Re: scouts getting free sentry.
I'm playing through a game at the moment, v0.92, which as a few more changes than you guys get at the moment

, and I'm enjoying that scouts get the unique early ability. I have also noticed the "issue" with meeting civs and not being able to see them, I would note that this can happen in other situations as well even without sentry scouts. This happened once when I captured a barb city and IIRC before the city's borders shrunk to zero (during the revolt) a scout on a nearby hill saw me but I didn't see it.
It can also happen with any other unit that legitimately gets sentry does a similar thing (only reason this is rare is that early sentry is difficult). Also, regular AI scouts can move by you, meeting you during their turn but going out of your visible range during the turn. You'd see them if you had show moves on, but probably not if you didn't.
I'm surprised you're calling that a dealbreaker, Silu.
I think even if you made scouts 10

they'd still be pretty bad without Sentry. Yes they get better hut popping results but in my experience huts are all popped in the first several turns during the game, and no one playing seriously builds a scout first up (except perhaps in very rare cases). I don't want the scout just a hut-popping unit and not useful for anything else.
If the issue is with how much better the hut results are for scouts, maybe we should change how good the huts are for warriors, or for scouts. I've sometimes considered removing the possibility of getting techs from huts or something similar but I am
not suggesting this at this point so don't panic!
Remember, the guys who start with scouts (human player I'm talking about) start with Hunting, a tech usually considered one of the worse starting techs. IMO that scout is a nice little bonus for them. Those who don't start with hunting now have a greater incentive to go for hunting fairly early to get the valuable scouts. At the moment, with sentry, I'm finding it worth having at least 2 or 3 scouts around. They can explore new land and rival territory much more efficiently now, making them better than using just a mounted unit or worker (which people, including myself, have been known to do).
Anyway, regarding forest preserves, I am indeed thinking of moving them to some later tech again. I will have to have a think about what tech to put them on, but ideally I'd go for something before SciMeth but well after Monarchy. Maybe something like Constitution.

If I can't think of anything, it'll go back to SciMeth and it will be hoped that because you kept some forests around with LMs, using preserves late in the game might be an option for civs short on happy resources and no longer running HR.
Re: Missing regenerate option
I am not 100% sure of this but I think it's because of the MapFinder part of BULL (I think I remember seeing it while I merged code some time ago). Maybe EF can confirm, because I don't know anything about MapFinder including how to use it. I'm guessing there is a hotkey for regenerate? I haven't been able to find it in any documentation but I haven't looked hard yet.
Re: in general
In v0.92, which I've been playing, I have LMs come with guilds which I think has been much better. I've also added a +25% cost for distance maintenance to the HR civic, similar to the State Property bonus (which is -100% instead of +25%). I didn't want to increase the upkeep cost of HR because then there would be no civics in the government category that are low upkeep. I tried 50% initially but found it too prohibitive to expansion. I think 25% only costs on the order of 2 or 3

for a typical early game 7 city empire, which I think is appropriate for the civic. Running HR when you possess a massive sprawling empire should come with greater cost IMO, something I believe the current change does reasonably well.
One slight worrying consequence of adding that property to HR is that it means that the bonus associated with State Property is now technically false. Just like all the things in the civilopedia that claim "double production speed" when they should instead say "+100% of base hammers", State Property should really say "-100% distance costs" instead of "no distance costs". Still, operating at -75% distance costs, most people would probably barely notice the difference as it's still a huge reduction. So running HR with SP is not going to be as bad as it may sound on paper.
Yah, I do. Compare it to an unit that would kill anything 100% on the offense, and die 100% on the defense. If the other params were tweaked enough (cost, etc) it would be "balanced", but not good design. As I said - buffing the aspect of the unit that's already good enough doesn't fix the problems of other aspects. That's like sweeping them under the rug. In some situations it makes them overpowered, and in others underpowered. You might be able to dodge the Panthers better, but if they still corner you you'd wish the bugger of a Scout could actually survive a battle at decent odds
With sentry scouts, I'm finding it useful to pair them with warriors when scouting, especially for bushy areas of the map where the scout is more vulnerable because of its more limited visibility.
This is something that the AI might have some more trouble with but tbh it already gets pretty good ability to scout given its starting units, often exploring enough before barbs and animals even become a problem. The extra thinking the human player can do with scouting now is an overall positive IMOATM.
