Do you disband your initial scout?

[triheptyl]

After I've explored my landmass I'll bring my scouts home. I'll put them on my borders with potentially hostile AI's and plant them where I really want to build cities, to prevent camps from showing up and making the settling process a pain in the ass.

 

[Vordeo]

I disband very rarely.

Even without getting an Archer upgrade, they're still useful for fogbusting or settler protection, and of course once you figure out embarkation they're useful again.

 

[Esperr]

Disband him? If anything you can gift him to a city state.

 

[Grotius]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread. What do you do if the archer-scout is stuck far from home, between two civs with whom you don't have open borders? This always seems to happen to my scouts, and I don't usually want to pay for open borders just to rescue this one dude. (I'd rather sell open borders in exchange for 50 gold.) And even if you have Optics, the scout can't embark unless it's in home territory, right?

 

[Dentalfury]

I always keep him. Unless i'm in the modern era or something and I'm having real issues paying for my armies bar tab.

This is partly due to the fact I always follow the +sight upgrade path from them and by the end of the classical era I could have a single scout survey and entire region if up on a hill.

@Grotius - It is true that unless you can get the stranded scout home he cannot take advantage of the optics upgrade. I don't really see it as a bad thing though if you can't get him home. The unique combo of fast movement with decent ranged attack can make him a barb killing machine (for local CS influence) and great at harassing other civs depending on the terrain. If you have issues at home or have a specific need for the archer-scout elsewhere just do the open borders treaty and get him back pronto.

 

[Daft73]

I always keep him, at worse to protect workers
Otherwise after embark..more goody huts, city-states to discover, find other ai.

 

[Grotius]

@Dentalfury - Thanks. I need to be more active in finding barb camps for CS influence, so I'll try using the stranded scout-archer for that.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

If my first scout is not killed by barbs, i'll keep him around. In one game i managed to get a scout with scouting 3 (+1 move) and he was great for taking cities after my composite bowmen bombed them to 1 HP

 

[Donaskme]

Does anyone keep their scouts around after they have explored the starting land mass? Are there good uses for scouts later in the game that I am missing?

Nope. As soon as he's done exploring, I kill him, unless he's an archer then I send him to the front lines.

 

[mintcandy]

later in the game they can be cheap garrisons.

This. If you have Military Caste, there's no reason you couldn't use the initial Scout as a garrison to free up more powerful units for actual combat...or build Scouts as a cheap way to generate culture and happiness.

 

[civzombie]

I keep my scarchers.

As for non-upgraded scouts, keep them if they have the sight upgrade. It is good for watching AI troop movements (even in or near their territory).

 

[Traejun]

If it's not upgraded at a ruin or just destroyed, I almost always disband it.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

i only disband them if they got locked out by civ borders and my opponents are many turns away from open borders or im on a small continent and will explore with triremes. if they became archers i certainly dont disband them.

 

[AlazkanAssassin]

My scout usually ends up dead when I start putting him in dangerous situations just to grant a flanking bonus to another unit.

 

[TheHarshax]

My scout usually ends up dead when I start putting him in dangerous situations just to grant a flanking bonus to another unit.

This. The flank bonus is very worthwhile. I wear down barbarians, then use the scout to finish them off. I once had +2 Sight, positioned the unit on a hill, and foiled every sneak attack through two ages, before it was taken out by bombers.

ALso, I always rename by scout-archer, to Ranger.

 

[Jman5]

Yes. There is no point having him hang around draining gold per turn. Once my scouts serve their purpose it's off to the glue factory.

 

[Wodan]

All of the above, plus, here's another idea that I do quite often. Your scout can usually attack a stronger unit without dying. So, simply having him along on combat operations, you can milk him to get some advanced promos such as Medic. At that point, he can stay along but behind your primary units, giving them better healing.

 

[Heretiv]

Barbarians with Ironclads, I saw at least once. No thanks.

Have you seen Somalia lately? Or Malaya?

Other side of this, personally I spend loads of time disbanding workers - you can often pick up a few free during a war, and I think it is dangerous for your profit to just keep on spamming tile improvements if you are not working them all.

 

[RonMar]

I aim to improve most, if not all, of the workable tiles for my cities. It gives me the flexibility to prioritize different types of production (gold, research, production, etc.). But, when a city is very small, I want to improve only what I need to work at the time.

 

[chmilz]

I use them for defense: if a really strong opponent is going after a weaker opponent and the weaker opponent is close enough, I buy open borders and place scouts in strategic spots so the difficult opponent can't take cities and run away. Using them to block exits so units get destroyed is good too.

They are really useful because they can cross rivers, otherwise horse units are great for this too.