Naokaukodem
Millenary King
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2003
- Messages
- 3,952
The 'Scout Problem' is that in the current Civ model, you start with a LOT less information than you should have. Even if you just migrated to your Start Position, it's hard to imagine that you wouldn't know that there is a big mountain range a few tiles' away (100 miles? 200 miles?) or that the seacoast is right over thataway... Likewise for resources - Native Americans living 100s of miles away knew about Salt Licks in Kentucky and even tribes living quite a ways inland knew about tribes on the coast that had fish to trade. How to 'model' that kind of information into the game is a real problem whenever you have, as we do, an Artificial 'Start' time and position.
I see two possible solutions. One would be an 'extended Start Radius' in which tall mountains, coastlines, major (X tiles long or longer?) rivers, would all show up in the 'fog' surrounding your Start. Also possibly 1 - 2 major Resources that are pretty hard to hide: salt licks, animals like (presumably wild) cattle, sheep and 'game' - certainly Bison. On the other hand, iron, copper, gold, silver, and such minerals you'd have to go and look for - they aren't obvious, and locals who know about such valuables may prefer to trade them to you rather than tell you where to find them yourself.
The other solution is to admit that 'Scout' at the start is an Artificial designation at the for Those Folks In The Tribe with a bad case of 'horizon fever' - they just gotta see what's on the Other Side of the hill, river, mountain, or desert. Therefore, almost every Civ would start with a Scout, but when the youngsters (almost every Tribe we have any record of also has a 'wandering year' or 'vision quest' for young men, which could be the model for the original 'scout' - expendable youngsters going out to Prove Themselves against the wilderness) return home they can be Upgraded to Warriors or the local tribal equivalent. Later there would be a more formal bunch of Scouts with upgrades to things like Prodromoi, Explorers, Dragoons, Armored Cars, Rangers, etc. but for the start, that model would solve both the current 'Upgrade' problem for Scouts and provide more information for your Starting Position. Given that, in my Ideal Civ VI the majority of 'Barbarians' would not be initially hostile, the scouts would also last longer and be able to find out more before running into trouble that kills them off.
However, if we use the 'Vision Quest' explanation, you couldn't just pump out the initial Scouts at will: they would be only a certain percentage of your population, perhaps initially you'd be able to raise one 'Scout' for every 5 - 6 points of population, but getting any more would require that they be a later version of the Regular Military scouting troops: light cavalry, light infantry, etc.
Or hired Barbarians, if you've got the Gold...
As I said, I see a third one : "rumors of the land" are displayed for each player at the start of the game (uncovers black areas), with possibly more for some civs with "memory of the ancients" or something like that, what could be pretty important considering how the game would be complex even right at start. ("memory of the ancients" could be a starting bonus ala Civ : Beyond Earth)
You still may have to build your first scout (even though I dislike the idea that a detachment of people would only be "scouts", they would much more like be multi-tasking at those times, being affirmed warriors included), as your tribe may represent a product of past generations that chose "agriculture" to avoid the increasing concurrence and conflicts resulting from lack of space for nomads and nomadic ways of life, possibly with a mentality of self-sufficiency or introversion that made them lost track of their surroundings more or less.
Those scouts could go in the wild to meet other tribes that would give them other "rumors of the land" automatically if they are friendly, and they may be if they are of the same clan than the player's tribe. There could be red crosses dispatched through the land at start (being regardless in the fog of war or in black lands), pointing out the last remembered locations of those tribes. They may have moved though, so there's no absolute guarantee. They may have forgotten you. (most of the time you need the name of a famous tribe member -either side- to prove you know them, or a manufactured sign, totem, etc...)
Each time you meet successfully a tribe of the same clan, they give you "rumors", techs, units, pop points, etc... (the others are just neutral to aggressive)