God's Imitator

Zheng Jie thought for a moment, ”In that case, it would be equivalent to increasing both risk and reward, right?

”If hidden players announce our community’s crime in the sixth round, then we win directly with full survival. But if hidden players put our crime toward the end for announcement, there would be relatively large risks.”

After serious consideration, Wang Yongxin said, ”But relatively speaking, I believe the possibility of hidden players announcing Officer Cao’s crime in the sixth round is greater.

”Actually, if hidden players could conduct sufficient consideration and comprehensively deduce various possible situations, they would realize that putting our community’s crime toward the end for announcement would make us more troublesome to deal with.

”But that’s still the problem: Lawyer Lin’s strategy actually also utilizes a brief window period, extremely compressing hidden players’ thinking time, so they’re more likely to make instinctive reactions.

”Let’s briefly review from the hidden players’ perspective:

”First, from the Gallery’s selection rules, generally speaking, the less intelligent and more extreme a community’s thinking, the more likely they are to get hidden identity.

”From Community 11’s actual performance, they indeed didn’t display very high wisdom. Relying on their advantageous identity, they single-mindedly extracted gold coins without leaving contingency plans for the possibility of ’field players fighting to mutual destruction.’

”So these hidden players very likely couldn’t consider all aspects thoroughly.

”After entering the second phase, they definitely knew immediately that they could decide the announcement order of these criminal files.”Then they would naturally reach a preliminary conclusion: whichever field community they wanted to target, they’d prioritize announcing that field community’s files.

”In the preparation phase before the second phase begins, Chen Peng’s file is announced, voting completes, then Lawyer Lin spends 30 gold coins to expose the truth.

”At this time, hidden players would realize that when the game ends, they’re already dead for sure.

”At this point, they must decide in a very short time whose file specifically to release in the sixth round.

”Because thinking time is very short and they’ve already internally fallen into despair and chaos, two thought patterns are more likely to occupy their brains:

”One is being extremely hateful toward our community. Out of the reason ’announce that community’s files to target which community,’ they directly announce our community’s crime.

”Two is wanting to drag all field players to accompany them in death, wanting to jointly implicate the most players. At this time, they should still directly announce our crime.

”Because thinking time is very limited, so the probability of them making this decision is still quite high.”

After serious consideration, Li Renshu said, ”But doing this would be equivalent to right at the start of the second phase, directly killing all hidden players indiscriminately without giving them any opportunity.”

Lin Sizhi nodded, ”Yes, I admit this might be somewhat cruel, but from the plot opening order in the first phase, we could actually already see these hidden players’ attitudes.

”Especially the fifth round directly pre-determining Community 12 as the privileged community already directly decided the game’s subsequent direction.

”So they also can’t be said to be very innocent.”

Everyone fell into silence.

This was a method, but the conditions for implementing it were indeed very harsh.

Not only must one realize the trap in the criminal file during the rehearsal from the start, but also realize hidden players’ existence, and seize the brief window period to make up one’s mind to kill them before the sixth round begins.

Moreover, this plan had some possibility of unexpected situations. At this time, sufficient on-the-spot adaptability would be needed to clean up the aftermath.

Otherwise, if things went awry, it could still induce very serious consequences.

Yang Yuting was somewhat shocked, ”This indeed is a viable solution.

”But wouldn’t this also fall into the God’s Imitator’s ’heart attack’ trap?

”Directly killing all hidden players at the slightest disagreement, then using death to coerce all field players, wouldn’t this also destroy mutual trust between various communities?”

Lin Sizhi shook his head, ”Actually, it’s okay.

”Because this method doesn’t only benefit our one community.

”The ’audience’ are also beneficiaries.

”First, after other communities confirm they have no death-avoidance opportunities, their behaviors of price gouging and draining the audience’s gold coins would be limited to a certain extent.

”Having death-avoidance opportunities versus not having them, people’s behavioral logic is completely different.

”Second, the number of plots in the field far exceeds the number of field players and audience members.

”There are 81 plots total, while there are only 30 audience members. One shelter per person is already enough.

”The reason price gouging occurred was because field players united to limit supply, artificially creating scarcity.

”We only need to release small amounts of low-priced shelters each round to cut off other communities’ behaviors.

”As for whether they hate us or not doesn’t matter. Anyway, the final vote will very likely be cast for us anyway.

”Moreover, hidden players’ gold coins and the gold coins from bidding on plots will also all be evenly divided. Audience members and field players can all obtain some compensation before leaving.

”I believe, from the ’heart attack’ perspective, ’cross-stance community cooperation’ is better than ’same-stance community cooperation.’”

Wei Yinzhang nodded, ”Yes, indeed so.”

So-called ’same-stance community cooperation’ was similar to cooperation between Community 12 and Community 15. Both were ’field players’ with common interests, so they cooperated to drain the audience’s gold coins.

This was also a type of cooperation, but this cooperation still couldn’t escape the God’s Imitator’s heart attack.

Because such cooperation was built on game mechanisms. Game mechanisms gave them common interests, so they established cooperation.

But next time, as long as game mechanisms no longer supported their cooperation, they definitely wouldn’t cooperate anymore.

Only ’cross-stance cooperation’ could break free from the God’s Imitator’s heart attack and maintain cross-community cooperation.

For example, cooperation between ’field players’ and ’audience.’

Field players’ interests conflicted with the audience. But if communities serving as field players chose to protect the audience’s interests, then this transcended game mechanism limitations.

Next time, even if game mechanisms didn’t support it, the two communities might also forcibly achieve cooperation and find optimal solutions both could accept.

This also meant the God’s Imitator’s attempt to induce player cooperation or mutual harm through mechanisms failed.

Zheng Jie felt very regretful, ”Ah, such a pity we were too dumb and couldn’t think of this method.”

Yang Yuting also felt somewhat dejected, ”I wonder if Officer Cao thought of this method or not.”

After a moment of silence, Cai Zhiyuan said, ”I think, even if Officer Cao thought of this possibility, he probably wouldn’t consider actually using it.

”After all, people are different from each other.”

Everyone nodded, recognizing this statement.

Clearly, whether a strategy could be executed didn’t only depend on whether players could think of this strategy in a short time, but also depended on players’ personalities and behavioral habits.

Most of the time, Cao Haichuan would still choose to counterattack later, using checks and balances to solve problems, and rarely adopted proactive strategies while risking huge dangers. Methods like bluffing were even more rarely used.

Moreover, as a police officer, it was also very difficult for him to make up his mind right from the start to kill hidden players indiscriminately.

Even though these hidden players had already displayed some tendencies during the first phase’s plot bidding process.