to be edited by someone who knows what has happened since the last update.

Type: Play Author: mneme

History

Original Publication: May 17, 2007 by mneme
Revised: September 24, 2007 by gorckat

Article

Mafia games (especially, but by no means solely, Newbie Games because they are more tractable) can be won by vote analysis, especially in the endgame.

Scum rarely vote for one another, are reluctant to eliminate one another and, in the end, aren't interested in finding out who their enemies are (they already know!). They are interested in getting the day over, eliminating someone, not being eliminated themselves, not letting their buddies get eliminated and getting on to the part of the game where they're dominant without revealing too much info (the night phase).

Analysis of the chat record is pretty straightforward: you look at what people have said and try to figure out who seems scummy. The thing here is that it's pretty slippery. Scum will sometimes stage mock-fights in public and even when they don't, competent scum can frequently do a good job of "playing town".

The voting record is the strongest and most solid tool the town can use to find scum. Scum who will blithely accuse or FOS one another are often more hesitant to vote for one another because any vote could end up leading to an elimination. But there's a caveat here. In order for the voting record to have teeth, it has to be genuine. Any vote has to have the potential to lead to an elimination, otherwise there's no penalty for (or clue about) scum muddying the voting record by voting for one another.

Part of playing town is to make your votes be (or at least seem) genuine because it makes it easier to analyze your votes determining that you're probably not scum with anyone else and to highlight scum who cannot afford to entirely play this way. If scum vote just as genuinely for their scumbuddies as for everyone else, they dramatically reduce their chance of winning the game.

Analysis is similar. Look at who's voted for who and try to judge how genuine their vote seemed. If you think there are two mafia left and someone's voted genuinely for everyone in the game (and/or voted for someone proven to be mafia) then they're probably not mafia. Of course, cunning mafia will try to vote their buddies but then let another bandwagon "win" so you need to look for late jumps onto bandwagons (to make sure to be on a buddy's bandwagon when they're likely to be eliminated or after they make an obvious mistake) and early/late jumps off bandwagons (as scum might be willing to vote each other early but are likely to look for another target before their vote turns into a bandwagon if they can).

Note that vote analysis doesn't make it easier to find Serial Killers because they have no partners and operate as individuals.

See also Tipping Point.