Most Compelling Reason 4 a Scout I've Been Able to Find

[BarbarianHunter]

Meeting all the civs for trading is nice, finding new city states is even better, but pillaging early game mines and ziggurats for 25 science (7 full turns worth) @ no warmonger penalties...the best.

Spoiler :

 

[liv]

Nice that is quite a boost. Gilgabro and warcarts scare me so I often go with friendship instead. Not sure if I am just too chicken

 

[BarbarianHunter]

Nice that is quite a boost. Gilgabro and warcarts scare me so I often go with friendship instead. Not sure if I am just too chicken

If it were deity I'd be worried. I'm just messing around as the next 6otM is prince level Macedon cultural victory, and I wanted to see how that might play out.

Really though, I rarely build a scout, but may start as the potential to stumble across a mine and pillage it for 25 science along with the other benefits (meeting civs, city states, and goody huts) could well have just thrown me over into the build a scout early camp.

 

[liv]

I always build a scout first on deity. I think it pays even if the benefits you get from them are based on luck.
One of my things to do with a scout is to pair it up with a slinger and go and take out camps. The guarding spearman will always wake up and move out of the camp to try to attack the slinger ignoring the scout totally and the scout can just jump in the camp and it makes for easy era points and money.