I disagree. As a sage, It would have been suicide for me to scream to everyone my findings. Of course I wanted to disguise myself seeming to be just a bandwagoner! Why would I paint a big red target on myself?! Read the FAQ for the sage. What exactly does "communicate wisely", "if you say Hey I'm a sage, you might die!" mean? Without PMs, you are cutting off his hands and feet before even starting the game.
Absolutely not. You can just press hard on your guilties or defend your innocents or just come out and rely on the doctor or just die in order to get a kill.
Of course politics and influence had to be used, both in public and in private. Again, why would we reveal our cards when we know there are three assassins in our midst? The only way for diplomats to win is with their sage convincing the others he is right, unless they get downright lucky.
No. I've played a lot of mafia setups with no cop at all. What you neglect to understand is that there's more subtlety in this game than meets the eye.
I think using logic and analysis makes it all that much more interesting. Psychology by itself won't help you at all unless you can convince the other side you are right, and that's done by logic.
"The sage seemed to be defending this guy vehemently and pressing on this guy very hard before he ended up dying" vs "the sage found this guy as guilty, let's kill him"
Two different kinds of logical analysis.
Edit- Even with all the PMing, and logic, and whatever else, the assassins are still just one kill away from parity. That should tell you how essential these things are for the diplomats. Without it, it'd have been an assassin victory.
This was a setup geared towards PMs. There's nothing wrong with that. Allowing PMs isn't good or bad in and of itself so long as you structure the setup properly around it.
Keep in mind that PMs mean that you remove a lot of scumhunting and turn it largely into "protect the sage, form a group of protected allies". Without PMs, you have counterclaims and all manner of intrigue and such relating to that.
