Explorers - did you find any use for them?

[Handel]

Because I didn't

[mrboo123]

I could see it being useful in the terra maps, but not really

[QuantumPion]

They are useful in terra maps, because you can drop one off via caravels before you get galleons for settlers. They have awesome bonuses for defense against the barbarian hordes that you find there.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Very useful in terra maps and sometimes archipelago...other than that, you can sometimes have them wander around in the AI's territory during a war without getting attacked, so they make ok spies that way...

[Blake]

Another thing to note is that if you do the Compass beeline (to get harbors) you also get explorers really early.

[Senethro]

Level 3 explorers can have half movement costs in forests and hills. I guess they also get better results from goodie huts. If you can't see at least some potential there then theres no hope for you. A unit for Terra maps only though.

[GeoModder]

Well, since with my low laptop specs it is unadvisable to play on anything larger then small maps, Explorers have no real use for me (except for the Terra map of course). At least if I want to have 6-7 civs ingame.
I find that for those 2, perhaps 3 goody huts you encounter on any other of the more normal map types (ocean, pangea) it isn't worth the effort beelining for them. Hell, offen all huts all already scouted by the time my first scout is build.

[khumak]

There's a lot of games where explorers are totally pointless because by the time you can build them there's nothing left to explore. But in Terra or island games they can be quite useful for the movement bonus and the chance to actually survive encounters with barbarians so you can grab the late goodie huts.

I generally either upgrade my scouts to explorers or build a couple of explorers at the same time I get my first caravels and send them out together in case there's anything worth exploring that the AI hasn't saturated with settlers yet.

[Blake]

People are way underestimating explorers. You can get them really early in the game if you prioritize harbors (and if you check the harbor thread, there are some reasons you might want to do so).

Explorers built early can do plenty of eploring and wont die to barbs, they can usually fight off axes if in a forest. You can also camp them next to barb/AI cities or otherwise use them for indirection.
Another use is as settler escorts, unfortunately they don't count as a military unit for drone control purposes, but it can be handy anyway (like if you have a garrison waiting at the city site, but a lot of fog to go through where the settler might get ambushed).

In short, you CAN get explorers very early in the game, and they certainly can be used to great effect.

[peyoan]

in the game i'm playing now, i built 2 explorers by accident.

i just clicked auto-explore and ignored them for the most part, i was too engrossed in colonization. (huge map, snaky archipelgo, low sealevel, Rampaging Barbs - which is why there is still lots of colonization to be done!).

I saw them get in fights with some barb swordsmen and axemen and survive to my surprise.

Once i was done colonizing prime city sites, i just noticed on my world map that i knew the location of every city for 7 or 8 additional civ's (plus they made contact with a handful for me too). I wasn't payin attention and they scouted the entire world for me! (i had open borders with everyone because i gave my tech's away to try to help the AI to catch up and had good relations all around).

In the future, i will definately use explorers to discover the layout of other civilizations early!