Little Red Book #1: Swapping Statues (I)

by SyxP

It is important to have a Strategy before you play. When first starting out, a lot of people complain that there is simply too much information. This can be attributed to lack of a plan, a simple game plan which you have predetermine on how to identify the Spy. If you lack a Strategy before you begin, you will feel clueless and lost. (A lot of people realize this implicitly while learning. In my opinion, this is less efficient than explicitly knowing.) This begs the question, how should one devise a strategy? For this, we employ the idea of motifs. Motifs are common themes which are present in many strategies. By studying motifs, you can better think of strategies suitable for oneself and effectively use them.

The first motif you will learn is the concept of “Camping”. “Camping” is a very basic idea. If you know that the Spy must do a mission, then by simply watching out for the mission, you would be able to identify the Spy. There seems to be some initial avoidance to doing this for a Beginner Sniper, as it might seem unfair or overpowered. But this is indeed the basic stepping stone where everything is based upon. From the motif, we can notice two key important parts for it to be successful. Firstly, you must know a mission where the Spy must attempt. This is easily dealt with as you play Beginner Ballroom, where you know the Spy must attempt the four stated missions. The second is that you can notice every single time the Spy does that mission. This is however not as simple and will be the topic for discussion this lesson. In the four missions available, swapping statues is actually the easier to track and will be our focus for today.

Swapping statues is considered a hard tell mission, which means that there is a visible indication to the exact person who has done it. If a mission is not a hard tell mission, it is considered a soft tell mission. Hard tell missions go hand-in-hand with the motif of “Camping”. In this case, you can identify the exact person who has swap the statue as you can see the statue morph while the culprit is holding onto it. Moreover, the Statues would otherwise remain unchanged. This means we can attempt to memorize the Statues initially, followed by a check after any partygoer visit the statue. If the statue has changed, the person who last visited that Statue is the Spy.

This allow us to devise Strategy A which goes as such:

Step 1 | After the map just loaded, memorize the 6 Statues in Beginner Ballroom.
Step 2 | Check the Statues after a partygoer leaves after visiting. If they have been changed, go to Step 4.
Step 3 | Repeat Step 2 until the map timeouts.
Step 4| Shoot the last person who visited the changed Statue.

After every strategy we devise, we have to consider how effective it is and it’s limitations. One key limitation is in our ability to carry out Step 1. This is explored in Exercise 1.1.3. There are no other clear limitations we can see for now but more possibilities are explored in Exercise 1.1.5. However, we can consider the effectiveness of this strategy easily. Our premise of the motif is that the Spy must do the mission. This is indeed the case on Beginner Ballroom. Hence, this is a fool-proof way of ensuring that we will identify who he/she is. This is because if the Spy does not complete the mission, the map will simply timeout and the Spy would lose anyway.

Exercises Set 1.1
1) Classify the other 3 missions available in Beginner Ballroom (Contact Double Agent, Transferring Microfilm and Bug the Ambassador) by determining if they are hard tell missions or soft tell missions.
2) Devise a strategy by applying the motif “Camping” to the mission Bug the Ambassador. Do not concern yourself over whether the limitations or the effectiveness of this Strategy.
3) There are only 3 different Statue types. Use this information to optimize the step of Memorizing the Statues in Strategy A.
4) Now that we have discuss Strategy A, it is important to put this into practice. Play a few games against someone of similar skill level on Beginner Ballroom. Attempt to carry out Strategy A and prevent the Spy from winning.
5*) Once you have shot the Spy consistently for Beginner Ballroom by camping Statues. The Spy may adapt and try to thwart your plan by changing when they decide to swap. Determine the changes that the Spy had made and suggest possible modifications to Strategy A to locate the Spy.
6*) There is something known as Green Action Tests which might render Strategy A ineffective. Green Action Tests are discussed in Lesson 5. For those who know what they are, consider how this affects Strategy A, and what changes have to be made to accommodate Green Tests.
7*) Use the strategy derived in Exercise 1.1.6 in a couple of games against other people. Attempt to execute the Strategy and prevent the Spy from winning.