Scouting

[sabrewolf]

i've often seen AI scouts crossing jungles, hill- or mountain-ranges, or following the tundra north coast. i presume the AI tries to maximize the amount of known tiles per turn and not for the fastest exploration.

btw, has anyone found the "logic" of goody huts? i happen to always miss them (that single black tiles has a hut ). and sometimes vast areas are empty, and then the group of 1-tile-islands has a lot of them. is the placement completely random?

[sabrewolf]

and another question: someone said, that on huge pangea maps the first unit-builds are all scouts.

do you start with the granary first? or first a bunch of scouts and then the granary?

[Bamspeedy]

sabrewolf - If you want to study how the AI uses it's scouts, then just use auto-explore (the 'e' key on your keyboard) for your scouts, and your scout will do just like the computer would use it. An automated scout won't always try to end it's turn on mountains for max range, and will tread through jungles sometimes when he could have gone farther by staying on flat ground. There seems to be some randomness in which direction it goes. And they will eventually want to uncover every last tile (even water tiles), so you may have scouts running in circles, or scouts treading back in through that big jungle, just to get to see 1 sea tile some other scout forgot to uncover.

[Mad Bomber]

Hey, its Bamspeedy....Welcome to Apolyton!

It seems to me that the AI builds only a few scouts and sends them in one direction until it reaches a coastline or reaches a cultural border. I have often had early contact with an AI scout and later find a goody hut just a few tiles outside their cultural borders. The AI rarely uses maximum movement in order to discover unknown tiles it will rarely move a tile and then move to higher ground.

[Cort Haus]

Another superb thread from Aeson.
(Makes me wanna fire up an expansionist game, but I've got AU302 behind my browser and I only popped into Poly an hour ago to look something up)

Originally posted by Yahweh Sabaoth
Does anyone know any tricks for expansionist civs to "out-scout" other expansionists?

You could kill their scouts ...

... or, what I have found playing expansionist with other expansionists around is that if all trade the techs from huts with each other, you collectively get a larger tech lead over the non-exps than you would as a sole exp.

[jayhawk]

I never get to start with a scout. Are only certain civilizations allowed to begin with one?

[sabrewolf]

jayhawK: only expansionistic civs (russian, english, american, iroquios, and others) get the scout...

[jayhawk]

I never get to start with a scout. Are only certain civilizations allowed to begin with one?

[jayhawk]

Thanks Sabrewolf.