Why do scouts become obsolete?

[Varus2319]

And with Scientific Theory even.

Right about the time you send out exploration ships to meet civs on other continents and right about the time you get open borders with those civs, your scouts become obsolete and you can't make any more.

Why?

There is never a period in the game when a scout truly becomes unnecessary, because there is no tech (Satellites anyone?) that reveals the map.

You can't trade/buy/steal maps.

You can't use espionage to get city visibility.

So.. um... what? Do I romp around their country with my knights or lancers? That seems a bit awkward, and it uses up horses that I would rather spend on my active military.

Thoughts?

[mjm800]

Thoughts?

None...I am dumbfounded as to why there is no map trading or scout upgrading to Explorer or why it is even made obsolete.

Satellites are no help they do not reveal the map.

[Epyon]

I agree completely with what both of you said, wtf happened to map trading and satellites? I would've figured these to be standard civ series features now.

[equivocal]

There is never a period in the game when a scout truly becomes unnecessary, because there is no tech (Satellites anyone?) that reveals the map.

Personally, I never use a scout. I'd rather use a warrior at least to do my exploring, or a mounted unit. My reasoning is that since exploration is finite, the scout becomes useless thereafter. Whereas a military unit can be redeployed to garrison elsewhere or as part of your military and can pick up upgrades along the way etc. As such, building a scout seemed to me to be a waste of early game resources.

I have picked up ruin maps that revealed a part of the map. But yeah, map trading is conspicuously missing

[Takao]

Because map trading defeats the purpose of having and finding those nifty natural wonders in Civ 5, now you actually have to fully explore the map

[duely_89]

It is a shame scouts become defenseless after the ancient era... perhaps if scouts could be upgraded at the beginning of each era would improve their survivability. Lewis and Clark didn't go off to brave the wilderness with sticks ya know.

[Black Gate of Mordor]

Because map trading defeats the purpose of having and finding those nifty natural wonders in Civ 5, now you actually have to fully explore the map

Yeah, but the only way to find the whole map is to use the FireTuner. You should be able to trade maps at least, or upgrade scouts to something else.

And Satellites doesn't reveal the map? So you can put satellites into space but you can't put camera's on them?

[Varus2319]

The natural wonder mechanic is worthless compared to the features that it is winning out over.

No air recon because of natural wonders?

No satelites maps because of natural wonders?

No map trading because of natural wonders?

Really??

Who in the heck thought this was a fair trade? Natural wonders are cute, nothing more.

They are not a feature.

[callan]

Why do Natural Wonders necessarily preclude the things you mentioned? I don't understand.

[Takao]

Because by using those things makes finding the "natural wonders" very easy.
All units or techs that let you reveal large portions of the map have been done away with.

Air Recon used to allow you to see vast tracts of land in one swoop, same as the old way of moving bombers and fighters square by square. They were my modern day recon units.

Satellites/Apollo Program used to reveal the entire map. Bam! any wonders not found, are found.

The same goes for the old "Map trading" between Civs.

I also see this as a reason why the Spy was "nerfed," she could waltz all over enemy territory and see what lay within their "closed" borders. That and they did away with trading/stealing technologies.

So, to find the "Natural Wonders" you have to use foot troops which takes much, much longer, and there is now no "easy" way of doing it, ie. there is no free lunch.

[Panda_Power]

I never use scouts either. With warriors you can make them last the entire game and they can level up by fighting barbarians, so by the time they get back to your original city, they've scouted the entire map and have all the first 3 improvements or you can leave them by a nice maritime city state to help protect them when they need it and then they become your ally. The first Honor policy comes along pretty quick too and that's good for making them a bit stronger in the beginning.

[usi DirTyDeeDs]

scouts can be handy to see whats approaching your territory, even better if they have the visibility upgrade.
gawd dam china sent wave after wave of spearmen then riflemen at me.
by posting scouts at the edge of my territory I had advance warning of what was coming.

[Gram]

The natural wonder thing seems inane as a reason to leave out important tactical features. The happiness bonus you get for finding them certainly isn't going to changew the outcome of the game at the point where you have airplanes, and satellites.

Hell people are still finding unique natural wonders on this planet today, so the reasoning that natural wonders are why there are missing features like air recon, etc... is pretty slim.

[Takao]

So, your hypothesis is that the Devs are morons?

If you have a better ideas than share...

[Wheem]

So, your hypothesis is that the Devs are morons?

If you have a better ideas than share...

He didn't say that anyone was a moron...

I also don't see the developers deciding to remove map trading, air recon, etc...simply because a player or AI might discover an extra natural wonder or two that they didn't know about before. Maybe the developers underestimated the players' value of those features, or maybe bugs and/or time constraints prevented them from being implemented at release. None of us really know the reasons, but I'd like to see those features put back into the game.

And yes, having the option to upgrade scouts with later technologies would be pretty nifty. Adding in an Explorer during the Renaissance era would be nice. It can be pretty dangerous to use scouts to explore a bit later into the game, and if one dies it's often a very long walk to get back to the area. Using military units may cause some AI to get angry, and harm diplomatic relations. At least in theory, that is. I don't really use military units to explore once I'm beyond the Ancient, Classical, and Medieval eras - when the AI empires start getting large.

[bezurn]

It would be nice if we had upgraded scout units that could survive barbarian ttacks of that era, but not used as front or middle line military units.

It would be nice to have a combat rating upgrade for scouts transforming into explorers come the Midieval era with the Compass tech. Then come the Renaissance era explorers would transform into pathfinders with the Navigation tech. These upgrades should be free, or better yet they should be upgradeable while they are not in your borders to give them added value.

Any scouting unit in the later areas of the industrial era prior to the combustion tech would be carried out by calvary, as the horse strategic resource has reduced value at this point. If calvary could ignore terrain movement penalties I think that would fit the bill nicely.

I still use scouts in my game as they have some good promotions. Getting survivial 1, and then sight 1 is pretty handy as you'll be able to out maneuver barbarians, and if you do get attacked by them, can pretty easily retreat a bit and be at full health in a few turns.

Going double sight is also good for very large maps with the 3 movement points and no penalty for any terrain type means you can avoid barbarians while finding new lands you might want to settle or conquer.

[Old School Role-Player]

A very easy way of dealing with the natural wonders issue is this:

1) First civilization to discover the natural wonder gets 2 happiness.

2) Any natural wonders which fall into a civilization's national borders receives 3 happiness.

3) Everybody else gets bupkis.

4) Possible exception: any civilization that has an open borders treaty with a civilization that has a natural wonder in its borders gets 1 happiness for each natural wonder (i.e. tourists being able to visit that site). Gives you a little more reason to seek open borders agreements with another civilization that way.

4a) Just because it came up: FOREIGN TRADE ROUTES! If you have an open borders agreement with a civilization, you should be able to get more money. Helps the peaceful civilizations tremendously while hurting the warmongers (because let's face it--happiness cap on a warmongering nation is a joke, since they can spam theaters and circuses right after the newly conquered cities build a courthouse).

Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread with 4a, but that one just really chaps my *ss!

[harmonic42]

A very easy way of dealing with the natural wonders issue is this:

1) First civilization to discover the natural wonder gets 2 happiness.

2) Any natural wonders which fall into a civilization's national borders receives 3 happiness.

3) Everybody else gets bupkis.

4) Possible exception: any civilization that has an open borders treaty with a civilization that has a natural wonder in its borders gets 1 happiness for each natural wonder (i.e. tourists being able to visit that site). Gives you a little more reason to seek open borders agreements with another civilization that way.

4a) Just because it came up: FOREIGN TRADE ROUTES! If you have an open borders agreement with a civilization, you should be able to get more money. Helps the peaceful civilizations tremendously while hurting the warmongers (because let's face it--happiness cap on a warmongering nation is a joke, since they can spam theaters and circuses right after the newly conquered cities build a courthouse).

Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread with 4a, but that one just really chaps my *ss!

Is that enough great ideas for you, Takao?

[Eshme]

I like how satellites would reveal the map. At least the fog of war removed chunk after chunk. And with more leading tech the last secrets are revealed over time.

Natural wonders bonusses should be met more flexible, rather than giving 1 or 0 happyness. Flexibility should account for who found it, approximity to territory, current era and so on. Even a cultural bonus could apply if the wonder falls into limited circumstances.

[alexfr]

At least one upgrade should be available for scouts. Also air recon should be possible. There is no point in arguing about natural wonders since a caravel already has a hilarious visibility range and with The Great Lighthouse and some further visibility promotions it becomes the like of a satellite.

[MrFusion]

A very easy way of dealing with the natural wonders issue is this:

1) First civilization to discover the natural wonder gets 2 happiness.

2) Any natural wonders which fall into a civilization's national borders receives 3 happiness.

3) Everybody else gets bupkis.

4) Possible exception: any civilization that has an open borders treaty with a civilization that has a natural wonder in its borders gets 1 happiness for each natural wonder (i.e. tourists being able to visit that site). Gives you a little more reason to seek open borders agreements with another civilization that way.

Agreed. Although I'd only have the +2 happiness upon discovery and change the 'inside borders' rule from your +3 happiness to +3 culture per turn and + 10 gold per turn in the modern era (accounting for tourism income to wonder-owning empire).

Right from my first game, it made no sense to me why the nth person to stumble across a natural wonder gains an empire-wide happiness bonus, when it had already clearly been found by someone else. This totally defeats any drive/pressure to DISCOVER them first and instead makes you just go around the map casually 'mopping up the fog' without really having to think.

The fact that this mechanic also seems to have a bizarre ripple-effect of removing satellite map reveal, map trading, air recon and even the subject of this thread; scout obsolescence is just plain dumb.

Even the most obvious/basic rule change where ONLY the first player to uncover each natural wonder gets the +1 happiness would allow all the above game-enhancing features to return - and keep scouts in the game.

The more I play Civ, the more I find myself thinking, "missed opportunity". I keep discovering so many areas of the game design that, quite simply, lack any form of imagination and finesse from a player experience perspective. Just a little bit of extra thought (aka Sid Meier's input) about so many Civ V play mechanics could have utterly transformed the player experience for the better, giving us more choices, more strategies and more fun.

Right now, it really does feel like I'm playing a 'work in progress' with us, the Civ players as the QA team - we're the ones asking the obvious questions - and coming up with the obvious solutions. I just hope somebody is listening and acting on them.

[NotDeadJim]

The lack of late game scouts came as a surprise to me. I was playing a huge earth map and had not completely uncovered everything so after getting open-borders I wanted to send in a scout, but I could not build one
Most annoying. It would be nice to have some kind of inoffensive unit that you could use to scout with later on. Or better yet actually make the satelites tech reveal the map. It might be possible to make it so that it just removes "cloud" fog of war but not the "line of sight" fog, so while you can see that a wonder is there it is not "found" for you. And if not, then what difference would a few extra happiness make so late in the game?

[Onandoga]

Lewis and Clark didn't go off to brave the wilderness with sticks ya know.

Lewis and Clark were american, so thus they were minutemen! (which is an advantage US has...upgradeable scouts on steroids.)