On the importance of scouting

[qyll]

Just finished a game as Washington today. My scout managed to get enough experience to get extra sight. What a difference it made. I parked him on my neighbor's (Genghis Khan's) borders, and saw him shifting his troops toward my capital half a dozen turns before he declared war. This afforded me enough time to cobble together a reasonable defense to repel his attack.

Later, I used the same scout as a vanguard in my main army to scope out units hiding in the fog of war before moving forward. Since, the AI has become more crafty with its units, the scouting made a huge difference.

Let this be a lesson, kids. Scout out your enemies, and plant scouts on enemy borders as outposts.

 

[chazzycat]

For sure - and doubly effective as America. Those scouts are awesome.

 

[Darac]

the extra sight promotions are the only ones i go for with scouts. they are really good! The same is true for ships if you can get the great lighthouse.

 

[Zenstrive]

but there are no upgrades for scouts....i miss pioneers

 

[theadder]

It might be nice to have the Explorer back, but I can see why they concentrated on other things.

 

[Barghaest]

I tend to have 2-4 scouts running around ASAP. First upgrades they get are Survivalism I - III. Travelling in pairs they quickly track down and eradicate barbarian camps giving me a needed economic (and often culture) boost early.

Trying to trudge a warrior through tons of forest and hills doesn't have quite the same effect (especially on raging barbs!).

With the survivalism line, scouts can hold their own against AI warriors pretty well since they can attack and still heal plus have a boost on defense.

Also extended the scout line in my mod through Combined Arms (last one has CS 50). They keep access to just the same recon promos to avoid them getting overpowered (I've tried upgrading to Archers or Muskets, but having scouting promos + ignore terrain cost + new unit promos makes em a bit gamebreaking.... the American musket UU upgrading is fine, it doesn't get scout promos at least).

 

[theadder]

I tend to have 2-4 scouts running around ASAP. First upgrades they get are Survivalism I - III. Travelling in pairs they quickly track down and eradicate barbarian camps giving me a needed economic (and often culture) boost early.

Trying to trudge a warrior through tons of forest and hills doesn't have quite the same effect (especially on raging barbs!).

With the survivalism line, scouts can hold their own against AI warriors pretty well since they can attack and still heal plus have a boost on defense.

Which difficulty is this on?

 

[Barghaest]

Which difficulty is this on?

Prince mainly. Beat the game on all difficulties so now I prefer to just play and concentrate on building my empire more than overcoming AI with free crap. I did adjust King once in my mod to remove the free tech (Pottery, I believe was all they got free anyway) and it was rather nice. Stayed behind in tech quite a bit but eventually overtook them... I rather like the reduced bonus vs barbs on King+ and tend to implement that in my mods for any difficulty setting (I like my barbarians nasty and numerous - give em a bigger bonus vs cities to make em more threatening but leave the AI getting a decent bonus vs them so they don't suffer too much - the challenge is mainly for me not them).

In Emperor or higher, Scouts aren't quite as effective in combat because they tend to get overwhelmed by large numbers of AI.

 

[theadder]

Prince mainly. Beat the game on all difficulties so now I prefer to just play and concentrate on building my empire more than overcoming AI with free crap. I did adjust King once in my mod to remove the free tech (Pottery, I believe was all they got free anyway) and it was rather nice. Stayed behind in tech quite a bit but eventually overtook them... I rather like the reduced bonus vs barbs on King+ and tend to implement that in my mods for any difficulty setting (I like my barbarians nasty and numerous - give em a bigger bonus vs cities to make em more threatening but leave the AI getting a decent bonus vs them so they don't suffer too much - the challenge is mainly for me not them).

In Emperor or higher, Scouts aren't quite as effective in combat because they tend to get overwhelmed by large numbers of AI.

You beat the AI on Deity and now choose to play Prince?

I might give larger number of Scouts a try, but the things that I'd have to drop in order to do that makes it seem less appealing.

 

[Darac]

You don't need lots fo them. just a few really effective/upgraded ones. I try my hardest to never let my scouts die, even if it means sacrificing a barb camp to an AI or something like that. A promoted scout with +2 sight is invaluable in the early -> mid game.

 

[Barghaest]

You beat the AI on Deity and now choose to play Prince?

I might give larger number of Scouts a try, but the things that I'd have to drop in order to do that makes it seem less appealing.

Deity was a serious pain. After several attempts.... I cheated. Played a game with three AI on my team and only one opponent. Pretty easy win on Quick, I let my teammates do the work. So, I can honestly say I've never truly beaten Deity... one day I may go back and try it again but I didn't really enjoy my previous attempts so that day is not exactly looming on the horizon (more likely to give Deity another shot in scenarios since they have separate achievements).

As I said before my enjoyment comes from building the empire... planning out spots for cities, maintaining garrisons, slowly going through the techs and seeing if my empire flourishes or flounders based on how I planned out. Get attacked by AI a lot early on because I run a skeleton army (actually push my Support to the limit, but it's always less pointy sticks than the AI so they pick on me) and concentrate on infrastructure... not fun to try while Emperor+ AI is beating on you, if I want a hectic pace, I'll play Age of Empire III (which I do enjoy from time to time).

Scouts are a hard choice in regular gameplay... they are faster to build than warriors but not by much, even on Marathon. I've just gotten used to them so I tend to prefer using them; however, they have a low "pointy stick" rating so the AI will view you as easy prey, still fun having a handful of scouts use terrain like forest, hills or good chokepoints whittle down warriors until the AI asks for a reasonable peace. Since they do goad AI into attacking you, there's lots of action using them as your army and a little bit of a challenge, even on Prince.

 

[Kabloosh]

the extra sight promotions are the only ones i go for with scouts. they are really good! The same is true for ships if you can get the great lighthouse.

Great lighthouse and the commerce tree. You can see all sorts of stuff coming on the sea doing this. I tend to like to keep my caravels as caravels since they have the largest sight radius of any naval unit save for maybe the carrier with planes in it.

This really helps in discovering those "sneak attack" amphibious assaults the AI sometimes likes to pull though.

 

[Harv72b]

I might give larger number of Scouts a try, but the things that I'd have to drop in order to do that makes it seem less appealing.

I use this a lot on larger, land-based games as well, especially on marathon. In that scenario you're probably going to build more than one scout anyway, and assuming you're opening Honor, the culture you can net from just two scouts hacking up barbarians can easily afford you the option of putting off a monument.

That said, it is best used on prince & lower difficulty. Trying it on king lately it'll still work (at least on marathon, with slower barbarian spawn rates), but it's tricky and fairly easy to lose one of them before you can get that first survivalism promotion.

/Have a level 8 scout running around on a huge Earth map, after running the unlimited barbarian exp mod. He's pretty much invincible, at least until the barbs start spawning pikes.