The Case Against Using Scouts

[tibbles]

You could just check the disable start bias option.

 

[woodshadows]

You could just check the disable start bias option.

good point

 

[Fluffball]

I see the benefits of building scouts first:

ruins
city states
barb camps
natural wonders
other civs
terrain

but I do not think a Scout is worth building to achieve these. Ruins go pretty fast, your starting warrior can find 2-3 before there all gone, so why waste a scout to find 1 ruin maybe none?

City States bring 30 gold if your the first, 15 if not, so why rush to find them when you may only get 1 to 2 anyways with your starting warrior?

barb camps: losing a scout to a barb is painful, so why risk it?

natural wonders: sure they bring happiness, but you would need open borders to find them all in game, so why waste the 50 gold from open borders to increase happiness.

other civs: yes, we know all the ai is dumb and you can defend pretty easily from an early war, but the warrior can find all nearby civs before the scout has to do much.

terrain: by the time you get your scout out, your warrior has been able to achieve lots of map searching that the scout has to go a long ways to see new land. plus you aint going to settle a second city anytime soon so your warrior can search enough land to find a good second city.

Can people post stories on why the almighty scout plays an important role in the early game compared to the warrior versus other production uses (worker, monument, etc)

The best question is what are the disadvantages to building a scout?
Personally i can't think of any while you have already mentioned lots of the advantages or at least potential advantages and others have added more.

A note on some of your specific points, yes your warrior can find most of the near by civs before your scout is even out but they are not the most beneficial to find. You will find them pretty quickly no matter what and there is likely to at least end up with bad relations if not starting so due to your proximity so the potential for trade is poor.
Once your scout is on the move you can very quickly shoot off and find the further away civs before you get blocked in by the nearby civs expansions and have a lot of great trading partners as unless you go out of your way to annoy them they will usually be very friendly.
Before i started on prioritising scouting i would often find myself knowing lots of civs but having little reasonable options to trade.

If your scout does get cut off from via the expansion of other civs then it is quite disposable and can be deleted without much loss. In fact when playing larger maps i routinely delete at least one scout as i know it won't upgrade to anything useful and it's not worth the time or maintenance cost to drag it all the way home.

If you have been heavy exploring with your warrior then it will have found a lot of near by terrain before your scout arrives but i often find it has hit a dead end so i can simply send my scout in the other direction and if not then can keep exploring with it for the small number of turns it takes my scout to catch and over take it, then send that warrior back to defend.

The only time i might consider a scout not so important is if you play on a small map or know your stuck on a small continent as your main scouting will be done via naval units.

 

[snarzberry]

That could be interesting, I've done that with Aztecs to good success but of course their uu lends itself to it far better than a standard warrior. I'd be curious to see how well it would go as well. So what are you proposing exactly? That my first two builds are strictly defined as warrior builds, or warrior then worker, and then I'm free to build/buy whatever I want after that? Or am I also banned from buying/building scouts at any point?

No let's just make the first build scout for me and warrior for you, then anything goes. I had gotten the impression from this thread that you were arguing against using scouts, as an opening build but also more generally as well. I still think it's best to build a scout first on a pangaea map, but if you normally add a scout in the first 20 - 50 turns then I don't think you're making any large mistake. I'm still happy to run a sample game and probably find more ruins, but it's the large difference in scouted area and how that could affect gameplay decisions that I was hoping to highlight and there will not be as large a contrast as I was predicting if you do actually commonly build or purchase a scout in the very early game, just not as an initial build.

I often build a scout in nearly every game. Once my cities are more established or I hit some extra gold I might buy/build a scout or two and send out to autoexplore safely, during a time when most barbs have been eliminated. This gives me the maps I'll need for later game wars and more importantly I try to find the natural wonders for the extra happiness they provide/city states extra little gold they give. In early game it really is variable and hard to say what percentage is involved. In my latest game with Catherine I ended up buying a scout some time after my worker was built because I was playing lakes map and I find this map it's more important to scout more as you don't have a coastline which restricts the amount of scouting required to determine who is on your borders etc. I really go on a case by case basis for deciding when and whether to build a scout, I think it's bad to confine yourself to a strategy too strictly, gotta be flexible. I don't think I would build a scout in this challenge tho just on account of it being a challenge, simply because I'm not of the opinion that the scout in-all-situations would provide an advantage, as is well known I still think in most cases there are better things to be built.



England sounds good. I'm not sure if they have a start bias.. probably coastal? I think that would be okay tho, I can't think that would give an advantage to either of us. I'm thinking possibly pangaea or continents for the map type?

I'm happy with England immortal pangaea, start bias disabled, standard everything.

 

[woodshadows]

upload the save file whenever you like and we can play them through 50 turns at our own pace (going to take me a while if I'm going to take more than a couple screenshots as I can't seem to ctrl-tab in and out of the game, it locks the game on me when I try).

 

[qemist]

Count me among the mob, but I fail to see why GOTM entries with crazy low win times that started scout first are not considered evidence. Civ is all about compounding the early turns and those early turns are the easiest to go back and replay over and over to optimize. You don't think by now those players haven't tried out opener after opener to see which shaved off turns?

I know little about GOTM but if you're saying the GOTM with low win times are due to cheating, then I don't think they're good evidence. On most maps I'd expect a save-game cheat to build one scout that somehow makes a beeline for all the best goody huts. I'd also expect them to hardly ever lose a battle no matter the odds and to boldly send their unescorted settlers into the unknown where they (what luck!) find the ideal settling spot. That doesn't make it optimal stategy for non-cheats.

 

[Atlas627]

I know little about GOTM but if you're saying the GOTM with low win times are due to cheating, then I don't think they're good evidence. On most maps I'd expect a save-game cheat to build one scout that somehow makes a beeline for all the best goody huts. I'd also expect them to hardly ever lose a battle no matter the odds and to boldly send their unescorted settlers into the unknown where they (what luck!) find the ideal settling spot. That doesn't make it optimal stategy for non-cheats.

Um..what are you talking about? He didn't say anything about cheating at all. You said it. And no, they aren't cheating. Or at least they say. And I trust them, because seriously, who would cheat? Why even bother?

 

[qemist]

um..what are you talking about?

those early turns are the easiest to go back and replay over and over to optimize

12345

 

[woodshadows]

Um..what are you talking about? He didn't say anything about cheating at all. You said it. And no, they aren't cheating. Or at least they say. And I trust them, because seriously, who would cheat? Why even bother?

Whether they are cheating or not doesn't really matter so much, the games posted are only those which have played through with optimal conditions which have allowed small army liberty tree openers to pull off the various tricks people use to gain overwhelming momentum early on. How many times do they have to play through before they get optimal conditions and circumstances to be able to pull off the NC, liberty, great person HS, PT swing? This doesn't mean they are following the 'best strategy', it means under perfect conditions it will provide overwhelming advantages.

 

[qemist]

Whether they are cheating or not doesn't really matter so much, the games posted are only those which have played through with optimal conditions which have allowed small army liberty tree openers to pull off the various tricks people use to gain overwhelming momentum early on. How many times do they have to play through before they get optimal conditions and circumstances to be able to pull off the NC, liberty, great person HG, PT swing? This doesn't mean they are following the 'best strategy', it means under perfect conditions it will provide overwhelming advantages.

That's a good point. The very fastest games will have been the ones where the player had the most luck (natural or manufactured) and so the strategies will be the high risk ones that pay off the most when the player is ginormously lucky. For example, if you are so lucky as to not be attacked until the renaissance then building military units before then is a waste of hammers (non-dom strategy, obviously). That doesn't mean that "playing naked" is the best strategy.

Some deity players who advocate the GLb, NC, HG, liberty bulb, PT etc strategy admit their fallback for when they get beaten to one of those wonders (or seriously attacked early) is "reroll" or "reload". To my mind they didn't win those games.

 

[Tabarnak]

I know little about GOTM but if you're saying the GOTM with low win times are due to cheating, then I don't think they're good evidence. On most maps I'd expect a save-game cheat to build one scout that somehow makes a beeline for all the best goody huts. I'd also expect them to hardly ever lose a battle no matter the odds and to boldly send their unescorted settlers into the unknown

Some games have no huts enabled and you can still see low time games. Unscorted settler? Why? Only noobs don't escort their settlers.

 

[woodshadows]

Some games have no huts enabled and you can still see low time games. Unscorted settler? Why? Only noobs don't escort their settlers.

I'll sometimes gamble with a settler, which will either provide me with a big advantage or will ruin my game. High risk strategies can provide overwhelming advantages and momentum and the result of their success is often displayed as HOTM etc high scores, this does not however mean that these are optimal strategies since these high scores don't show the hidden costs of these strategies - ie lots of ruined games/reloads.

 

[qemist]

Unscorted settler? Why? Only noobs don't escort their settlers.

Why escort a settler if you know it cannot be captured?

 

[Atlas627]

12345

I totally missed that, my apologizes. Though even now I still think he meant that they have practiced on non-GOTM games.

Also, I agree about calculated risks. High scores show luck as well as skill (you must take advantage of the luck).

However, my argument for scouts was not based upon "look at GOTM for proof", I was simply presenting logical arguments. I did not provide any evidence, instead tried to use premises we can agree upon.

 

[Tabarnak]

Why escort a settler if you know it cannot be captured?

I don't need such gamble to play well. I may throw a unit some turns before and memorize barbs spawning but not that much. Reloading in HoF and GOTM games to know in advance the map is weak. I play multiplayer a lot so i'm used to not know the map before starting the game. If you don't trust best games showed, you probably sub-optimally use the most powerful weapon for non-domination games : Research Agreements.

I have a lot of experience, i play civ games since 1996.

A scout start can let you find the extra or 2 AIs needed for the first wave of RAs, giving you the snowball wanted.

You absolutely need to reroll* in HoF games a lot and prepare a grand strategy to have a chance to finish in top3. For GOTM games, it's more balanced since everyone use the same map and only once. That said, HoF games give a lot(insane, but doable) better results.

 

[vexing]

Why escort a settler if you know it cannot be captured?

i agree completely

 

[Tabarnak]

Good scouting can bring you opportunities like vexing showed. I call this ''preventive scouting''.

 

[RD-BH]

Getting that scout->archer upgrade is just the best

Do you always go for the vis upgrade then? I tend to go for the +1 healing and +50% defence route? Or is that just a bit silly on a unit with base combat values?

Might try the +1 vis range from now on. Admittedly, i've always thought of it as the weaker upgrade...

I prefer +1 vis, +1 movement.
An early unit that moves/sees 3 tiles is great at fogbusting.
If that unit becomes an archer ... even better.

Tip:
Don't blunder onto a hilltop or forest on your last movement point.
Use the scout to scout.
Move 'onto the hill'/'into the forest' on the first move.
This lets you back out when an enemy is in the next tile.

 

[Redcoat Captain]

I prefer +1 vis, +1 movement.
An early unit that moves/sees 3 tiles is great at fogbusting.
If that unit becomes an archer ... even better.

Tip:
Don't blunder onto a hilltop or forest on your last movement point.
Use the scout to scout.
Move 'onto the hill'/'into the forest' on the first move.
This lets you back out when an enemy is in the next tile.

Thanks for the tip

I've got to get myself out of the habit of moving two tiles at once using the right click. I've lost count of the number of tiles i've left my scout and/or settler next to a barb because I'm too impatient to move 1 tile at a time

 

[The Pilgrim]

i agree completely

The problem is not risking settler/worker. But the turns you lose while avoiding barbs.
Sometimes you can move back and forth for a long time before city eventually kills multiple barbs around. And these are cases when I'm sorry I didn't pull my starting warrior back.