Scout upgrades?

[civ54lyfe]

it's pretty sweet when you pop an advanced weapons hut w/ a scout though. even though it's luck based. they end up being SWEET Bows and Gatlings and Machine Guns later.

 

[CaptainPatch]

Even if they upgraded to explorers I would still delete the scout once I discovered everything on my land mass. They are good for finding ruins and CS. If none of those remain then you're just paying unit maintenance on a unit that can't fight.

I am also inclined to believe that Scouts receive some kind of favorable die roll adjustment when revealing the ancient ruin benefit. Like a better chance of getting improved weapons rather than just another map of the surrounding area.

 

[Dogmouth]

Even if they upgraded to explorers I would still delete the scout once I discovered everything on my land mass. They are good for finding ruins and CS. If none of those remain then you're just paying unit maintenance on a unit that can't fight.

They're fine for garrisons with oligarchy and/or military caste. Bows are better garrisons, but my bows are usually on the front lines.

 

[ahawk]

It's probably safe to assume that a scout upgrade is something that the developers considered at some stage, what with the existence of the explorer unit in Civ4 and all. It's unlikely something they just didn't think about. So there must be a decent reason why they opted not to include another unit.

I pretty much agree with this.

I remember in Civ IV that I rarely did anything with the Explorer unit: a single Explorer was often enough per game, and that meant that there was little incentive to keep around more than one Scout.

Also, I think the reason they opted not to include an upgrade to the Scout is that it would have infringed on the unique abilities of a number of sides: Inca (double-movement in hills), America (Minuteman), Shoshone (Pathfinder), Aztec (Jaguars), Iroquois (travel as if on roads in forest within own borders) and possibly even a couple more uniques would all be cheapened if everyone could just build/buy a handful of Scouts and upgrade them into anything reasonably powerful later on. So putting Scouts into the main line of upgrades wouldn't be fair, and including an upgrade to Explorer would be sort of a waste of programming, since by the time you'd upgrade them you'd have already discovered much of anything useful (aside from who the other AI's are).

 

[DarthSheldonPhD]

Couple of thoughts...

I always play with ancient ruins off and consequently never found it practical to build a scout at all- early warriors can peek outside the perimeter, finding a suitable second city site, a neighbor or two, and nearby CSs. With HBR, usually build 1, maybe 2 horseman to explore the rest of the map. Multi-landmass maps are finished with caravels.

But scouts historically have provided strategic advantages to the garrison they're scouting for, often making the difference between victory and defeat. From finding defensive positions to advising of the composition of enemy forces to the most obvious- informing the garrison there's a big ol' stack of nasty coming right for us (example set by the Civ 5 GreatScout - Paul Revere)

Here's an idea that kills 2 birds with one stone - all units suffer a defensive penalty, perhaps 20-25%, if attacked by a unit that is unknown at the end of their turn (i.e. in the fog of war), or perhaps if attacked by a unit that is 3 (4?) tiles away, and this penalty is negated if within 2 (or 3, 4?) tiles of a scout. First off, gives the scout a purpose in combat. Second, the trend on the forum for a while now has been either archery-based assaults, taking advantage of the hammer efficiency of pike units, or the ease of naval warfare. Mounted units seem to suffer in strategic application, so much so that people often sell horses for 1GPT. This would make mounted units, although still requiring some careful (tedious?) planning, more viable.

On a related note, I'm playing the Shoshone for the first time and found that I have a pathfinder instead of a warrior. Since I play with huts off, I'm obviously losing out in the greatest attribute of the civilization. I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one here that plays with huts off, and it would be great if there was some application of the unique unit that applied to hut-free games, and seeing this thread gave me an idea that i think would be really cool - I know that some of the huts offer advanced weaponry, turning a warrior into a spearman and most effectively turning a scout into a scout/archer. I think it would be cool if the Shoshone (and that civ only) could upgrade their scouts to scout archers. Before saying that it makes a powerful civ OP and that you should play with huts on the appreciate the civ, keep in mind that pathfinders cost more hammers than archers, 1/8 more in fact, and you'd also have to invest gold to make it happen.

Finally in regards to revisiting the explorer idea, Kamikaze pointed out that the designers had it in Civ4 and intentionally left it out of civ5, and there must be a reason for this. The reason is that we posted over and over how the explorer was the most insignificant and ineffective unit of Civ4, WE decided that explorers don't belong in civ5.

 

[ahawk]

On a related note, I'm playing the Shoshone for the first time and found that I have a pathfinder instead of a warrior. Since I play with huts off, I'm obviously losing out in the greatest attribute of the civilization. I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one here that plays with huts off, and it would be great if there was some application of the unique unit that applied to hut-free games

But... it's a free scout either way, huts or not. That's still a pretty solid boost, given that you still can meet CSes, and that you still want to know what terrain is around you. And if that wasn't enough, it's a free scout that won't get slaughtered should a barb attack it.

I agree that it's tough if you disable huts, because that's the most enjoyable/interesting part of the Pathfinder, but it's a bit of a stretch to say that it has no applications if huts are disabled, because a free, extra-strength scout you get on Turn 1 is still pretty powerful.

 

[cairnsy44]

I miss the explorer. Another idea might be to add an explorer ability that lets you build a colony on a resource that isn't within your territory so that you can gain access to it.

Workers were able to build colonies in Civ III iirc. I miss the ability to do something like that sometimes.

Or make them able to settle in later eras, a la the Conquistador?

 

[iconocast]

back in vanilla i always thought they should have upgraded to spys. something to let u see inside/ pass thru closed boarders?

or possibly a special forces unit that runs in and pillages tiles during war times? mabey poison the wells