Scout promotions

[Finarvi]

Hey!

My problem is that I always choose extra sight when leveling scouts. I can't imagine why would I want to pick survival. Scouts are for scouting, not sitting and healing. Even if you explore everything, your scout can be used to watch your caravans and prevent barbs from spawning. Please tell me what you choose and why!

I've also done some comparison:

Promotion:|Sight|Survivalism
Level 1|+1 sight range|+5heal,+25%def
Level 2|+1 sight range|+5heal,+25%def
Scouting:|Much better active and passive scouting.|No effect.
Survival:|Better sight allows to avoid barbarians.|Can survive longer but wastes time on healing.
Leveling:|Much faster leveling from scouting.|Slighly more exp if leveling on barbs.

Some of my ideas (choose one or more):

1. Buff survivalism. Let this heal work as march. This would synergize with initial purpouse of scouts: to scout actively, survive and reveal as much ruins, wonders and civilizations.

2. Add Swiftness promotion: +1/+2 movement. This would make leveling real choice: more sight (meaning better active and passive scouting) or more movement (making better active scouting and much more mobility).

3. Add promotions related to certain terrains (something like barbarians have). These could give you extra moves, healing and defense in certain terrain.

 

[Strigvir]

There is no point in giving them direct strength buffs because the base CS is so low it won't even matter against a sudden horseman. At least with vision you can avoid the damage entirely.

 

[supracseduch]

I like the March-like effect with Survivalism. Here's my suggestion:

Scouting I: +1 sight range
Scouting II: Can enter foreign territory.
Scouting III: +1 movement

Survivalism I: +5 heal, +25% def
Survivalism II: Heal every turn.
Survivalism III: Withdraw before melee.

 

[jacktannery]

I actually think we should completely remove the +1 sight promotions. It makes scouting too easy and quick.

 

[ExpiredReign]

I ALWAYS get the survivalism promotions. Why?

Once you get to the 3rd promo if you are unlucky enough to get ambushed by barbs you can often "tough it out" until they move away or reinforcements arrive. The ability to heal whilst moving is just too good to overlook.

 

[Finarvi]

Warlord

Join Date: Jan 2015
Posts: 141
I like the March-like effect with Survivalism. Here's my suggestion:

Scouting I: +1 sight range
Scouting II: Can enter foreign territory.
Scouting III: +1 movement

Survivalism I: +5 heal, +25% def
Survivalism II: Heal every turn.
Survivalism III: Withdraw before melee.

I like this one! Plus, Survivalism I could give +10 heal istead. Stigvir made good point that this +25% means so little. With Survivalism 1 even one archer deals more damage than you can heal in turn.

I actually think we should completely remove the +1 sight promotions. It makes scouting too easy and quick.

I agree that sight promotions are overpowered, that's why I choose them. But one level is OK as it is purpose of scout.

 

[kaspergm]

I actually think the two promotion lines are quite well balanced. For me, it's about 50/50 whether I pick one or the other, and often I will cross-over, i.e. start with one and then take the other side next time in order to both make unit more useful AND to help survive barb attacks.

Maxing out Scouting directly seems like a bad strategy in most cases because your unit will soon be killed by a barbarian horseman and then you've wasted the unit, plus it may not be possible to get a new scouts to the same location.

 

[Gamewizard]

I too always take the +sight on scouts. Once there is nothing left to explore, I camp them outside my frontier cities to prevent barb camp spawns and surprise attacks from neighboring Civs.

If we do change the promotions, I would keep only 1 +sight, the second is overkill.

 

[Almonds]

I have found myself doing one of each on Emperor and Immortal difficulty. It's nice to have a little bit of defense when moving far away from any claimed territory, because barbs can get the jump on you quickly. Survivalism also lets you help tank early barbarian camps while your warrior dishes out some damage. If you get lucky, Archer class units with Survivalism are also really strong, and who doesn't want a ranged unit who can spot targets AND take some attacks without needing to retreat?

All this said, the March idea is very fitting and I would like that change.

 

[Finarvi]

Question to those who take Survivalism (both levels or only one): do you play with raging barbs?

 

[zeta]

Of all your suggestions I like swiftness most. Especially on large maps the decision will be interesting to make.

 

[Jdoug312]

Question to those who take Survivalism (both levels or only one): do you play with raging barbs?

Yep, always

 

[Myrrdin_Emrys]

well there is another thing to take in consideration that you forgot !
For me scout aren't onloy explorers
1 or 2 scouts can easily pillage or capture civilian in early wars? Capture a civilian unit nice, but you cant move it until next turn, so you will have to defend it 1 or maybe 2 turns to evacuate him, and here survivalism does the job. You can resist and annoy a little longer your opponent (even heal a 2 rough tiles further and come back to burn farm again (gold gold gold) or trade route (even more gold !)or even take another civilian (time earned ! and time is money so gold gold and gold again !)

To be more serious, i often go for scouting promotion but sometimes if i have an agressiv civ or i find a neighbour really close to me survivalism just overpower scouting promotions ....

 

[Iamblichos]

if you guys are using raging barbs, may I ask how many have started using the GG/GA points from fighting barbs Game Option I added to the DLL? Thoughts?

 

[Funak]

Hey!

My problem is that I always choose extra sight when leveling scouts. I can't imagine why would I want to pick survival. Scouts are for scouting, not sitting and healing. Even if you explore everything, your scout can be used to watch your caravans and prevent barbs from spawning. Please tell me what you choose and why!

I've also done some comparison:

Promotion:|Sight|Survivalism
Level 1|+1 sight range|+5heal,+25%def
Level 2|+1 sight range|+5heal,+25%def
Scouting:|Much better active and passive scouting.|No effect.
Survival:|Better sight allows to avoid barbarians.|Can survive longer but wastes time on healing.
Leveling:|Much faster leveling from scouting.|Slighly more exp if leveling on barbs.

Some of my ideas (choose one or more):

1. Buff survivalism. Let this heal work as march. This would synergize with initial purpouse of scouts: to scout actively, survive and reveal as much ruins, wonders and civilizations.

2. Add Swiftness promotion: +1/+2 movement. This would make leveling real choice: more sight (meaning better active and passive scouting) or more movement (making better active scouting and much more mobility).

3. Add promotions related to certain terrains (something like barbarians have). These could give you extra moves, healing and defense in certain terrain.

Yay for biased post again .

Survivalism is a super-powerful promotion-line, it pretty much lets your scouts stand up to barbarian horse-units and swordsmen without dying. The also the third level of Survivalism is a lot stronger than the third level of Scouting.

That being said I do pick scouting whenever I think I can get away with it, mostly because of greed, if you don't run into any barbs you can get away with building fewer scouts if you go for scouting.

Might also be worth mentioning that I don't play with any increased scouting-exp so my scouts don't reach level 3 unless I use them to harass some AI. Increasing the cap(which a lot of players do) makes Survivalism a lot more powerful.


I'd also like to point out that the poll is rather flawed, the answer that most people would go with does not exist, it being "It depends on the circumstances" or "Both".

 

[bane_]

Question to those who take Survivalism (both levels or only one): do you play with raging barbs?

Yes. Always.

 

[WileyNg]

I would rather give scouts +1 movement somewhere along the Scouting promotion line

 

[kaspergm]

Question to those who take Survivalism (both levels or only one): do you play with raging barbs?

No, never.

 

[jacktannery]

Survivalism is a super-powerful promotion-line

I think this is going a little too far. I sometimes take it just for a change, but the +1 sight line is clearly superior. Amongst other things, once you complete scouting your landmass you can then go back along all the coasts and scout well into the ocean with two +1 sight promotions, getting additional use of of your scouts before you get optics.

The survivalism route has few advantages. Scouts are hopeless at fighting barbarians, so if you are trying to deal with barbarians you are always better off building warriors and archers than survivalism-promoted scouts.

The results of the poll above I think speak for themselves.

 

[Iamblichos]

Sight all the way. That's what scouts are for. Only time I may pick survivalism is if it would mean saving the scout.