This pet project is trying to find out who will dominate in a game called Werewolves(狼人杀).
Specifically, I try to look at the winning share under different settings with different roles in the game. As I wrapper up later, I realized that only the setting A can be simulated in a random manner. Under other settings, the game strategies are totally different. That is the reason I intended to do 3 settings but ended up with just the first one. I will talk about the 3 settings afterwards.
Noticably, Werewolves is not so popular in north America. For those who have no idea what I am talking about, check this out as a start: http://www.playwerewolf.co/rules
On top of this, I introduce you a broader range of role characters that I am intereted in. Heads-up, sometimes I misspell werewolf as wolf.
The Villagers: every Peter living around the corner on your street. They are really good person but know nothing literally.
The regular werewolves: they must agree to kill one person per night. They are not entitled with other talents like their king but they are able to hide their identity among the good.
The Seer: one who can check if one player is good or bad per night.
The Witch: one who has two potions, one to resurrect, the other one to kill. She can resurrect the person who is killed during the same night when she is waken up but she can not use this potion on herself after the first night. She can put one death to anyone she wants.
The Guardian: one who can protect a person from being killed only by werewolves. He cannot protect exactly the same person two nights in a row.
The Dolt: one who can reveal his character to save his own life only after he is expelled. After doing this, he loses the right to vote for expulsion but can speak as usual.
The Hunter: one who can reveal his character only after he is killed by werewolves or expelled. After doing this, he can shot one person to death.
The Werewolf King: one who can reveal his character anytime during the daytime before expulsion takes place. After doing this, he can put his claws into one person to kill him/her and itself at the same time and night falls again.
Next, I will briefly talk about the rules to win. There are two sides of people in the game, good and bad. Good guys include villagers and everyone in the previous part except Wolf King. Bad guys have normal werewolves and their king. For the good to win, they need to kick every bad guy out of the game. For the bad to win, their either slaughter the normal villagers or eat all of the good and functional guys (like the Seer and the Witch etc.). There 12 players in one game. Four are bad, four are villagers, and the other four are functional. 8 good guys in total.
What I will do is to have a good and solid sense of under which setting the bad are stronger. I will just use a random number generator as my major tool to explore. I will add more reality into the model gradually if I have more time. NOTE that this game is really not this simple. But my observation is that when the players are not that experienced and shrewd, for the good side to win, a random choice to kill and expel beats a situation with a whole bunch of discussions and reasoning.
There are three settings I am interested in. A) a werewolf king leads three werewolf buddies against 4 villagers and Seer, Witch, Guardian, Hunter. B) no king but 4 werewolves against the same good people in A. C) no king but 4 wolves against 4 villagers led by Seer, Witch, Guardian, Dolt.
A standard setting is C in that the game is very balanced. But The Guardian is a very cool role to have unlike the seemingly useless Dolt. The Guardian is clearly more powerful than Dolt because he can protect 2 or 3 lives. This gives the good more time to find out the wolf gang. But this leads to a disadvantage on the bad. So the King is introduced to make the bad stronger so the game can be more balanced. I would love to compare what happens between B and C to see how the introduction of Guardian can affect the win share of the good. Also, from what I have played, there are different starting points in setting A that lead to totally different paths, experiences, and to-win strategies. Especially a start that the King and the Seer die together leaves the good a very uncertain and blurred future since the Seer is almost the only source from which the bad can be identified.
I will only focus on the setting A along different paths for the reasons I stated before.
Setting A: 3 regular wolves, 1 wolf king, 4 villagers with the Seer, the Witch, the Guardian, and the Hunter on the good side.
In this situation, the most common strategy for the bad is that the king will declare that he is the true Seer against the true one. After indentifying the Seer, the King takes the Seer to grave with itself together. Then there are 10 players alive. There are three cases to consider, I) the Seer found a non-king werewolf and everybody knew it. II) the Seer found the king. III) the Seer justified a good person.
Clearly, under I, the exposed werewolf will be expelled next day which is the worst for the bad. II is the best for the bad. III is in middle. Let’s start in order.
Another split of game path is whether the Witch uses her resurrection potion in the first night. I will denote that as 1 or 2 in the beginning of each situation.
Similarly, whether the Seer is killed in the first night is very important. I disregard the possibility that Seer is killed at the first place in part because if the Seer is dead, the good is in very bad situation and the bad is obviously on upside.
I1) the Seer found a non-king werewolf and everybody knew it, the Witch chose not to heal unless she is the one being killed
I2) the Seer found a non-king werewolf and everybody knew it, the Witch chose to heal in first round
II2) the Seer found the King werewolf
III2) the Seer found a good person marked as gold
I will paste the codes here for you to look, just click the link. I only include the code for III2) or it could be very redundant. To realize different paths, just do some minor changes to the code.
I will paste the final results here:
Out of 100000 games, these are how many times the bad wins or loses. This is well in line with the intuitions. Spotting the King does not help the good anyway. Spotting a werewolf will give good people an huge advantage since there will be only 2 bad guys and 7 good guys. Giving out a gold helps the good the exclude a good person but there are still 3 bad ones hidden out there. If the Seer is very lucky, he will raise the possibility to win by 14%.
This project is only a personal toy. Any comment is welcome.
