Why is a "vanilla-townie"-claim so frowned upon?

[cuban smoker]

Claiming townie is not a good strategy early on. Suppose you do, while in fact you could be (a) a townie, (b) a powerrole, or (c) scum. Let's suppose both the town and mafia decide to let you live for a couple days.

If you are in fact townie, the mafia has a better chance of killing a powerrole, as said before.

If you are in fact a powerrole, you may need to announce later that you have this powerrole to help deduce who the mafia are. By Lynch all Liars theory, you have probably screwed the town, as said above.

If you in fact scum, you will either get investigated by a curious cop or will find that the town realizes the only players with incentives to claim townie are scum, and you will get lynched.

Therefore, it seems claiming townie is not a good idea (at least in the early stages).

In fact, if you are pressed for a claim early on, and you are in fact a townie, I suggest claiming an unverifiable pro-town role, such as doctor!

Why? The town probably won't lynch you, which is good. The scum may target you, but if you are playing for the win condition "you win if town wins" as opposed to "survive", then this is good for the town, since no powerrole dies the night you die. It can get even better if there is a real doctor in town. Now the real doctor may be skeptical of your claim, but won't publicly denounce you. They may in fact protect you since you are now an obvious mafia target.

In addition, in future games when a real doc claims, the mafia may choose not to target them immediately thinking it could be a fake doc claim. Extra bonus!

Now, if scum claim doc, things get interesting. I leave that to another post.

Suffice to say, townies shouldn't claim townie. They should consider claiming an unverifiable power role (cop/vig not good choices) for the main goal of sacrificing themselves to the mafia for the betterment of the town.

[cuban smoker]

I disagree! If I claim doc and get targetted by the mafia, I have in fact saved the doctor from a random night kill. If the doctor saves me the same night, we have prevented a night kill.

If I claim doc and don't get targetted by the mafia, you may argue that I have increased the mafia's chance of finding the real doc from 1/n to 1/(n-1) (where n is number of non-mafia players remaining). But you have to wonder: why on earth isn't the mafia targetting the claimed doc? If they had reason to believe I'm not the real doctor, they must have gained this knowledge before my claim. Therefore they wouldn't be targetting me anyway. The action of claiming doctor does not increase the chance they find the real doctor.

EDIT to address Thok: No good doctor would react in any noticeable way to a fake doc claim in their posts until the end game. There could actually be two docs, and this would foolishly out both.

Now suppose that this strategy becomes mainstream, and the mafia knows that with some probability my doctor claim is a fake claim. Every time they choose not to target me (and I'm a townie) they have increased their chance of finding the doctor by a small amount. Every time they choose to not target me (a doctor), they have decreased the chance of finding the doctor to zero!

I can make a chart and calculate the EV of these plays. It's just like poker. A little bluffing keeps your opponents guessing and playing suboptimally.

Conclusion, not all lying is bad.

[cuban smoker]

Ok, I remeber having this discussion a long time ago. In larger setups with a wider variety of roles, I think we can safely assume that all lying is bad. I respect your argument JEEP.

However, in a smaller setup, say with mafia, cops, docs and townies, I think my argument shows that the strategy of claiming doc as a townie can help the town. Specifically, you must assume:
- There are no roles that the town would prefer to see killed over a townie (i.e SK)
- The doctor will not change how they post or attract attention to you until later in the game.
- There are no 'follow' roles
- ???

I think a good strategy for the real doctor after watching a fake claim is to protect the claimer. If someone else dies, it increases the chance the faker is mafia. If no one dies, it pretty much guarantees the claimer is innocent. The doctor, in a day or two, may use choose to reveal some of this info to the town.

Ultimately, lying is not a good strategy, but I insist there exist optimal lies. For instance: if you are a vanilla townie in a claim or lynch situation, we have argued claiming townie is a bad strategy. So is getting lynched! There must exist an optimal strategy for the townie in the face of the town's claim or lynch strategy.