Mmm..re: Andy's roleclaim calling...
I...ok. I can see where you get that. My impression on reading it was more of a late-game thing, but...I see where you're getting that now. I thought by substantiate he meant a later thing - perhaps I'm just reading and inserting my own view of it, but to me, substantiation means that I have enough information to not only prove the cop is lying, but also to support other things, since I'm likely not going to live long.
His original post you cited on day 1:
"Yeah, sure, we can get along with a cop. But why on earth would we do that when we don't really need to? We hammer Tom now, we get either dead scum or dead cop. If we wait, we can (potentially) later confirm his actual alignment and deal with him, all without smacking down an (uncountered, might I add) cop claim?"
I'm not getting a sense of urgency with invites for a counter claim. I read it as more of: "Ok, don't kill cops this early, especially since we can check on it later. The cop claim isn't even countered by someone else, so we have no real reason to nuke him for lying". That's what I got out of it. It seemed more like musing, openly, on the fact that there is no reason to doubt his claim. A counter would have brought doubt into the argument, I think is all he was trying to say there. Or at least that's how I read it.
Granted, his later posts do seem to be more on the line of pulling for claims.
"And idly, the problem with a hugely delayed counterclaim is that it allows misinformation to spread and become harder to get yourself accepted as the proper cop. It also means you can start playing the protection game as well as quite likely take out a scum in the process. In other words, if you can generally get scum killed, you should. We win with exchanges and what have you."
The hugely delayed counterclaim...really depends on the definition. Even saying this is Day 5 when the counterclaim comes out, for the case of Tom, I wouldn't expect him to be around that long. But in general speak? Misinformation does spread, yes, but the longer you live, the stronger your investigations become. And a later cop claim keeps you alive longer, because you're not targetted. You're under the radar, so to speak, but in a good way - scum aren't looking to kill you as a power role. I do disagree with Andrew here - a properly timed claim is ideal. If Tom had lived and given crap information, it would have got him nuked - another cop claiming would likely be accepted with viable information. An early counter claim isn't helpful unless you can back it up. If in a theoretical example I had claimed cop to counter Tom (ignore the stupidity of this statement), what could I back it up with? Nothing until the next day at best. If I were a real cop, I'd have information, but it would do scant little good in this case especially, and generally bad in most cases. That's ignoring all the other issues that could arise with investigations. And early counterclaim is worse than a later one, since a later one has much more information to back the claim up with, strengthening the role.
NR mafia was a decent example - early claim from Super (scum), counter from Meeple (town). It got Super killed, because we could back it up (and shoot holes in Super, but that's besides the point). But there was a lot of questioning later on about Meeple's investigatees, because it was early and people were acting weird. There was so little information to back all that up that the cop claim (besides Meeple's suicide) didn't help as much in the end because there was so little info.
Yes, I do agree trading a scum for town is generally good. That's a good thing to do to win. But...not counterclaiming early. Not at all.
So yes, Corwin, I do agree with you now that I've been able to re-read and re-think. Definitely interested enough to question this some more.
##Unvote: Shale
Shale's speaking, and I'm sure he'll post more.
##Vote: Andrew
While I do believe you could have mispoken or been mis-read, this does bear some suspicion so it doesn't fall through the cracks.
