Caitlin's Town Guide

**Caitlin's Town Guide**

If you are town, you wanna find the mafia so you can vote them. Even if you're not sure, do place your vote on them! Voting is a powerful tool, and should be used at all costs. It pressures people, thus giving you more info. VCs where votes are close also are the most informative you can have. So: vote, vote, vote, vote!!!

But, who exactly is a mafia? Someone had wrong reads but, are they mafia, or just someone being wrong? Because: you will be wrong alot. When you are town, you should just aim for whoever has more chance of being mafia readswise, but realistically there isn't gonna be someone you should be 100% sure on, unless it's mechanically confirmed. So that means that someone being wrong doesn't really mean they're mafia, because well, you can be wrong too. The champion of the MU champs can be wrong. Heck, even the creator of mafia himself, Davidoff, can be wrong in mafia.

So what should you look at then?

- Interactions

What is important about them? Well, mafia plays with knowledge of all alignments (in most games). This means that any interaction a mafia has with someone is biased. If a mafia talks with a townie, they know they are conversing with a town member. If a mafia talks with a mafia, they know they talk with a buddy, and they may want to avoid doing so or make it seem like they are not, because SvS interactions (SvS being scum vs scum) are actually kinda easy to spot. This applies to town too -> they are uninformed. Another thing is that heated interactions are usually TvT (TvT being town vs town).

- Reasons

This once again comes down to what I mentioned in interactions about the info. Town actually is solving, so their reasons will probably make some sense. Mafia however, has to come up with things to make it seem like they are actually solving. So if you think someone's reasons behind something make no sense -> you may have found a mafia!

- Nightkills

Good players usually get nightkilled. Is this totally scary player still alive, without it making any logical sense? Ask yourself about why. They probably either have shitty reads and thus are kept alive because they pose no threat, or might be a member of the mafia!

- Agenda

Later into the game, or perhaps even earlier on, mafia may very well show that they have an agenda. They are playing to reach parity, and sometimes this just shows. Let's say there are 7 players alive. 5 townies, 2 mafia. Mafia wins as soon as they vote out 2 townies. Currently, 2 players are tunneling each other. A is sure B is mafia, and B is sure A is mafia, and it seems this whole day is gonna be about that. Suddenly... C steps in, and suggests that A and B must indeed include a mafia, after all, they are so sure of each other being mafia! C seems to imply that if a townie is hit in one of the two, the other should go the day after. It's very possible that if A and B are both town that C is just trying to set them both up to be lynched in a row!

Ofcourse there are other important things too like tonereading and gut reading! It's always important to follow your gut!

Also: lynching a useless player is **not** a bad idea. Is someone refusing to solve or vote? Throw them out of here! At the very least them being threatened might get them to play, so then you turned a useless player into a useful one. It also just isn't that big of a loss if they get voted out. As I stated at the start, a day with a lot of votes is helpful, this causes more info in various ways, so if someone isn't contributing to that... Well then they might as well be yet another mafia player. I also made the mistake of keeping this player called Nico alive in a diff game. They only trolled and didn't solve at all, and I disregarded it as 'might just be a trolling townie' -> but, they were mafia. If you don't want things like that to happen, push these slots!

**LyLo and MyLo**

Oh no, the game reached a vital point! It's LyLo (lynch or lose) or MyLo (mislynch and lose)! Most advise here still applies but looking at **interactions** is by FAR the most important thing now. There are so many mafia at this stage (unless it's 2v1 or 3v1 then not really) that it becomes really important to look at this! Another scumtell in this stage is **opportunism**. It already applies earlier, but if someone suddenly is sus of someone just because they think they can get a mislynch there... Red flag!!! Oh and: don't vote early, this might get you to lose if you vote the wrong person. And final piece of advice: re-evaluate. If you have been active and townread, yet are in this stage, there must be a reason you're alive. Perhaps you are just being a pocketed by a strong mafia member!

Thank you for reading and good luck solving!