Scouting techniques

mbbcam

mbbcam

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Anyone have any advice or tips on this?

I tend to make the first warrior follow flat land (it takes him too long to crash through forest, jungle, or over hills) if possible. And with the initial scouting I try to sweep around the capital a few tiles out, because I reason that ruins are likely to be not too far away.

Others probably do it differently. I imagine that some are more interested in meeting other civs and city states as soon as possible. There are no doubt pros and cons in any approach.
 
Ruins are not my priority, funnily enough. As I like to play a lot of domination games, getting a feel for the land and planning my military sweeps dozens of turns in advance really helps me, I find.

The warrior goes to try and find an early worker, but if not then scouts can do this, situationally and spontaneously, as they find enemy cities. My scouts move on long axes away from my capital. So if, for example, I find I am in the middle, each scout goes in one cardinal direction as far as possible, then scouts back around in a clockwise/counterclockwise direction. Closer scouting can be done by archers and warriors/spearmen/horsemen as and when.

The main reason I focus on land scouting and not ruins is that you often lose opportunities to move through territory if you become overly-focused on ruins as AI cultural borders swell and their cities pepper the land. I try to move through and back before they're done ICS-ing.
 
Thanks, that is useful.

By the way, with reference to your signature, I'd say the most universal human characteristic is affiliation -- otherwise the species would have died out by now!
 
The purpose of scouting should be:
-Discovering everything in a radius around your capital (something like 10 tiles radius) so making sure your units have complementary pathways. This is important to find all the settling spots and this area is also the most likely to yield ruins.
-Your scouts and warrior should also actively seek AIs to increase the likelihood of worker steals. With the current warmonger penalties it's pretty fine to make multiple DoW for workers and then make peace soon.
-Try to find also a suitable CS for worker stealing and have a unit explore in a radius not too far.
-Your warrior should go back once you have workers or make archers.

Scouting very far from home in the first 40 turns is overrated. The likelihood of finding CS first and ruins diminishes tremendously. Once all the above is done it's time to go further to find everyone else and scout capitals if you plan on domination.

Other than that just the normal tips. Warrior should avoid forests/jungles, end turns on hills or by crossing a river. Obvious stuff.
 
keep one thing in mind though: ALWAYS KEEP SCOUTING

a mistake I kept making was using a scout to steal a worker or two, then park him in the city and forget about him completely. That way I lost out on CSs, and I met AIs much later than I should have. Obviously applies on a Pangaea map but regardless, Astronomy and get rolling
 
A few of things to add about scouting for ruins for new players:

1. They spawn on all terrain types except for snow.
2. They don't spawn within a certain distance of cities/city states. Does anyone know the exact distance? I think it's 4-5 hexes.
3. Ruins can spawn within 3 hexes of each other, no closer.
4. Check if a city state gives you 30 or 15 gold when you find it. If it gives you 30, at least some of the terrain nearby is unexplored and there may be ruins left.
5. Obviously if you encounter an enemy civ's unit, look in the other direction.
 
I would appreciate tips about how much to prioritize getting the +2 vision. This is something I think I may be doing wrong, as leveling up on barbs is usually the first thing I do. The +2 vision really helps, especially along the coast, but I am not happy about how much downtime my scouts spend healing. Should I just forget about xp? Or worry about that after first discovering everything in a radius around my capital? After (or maybe before) AI worker steals?
 
My own priority with scouts is to avoid Barbarians at all costs. You see a heck of a lot more by moving than you do with extra vision. If I happen to get a promotion for a scout, I always go for extra strength. It makes them a little less fragile.
 
mbbcam said:
You see a heck of a lot more by moving than you do with extra vision.
Click to expand...

That is not correct. Count the hexes, do the math. You would need two scouts without vision to uncover hexes as fast as one scout with +2 vision. The same experiment holds for unpromoted caravel versus one with +1 vision. By neglecting the promotion, you need twice as many units. Also, after getting +2 vision, it easy to avoid barbs.
 
I was guilty of compressing my thoughts a little too much. I think what I was suggesting was that you will see more if your scouts are healthy and moving than if they are stationary and healing. I would go for the movement every time, particularly when there are ruins and city states to be found, not to mention workers to be stolen. Not only that, but I think that *early* movement/scouting is more valuable than late scouting.

On Deity, the answer to so many things seems to be "speed". Doing it early seems to have a value that is not merely numerical. But I'm terrible at maths ... :)
 
Bimblecrumbs said:
A few of things to add about scouting for ruins for new players:

1. They spawn on all terrain types except for snow.
2. They don't spawn within a certain distance of cities/city states. Does anyone know the exact distance? I think it's 4-5 hexes.
3. Ruins can spawn within 3 hexes of each other, no closer.
4. Check if a city state gives you 30 or 15 gold when you find it. If it gives you 30, at least some of the terrain nearby is unexplored and there may be ruins left.
5. Obviously if you encounter an enemy civ's unit, look in the other direction.
Click to expand...

Sorry but I know for a fact that 1 and 2 are wrong because I've seen ruins being swiped by a CS border, seen plenty of them on snow.
 
I'm talking about the distance from the city tile itself, not it's borders. I'm aware that once a city state's borders expand to a ruin, the ruin vanishes, so maybe the close ones are gobbled up quickly?

Fair enough about having seen ruins on snow, I just haven't :)
 
I'm also not sure on 3, I've seen ruins bunched together but maybe they were exactly 3 tiles apar
 
I would add that when you find a semi-polar capital, it is worthwhile to check the wasteland beyond it. I don't know how many times I've found ruins 5-7 tiles from the city many, many turns into the game. It seems like the AI doesn't scout wasteland very well early.
 
mbbcam said:
I think what I was suggesting was that you will see more if your scouts are healthy and moving than if they are stationary and healing.
Click to expand...

Let's say send out your unpromoted East-Going Zax at T0. He has a sight range of 2, there are 5 tiles on his leading edge of vision, and he as moves 2 hexes each turn he is unfogging 10 new hexes. My West-Going Zax spends 15 turns getting to +2 vision. When he starts moving his leading edge of vision is 9 hexes, and unfogs 18 new hexes when he moves. But at T15 it’s 0 hexes to 150 hexes in your guys favor. Looks pretty good, no?

At T30, your is still winning, but now the score is 270 to 300, and you can see where the math is going...

Not only that, but I think that *early* movement/scouting is more valuable than late scouting.
Click to expand...

Absolutely this is true. Which is why I framed my question as I did! (As an aside, this being true is the only reason scout-monument-scout might be competitive with scout-scout-monument.)

...not to mention workers to be stolen.
Click to expand...

A scout camping a CS for a worker needs at least +1 vision. Scouts looking to steal workers from AI really need +2 vision. You are not helping your argument!

Scouts really need the +2 vision to be most effective. But when is the least-bad timing to pause scouting to do that?
 
I think scout defense first, then vision, is a safe, conservative approach -- it's the one I adopt most often.
 
Without mods, you can only get two promotions from barbs. Choosing defense over +2 vision is quite terrible.
 
beetle said:
A scout camping a CS for a worker needs at least +1 vision. Scouts looking to steal workers from AI really need +2 vision.
Click to expand...
Really? I steal workers with unpromoted scouts all the time. I try to steal from the AI civs with the warrior, but I've also done it with a scout. Sometimes it's just luck, of course -- being in the right place at the right time. And in all the LP videos I've seen, I don't think I've ever seen a player take a vision promotion for a scout. Naturally, everyone uses their own methods, but I've never thought I needed extra vision for worker stealing. I guess it just never occurred to me.

And as for timing, I can only repeat that it seems to me that in this game, timing is enormously important. Time lost leads to the game being lost.
 
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