well played

Great job Josh!

I do have the results of my survey from the start of the Dynasty (just a bunch of various communications that went in different directions with each player) that I was encouraged to share.

I’m unsure what I can share, because there was no consistent format for the PMs and now the 40-50 emails or so are a bit of a mess.

In the mean time while I ponder the mess, is there anything specific anyone would like revealed? Also, are there any messages the other corresponder would not like revealed (I’m guessing not, honestly).

I think it could be interesting to backtrack through the history of this secretive Dynasty.

Also, for my own curiosity, for Alternative Endgame I was going to try either Brendan, Josh, Darknight or Brendan, Josh, _Fox_ (but most likely option 1). Who were the Androids in the end?

As far as what we can learn from this for future Dynasties of this nature, I think the Sabotage power was a bit much. Unconditional Proposal blocking without revealing identities should at least have a downside of some sort if they are to be used IMO. What are others’ thoughts?

All in all, an AWESOME Dynasty though. Thanks Kevan and everyone.

Just me and Brendan. We kept hoping that someone else would turn but no luck.

I guess Sabotage was the trade-off for not having anything that looked like a nightly execution, but yes, giving the humans no way to get anything through was perhaps a bit strong. The two key mechanics were Marks and Trust (Clearance) - Sabotage was essential so far as it protected those from being nerfed, as well as for stopping anyone from lowering the Trial success threshold, but in most other cases it was a useful bonus, not a key tool.

Note to everyone who didn’t figure it out: For all the traceability issues, the real problem with Marks was that the flush could be retroactively sabotaged if it went off-target.

Yep. That’s the main reason why I votyed against this - I didn’t want Flushes flying off everywhere without being able to control where they landed.

As to what I was up to, I’d been conspiring with _Fox_ (who had me convinced he was an Android) and Brendan (who actually was an Android) to get the Androids to kill themselves in a coordinated fashion.

@Josh, I’m not saying that Sabotage caused your victory or that you relied on it (it seems to me that your Victory did not rely on the Sabotage power), but I am saying that absolute Veto is illogical and OP, as you seem to agree. It’s definitely a tricky issue though because with a Quorum of Humans, no Sabotage means the opposite is true; instead of the Androids bullying the Humans, you have the Humans bullying the Androids.

@Kevan, could you give us a complete list of Androids? I understand that there are two known Androids, but I’m curious if there were Androids that were Disabled that did not join Josh’s cause.

Anyway, with Sabotage powers, p implies q, where p=any Proposal threatens any Android and q=that Proposal get’s Sabotaged. I was just thinking (since Androids do need some Sabotage powers for this type of Dynasty as detailed above) that perhaps a solution would be a unanimous sabotage from all Androids is necessary, perhaps with 3-4 Androids. I think that could be balanced and fun in this type of ruleset; what do others think?

I’m not at all happy about this, basically because it all came down to who could be online at the critical moments, and how easily I could communicate with them. (For example, if I had been online at the right moment to persuade Sylphrena to CoV on the _Fox_ trial, all of this wouldn’t have happened.) I was also planning to lock Josh and Brendan out of making trials via chaining Trials against them, but Josh started a Trial against me while I was offline.

Even then, the only reason Josh won is that Brendan arbitrarily decided to give victory to him. As far as I know, they weren’t even in an alliance, so this was just a kingmaker situation. (Brendan could have given the win to me or Sylphrena, too. Possibly even _Fox_ or Bucky, but those would have been more difficult.)

So all in all, a very unsatisfactory ending. I’d had a good idea about who the Androids were for over a week now (although it took the second drugging on Bucky to be absolute 100% confirmation, I was only about 90% sure before that). Despite all this, the game mechanics made a Human victory impossible.

I also note that there was a 50% chance I’d have made the Human victory condition, despite everything. I’m on 0 Clearance right now, and there’s an MD1C pointed at me in the queue. If it hit my Tired or Depressed statuses, I’d have been able to bring my Clearance down to -1, and then push Sylphrena’s up to 0. This was relatively unlikely, though, and I was planning to just give the win to Sylphrena if it didn’t work out.

Finally, Brendan should have been Disabled via Trial a while back. I think I had enough people ready to make votes and/or change to Unhappy, but some of them were offline at the time.

(Sylphrena could also have prevented the Android victory, incidentally, by idling immediately after being Disabled, but I don’t blame him for not doing that; it’s a hard strategy to think on the spur of the moment and looks a bit like it’s throwing away a win. Bucky could also have prevented the Android victory by idling, although I was under the impression that he would have preferred to give the Androids the win anyway.)

So all in all, this was very frustrating. I had all the resources I needed to win, or at least control the dynasty, except for how much attention me and other people could pay to sitting in front of their computers, refreshing constantly. In the end, I simply had to go to sleep :-(

(@Bucky: Why do you think I put in an anti-retroactive-Sabotage clause into all my dynastic proposals recently?)

Anyway, this is a valid victory by the rules, much as I dislike it. 

Err, I mean, CoV

And they could then have nightly executions too, but perhaps with more revival? If Humans can heal other humans after Androids hurt them, and Androids have to work together to Sabotage, and the Ruleset makes it slightly easier to tell who is what type, we could have a straightforward Dynasty where the intended alliances are encouraged as opposed to these unintended cross-factional alliances being encouraged.

ayesdeeef - Of course, I didn’t mean to imply that I thought you mwant that we rode on Sabotage’s coat-tails. It was definitely a bit overpowered.

ais - incorrect - Brendan and I had been working together from the word go, and had agreed to seek an Android co-op victory as soon as we got together with the anonymous email Demand. I was briefly worried that he might ditch me for Bucky, but after we’d got Marks and Truth through, Android victory was far easier to engineer than any other scenario, and only required the dilution of power of two players - so trust was fairly easy to build.

I don’t think human victory was impossible - but it was after Marks went through, and once everyone started chasing Clearance. I still can’t quite believe Marks didn’t get voted down.

I don’t think a Human victory would have been impossible even the day before yesterday. The main thing that would have been required, which didn’t happen, would be _Fox_ and I cooperating fully and being properly coordinated (together with Sylphrena not voting FOR on the trial against _Fox_). There’s no mechanic in the ruleset that would have allowed you and Brendan to Disable either of us at that point; you wouldn’t be able to outvote us on Marks (we couldn’t outvote you either, meaning that Marks would be useless), and you wouldn’t be able to get the three votes required for a Trial without recruiting some Disabled Human to help out (likewise vice versa).

For what it’s worth - and this is all retrospect, as it certainly felt closer at the time - I think any non-Android victory became unlikely after my first trial failed. Brendan’s trial couldn’t pass - from memory, it needed 5 votes from 7 players, and with Brendan, me and the effectively idle Put not voting for it, that was never going to happen. One of our biggest strikes if luck was that command-quorum-plus-one restriction.

ais - true, but the best case would have been stalemate, with a slight advantage to the Androids as a) we had confirmed each others’ roles and b) we could pass advantageous proposals without the risk of sabotage. The Sylphrena vote was a stroke of luck but it really only sped up the likeliest outcome.

“I still can’t quite believe Marks didn’t get voted down.” - Same here.

Anyway, I take it that all that accusations against me about playstyle were simply lies in an attempt to hide your Android status?

I think I did pretty well both at Werewolf and at Nomic this dynasty. Part of the whole encouraging Humans to reduce their Clearance was that there was no real penalty for doing so anyway; but mostly, it was so that I could easily identify the Androids by seeing who didn’t participate. In retrospect, I was quite lucky that both the Androids got Clearance-affecting Command Roles, so that it became obvious that they were Androids quite quickly when they used them in entirely the wrong way.

The main thing confusing me was _Fox_, who wasn’t acting in an even approximately sensible way Human-wise. I think that what was happening is that he was pretending to be an Android in order to mislead Bucky?

Oh, not to mention: the “Disable all Android powers” proposal would have been quorumed and passed before Kevan could get online if it hadn’t been blocked by Bucky and _Fox_. It wasn’t just an attempt to change the Atmosphere: it was an intentional attempt to get a Human advantage over Androids despite the Sabotage mechanic. It came pretty close to working, too.

The real key to this Dynasty functioning at all—and it did function, or all the timing-based stuff wouldn’t have mattered—was Kevan’s volunteering to do as much processing and mediating as he did (not to mention maintaining the theme and flavor). Thanks, Kevan.

@Brendan, yeah, Kevan’s flavor is amazing.

On the whole, the Dynasty was great. I’m just saying that from the Ruleset, what can be logically derived is that every Proposal that passed benefitted every Android and a Quorum of Humans.

>>If you look at Alternative Ending as an example, even if every Human and Disabled Android voted for it, either Josh or Brendan could have Sabotaged it at any time without revealing their identity!<<

We were relying on the Androids’ benevolence to pass a Proposal that would give us a sliver of a chance at Victory! Can you imagine trying to pass a Proposal that would make the Ruleset, say, equal? Any single Android can freeze the Dynasty at any time. You all voted against Mass Conviction on the grounds that it would not allow anyone to do anything, but in fact the Ruleset essentially already said that!

Will there be Android/Human style games in the future? I like the idea of a unanimous sabotage rule in future rounds that is similar to replace the sabotage rule we had this round.

@Josh, true, you were most likely winning even if you didn’t Sabotage Alternative Ending since my guess was probably off for who the Androids were. Out of curiosity, if you hadn’t won yet but you were somewhat close to winning, would you have let that go or sabotage it?

@Kevan, I would like confirmation on who the Androids were, if at all possible. Thanks.

Would be remiss of me to volunteer any post-game analysis in case a group are planning a twelfth-hour CoV with damning evidence.

But for now:

Given the timing problems, if I were going to do that, I’d have done it earlier (and filed a CFJ at the same time).

@Josh: I also had 100% knowledge of who the Androids were at the end. Two Druggings in the same week = two Androids are active, and _Fox_ had proved himself non-Android via that illegal Stim action. So your only knowledge advantage is that _Fox_ didn’t have 100% proof that I wasn’t an Android.