the fragile scout as a little buddy

Scarpa said:

A Scout built out of a city with Barracks and Armory can have 4-tile sight range right off. This lets you stand off on a hill and spot for Artillery and/or Bombers without fear of attack from Artillery stationed in the city. I picked up a tip from this forum to remember to build a few scouts before Scientific Theory and if you're warmongering you should have a city that can produce one scout per turn at this point in the game. It's a useful unit to have, besides just spotting for artillery it gives you a slight tactical advantage, especially in hilly/forested terrain.

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I'd still be wary of melee counter attacks to take out my spotters.

Yes, it is true that by the time Dynamite rolls around, one should have at least one city that can pump Scouts every turn. Heck, that's why I like Military Caste so much as a warmonger...if the majority of my cities are connected by road to the capital, then I can quickly increase happiness by 1 AND culture by 2 every turn...that is, assuming my cities weren't already garrisoned to begin with.

:: shrugs ::

I guess I just don't like the tightrope act that I'm forced into any time I use post Classical era Scouts in any meaningful tactical or spotting role. Sure, it's fun to batter down a city's defenses to zero in the Industrial era, and send the Scout in to actually take the city, but I wouldn't consider that to be a useful tactical role.

I find that when playing SP, the AI will ignore your scout spotters unless they move right next to them. Otherwise, they concentrate on attack units, primarily siege or wounded. Human players are usually smart enough to take out the spotter first just to hinder the artillery/bombers.

I've been thinking about this some more, and I guess there are SOME situations that I wouldn't get uptight about using Scouts in the post Classical era to spot.

Most of the situations follow a common theme: the Scout finds a position to spot from that takes more than one turn for the enemy to attack it OR the Scout can manage to reach a position to spot from, and can reach a safe hex in the same turn.

For example, the enemy city is isolated and doesn't have any roads or improvements to speak of. Furthermore, the tiles around the enemy city are predominantly forest and jungle. In that circumstance, I would have no problem using my Scout to spot for my indirect firing ranged units because it would be difficult for the enemy to directly counterattack my spotter.

However, I find that I rarely encounter situations like these...it seems like an awfully specific circumstance to call a Scout a good spotter.

:: shrugs ::

Some of the posters here have given some good uses for scouts. The AI is so horrifically terrible at combat that the full potential of scouts is not realised against it, as the AI will simply suicide its units for you.

When playing intelligent opponents, the scout is one of the most ecnomical units you can utilize for combat. Here are some examples:

1. Zone of control: opponents can't move past it.
2. Flanking bonuses add up.
3. Blocker - prevent opponent from using that tile. Great for naval invasions to prevent city being taken by hopping in the water
4. Starving city being attacked by sitting on its tiles (after pillaging them)
5. Cannon fodder - a good unit will spend its turn killing the scout (not chukonus or other special cases.)
6. Taking cities, as mentioned
7. Vision, as mentioned
8. Finishing off earlier era units like wounded archers/compound bows

All this... and scouts are so easy to make in total war I can make several per turn and my other units!

For the maintenance you pay you could actually use units that won't get one-shotted after the Classical Era.

Silverfuturist said:

1. Zone of control: opponents can't move past it.
2. Flanking bonuses add up.
3. Blocker - prevent opponent from using that tile. Great for naval invasions to prevent city being taken by hopping in the water
4. Starving city being attacked by sitting on its tiles (after pillaging them)
5. Cannon fodder - a good unit will spend its turn killing the scout (not chukonus or other special cases.)
6. Taking cities, as mentioned
7. Vision, as mentioned
8. Finishing off earlier era units like wounded archers/compound bows

All this... and scouts are so easy to make in total war I can make several per turn and my other units!

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A great post that brings it all together in one place. Consider the scout like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer that nobody pays any attention to until one foggy night the king, instead of Santa, says "why don't you go jump in the water and stop that naval fleet?" then everybody cheers for the scout!

The cannon fodder and zone of control uses are much appreciated. The scout can give a major unit at 10% health that last chance to escape, duck into a city and come raging back at full health.

SS-18 ICBM said:

For the maintenance you pay you could actually use units that won't get one-shotted after the Classical Era.

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You have a good point about the maintenance - for opponents that can't fight (like AI on any level) I would create scouts sparingly, maybe not even make any after my initial exploration. For opponents that are tough, the maint doesn't become an issue because they all end up expiring like clif's the "rudolph the red nose" scenario as above.

In a grueling war vs a good player, the battlefield becomes a meat grinder... well against the AI the meat grinder is one sided.

yeah, scouts aren't useless in battle. I like to stack them with an archer or two for cheap, effective early game barbarian destruction. You can use them to explore and disband barb camps and they level pretty quick. The extra HP makes them able to heal quicly in the field if you take survivalism and the extra sight bonuses are great if you're exploring, of course.

And because they move over hills/rivers etc quickly and easily, you can sneak them in to a city and cap it more quickly so long as you've used ranged units to weaken it to 1 hp.

EDIT: never considered using scouts as zerg, quickly building 10 or so in 3 turns then rushing them in to an enemy city, pillaging every tile for fun and profit and letting them all get killed. Rinse/repeat for all cities.

EDIT 2: This makes me consider a mod where the scout is the only unit available to the player but costs no maintenance. lol.

For those interested, I took a look at this thread and made a mod trying to do what you guys were suggesting. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=95374051