When is claiming expected/required

[Yosarian2]

Eh. Only claim if it's going to help, and if you think you can't otherwise prevent a lynch on yourself. No one should ever be "expected" to claim; vanillia townies, for example, should never claim at all. There's nothing "dumb" ahout just refusing to claim, depending on what the situation is and everything.

Now, the "legitimacy" of your wagon, or whatever, isn't an isuse. If you're at lynch -1, then obveously the rest of the town thinks they have a legimitate reason to suspect you, and you don't really get a say in that, heh. If claiming can prevent you from being lynched, and there's no other way to do that, it's usually a good idea; don't be stubborn just becuase you don't think the wagon on you is "legitmate" or whatever, that's silly.

[Yosarian2]

So...you agree that townies shouldn't claim then, armlx?

[Yosarian2]

Of course if someone can dissuade a bandwagon without having to claim, fair play. Being able to talk yourself back from L-1 is either a sign of great play or, more likely, a town with commitmentphobia.

Disagree. I often get the best read on someone only after I've pushed them to lynch -1, depending on how they respond to it, and I'm always willing to change my mind if I get a pro-town read on someone even if I've been pushing their wagon all day.

[Yosarian2]

I don't claim unless I have a power role. Better a vanilla townie lynched than all power roles exposed by the bandwagon until claim then switch to next tactics.

Under such a meta, what is the difference between not claiming and claiming townie?

Well, the key thing here is that being a vanillia townie isn't the ONLY time you shouldn't claim.

Best way I can explain it is to put it in an equation.

O=odds of being lynched if you claim in %
N=odds of being lynched if you don't claim in %
H=harm to town done by you claiming
L=harm done to town by you getting lynched

You should claim strictly in order to not get lynched only if:

(O-N)x(L/H) >1.

For a vanillia townie with no flavor, it should be the case in normal circumstances that O=N, the odds of getting lynched not claiming should be equal to the odds of getting lynched if you claim vanillia, or perhaps even higher if you claim vanillia (since from the town's point of view lynching a claimed vanillia is safer then lynching an unclaimed) . So claiming is a bad idea there, unless there's some unusual circumstance where claiming townie might actually lower your chances of being lynched.

For other roles, you might want to claim if it's going to significantly lower you chances of getting lynched, since my hunch is that on average getting lynched is usually worse then just roleclaiming by a factor of, I donno, 2 or 3 or 4, or something like that, depending on your role and the situation. However, if you're in a situation where claiming is almost as bad for the town as you getting lynched would be (say you have some role where, if you get outed, it dramatically hurts the town's chances of winning), or in a situation where you claiming is not likely to help your odds of survival much for whatever reason (like, you're a back-up doc and you're pretty sure no one is going to believe it for whatever reason), then you might not want to claim.

Of course, if you claiming gives information that might help the town in other ways, that might come into play too; this is just taking into account the "claiming just to save your own skin" situation.

Also, in game-play terms, I don't usually SAY I'm not going to claim, I'm most likely to just continue to defend myself and ignore requests to claim. Since I'm likely to do that for a while even if I'm in a situation where I'm willing to claim if I absolutly need to, it's not really easy to tell when I'm refusing to claim and when I'm not.