- Location
- USA
New bid.
[x][Bid] 1 dice of 4
[x][Bid] 1 dice of 4
Usagi Quest (CK3/Princess Maker) (Sailor Moon)
- Pronouns
- She
[xb*][Bid] 3 dice of 3
- Location
- Unitied Kingdom
Right, so I've gone and refamiliarized myself with how liars dice works, and will be casting a new vote accordingly.
Liars dice is ultimately a game of information warfare, trying to feed believable lies and unbelievable truths to your opponent, while at the same time trying to wring every drop of falsehoods and facts you can from what little information they give you...
I'm getting ahead of myself, back to basics. The main thing about Liars dice is that, like all social deduction games, it splits critical information between multiple parties. Liars dice is about as simple as you get with this concept, as it splits said information evenly between just two people.
To explain, there are ten dice in the game, of which Usagi knows the truth of five dice, while Luna knows the other five dice. So Usagi knows 50% of the critical information, while Luna holds the other 50%. An even playing field to start with, but if Usagi is able to raise her information percentage higher than Luna then she will be at a major advantage, while Luna will be attempting to do the same to gain said advantage for herself.
So, Usagi ideally wants to do two things when she bids. A) Create a situation where she is likely to gain critical information, and B) reduce Luna the ability to gain credible information from Usagi's bid.
To do this, Usagi could bid for 3 dice of 4, or 3 dice of 5. Both seem like fairly safe/good bets at first, Luna isn't likely to call such a bet if she has even a single 4 or 5 dice in her pool, as the chance of Usagi having the remaining dice would be too high with Luna's limited info, Luna not calling would then tell us that she probably has at least one of these dice, increasing Usagi's information percentage. But in reality this move is both suboptimal and surprisingly risky, as it gives Luna a chance to guess two of Usagi's dice in exchange for only getting one of Luna's, there's also the fact that if Luna doesn't have the third dice she might diced to call, as the odds of Usagi alone having three of the same dice face are rather low.
A much better move would be to bid 2 dice for 1. Here Luna is unlikely to call such a bid even if she had no 1 dice, as the odds of us having 2 1's isn't too unlikely, it is as mentioned earlier a believable lie. Luna then gets little to no information while also setting up a trap for future turns, if Luna starts counting on Usagi having 1's in her pool that she don't actually exist. It makes it more likely that Luna will call out higher numbers of 1's in the future if she has any in own her pool, since she'll think there's more 1's in play then there are, but it still doesn't lose Usagi much if Luna doesn't fall for it.
At least, that would be a better move if not for one element I've mostly ignored up till now, the human element. Or more specifically, the Usagi element.
Between her personality and negative intrigue score, its clear that Usagi is the kind of person who, if she tried to plan a surprise birthday party not only would the birthday boy/girl figure it out, but so would every household in a one mile radius and the local news. Someone could also plan a surprise birthday for Usagi, ask her what presents she would like the day before said birthday, then the next day Usagi would still be left walking around thinking that no one seems to have remembered her birthday.
The point is if Usagi actually tries to lie here, she'll probably mess it up, with that said I give it roughly 70%+ odds that the moment Usagi states her bid Luna will immediately be able to tell whether Usagi is being truthful or not. Which makes sense when you consider that not only is Usagi vastly disadvantaged against Luna's comparative skill and experience, but that the entire point of the exercise is for Usagi to become better at both lying and spotting lies, actually winning liars dice is more of a side goal.
So the question then is less, 'how can Usagi win at liars dice', but rather, 'how can Usagi get better at intrigue faster?'
Simply put, she can improve with practice, both by lying and by watching someone lie. In other words, she'll improve the more she plays. (It is at the point in the exercise that I realised that I spent far too much time trying to figure out how win a game when that wasn't even really then main goal here.)
So the bet should be a lie, so Usagi can practice lying, but it also shouldn't be such an obvious lie that Luna will be forced to call Usagi on it whether she wants or not (So no guessing five or more faces basically). Thus Luna gets to make a bid, giving us a chance to read Luna, which is more practise then if we just immediately flub it...
[X][Bid] 2 dice of 1
A lie, but not an unbelievable one, plus I like this particular bid for the reasons listed above.
Side Note: If we assume that Luna can automatically tell a Usagi truth from a Usagi lie, then our best chances of winning would be to, funnily enough, have Usagi not look at her own dice at the start. After all any information Luna could derive from the bid would useless if Usagi herself doesn't know what she's bidding on. Really only useful for the first turn though and only if you want improve your odds against a telepath/mind reader/perfect lie detector.
Liars dice is ultimately a game of information warfare, trying to feed believable lies and unbelievable truths to your opponent, while at the same time trying to wring every drop of falsehoods and facts you can from what little information they give you...
I'm getting ahead of myself, back to basics. The main thing about Liars dice is that, like all social deduction games, it splits critical information between multiple parties. Liars dice is about as simple as you get with this concept, as it splits said information evenly between just two people.
To explain, there are ten dice in the game, of which Usagi knows the truth of five dice, while Luna knows the other five dice. So Usagi knows 50% of the critical information, while Luna holds the other 50%. An even playing field to start with, but if Usagi is able to raise her information percentage higher than Luna then she will be at a major advantage, while Luna will be attempting to do the same to gain said advantage for herself.
So, Usagi ideally wants to do two things when she bids. A) Create a situation where she is likely to gain critical information, and B) reduce Luna the ability to gain credible information from Usagi's bid.
To do this, Usagi could bid for 3 dice of 4, or 3 dice of 5. Both seem like fairly safe/good bets at first, Luna isn't likely to call such a bet if she has even a single 4 or 5 dice in her pool, as the chance of Usagi having the remaining dice would be too high with Luna's limited info, Luna not calling would then tell us that she probably has at least one of these dice, increasing Usagi's information percentage. But in reality this move is both suboptimal and surprisingly risky, as it gives Luna a chance to guess two of Usagi's dice in exchange for only getting one of Luna's, there's also the fact that if Luna doesn't have the third dice she might diced to call, as the odds of Usagi alone having three of the same dice face are rather low.
A much better move would be to bid 2 dice for 1. Here Luna is unlikely to call such a bid even if she had no 1 dice, as the odds of us having 2 1's isn't too unlikely, it is as mentioned earlier a believable lie. Luna then gets little to no information while also setting up a trap for future turns, if Luna starts counting on Usagi having 1's in her pool that she don't actually exist. It makes it more likely that Luna will call out higher numbers of 1's in the future if she has any in own her pool, since she'll think there's more 1's in play then there are, but it still doesn't lose Usagi much if Luna doesn't fall for it.
At least, that would be a better move if not for one element I've mostly ignored up till now, the human element. Or more specifically, the Usagi element.
Between her personality and negative intrigue score, its clear that Usagi is the kind of person who, if she tried to plan a surprise birthday party not only would the birthday boy/girl figure it out, but so would every household in a one mile radius and the local news. Someone could also plan a surprise birthday for Usagi, ask her what presents she would like the day before said birthday, then the next day Usagi would still be left walking around thinking that no one seems to have remembered her birthday.
The point is if Usagi actually tries to lie here, she'll probably mess it up, with that said I give it roughly 70%+ odds that the moment Usagi states her bid Luna will immediately be able to tell whether Usagi is being truthful or not. Which makes sense when you consider that not only is Usagi vastly disadvantaged against Luna's comparative skill and experience, but that the entire point of the exercise is for Usagi to become better at both lying and spotting lies, actually winning liars dice is more of a side goal.
So the question then is less, 'how can Usagi win at liars dice', but rather, 'how can Usagi get better at intrigue faster?'
Simply put, she can improve with practice, both by lying and by watching someone lie. In other words, she'll improve the more she plays. (It is at the point in the exercise that I realised that I spent far too much time trying to figure out how win a game when that wasn't even really then main goal here.)
So the bet should be a lie, so Usagi can practice lying, but it also shouldn't be such an obvious lie that Luna will be forced to call Usagi on it whether she wants or not (So no guessing five or more faces basically). Thus Luna gets to make a bid, giving us a chance to read Luna, which is more practise then if we just immediately flub it...
[X][Bid] 2 dice of 1
A lie, but not an unbelievable one, plus I like this particular bid for the reasons listed above.
Side Note: If we assume that Luna can automatically tell a Usagi truth from a Usagi lie, then our best chances of winning would be to, funnily enough, have Usagi not look at her own dice at the start. After all any information Luna could derive from the bid would useless if Usagi herself doesn't know what she's bidding on. Really only useful for the first turn though and only if you want improve your odds against a telepath/mind reader/perfect lie detector.
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- Location
- Attached to a wall
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X][Bid] 2 dice of 1
That seems like a big explanation, and I know nothing about this game, so I will trust that effort means minimal competence.
That seems like a big explanation, and I know nothing about this game, so I will trust that effort means minimal competence.
- Pronouns
- Mr
Oh right, the goal isn't to win per se but to get better at recognizing lies.
[X][Bid] 2 dice of 1
[X][Bid] 2 dice of 1
Liar's Dice is that old?
- Location
- Italy
ah, yes, the highly advanced/forbidden technique of going all in without watching one's cards/dice!
After all we just need to believe in the Heart of the
Probably doesn't really help with the intrigue part of the exercise though, or at least not after we have Usagi come up with it the first time as an interesting alternative strategy.
also, you convinced me! Really nice analysis
[X][Bid] 2 dice of 1
- Location
- Academy City
- Pronouns
- They
I mean, I can't really fault this analysis since I was purposefully also overly reductive in my analysis to avoid degenerate gamestates, but it's worth noting that this isn't, strictly speaking, true. The first bid being called out as a lie is, in fact, the safe option, irrespective of if you think they're lying, because even someone going about it honestly is probably wrong. Take my reccomended bid, where I have Usagi bidding 1; sure, this is the most likely individual possibility, but it's a plurality, not a majority. It's wrong 60% of the time. If you're trying to do social tricks, it's wrong even more often.
Which leads me to:
The question, then, is what do we want Usagi learning from liars dice. Do we want her working on data analysis, and genuinely guessing the most likely result? Social analysis, to call out Luna's claims and see which ones were true, and associate those with their tells? Her pokerface, and have her frequently give out surface-level plausible results that she knows are false to get her used to lying? Do we want her cheating, by trying to subtly edit her die rolls to "prove" luna wrong or by trying to catch a peak at Luna's dice? I think all of these are important to one extent or another, and all of them would be classified as intrigue. The question is which one we want Usagi practicing here; I think the last one is not ideal for instance, since this is a relatively poor way to practice those and that's a less important skillset for her atm, but besides that I think there's a fair argument to be made for any of them.
re: Side note. Bidding 2 on every dice and calling out every claim as a lie without looking at your dice does reduce how much you're losing to a mind reader by, but you're still going to lose in the long term to someone who is both good at the game and capable of reading your mind. In such a case, unless you're playing on a specifically short run of hands or your goal is to score as high as possible rather than maximize your chance of winning, it's better to try and read their face and actions to learn their dice, so neither of you are acting at an information advantage; of course, that's not so much a good strategy as least bad, since telepathy is just that big of an advantage here. A perfect lie detector is much less valuable / dangerous though, since by virtue of the game you can be confident you have chosen the best bid but nonetheless usually be wrong; it's actually possible to win against those, albeit still a disadvantage.
Cmd. Frost
The last one standing.
- Location
- The Summer Stretch
[X][Bid] 2 dice of 1
NaanContributor
Provider of delicious flatbread, and nothing else.
- Location
- Hawaii
Ah, ok. I was initially confused as to why people were only voting for number of dice without actually bidding on a particular face, and using Monty Hall probability calcs. Was wondering if it was under a slightly different rule set I wasn't used to, so hesitated to vote.
Speaking of rule variations, I have a couple other questions. You described how to do initial bids, but what are the restrictions on subsequent bids? I'm used to it being that you can increase the number of dice, the face number, or both, but you can't make a bid with a lower number of dice even if you increase the face. So if the previous bid was three 3s, you need to bid three of 4, 5, or 6, or at least four dice of any face.
Are you including the third option of "Spot On" with the other two options of Calling or increasing the Bid? It's a minor thing, and usually too risky to use anyway (I personally never take it), but it's something you can do when you think another person's Bid is exactly correct and don't want to risk a wrong Call or making a higher Bid.
Also, are you using the rule where anytime someone loses a round, they also lose one of their dice, and they are out when they lose their last die? This is a more significant rule to use or not, because the more you lose, the more of a disadvantage you're at for the rest of the game.
It's not that wrong by the rules of the game, because if there's at least that many dice of that particular face, then the Bid is correct. So a Bid of one die is really safe, even if you yourself don't even have one of that face and are just bluffing. In the opening of this game, feeding bad information to the opponent while still banking on a reasonably low number of dice is more valuable than worrying about probabilities of actually being correct.
[X][Bid] 2 dice of 1
- Location
- San Ramon, CA
[X][Bid] 2 dice of 1
FictionPack
Monochromatic Ursine
- Location
- Tennessee
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X][Bid] 2 dice of 1
Stare the cat down with the eyes of a snake!
Stare the cat down with the eyes of a snake!
Lunaryon
Dual Aurora Wave
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Given that I don't think I have even heard of the Spot On Option, that is very much not a thing, as for the rest - My general idea was to have this first hand handled by vote, and then there would be an opposed roll to see just how well you do, with various bonuses based on your actual bid.
Just to keep this from being like four or five updates in and of itself.
- Location
- Pittsburgh PA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[x][Bid] 2 dice of 3
NaanContributor
Provider of delicious flatbread, and nothing else.
- Location
- Hawaii
It very much is a thing, just not a rule variation that's always used, and probably wouldn't come up even if you did happen to be using it:
Wikipedia said:
FictionPack
Monochromatic Ursine
- Location
- Tennessee
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Location
- Academy City
- Pronouns
- They
On it.
Lunaryon
Dual Aurora Wave
- Pronouns
- She/Her
*facepalms* Here I am, having finished nearly the entire update, and as I am working on the Turn 2 stuff, I realize that part of the Asking about the Moon and Dark Kingdoms involves a chance of increasing Learning.
So I need another roll. I really need to work on my notations.
I need a d100 +2 DC: 59
So I need another roll. I really need to work on my notations.
I need a d100 +2 DC: 59