How do you scout new maps?

Z

ZeekLTK

Warlord
Joined
Oct 6, 2002
Messages
260
What do you do on brand new maps to scout the land?

Do you send your warrior/scout far away in one direction to see how big the landmass is and meet as many civs as possible? Or do you circle around your area so that you can see all directions, but maybe not find any neighbors yet?

I find that I tend to start exploring one direction and the next thing I know my scout is all the way on the other side of the continent!
 
More like a spiral like Teza. My top priority is finding a good (if possible the best) second city spot. I tend to travel via mountains/forests to keep my starting unit alive for fogbusting if possible.
 
I try to make moves that reveal as many tiles at once as possible. Usually, I try to keep it to a loose spiral but I will diverge into following hills and avoiding deep jungles.
 
I tend to spiral, although I also tend to have more than one guy exploring . Exploration is one of my favorite parts.

I've come to have a pair of warriors out gaining experience as woodsmen, then sending them home to become axemen, because I've grown partial to the axeman/woodsman medic III guy.
 
Scouts preferably trying to end on hills after going 2 tiles/turn if possible
 
We have some spiral lovers here.

I usually go straight out, because on most maps (especially Continents or Pangaea) blocking the AI out of a good-sized peninsula early in the game is the equivalent advantage to me as doing an early rush, with a smaller economic impact. This tends to be more important IMO than a good second city, especially because you can just settle it anytime you want in the future.

I guess it depends on the quality of your capital.
 
I support both camps here. If my capital is on a coastline I tend more towards the straight line...looking for another coast so I can do some sort of cut off. If not on a coast I go more with the spiral approach.

The exploration phase is a big part of what makes this game so annoyingly replayable. I just finished grinding through the fifteen turns for my spaceship to reach AC. The whole time I was thinking 'Colonization? SMAX? Galactic Civ? Maybe a Total War campaign?' I have a bunch of games in the strategy arsenal I could bust out next...but switch to the next leader down the list and start over has that exploration attraction and even though I'm somewhat burned out from the late game I might just do that.
 
Another spiral fan. Finding the closest strat resource is of high importance and I'd hate to miss a close site due to heading out in a straight line.

But I also play with huts so my unit gets sidetracked sometimes. You get a map and it shows another hut and so forth and so forth.
 
Same way as rah with the warrior or scout that I start with. It is important to know the local land and resources. The first warrior that I build stays in the capital and the second one goes off looking for the neighbors. If a goody hut pops a warrior or scout, then he is the one that goes looking for neighbors.
 
One round around the capital and then depending on the starting tech (Hunting)
building a few more scouts or do the scouting later with the Great Spy (Great Wall).
 
I start on a spiral until:

T5: Barbarian's Bear have defeated Windsor's warrior!
 
Interestingly enough when I saw this thread, I noticed that I fell back to my training from my navy days. I use an expanding square, which is what we used when conducting SAR ops. Funny actually, as I never really payed attention to it before until now.
 
Drakarska said:
Interestingly enough when I saw this thread, I noticed that I fell back to my training from my navy days. I use an expanding square, which is what we used when conducting SAR ops. Funny actually, as I never really payed attention to it before until now.
Click to expand...

The expanding square proves that the navy does not operate on a hexagonal grid map.
 
I click on the "Explore Automatically" button. #lazy
I'm kidding, of course. I just keep going in one direction until I find a civilization or the ocean.
 
Generally I go in a loose spiral, prioritizing hills to see farther. Sometimes I try to "guess" based on coastlines, locations of enemies and such and then I'll divert from the spiral to beeline in some direction I guess to be more important. I also like to follow rivers
 
1st target is to find best place for 2nd city.. or also possible "strongholds I must get 1st" and than just try to get experience to 10 xp and return home safely (its usually warrior I have.. and Woodsman 3 I really like early on for worker steal)...
 
I try to explore the local area - which would be a spiral, except that usually, my maps have small enough landmasses that a single 'loop' of a spiral covers the width of the land. After that, I usually pick a direction and try to zigzag to uncover as much land as possible. After a short while I try to land on forests or forested hills for defense, so that impacts the search pattern as well.
 
Usually I send the warrior / scout out to try and find huts, without going farther than about two city radii out from the capital area. I go around in a large circle outside my capital, revealing all resource tiles I can for future settling plans / blocking other civs settling :).

After I have seen the surrounding area in a circle, of about two cities each direction or so, I only try and fogbust the area however possible if there are Barbarians on. Posting in each direction warriors on hills / forest, and I figure that I will get a lot of fogbusting help from random AI scouts / warriors that are walking around. Plus I don't usually scout much more than my area lately, since lately I play almost all completely peaceful games, I never go to war or leave my area, and I get to Paper early so after Paper I end up with someone's World Map anyway :goodjob:.
 
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