My best military unit is my scout

[RogerN]

I'm currently playing a game as the English, and the following chain of events occurred:

* I start building a scout at turn 1, as I frequently do.
* Scout finishes, finds some goody huts.
* One of the goody huts equips the scout with better weapons. Yay, now he's an archer!
* Fast-forward to the medieval era. My archer (previously my 1st scout) gets upgraded to an English longbow. Yay, extra firing range!
* At this point I notice that he can still move like a scout - moving through hills and forests for just 1 MP. So I now have a powerful medieval longbow that can shoot farther than any other unit of the era AND move through rough terrain like it's not even there.

Is this the intended behavior? Can you really manufacture super-useful military units by upgrading a goody-hut-equipped scout?

 

[Usuno]

This happened once in a game with ruins on and my scout became the Queen of my chessboard, getting mad upgrades and tearing apart armies before they even got close. They'd either try to duck into cover and fortify/heal, which was worse than useless because promotion vs. fortified units + promotion vs. cover terrain, or they'd wade through my arrow storm with 1-2 guys left in their "unit," this ofc only happening if they survived at all. It helped that he could hop on hills and shoot in the same turn, flee through forest if outnumbered, etc, maneuvering however he needed to take advantage of terrain to ensure no one escapes the wrath of scout-archer.

Never played with ruins on since then.

 

[Tabarnak]

Someone should start a game at settler(or warlord?) difficulty and try to beat a pangea map against 6-8 civs with only a scout.

 

[Pouakai]

I had a scout with scouting 1 (+1 visibility) and scouting 2 (+1 movement) upgraded to Archer, Crossbow, Rifleman, Infantry, and Mech. Infantry. There, it got Rough terrain 1,2,3 , Blitz (Multiple attacks per turn) and Woodsman (2x movement through jungle and forest) - 5 movement and can capture a city in about 1 turn on it's own, from nowhere.

 

[AznWarlord]

Yes it's intended behavior

 

[Karl_Rove]

Someone should start a game at settler(or warlord?) difficulty and try to beat a pangea map against 6-8 civs with only a scout.

Doing it on Saturday. Will post results.

edit: which would be better: Cho-ko-nu or the longbowman?

 

[ljofthemm]

Doing it on Saturday. Will post results.

edit: which would be better: Cho-ko-nu or the longbowman?

I wanna see these results!

 

[shaglio]

edit: which would be better: Cho-ko-nu or the longbowman?

This happened in my current game as the Chinese. My scout got upgraded from Ancient Ruins and became an Archer. Eventually I upgraded the Archer to a Chu-ko-nu and it could move over rough terrain unhindered and fire twice per turn.

But, to answer your question, I would say the Longbowman would be better. You could always get the attack-multiple-times-per-turn ability through the Blitz promotion, but the ability to fire 3 squares for a non-artillary unit is invaluable in a ground unit (until you upgrade them to Riflemen and lose the ranged attack).

 

[Arilian]

At the beginning it was possible to get one more hut and Longbow at turn 10-20.
That was something

 

[bryanw1995]

Ha, or my personal favorite was seeing babylon with rifleman on my doorstep on turn 34. Fortunately, back then they weren't allowed to sneak attack you until later on.

Recent patches prevent you from getting more than one unit upgrade from a goody hut, so no more longbows or or ckn's on turn 30. Sorry guys

 

[Karl_Rove]

I wanna see these results!

Wasn't nearly as fun as I thought that it would be. I limited myself to an offensive army of one scout-->longbowman and one scout as a spotter/city taker (longbowman cannot take cities). It got boring FAST, though it was pretty cool to have a lvl12 or so longbowman. When the "people w/ the pointiest sticks" menu would pop up mine number would be like 12x the number 2 spot, even though I only had 2 units!

Once people build walls around their capital, it is impossible to take the city with only one longbowman, no matter how powerful. Maybe if the rules were changed to allow two it could be done, but I still think that it was just plain boring.