Townplay Part 2: Broader things
So early in this game I kind of had the thought that the reason our townplay is so bad is that everyone just sucks at making reads, which was kind of an uncharitable thing to think but probably gets at something real. Like, I saw a few townreads handed out for things like ‘they aren’t really pushing people’ when that is … a scum-AI thing to do… In any case, in terms of actually actionable things, it would probably be helpful for people here to familiarize themselves with some of the level-1 signs of towniness and scumminess.
Another thing that hurt town this game was that a lot of townies weren’t trying to solve, which meant that all the scum that also weren’t trying to solve could essentially skate by. Like, almost none of the wolves were actually “doing anything” in terms of legitimately trying to solve the game (Kyo is basically the one exception), but because so many villagers were also not doing anything, that meant that it was hard to pick out which was which.
Additionally, this is kind of a specific/niche point but people were clearing an awful lot of people based on spew when the things they were clearing for were pretty easily distancing. Like, it’s one thing to say ‘Player A spent all game trying to get Player B executed, so Player B is spewed town,’ or ‘Player A and Player B got into a massive fight where they started insulting each other, so Player B is spewed town,’ but (for instance) people were clearing sulit for Hippo parking a vanity wagon on her, and that’s … not really clearing.
With that being said, there were definitely some good plays from town here, and from individual townies. Town did a good job this game in the early days of backreading dead players, even if it fell down on that front on later days. TBE and Centuries in particular had some very good plays + reads as dreaming gods. Most of the townies that were alive in endgame had done a good job of being obvious town, regardless of the quality of their reads.
