Imprisonment Theory

[Judge Sam]

I've been thinking a lot about everything concerning Imprisonments in the game of Spies lately. The theory behind Exiles is pretty straight-forward. It is obvious why the game of Spies needs Exiles. Everybody is equally vulnerable at Exile. Exiles are kind of like Survivor votes, of course with a bunch of differences. The questions behind Exile is more along the lines of: "How do you avoid being Exiled? How should you vote? How should the group vote?" which are important questions but not ones I'm thinking about now.


What I'm thinking about is exactly what Imprisonments are, what the purpose of them is, and why we have them. Here are some questions I'm considering:

What is the intended purpose of Imprisonments in the game of Spies?


How does the threat of Imprisonment affect how the game is played by Citizens? Is this positive or negative? Necessary or unnecessary?


Is it fair for someone to be eliminated via Imprisonment?


What is the correct ratio of Imprisonments to Exiles? What affect does more or less Imprisonments than 1:1 have on the game?


How does the intent and execution of Imprisonment change throughout the game?

These are just some questions that come up when I think about it. I will admit that, at the moment, I have a pre-conceived bias against Imprisonments. It's not really because I get kicked out by mafia all the time either (actually that's a little of it). I just don't like the idea behind someone being eliminated - the worst thing that can happen to you in the game - based on such elusive, undefined, and random criteria.


What if there were only 2 semi-active Spies left and they picked you just because you came online in the afternoon and they came on late at night? What if they picked you as a "shock Imprisonment" just to throw people off? What if they picked you for no reason? I'm not saying my past Spies haven't had good reasons, I'm just saying tons of times people are thrown out of the game on random criteria.


Basically I feel if you are eliminated there should be a game reason you are eliminated. In many Imprisonments I feel it is basically a random type selection - these people could not do anything to prevent themselves from being eliminated. It also could have easily been another person. Obviously there's a lot of out-of-your-control aspect in large parts of the game, but there are still many strategies and gameplans you can enact to keep yourself safe. I don't really feel there is with Imprisonments (sometimes).


That is except for later Imprisonments, say after Episode 4 or 5 when Spies start Imprisoning confirmed people. That I don't mind, because although these people are active and valuable people, they became confirmed usually of their own accord and could have prevented it. Plus these people need to go or the Spies have absolutely no chance of winning. (the game ends when 'confirmed' people have a majority). So at this point it is very much a tug of war and for the game to remain competitive, confirmed Citizens would have to go.


Even then, it's not a science. However, I have seen lots of people successfully enact strategies that prevent them from being Imprisoned which gives me lots of hope that some strategy is involved.


Despite the fact that only 4 actual Imprisonments took place, the threat of possibly being Imprisoned gigantically changed this game. I think just the threat of it through 50% of rationality, logical strategies, working towards a group win, and all that other good stuff out the window. That probably has an equal or greater effect than just the elimination aspect of it.


So yeah, that's a lot of my thoughts, not a lot of answers lol. It's just what I'm thinking, I like thinking about stuff like this, if you do too add your thoughts.

[Bebe]

Imprisonments are the #1 most important tool the citizens have to help them figure out what's going on because it's the only thing that the Spies are singularly responsible for. You can look at conversations and ask questions and set traps in the burg all you want, but when all is said and done, you don't know for sure what's Spy manipulation and what's not.

When a citizen is imprisoned, the Spies were responsible. Period. It's the best starting point for examining theories and ideas.

I don't think any imprisonment in mafia is ever truly random. There is a strategy behind everything. Every imprisoned player can tell you why the Spies imprisoned them, and every Spy can tell you why they chose to imprison each player.

Imprisonments don't disturb me. It's part of the game and has been since the first game of mafia was played. What does bother me is people being afraid to play hard because if they're imprisoned, then they can't win the game ... but that's a subject for a thread that already exists.

[Reicheru]

Hmmm... to answer that, I'd refer you to the film "Cry Wolf". (I believe it went straight to DVD over here.)

That film is notable for two things:

1) The worst British accent I've ever heard since Kevin Costner in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves", and

2) The early centrepiece chapel scene, in which a group of obviously-late-twentysomethings-pretending-to-be-teenage-schoolkids play what they call the "lying game". In it, one of them is a liar, and the others, called "sheep", have to discover the liar, or "wolf". In each "round", one of the teens - liar or not - has to make an "accusation" of one of the others. Anyone, including the wolf, can make an accusation at any time; but once it's been made, there has to be a vote. All of the remaining teens vote on which of those two - accuser or accused - to cast out. Each of them has put into a central pot an equal amount of money. If the "wolf" is accused and cast out, the person who accused them gets the entire pot. If the wolf survives until the final two, they get the pot.

(They never actually say what happens if the wolf accuses someone and is voted off instead of the person accused. Nobody's accused the wolf, yet the wolf has been ousted. Where does the money go? To the person the wolf accused? There's actually an online game based on the film, which is a helluva lot better than the film itself but uses "conventional" mafia rules, together with imprisonments.)

Now don't think for a minute I'm suggesting you WATCH this film. (Unless you regard watching unconvincing actors pretending to be teenagers spout cliche'd dialogue in a thriller set up as a mystery-cum-slasher movie in which hardly anyone ever actually gets killed and the mystery plot is both absurdly obvious and more full of crap than an overfilled septic tank, is your kind of thing. In which case, go waste two hours of your life!) But it sets up an interesting alternative way of playing the game.

Are imprisonments unfair? Sometimes. Sometimes exiles are unfair, as Jakub and Judith would no doubt attest. Sometimes LIFE is unfair, as Arthur would! Fair is as fair does. There are ways to make yourself less of a threat. I think I used most of them pretty well in Spies 3. (And really, the fact that I would've been imprisoned anyway, as Bebe said, wasn't down to me. Once it got to that stage, I was posting like crazy to everyone and trying to snatch the win for the citz.) Did the fact that I was trying to protect myself from imprisonment hinder us from catching the spies? No, the fact that I was crap at spotting the spies hindered us from catching them. As is the case with every other citizen in the burg who survived that long and still couldn't get a spy out.

I agree with Bebe in that I do think imprisonments tell citizens a lot about who the wolves are or might be, which is why I wasn't sure about the concept of the two "double-exile" rounds. It kinda makes sense in a game with five spies, but only because really I think there was one too many anyway for what was essentially a 22-man game. The other thing is that, as a spy, you NEED imprisonments if there's any chance that someone could be "confirmed". As there clearly have been in each game so far! What would be very interesting, I think, would be a game with minimal roles and a very small spy-citizen ratio, but no investigations. Hmmmmmmmmmmm...

I will leave you with this thought... No spy has EVER been successfully investigated in one of Sam's games. Tiffany from Spies 2 came closest, but she was imprisoned before she could get the results. That was perhaps the most crucial imprisonment in any of the spies games so far... apart from Gerta's in Spies 1 of course...

[Tenchi]

No imprisonment in this game was random. I believe we all gave very sound reasons.

Of course as spies, we want the Imprisonments to "appear random". Why? It gives the citizens less information since (quoting Bebe) Imprisonments are tools to figure out who are the Spies since imprisoned people are in essence confirmed Citizens.

If there is going to be a random Imprisonment, it would have to be the first one.

If Audrey or Leena actually spoke more or made themselves look vulnerable for Exile, they could have at least removed themselves in my criteria for an early exile. They could just have spoke to everyone and made themselves look like a dim wit or something, but the reality of it all is that they were in control of something. If they didn't make themselves elusive for the Spies, then they could have stayed longer.