Specific to AoD, -avoid- meeting chiefs in coastal cities with land units. Use your ship! This way, there's a chance on getting free XP for your ship from some settlements. On a Huge map, I managed to get my Caravel souped up with all the Nav promotions plus a few strength. While it probably could not handle a pirate attack, that Caravel was nonetheless extremely useful for me in spotting for my SoLs later against the pirates with its visibility and speed to run out of danger, as well as for quick cargo runs to/from my island settlements.

Only works on AoD II since only AoD II lets ships meet chiefs, which is an awesome feature. :)

Hehehe..... I love that one!

Also very related to this, you can talk to chiefs with treasures. ;)

This would be more useful if the 'Automatic exploration' button would allow the ship to automatically talk with chiefs on coastal cities just as the land scout do.

nice find :) have to say (given the option) i'd still prefer to have my scout with promotions though - I normally like to get him up to surgeon III to use as my army medic in the revolution

Your scout can still get promoted on ancient ruins/burial grounds and inland Native settlements.

So any plan on adding the automatic seek coastal cities and talk to chief for 'automatic explore' set ship ??