Games [Danubian Federation Victory] Ausgleich '37

[Shade939]

But I think overall, National Populists were supposed to help out Status Quo since they were inherently weaker.

[OrangeP47]

It seems to me like scum waited too long to mason.

[Shade939]

Just now, OrangeP47 said:

It seems to me like scum waited too long to mason.

I think it's more like they died before they got the chance.

[OrangeP47]

Just now, Shade939 said:

I think it's more like they died before they got the chance.

That's literally the same thing

[Shade939]

Just now, OrangeP47 said:

That's literally the same thing

Specifically iLTS.

[Killing_You]

1 hour ago, OrangeP47 said:

It seems to me like scum waited too long to mason.

Here's the thing, though: We had no idea who our partner was or how to contact him. Apparently if I rolecopped iLTS we would've linked up, but Cat5 kept thinking it was someone else and was sure iLTS was town.

[Jeod]

2 minutes ago, Killing_You said:

Here's the thing, though: We had no idea who our partner was or how to contact him. Apparently if I rolecopped iLTS we would've linked up, but Cat5 kept thinking it was someone else and was sure iLTS was town.

After all the scummy things I did in the name of town, you really never thought I was your partner? Oh wait, you did rolecop me first...

[Killing_You]

Just now, Jeod said:

After all the scummy things I did in the name of town, you really never thought I was your partner? Oh wait, you did rolecop me first...

Second, actually. But we really did think you were our partner :V

[Category 5 Hurricane]

Yes, who I thought our parnter was and who I thought was for sure town was two of the things I got wrong. Multiple times.

[FRAYDO]

1 hour ago, Category 5 Hurricane said:

Yes, who I thought our parnter was and who I thought was for sure town was two of the things I got wrong. Multiple times.

[VERTi60]

It's kinda iconic that the game ended as Danubian Federation, while we're also remembering 50th anniversary of Operation Danube on that exact day the game ended:

 

Short version:

 

Long version:

 

Good documentary with background:

 

[TheIrishman]

What a disappointing ending. Alright, who's up for HOI4?

[OrangeP47]

4 minutes ago, TheIrishman said:

What a disappointing ending. Alright, who's up for HOI4?

It's time for pokemon.  I've seen your steam stats, you're developing an unhealthy obsession

[FRAYDO]

I'm so down for HOI4.

[Nodlied]

 

Well then, thus we arrive at the true end of the game. Let's take a look the different game mechanics as well as the players and discuss them shall we?

 

 

Document links

All docs, be it player docs, mechanic docs, day-night resolver docs, etc, can be accessed via the main doc. I will also provide you with a direct link to the image base on imgur so you can take a look. If you want to take a closer look at the Excel file, open up the cvc and day/night resolver doc. In there you will find a link to the Google drive folder that I used to deposite some of the Excel files and paint.net files so that Voe could use them in case I was gone (spoiler: he never used them). 

 

Players

OrangeP47 as Albert Dietrich

Objective: Pluralism by reform. 

Orange was the good boy Pluralism role in the game. His voting boosters could be used at critical moments during the game to swing the game in favour of his team. His evidence base key also made him the powerhouse role of team Pluralism. Orange started out well and managed to get the first Pluralism vote through by using his double vote. That said, he spent too much time checking the voting patterns of people while he should have started checking for actions a lot sooner. One of his mistakes was that he didn't put more thought behind catching TheIrishman's kill action. TheIrishman's weird behaviour as specified in the action check was one of the indications that there was a subversive scum in the game. However, his night spent on checking Irish's actions did net him the stability jackpot as each tracked illegal night action would add 4% stability each, and he found two of them. His endgame attitude was one of the factors that lead to the team Pluralism infighting.

 

iLikeToSnipe as Joseph von Papen

Objective: Abolishment by war. 

iLikeToSnipe started out as a lone-wolf thief. He would have to confuse the town teams to achieve the civil war he desired. Once he would have joined the scum team, he too would have gotten a killing action and could be described as scum's item reservist in case Cat5 died. Due to his internet outage and the fact that he was killed by his own brothers in arms, he couldn't achieve too much other than the initial Red Scare.

 

TheIrishman as Daniel Szabo

Objective: Status-quo by reform. 

TheIrishman was Status-quo's equivalent to Orange. His gun could take care of the opposition during more peaceful periods of the Ausgleich while it also allowed him to nail scum. His trap could be used to stun players during the day and to discover who visited whom, even if it required a bit of planning. Ironically, he failed to realise that he had something to do with Fraydo's death after falling into his own trap. He also failed to notice that, during the nights in which he was used, he didn't receive any night-action results in his day PM, another clue that something fishy was going on in the game. That said though, he played a good game and became a victim of the many ploys devised by scum. As a highlight, he murdered Killing_You before he went down. Had he realised that he was being used, I'm pretty sure that he would spend no time in safeguarding his gun.

 

Jeod/Verti as Aleksander Litwinowicz

Objective: Status-quo by reform. 

Jeod was the classic doctor in the game and was Status-Quo's immunity role that, unlike Shade, was a lot weaker but, unlike Shade, could vote. Jeod made it his life mission to nail Scum, a good move as Status-Quo was a stronger team in terms of night reform votes before the death of Kaiser Karl the 1st. Despite his efforts, he couldn't convince everybody to go after Cat5 in time before the Pluralists got themselves enough power to wipe Status-Quo from the face of the earth.

 

Retaliation as Anton Bibescu

Objective: Pluralism by any means. 

Retaliation was team Pluralism's way to gain access to a killing action by the use of his crowbar item, a highly useful item which direct counters were mind control and the blocking action from the admiral's cane. Beyond that, he was team pluralism's source of additional PP, even though it was limited to himself. He tried his best and worked hard for team Pluralism. His status as a Romanian prince confused people for a short while but Retaliation stuck with doing the right thing until the very end, his decision to do away with the gun indirectly made Cat5 look rather silly and prevented a reform from being voted on during N10. If Cat5 had voted for radical Pluralism, it would be game over with a scum victory (or a civil war if people still wanted it). So one could say that Retaliation put a wrench/cane/crowbar in Scum's path to victory. Beyond that, his mission to gain the cane certainly caused some comic relief.

 

Sunflower as Emil Benes

Objective: Status-Quo by any means. 

Sunflower was team Status-Quo's source of additional PP, and she could even gift it to other teams to further her own goals. Her typewriter was a free action that caused a few laughs, had it not been for its early removal from the game. In any case, she led team Status-Quo by finally passing a reform through her efforts and put up a good fight to achieve her goals. Her downfall was a result of team Pluralism achieving a stronger organisation earlier than her own team. The resulting purge ended her game, but let it be known that she did well considering the circumstances.

 

Shade as Otto von Habsburg

Objective: Pluralism by reform. 

The final member of the Pluralism team and one of the members of the Monarchy. He was the good guy counterpart to Cat5. His passive prevented him from being investigated, hit by any action (including good ones such as donations!), being able to win to-the-vault ties, and prevented him from voting. As you can see, this is rather powerful, despite its weaknesses. He would lose this passive in case Kaiser Karl the 1st died, which never happened. His call to order acted as a one-time boost to stability to stave off any potential early game oopsies. He played well during the game, even though his paranoia caused some unnecessary results. That said, his passive eventually paved the way to the victory which has now been achieved.

 

Fraydo as Miklos Horthy

Objective: Achieve either Pluralism or Status-Quo by anymeans while ensuring that he monarchy survies.  

Fraydo managed to land the Horthy role, his undoing in the previous game, by pure RNG, talk about lucky. He was the second Mornarchy member and was to be used as a tool for Shade to vote. That said, he could always switch sides, despite Shade's objections to ensure that the Monarchy would stay safe. In case Karl died, he would, if he still had the cane, automatically block nightkill actions on Shade. However, it would also cancel any other action, including voting, for him that night. He would also act as a final Monarch in the form of Regent Horthy. However, unlike the other Monarchs, imprisoning him through suspicious status would immediately launch the civil war. Fraydo did his best during the little time he was around but was eliminated early on.

 

Killing_You as Alojzije Stepinac

Objective: Abolishment by killing the monarchy. 

Scum's information role. He was vital in discovering the action commands for Cat5 to use and was thus an important supporting role. He hit the jackpot on N1 by investigating TheIrishman and finding the army rifle, the only weapon in the game at the time. This is due to the fact that a nightkill requires a weapon as prerequisite. His absence during parts of the game prevented him from communicating with Cat5 during times, but overal he gave his all until he was eliminated by an angry Irishman with a gun.

 

Cat5 as Teohari Georgescu

Spoiler

Category 5 Hurricane as Yuri

 

Objective: Abolishment by killing the monarchy. 

Cat5 was the oddball role in the game and scum's most powerful weapon. Through Killing_You, he could use other players and their actions to achieve scum's goals, somewhat countering the ##Check Actions command in the evidence base. There is a reason why the ##Frame action was there . Despite his power, he could be countered by being imprisoned, by being hammered with a well known cane, and by Shade's passive. Despite Yuri not appearing in case of Cat5's elimination, the game had a lot of ways to tell players that something strange was up. His night mind control always prevented full night action results from being posted in PM's. Checking his victims during the night always ended with a notification that the victim was acting odd and checking Cat5's action would end with an unkown result. So, like Shade, he was really powerful despite his weaknesses. His undercover mantle was also a historical Romanian communist, which could spell more suspicion onto him if people felt like it. Despite his efforts, he got most of his things wrong. Not only did he murder iLTS, he also failed to grab the chance at killing Karl the 1s, despite the hints that he got. If he had spent more time on the game, I'm quite certain that this game would have gone radically different quite early on. In the end, his endgame plan was foiled by Retaliation and the fact that Shade still had his passive.

 

Rewards

Tie breaker

Sunflower
Even though the game had an ungodly amount of ties, Sunflower used her Santa Offensive to finally push through a reform. It was a radical one, but it got through. This showed the power of what a well organised voting offensive could do. Too bad that her success didn't last through the rest of the game though.

 

Fraydo's Curse

iLikeToSnipe, Killing_You, Category 5 Hurricane
Despite a smashing start with finding the gun on N1, the scum were quickly hit with back luck. Not only was the first nightkill friendly-fire, they also failed to take their opportunity to kill Karl the 1st, something that would bite them in the arse at the end of the game where they couldn't kill shade due to his still active passive. Beyond that they were unlucky due to the angry Irishman kill on Killing_You as well as Cat5 being pre-empted by Retaliation, which led to a tied reform vote, and thus no way to start a civil war before it was too late.

 

Horthy's Pride

Retaliation
Even though Retaliation wasn't Horthy, he did continue his legacy by being a pain in the arse towards any of his enemies. At the same time, he twarted Cat5's plan by doing the right thing and stashing the gun in the Vault. I'm pretty sure that Fraydo and Horthy would be proud.

 

Dawn of the Atomic Era

TheIrishman, Jeod, Sunflower, VERTi60
The Status-Quo team did their best, but they didn't manage to gain the item advantage in time. This resulted in their horrific purge which left them completely unable to win anymore. That is, if the Pluralists prevented a civil war, which they did.

 

Oversights have Consequences

Orange, TheIrishman
Despite Orange catching TheIrishman trying to kill somebody, he didn't nail scum. And despite TheIrishman not doing anything wrong, he still got nailed. Both of them spoke the truth after the nightkill reveal. However, both of them were victims of Cat5's powers even though both of them had hints that something was off before the great debate. 

 

Victory Rally

Orange, Retaliation, Shade, Fraydo
The Pluralists + Fraydo all managed to score a victory this game. However, only Retaliation and Fraydo have scored two points, putting them ahead of Orange and Shade. The end of the game was decided by something other than reform, nullifying Orange and Shade's secondaries. Retaliation and Fraydo, though, had to achieve Pluralism (or either in Fraydo's case + the Monarchy had to exist) by any means, which includes this elimination victory.

 

 

 

Post game thoughts

And thus we arrive at the very end. I will not be going into detail about the civil war mechanics unless you want me to or have questions regarding that. So, without further ado, let's discuss the game shall we?

When I set out to develop this game, I wanted to create a more politically focused game experience where the majority of players would stay in game until the very end. Killing actions had clear limitations and their counters.
However, and let's just start with the elephant in the room, the Army Rifle was too good for what it did. It allowed a team to become more overpowered than intended and basically ended the game by eliminating everyone. Oops! A better variant for the gun would have been to change the way the player status worked a little bit. In a reworked system, a pushed case would be necessary before a hostile player could be arrested (or a simple friendly-fire day kill would be enough for an arrest). In this case, the requirements for shooting the gun could move from suspicious to hostile.
So what about the other mechanics? The vault functioned almost the same to the one from the July Crisis game and I believe that it did well. Items were there to allow players to switch up their roles a little bit and boost their teams. The for-fun items were still there to add a little spice. Granted, a team could become really powerful if they could gather enough strong item, but that was intended, as just like in real politics, a well organised party will (and should) be able to gain a decisive advantage. The items would also spark a bit of tension between players that wanted the same item, which it did.
The Evidence base was new and, honestly, I think that it functioned well. It allowed specific players to check on voting patterns to discover their alignments as well as potential liars. The Action checks were not only a requirement for the push case command, they also allowed people to discover the roles or items behind the players. Of course, there was a scum role to circumvent and abuse this, which was the case with TheIrishman and his not-really-his killing action. Pushing cases was there to eliminate bad guy players or, in conjunction with a framing action, to eliminate political opponents. Speaking of the framing action, it wasn't just there to frame good guy players. It was also a way for town to nail Cat5 in case they knew that he was scum and didn't have a way to arrest or kill him. The fact that framing didn't leave a true log action could help everybody hide their true intentions, as the logs were there for all to see. Perhaps I will keep at least one evidence key for the next game while also allowing people to vote on another player to enter the evidence bay. Perhaps that will allow more players to interact with its mechanics.

So, what about the reforms and stability? Well, all types of reforms had their own bonusses. Military and Economic would provide starting bonusses to the civil war while political reforms would come with a bigger reform-is-passed bonus for the reform meter.
Stability was a whole different thing altogether. A lot of actions, night actions, and reform results affected the stability meter. For example, passing a reform of the already leading ideology type would always lower stability while passing a reform of the losing ideology would boost stability. The boost of compromise would always be higher than the loss of imbalance. An additional stability booster (that didn't count for Shade!) was the fact that not doing anything other than voting on a reform during the night would add +1 stability. This was always mentioned in the relevant day-start PM's, which quite a few of you had noticed. In the end, I should probably have added a harsher modifyer for friendly-fire (that is, all non-scum) daykills. But that's something for another game. Reform victory could only be achieved if the leading ideology was at 75% or above and when stability was also at 75% and above. Flavour text would announce it whenever one of the meters hit one of the victory thresholds though.
But how could we achieve a civil war then? Well, there were a few ways. The first was the elimination (or in Fraydo's case, also imprisonment while he was in power) of all Monarchs. The second was to pass three radical reforms of the same ideology in a row, which would piss the other side off enough for them to start the civil war. The third was to hit the civil war stability threshold. It started at 10% stability, but each radical reform passed would add its reform points to the civil war stability threshold up to 45%. This meant that civil war would be pretty much a non-issue at the start of the game but could quickly become a problem as more radical reforms would pass.
That said, I'm quite surprised to see so many ties in this game. Had you all been voting in a more organised manner, I'm quite certain that a lot more of interest would have happened. Then again, stagnation is a typical political thing, so I guess that you lot put up a realistic game.

As for Political Power (PP), I think that it functioned in its intended role. It prevented action and item spamming and forced players to make a choice. Perhaps I could have done more to make the day boost PP of more use, but I do believe that it was good for what it did during the night.

Finally we come to the monarchy and its hidden behind-the-scenes game. One one side we had Horthy and the Habsburg Prince (+ NPC Karl) and on the other side were the two Natpops and one Syndie. Even though scum only had to kill three characters (or two and imprison one), they would have to spend a lot of their time figuring out on how to get there. Beyond grabbing (or commandeering) a weapon, they had to find out how to get to the Monarchs in the first place. It is a shame that they didn't figure it out and got hit by their counters in the end game, but had they killed Karl when they could (there were hints lads, hints!), their life would have been a lot easier. The entire Monarch side-game was supposed to keep the game a bit fresh and interesting and, as it did, was meant as an additional worry later in the game. Luckily for town, the horrible moment of realisation wasn't the death of the Kaiser but the further discussions down the road.

So what do I think of the game overal? Well, it had its issues here and there and quite a few things didn't really go as designed, a flaw that stems from the fact that I didn't run enough simulations (especially not one where everything goes against what was to be expected), something that I've already discussed with VERTi60. Then again, I did have a lot of fun seeing things unfold and I'm pretty certain that the game mechanics in this game provided an interesting (and somewhat new?) way to play games here in the games forum, just like the previous July Crisis. So am I happy with the game? Ehh, maybe not as much as the July Crisis, but I'm definately happy with how it turned out. But is it also a success? Well, I'd say yes, despite its flaws, it put us all through (I hope) an interesting and enjoyable experience. Too bad that there wasn't a way for all townies to win... or was there?

 

In any case, you're all welcome to provide your feedback on the (im)balance and mechanics of the game, or just the game in and off itself. I hope that you all had as much fun playing as I did hosting it!

 

Thanks you all for playing the game!
And see you all next time.

[Nodlied]

As for the Hearts of Iron 4 game, I'll put up a thread once I get home in about 45 hours. That way we can take a look at the proposed rules (to keep things fair) and sign up accordingly.

[Retaliation]

You're going to issue me a pardon right @Shade939?

[Shade939]

2 minutes ago, Retaliation said:

You're going to issue me a pardon right @Shade939?

Nope, still remembering that you shot Sunflower and Jeod...

Although Irish does get one.

[OrangeP47]

Just now, Shade939 said:

Nope, still remembering that you shot Sunflower and Jeod...

Although Irish does get one.

And Pluralism likely won because we eliminated status quo when we did

Though I do feel bad for Irish.  That's like being run over by a double decker bus, in slow motion.

[Shade939]

Your have to settle for house arrest instead.

[Retaliation]

1 minute ago, Shade939 said:

Nope, still remembering that you shot Sunflower and Jeod...

Although Irish does get one.

It was self defense! Jeod even admits he was going to shoot me in the dead doc !

[Shade939]

Also, I want to point out that since Category 5 couldn't target me, I could filibuster the reform so he couldn't vote at night on it also.

[Nodlied]

1 minute ago, Shade939 said:

Also, I want to point out that since Category 5 couldn't target me, I could filibuster the reform so he couldn't vote at night on it also.

That would come with a drop in stability though. Not much, but every drop would help Cat5.

[Shade939]

Just now, Nodlied said:

That would come with a drop in stability though. Not much, but every drop would help Cat5.

It did give me more time to pursue various options to remove him from the game other than immediately grabbing the gun to shoot him though.

[OrangeP47]

38 minutes ago, Nodlied said:

The end of the game was decided by something other than reform, nullifying Orange and Shade's secondaries

Just got to this.  The salt is real

[Shade939]

Just now, OrangeP47 said:

Just got to this.  The salt is real

No, it was an impossibility for my character to win by reform without anyone else to vote.

[OrangeP47]

Just now, Shade939 said:

No, it was an impossibility for my character to win by reform without anyone else to vote.

SAAAAAAAAAAAAALT!

[Shade939]

Just now, OrangeP47 said:

SAAAAAAAAAAAAALT! 

Still not for the reason your thinking of.

[OrangeP47]

Just now, Shade939 said:

Still not for the reason your thinking of.

I'm referring to myself.  I'm salty

[Shade939]

3 minutes ago, OrangeP47 said:

I'm referring to myself.  I'm salty

Do magikarps taste better with salt?