What happens when you try to move your warrior into a tile you can't see?
When moving a unit into a unexplored tile, you expose that tile and use up your movement points. So far, that applies to scout, warrior, worker, settler, galley. It is only on the explored tiles that the actually unit movement is taken into account. I set fishing ships not to be able to move into unexplored tiles.
If so, what if there is a bad guy there?
I have not had this happen to me yet, but not for the obvious reason. So far with these settings, because I am using Erebius Continents map there are tons of forests, jungles, hills and mountains. You can only see the explored the tile your unit moves into. You do not expose any other tiles for most movements. So I move into a tile that is one movement point away from an enemy. You
do not see that goblin fort, hill giant, spectre, wolf, bear, spider, etc the next tile over. When it is the ai's turn they attack you as a complete surprise, I have lost many scouts this way.
So I have played 180 turns as the elves. Fun game, makes exploring a little easier with peace with animals so it is only the barbarians, spectres, hill giants, etc that attack you out of the fog. This was on a map with one big land mass, with all the civs living on it. By 180 turns I had only contact with 5 out of 10 on a large map. I had lost 6 scouts so far. In my previous games, I would use the 2 scouts that I started with and they would explore the world. I also would not need to build more of them, so I never really used hunters to actually explore and do their job. With these settings my first 2 initial scouts were both killed by turn 30 and I have had to build 4 more, which were all killed.
The ai barbarians seem to prosper with all of this extra time in the dark. They seem to be walking around all over the place. Of course I do have the option selected Raging Barbarians.
I have also played 210 turns as the launs. Something that I discovered, you must explore both land and sea. Your scout does not see that 1 or 2 extra square out into the water with these settings. For the most part the only way you know that you hit the coastline is to zoom the game up close and look for a beach or try to move and you can't. That means you have to build ships to even explore the coast water. Which means that to find a good city site, you have to have both a land and water unit explore if you want to find a good city site on the coast.
As mentioned above ships use up all their movement points when moving into one new unexplored tile. Once the water is explored the use their normal movement.
Also because fishing boats are set to no longer be able to move in unexplored tiles, you have to wait until sailing and the galley before being able to explore water. So your choice is to either explore inland and find your second city site, or prioritize the sailing tech asap so you can start exploring the water and try to find your second city site on the coast. Another added wrinkle to strategy based on your starting location and the race you are playing.
These changes make a large map using Erebius Continents seem huge, because of the extra time that you need to explore.
Overall I really like these changes, it prolongs the early stage of the game of exploration. It is sometimes tedious, but that vanishes the moment you end your turn, and have a barbarian appear out of nowhere and kill your unit. You swear at the monitor and then start to figure out when you can squeeze another scout into the build queue.
