Humans are usually hit hard enough without cylon interference just by the mistrust among themselves. I have no need to further decrease my chances at a human win by sabotaging my own team for the first half of the game. The chances of turning into a cylon during the sleeper phase significantly smaller than not turning, so by your cold, hard logic it is senseless to hold back before sleeper phase.
Advice for a group where the humans never lose.
I have to agree with Bombur and for pretty much the same reasons. It is illogical to play sub-par because you believe you MIGHT become a Cylon one day.
Well, their problem was that humans win all the time. Which is no wonder if everybody works for a human win, regardless he might be hindered by it later. Especially if the cylon loyalty cards came out only in the sleeper agent phase.
The chance to turn into cylon in a 5 player game is 40% (more if you play Boomer or Baltar) which is indeed smaller than the 60% chance to end up being human, still, not an insignificant probability.
Nagypapi said:
The chance to turn into cylon in a 5 player game is 40% (more if you play Boomer or Baltar) which is indeed smaller than the 60% chance to end up being human, still, not an insignificant probability.
Assuming no Baltar or Boomer, the chance to become a cylon at some point in the game is indeed 40% before any cylon cards have been delt. However, after you look at your first loyalty card and see a 'you can never know for sure', you then know you only have a 22% chance of becoming a cylon. (2 cylon cards left out of 9 cards you haven't seen)
If you realize that there's at least one cylon already out there, this chance drops to 11%.
I would say it's ussually in a human's interest to give it 100% for his cause.
Nagypapi said:
Well, their problem was that humans win all the time. Which is no wonder if everybody works for a human win, regardless he might be hindered by it later. Especially if the cylon loyalty cards came out only in the sleeper agent phase.
They're doing more than simply working for a human win. They've added their own pro-human meta-game on top of it all.
LikeTheWhirlwind said:
Hey all,
Looking for a bit of advice. My group has played about 20-30 games, and aside from our first few games, the Cylons NEVER win. It's been close a few times, but for the most part the humans sail to victory.
My only theory is that the humans play too well. We metagame every aspect of the game. We almost never overshoot a crisis card. We root out the Cylons fairly early. Even if the Admiral or President is a Cylon, we usually get them brigged fairly quickly. Even if a Cylon manages to stay unrevealed for a while, we usually root him out by counting negative destiny cards. Even with both Cylons revealed, dumping crisis after crisis on us, the humans still manage to win. When we have a human president, the quorum cards usually get used quite frequentely to check loyalty cards, brig cylons and raise morale up to ridiculous amounts.
I notice in the victory count thread that in other groups, the Cylons win the majority of the times. I need some help figuring out what we're doing different.
We've looked over the rules and the FAQ many many times. We're playing the game correctly. We follow the secrecy rules to the 'T'. Cylons honestly try to cast doubt onto other people. But their lie typically gets figured out rather quickly. We've tried 3,4,5 and 6 players games. It never seems to go any better for the humans. Even when both Cylon players get their cards before the sleeper phase, they never seem to win. We keep a very tight eye on cards that go into skill checks and they never seem to get away with playing many negative cards.
Does anyone have any advice? Help! My players are getting frustrated. We love the game, but some games its not even close, and the Cylons waste two hours of their lives drawing crisis cards and activating raiders.
Thanks in advance,
-LTW
ok with out reading the rest of the thread (sorry if its been mentioned) but your problem is painfully obvious....your CYLON PLAYERS SUCK.
cylon players need to be smart. you can't be throwing negative cards at crisis cards.
Cylons almost want to help the humans in the first half of the game.
If any resource is in the blue after the 2nd draw of loyalty cards the sympathizer IS a cylon....in a 5 player game this makes it 3 cylongs against 2 humans.
if any resource is red, then the sympathizer is human...in a 5 player game this makes it 3 hamans against 2 cylons.
SO the cylon needs to manage the game, lie cheat steal, do what ever it takes to (now here's the hard part) get a resource down...but keep it in the blue. If that resource is getting close you better do all you can to make sure you pass that crisis card.
if you dump negative after negative card onti a crisis card...of course they are going to be found out. mix it up too....throw in one negative one, next time throw in a posative, next time throw in a negative and a posative one...what ever you can to throw people off the trail....lie about who you think is a clyon.
One crazy way to fix it would be to have your friends over for a game of BSG is not not put any cylon cards into the loyalty deck. Of course this is silly, but one of my friends "forgot" to put the cylon cards in their first game, and the humans still lost becuase everyone was so paranoid it drove them crazy.
this is very much a social game. if you metagame and don't play the MIND GAME especially as a cylon...of course the humans will always win.
and I find the opposite...good clyons will almost NEVER loose. but its always close in our group....if they humans do with they win with 1 point in some resource left.
I also try not to play this game very much....if you play this game all the time, you will pick up on the "Poker faces" and it won't be fun anymore.
KAGE13 said:
ok with out reading the rest of the thread (sorry if its been mentioned) but your problem is painfully obvious....your CYLON PLAYERS SUCK.
cylon players need to be smart. you can't be throwing negative cards at crisis cards.
Cylons almost want to help the humans in the first half of the game.
If any resource is in the blue after the 2nd draw of loyalty cards the sympathizer IS a cylon....in a 5 player game this makes it 3 cylongs against 2 humans.
if any resource is red, then the sympathizer is human...in a 5 player game this makes it 3 hamans against 2 cylons.
SO the cylon needs to manage the game, lie cheat steal, do what ever it takes to (now here's the hard part) get a resource down...but keep it in the blue. If that resource is getting close you better do all you can to make sure you pass that crisis card.
if you dump negative after negative card onti a crisis card...of course they are going to be found out. mix it up too....throw in one negative one, next time throw in a posative, next time throw in a negative and a posative one...what ever you can to throw people off the trail....lie about who you think is a clyon.
One crazy way to fix it would be to have your friends over for a game of BSG is not not put any cylon cards into the loyalty deck. Of course this is silly, but one of my friends "forgot" to put the cylon cards in their first game, and the humans still lost becuase everyone was so paranoid it drove them crazy.
this is very much a social game. if you metagame and don't play the MIND GAME especially as a cylon...of course the humans will always win.
and I find the opposite...good clyons will almost NEVER loose. but its always close in our group....if they humans do with they win with 1 point in some resource left.
I also try not to play this game very much....if you play this game all the time, you will pick up on the "Poker faces" and it won't be fun anymore.
1. No offense, but there have been a number of suggestions for the cylons to up their game. Furthermore, there has been a fair bit of advice about the evasion of card counting.
2. Cylon players sometimes have to throw in negative. Sometimes, the humans can coast to victory if everyone plays nice and the cylons wait for their big break that never comes. If everyone is co-operating, aren't unrevealed cylons just like humans?
3. In a five player game, there is no sympathizer. In a five player game, there are always two cylons and three humans humans.
4. Concerning sympathizers, if the humans want to run a resource into the red, they can and will. Fuel is the easiest, and least punishable. Food is the next safest while Morale is the next easiest, and Population is neither easy nor safe.
Why not just toss in an extra You are a Cylon card, without telling anyone next time you play 6. 50/50 ought to help the Cylons.
Verkan said:
Why not just toss in an extra You are a Cylon card, without telling anyone next time you play 6. 50/50 ought to help the Cylons.
It seems like a good idea except for the bolded part. That part could lead to an out of game ass beating.
Forgive me if someones already said this, but once you have two revield cylon players they can deal way more damage then losing skill checks. Yes I understand good coordinated humans can do well but a well placed super crisis right after a big drain on their skill cards and your in major business. I've been human over 8 games in a row and have the most experience and Humans have lost all 8 times, mostly because the of what they cylons do AFTER they out them selves.
Thoughts
When someone looks at the back of a civilian ship, he only says "a lot" or "a little" resources. We've learned that "a little" typically means zero, or morale.
This, IMO, is a warning sign: Due to familiarity and social norming, your group has turned what appear to be vague phrases into a very precise code. You may be following the letter of the secrecy rules, but you're (inadvertently) violating the spirit.
When someone says they're going to play a high amount, we usually make a rule that everyone else should throw in only low or medium amounts. This makes it easy to tell if the person that said "I'm throwing in a high amount" was lying.
Here, again, we see social norming. Your group has clearly developed a highly robust set of protocols. Those acting outside of the protocols are easy to detect, particularly since you're tracking everything with notepads.
For some reason, however, your cylons haven't figured out how to subvert the protocols. Part of the problem appears to be that your group is so confident that their protocols are robust and perfect, that the cylons don't dare to poke their heads up. Or, if they do, they poke their heads up in all of the ways that your group has trained itself to expect. Your cylons need to start thinking outside of the box. Based on the sampling you've provided, several obvious ideas present themselves.
(1) You say that when someone says "high amount" the rest of you only throw in low or medium amounts. (Well, again, you've got your personal code subverting the secrecy rules, but putting that aside...) The obvious solution is to actually throw in a high amount... and also throw in a counter-acting negative amount in colors that could belong to multiple people contributing ot the skill check. Looking at the resulting revelation, you can't figure out what happened: Did they sabotage the results like I describe? Or did one of those low/medium blokes actually toss in negative cards?
(2) Yeah, it's generally pretty easy to tell when you've got a cylon working against you. The trick for the cylon is to pick one or two other players and make sure that their "guilt" is always shared. A, B, and C all have blue cards. And whenever A, B, and C all throw-in on a skill check where blue is negative, there's extra blue in the deck.
(3) Card counting the destiny deck is nice. The cylon should probably try using that to his advantage. Say you've got a skill check where 50% of the remaining destiny deck is positive. The cylon should toss a single high negative card into the mix. If they get lucky, at least one of the destiny cards will be positive. Everybody assumes that the negative card they threw came from the destiny deck. Not only have they avoided suspicion, but now everyone's card counting has been thrown off. Eventually the truth will come out, but by then the true trail is completely muddied.
(Although how you're doing this hyper-accurate card counting even in the absence of cylon interference isn't clear to me. If you've got a skill check with three or four positive skills and the destiny deck provides positive cards, how exactly do you know which color cards came from the destiny deck? You can certainly ballpark it, but there's no certainty to be had.)
Truthfully everyone here as said ditch the notepads, and thats exactly what you need to do. You keep defending it, and I guess if you want to let this group never really experience the game, than be my guest.
Second, you and all the other Cylons need to learn to use these quirks your play group has developed against them. They are perdictable, very, very perdictable, and as a Cylon that should mean easy to kill. Im sure if you just thought about it for a little bit, you could find all sorts of ways to use how perdicable and reliant they are on trust of one another to rip them apart. I have myself.
After a few games of using all their own trusted guidelines against them, and making them doubt those guidelines they will start to abandon them, and in doing that, they will get easier and easier to defeat as a cylon.
But first and foremost, ditch the notepads. Then you guys need to just stop saying "alot, little or medium." You abused and broke that rule. You are not following the secrecy rules to a "T" if you have developed a code where little means 1 to 0, medium means 2 to 4 and alot means only put in 1 or nothing, I got this one. Your breaking the game, and since you abused it, you need to stop using it. Go to either, I can help, or I cant help.
If that doesnt help, then drop the sympathizer, and put in another full cylon after the sleeper phase.
If that doesnt work, get a new group.
LikeTheWhirlwind said:
I need some help figuring out what we're doing different.
You are writing down every single thing that happens. You are counting cards. That is what you are doing differently.
We've looked over the rules and the FAQ many many times. We're playing the game correctly.
If you were playing the game correctly, you would not be keeping track of every single thing that happened in-game on a piece of paper.
We follow the secrecy rules to the 'T'.
"Following the secrecy rules" doesn't really count for much when everyone is counting cards anyway.
Lemmiwinks said:
Truthfully everyone here as said ditch the notepads, and thats exactly what you need to do. You keep defending it, and I guess if you want to let this group never really experience the game, than be my guest.
Second, you and all the other Cylons need to learn to use these quirks your play group has developed against them. They are perdictable, very, very perdictable, and as a Cylon that should mean easy to kill. Im sure if you just thought about it for a little bit, you could find all sorts of ways to use how perdicable and reliant they are on trust of one another to rip them apart. I have myself.
After a few games of using all their own trusted guidelines against them, and making them doubt those guidelines they will start to abandon them, and in doing that, they will get easier and easier to defeat as a cylon.
But first and foremost, ditch the notepads. Then you guys need to just stop saying "alot, little or medium." You abused and broke that rule. You are not following the secrecy rules to a "T" if you have developed a code where little means 1 to 0, medium means 2 to 4 and alot means only put in 1 or nothing, I got this one. Your breaking the game, and since you abused it, you need to stop using it. Go to either, I can help, or I cant help.
If that doesnt help, then drop the sympathizer, and put in another full cylon after the sleeper phase.
If that doesnt work, get a new group.
Well, in all fairness, notepads are hardly necessary for counting. We're talking 5 distinct element types, 10 elements total. If you draw 5 crises with skill checks and none of them needed red or blue (and that's not all that rare), it's pretty easy to notice if there were more than two reds or blues in any given run of ten destiny cards. It's just that easy. A clever cylon would throw in small yellows/greens against when the crises that don't use those colours come up; if you do that, then the assumption might be that the reds/blues that counted towards were not from destiny (and the yellow/green were destiny), giving the next red/blue sabotage a free pass. In any case, it throws doubt into the counting. Secondly, it was never made clear what happens when someone sabotages purple, despite the fact I asked the question. Practically everyone and their uncle draws purple. It's not bad to pick up purple with consolidate power.
I certainly agree with the secrecy suggestions; the last faq has a provision saying that there is no 'medium', you say a lot, or a little. Secondly, if you're an unrevealed cylon, you can always say you don't have 'a lot' when it comes time to put in 'a lot'.
LikeTheWhirlwind hasn't responded in a while, so my guess is that they've given it up in any case.
Playing good combination of investigation commity, presidential order and usage of possibility of choosing crisis card (Laura skills) made game very difficult for Cylons.
Investigation commity prevents from sabotage during crisis card and make human very easy not to throw to much cards.
Presidential order make very easy to use quorum cards and use personal skills.
Choosing crisis card prevent from large crisis.
Revealed cylons has very limited possibility of attacking.
After 5th or 6th game I'm wondering if it would be possible to win by cylons in the future...
Playing good combination of investigation commity, presidential order and usage of possibility of choosing crisis card (Laura skills) made game very difficult for Cylons.
These sound great and it is something to try and do, but it fails the instant that the President is a cylon. It also fails if you get significant Cylon assaults as you waste time ordering the president rather than pilots, and a focussed president like Laura Roslin means no backup options - it costs cards for her to use locations - thats cards for skill checks lost and card spent to get the Quorum cards - remember that Roslin is likely to be a major source of politics cards and so the Investigative Committee cards which you do not want to be discarding. If Roslin is being exec ordered to get Quorum cards and getting them on her turn that is 6 skill cards lost - she only gets 5 per turn. There are big vulnerabilities to this strategy which the Cylons CAN exploit.
Investigation commity prevents from sabotage during crisis card and make human very easy not to throw to much cards.
They also can lose you the skill checks if used too often. While providing control of a skill check the Investigative Committee cards are the 3 4 and 5value Politics cards - so very often needed and you lose powerful numbers.
Revealed cylons has very limited possibility of attacking. After 5th or 6th game I'm wondering if it would be possible to win by cylons in the future...
I've lost count of the number of games I have played and the cylons still win frequently. The problem is this the game initially penalises heavily poor human play and the inertia is with the cylons. This gives a period of time in the learning curve where the game is very forgiving of poor cylon play, for example too many players (In my opinion) try and stay as a hidden cylon as long as possible rather than reveal and start acting - leaving themselves in the end game scrabbling to do anything once revealed as the game goes to conclusion around them. Then you get a time where the players know how to play as humans and work together - at this point the game is unforgiving of poor cylon play - you have to get beyond that and so the cylons need to learn how to play well as cylons in the face of organised humanity. Thats when the game gets REALLY tense to play 
myrm said:
I've lost count of the number of games I have played and the cylons still win frequently. The problem is this the game initially penalises heavily poor human play and the inertia is with the cylons. This gives a period of time in the learning curve where the game is very forgiving of poor cylon play, for example too many players (In my opinion) try and stay as a hidden cylon as long as possible rather than reveal and start acting - leaving themselves in the end game scrabbling to do anything once revealed as the game goes to conclusion around them. Then you get a time where the players know how to play as humans and work together - at this point the game is unforgiving of poor cylon play - you have to get beyond that and so the cylons need to learn how to play well as cylons in the face of organised humanity. Thats when the game gets REALLY tense to play
I agree, especially with the cylon's dilemma of choosing to reveal. Many cylons try to stay hidden as long as possible, that's when you can do the most damage. But, in their attempts to remain anonymous, they fail to do the damage required.
Basic complaint: It's easy to find the cylons and there's not too much they can do in the face of scrupulous play. Is that what I'm hearing?
It sounds like the expansion is for you.
Just try escaping New Caprica! The cylons will mutilate you, revealed or not, unless you get a pilot up there STAT, or someone who can fire the Pegasus guns effectively. And even then it's iffy. If your Admiral manages to remain as a hidden Cylon, he can end the game at his leisure. Or leave somebody in Detention, harder to get out of than the brig. Or only play with the hostile Cylon agendas. If the "sympathizer" isn't on your side, that's sure to hurt.
Investigative Committees will no long do all of the work for you. Treachery cards are sure to throw off your math, at least a little.
Oh, and ditch the notepads, if you haven't gotten that hint yet. The expansion, while not without it's problems, has a lot going for it. Maybe that will be sufficient to shake you from your established pattern?
flamethrower49 said:
Basic complaint: It's easy to find the cylons and there's not too much they can do in the face of scrupulous play. Is that what I'm hearing?
It sounds like the expansion is for you.
Just try escaping New Caprica! The cylons will mutilate you, revealed or not, unless you get a pilot up there STAT, or someone who can fire the Pegasus guns effectively. And even then it's iffy. If your Admiral manages to remain as a hidden Cylon, he can end the game at his leisure. Or leave somebody in Detention, harder to get out of than the brig. Or only play with the hostile Cylon agendas. If the "sympathizer" isn't on your side, that's sure to hurt.
Investigative Committees will no long do all of the work for you. Treachery cards are sure to throw off your math, at least a little.
Oh, and ditch the notepads, if you haven't gotten that hint yet. The expansion, while not without it's problems, has a lot going for it. Maybe that will be sufficient to shake you from your established pattern?
Eh, being an unrevealed cylon isn't all that hard to play. You have to balance effective damage against exactly how obvious you are being. Mostly, I find that players do not know when to pick their battles. Cylons who do their utmost to damage food and fuel (unless victory is within sight) are going to fail. Generally speaking, it's pretty easy to ignore resource drops from fuel and food. If food/water shortage comes up, players tend to pick the discard option. There isn't much you can do to food beyond that. Fuel is pretty similar, there's little you can do to actually make the humans lose by fuel. Cylons ought to be sabotaging skill checks that lower population and morale.
Secondly, when the crises are simply not coming up cylon, there's no point in staying unrevealed. Everyone has played in that situation where every human player has 7-10 cards in hand and simply launches a scout every turn so that the hardest crises (and those crises without jump tracks) are skipped. Waiting for your 'big break' in a game like this is like waiting for Christmas: it might happen once a year. It's in those games where you have to reveal and get on to Caprica to find the hard choices.
I've had numerous games where cylons plot and connive and sabotage all the wrong things and end up paying for it when the humans win the game with 5 of each resource or when the humans simply coast to victory because a cylon waited forever for their big break.
myrm said:
Playing good combination of investigation commity, presidential order and usage of possibility of choosing crisis card (Laura skills) made game very difficult for Cylons.
These sound great and it is something to try and do, but it fails the instant that the President is a cylon. It also fails if you get significant Cylon assaults as you waste time ordering the president rather than pilots, and a focussed president like Laura Roslin means no backup options - it costs cards for her to use locations - thats cards for skill checks lost and card spent to get the Quorum cards - remember that Roslin is likely to be a major source of politics cards and so the Investigative Committee cards which you do not want to be discarding. If Roslin is being exec ordered to get Quorum cards and getting them on her turn that is 6 skill cards lost - she only gets 5 per turn. There are big vulnerabilities to this strategy which the Cylons CAN exploit.
Two yellow player resolve the problem.
myrm said:
Investigation commity prevents from sabotage during crisis card and make human very easy not to throw to much cards.
They also can lose you the skill checks if used too often. While providing control of a skill check the Investigative Committee cards are the 3 4 and 5value Politics cards - so very often needed and you lose powerful numbers.
Similar to above: to politician resolve the problem.
myrm said:
Revealed cylons has very limited possibility of attacking. After 5th or 6th game I'm wondering if it would be possible to win by cylons in the future...
I've lost count of the number of games I have played and the cylons still win frequently. The problem is this the game initially penalises heavily poor human play and the inertia is with the cylons. This gives a period of time in the learning curve where the game is very forgiving of poor cylon play, for example too many players (In my opinion) try and stay as a hidden cylon as long as possible rather than reveal and start acting - leaving themselves in the end game scrabbling to do anything once revealed as the game goes to conclusion around them. Then you get a time where the players know how to play as humans and work together - at this point the game is unforgiving of poor cylon play - you have to get beyond that and so the cylons need to learn how to play well as cylons in the face of organised humanity. Thats when the game gets REALLY tense to play
Hope so! 
TST said:
Two yellow player resolve the problem.
Actually it doesn't really - In any game you should have some measure of cover for any colour (3 player it gets hard) so the problem I identified is based on the context of having that cover already. It also doesnt change the fact that using this strategy still does take out one entire player card set which you will need - even if its as simple as stripping Declare Emergency and Exec Order out of Roslin's hand - which is a vulnerability. This game is well balanced and to heavily focus on any area you will lose out elsewhere - you get a similar effect if you go for lots of flyers - the cylons need to identify the weak spots and hit them - thats the skill of playing Cylon. Nor does having cover sole the problem of a Cylon in the Strategy - if you are reliant on Roslin or her cover being human (or indeed anyone in any strategy) you run into problems if either of them go Toaster. Single strategy focuses in this game are inherent unsafe, even if potentially powerful when they work.
Anyone else have as many problems witht he quoting system as I seem to?
myrm said:
Anyone else have as many problems witht he quoting system as I seem to?
Yes, it works 'strange'.
myrm said:
TST said:
Two yellow player resolve the problem.
Actually it doesn't really - In any game you should have some measure of cover for any colour (3 player it gets hard) so the problem I identified is based on the context of having that cover already. It also doesnt change the fact that using this strategy still does take out one entire player card set which you will need - even if its as simple as stripping Declare Emergency and Exec Order out of Roslin's hand - which is a vulnerability. This game is well balanced and to heavily focus on any area you will lose out elsewhere - you get a similar effect if you go for lots of flyers - the cylons need to identify the weak spots and hit them - thats the skill of playing Cylon. Nor does having cover sole the problem of a Cylon in the Strategy - if you are reliant on Roslin or her cover being human (or indeed anyone in any strategy) you run into problems if either of them go Toaster. Single strategy focuses in this game are inherent unsafe, even if potentially powerful when they work.
Of course there are vurnabilities of this strategy - I don't claim this is 100% success way of playing. But as I mentioned previously - it's hard to play for Cylons if human players use Executive Order and Committy cards. I think that the only strategy in that situation is reveal as soon as possible. But I'm noobie:)
Somewhere on the forum or FFG page I have seen "strategy for cylons" or similar document - do you know where can I find it? Or it was just a dream?