Having it on every scouts would ruin a lot of sneaky strategies, and would literally kill the game.
Don’t want to lose your scout? Just learn how to use it, by yourself
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I think it would change the meta rather than kill the game.
It really depends whether just having it on the intiial scout or having it on all scout line units would affect the game more negatively. I don’t think either option would literally kill the game.
I must say that i do like the fact that only having it on your initial scout is, sort of, an indirect nerf to boar stealing.
No, it wouldn’t change the meta. It would eliminate a lot of options from the game. If you have 5 units autoscouting your surroundings, it would be impossible for your enemy to sneak villagers and build military buildings, or do a castle drop. Heck, even trying to raid would be highly difficult, since it would be anticipated from scouts.
Anyway, I think thid function should be optional in the lobby. Like map explored/unexplored.
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You may be right about it killing the game if it was on more than just the intial scout.
I think it’s fine having it enabled for ranked mode, on just the intiail scout, but I’m not sure. Like I said, one good benefit from having it just on the intial scout is the fact it’s an indirect nerf to boar stealing. Although, meso eagles can still heal up in the TC … so maybe increase the damage that boars do to eagle scouts?
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What is annoying is that in a scout way between to evenly match opponents, even if both players lose the same number of scouts, if you lose your initial scout, but the other player doesn’t, it puts you at a disadvantage.
It would be best if that initial scout could be replaced somehow.
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Yeah, that was one concern that I have noted with regards to having it only apply to the initial scout … the fact that it creates a lot of RNG if one player still has their initial scout left late game but the other doesn’t, purely due to one player getting lucky with the auto scouting and the other not.
And, yes, being able to replace the inital scout but still only having autoscouting for the one unit would absolutely be ideal… but I don’t know how that could be implemented.
Perhaps–and here is an idea-- the first scout-line unit trained after the initial scout is lost should become an auto-scouter … but there would also have to be a way for the player to visually tell that it’s the initial scout, in my opinion (and I think that that should still be the case anyway) … and it would have to be a visual way to tell that can’t be seen of the opponemt, of course. Just like the glittering when researching techs that is only seen by the player doing that tech research and not by their opponent.
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On the third point of the auto-scouting announcement, it’s spelled “cede control” rather than “seed control” - minor misspelling, but thought I should share.
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Again, I’m wondering: Does anybody know if the new auto-scouting feature is affected by the game’s difficulty setting or not? Does your scout auto-scout better on extreme difficulty than it does on easiest, for example?
After all, the difficulty level applies to wolves as well as the enemy AI so does it also apply to auto-scouting?
I hope that Spirit of the Law will test that.
I think there is 0 chance he won’t.
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On a similar note, anybody else here want TheViper to do civ overviews for all civs and update his overviews of the Last Khans civs?
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couple of auto scouting scouts running around the map
you only get the one. patch notes state only your starting scout so you cant just have a bunch auto scouting
thus there is lower chance enemy can sneak vills to the side of the map to get extra resources,
this I get though you still have to be looking for it and be paying attention to it yes a mining camp on a secert gold might show up on the mpa but ive seen even pros miss something that you can see on a mini map.
side note I feel like it’ll be easier to snipe a scout if someone just throws it on auto.
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Just tried a 1v1, where we both agreed to keep our Scout on auto-scout the entire game. My initial thoughts are that it is incredibly weak early game, but potentially very strong late game.
Early game weaknesses:
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I wasn’t sure how to coordinate moving my Sheep along with my Scout, although the Scout did seem to avoid already scouted areas.
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The Scout captured 1 out of a group of 2 Sheep (for both groups), leaving me with 6 instead of 8 Sheep. The other Gaia Sheep were in my fog of war, the Scout just didn’t bother to pick them up.
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By the time I reached the Feudal Age, my Scout had not bothered scouting my opponent. It decided just to scout the back corner of my map, rather than going forward (or at least picking up my Sheep).
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On the other hand, my opponent’s Scout decided to come forward well before he had gathered all of this Sheep.
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The Scout ran extremely close to my TC. I put down some trap quick-walls to force it into the TC, and it just ran into arrow fire instead of trying to keep itself safe.
Some of these weaknesses come from the extreme of us using only auto-scouting and not manually controlling our Scout. We could easily have picked up the Sheep, for example, then resumed auto-scouting. But running under the TC, scouting the corner of the map, and running forward early without finding all of the Sheep are really inefficient.
But I did manage to keep my Scout alive in the late game (didn’t include it in my Scout rush or use it to attack). Throughout the game, my Scout managed to do the following:
- Find spaces where my opponent hadn’t walled.
- Find the extra resources (the 2 extra golds and the extra stone).
- Spot my opponent when he moved out to mine one of the extra golds.
Now all of these things could be done by using my Scout intelligently, building Outposts in the corners of the map, and Palisade scanning near the extra Gold. But it still felt way too easy just to have these things discovered for me, and it ruined the sense of accomplishment of doing them myself. It’s normally exciting to find the extra Golds, but here it was just automatic.
I’ll need to play around with this more, but I feel like even at a moderately high skill level (18xx+ Voobly), the auto-scout potentially is very strong in some situations. And it’s strong in a way that removes a good deal of the map awareness that strong players need to develop.
Perhaps the auto-scout is easy to kill (e.g. my opponent’s Scout did run almost straight under my TC). But then there’s a good deal of randomness involved in whether an auto-scout does something dumb and gets killed or manages to stay alive until later in the game when it may become more useful. If a player is active in paying attention to it, they may be able to keep it alive fairly easily.
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Any thoughts on sticking to manual scouting and control grouping the scout generally speaking but pressing the auto-scout hotkey just before you do something else, as a way to prevent your scout from EVER even going idle for 1 sec whilst still most of the time benefiting from your own more efficient manual scouting?
Sure, if you’re a decent player your scout is never idle for even a second in dark age anyway … USUALLY. But not never. I’ve seen it even happen to Viper on occasion but using autoscouting ONLY prior to looking away from your scout may be a way to guarantee that nobody EVER has an idle scout (with enough practice) even if they’re not a newbie and good enough to use manual scouting most of the time.
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Ruined the sense of accomplishment is an odd turn of phrase as it’s often associated with loot boxes
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There shouldn’t be too many elements of the original game being replaced like this. AOE2 has been very good at making options toggable. So I think automatic scouting should only be for lobbys and hosts can decide to turn it off. Scouting is an important part of the game and beginners should have to get use to it, too.
Interesting observation. Frankly I am concerned about the other “cosmetics” features that are in this update. Implementing features that are advertised as being “friendly for new players” seems like a concern that’s being addressed in order to drive engagement with the “seasonal events” among newer players, with an eventual goal being to find some way to monetize the multiplayer system.
But as far as my comments go, I was thinking along the lines of the Scottish narrator in the 2nd tutorial, where he excitedly proclaims “Good! You’ve found some gold!” Finding the extra Golds are extremely important for determining late game strategy, and there are situations where you desperately search for one when your normal Golds are denied or run out. Finding these Golds can be the thing you need to stay alive.
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I have been happy with it, at certain points in the game I can let it do its own thing freeing me up to manage my economy instead of queueing up actions on my scout. I would never instantly turn it on like I did in my first game with it because it misses key objectives I want to meet in the early game but a player can learn scouting is important from it and can look up what they should be making sure their scout does in the early game. Here are some of my observations about the auto scouting in my first game.
- It didn’t scout around my base to find my sheep.
- It found the enemy town center, got shot while moving past it then doubled back to get itself killed
I think the two bullet points above are a good thing. A human can significantly out perform the auto scout leaving areas for a player to improve. It means I still need to keep an eye on my scout later if I intend to let it auto scout.
In my second game I didn’t immediately turn on auto scout. I used it to find my sheep and get a lay of the land around my base. Once I had no specific objectives like finding, gold, stone berries and sheep I let it wonder. Here is my observation from this game.
- It wondered into a single hole the opponent had made in their wall and then they rebuilt the wall.
I am not sure if my opponent was attempting to take advantage of the auto scouting but I think this is also good because it punishes people for not keeping an eye on their scout.
Overall I feel good about it because it sets a bar you can improve above. The scout is rather dumb so it is not entirely hands off which I think would be a negative if the scout needed no management. It removes the monotony of setting way points with no real purpose other than to reveal parts of the map you might never use.
Thank you for adding this feature.
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Your early game experience matches mine quite closely when just turning on auto scouting to see the extreme use case. I haven’t noticed as many of the late game effects but I am pretty bad at managing my economy so I probably don’t have as much of an opportunity as you did to see them. As for the hole in the enemy walling, my scout found a hole I believe my opponent strategically placed early in the game to trap my scout. The map was Hideout and my scout navigated into a single destroyed palisade section. Then a villager rebuilt the section as soon as it went in. I personally really like the idea of people taking advantage of the blind auto scouting to kill the opposing scout. It gives players incentive to at least keep an eye on it. I am glad some one else tried the extreme case of just turning it on and letting it loose to see how it did on its own.
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Sniping a scout on auto scout seems like it is very easy from my very small sample size of leaving it (almost) entirely to its own devices. I am glad that is the case though because you should at least have to pay attention to it in my opinion. I like that it removed the monotony of blindly setting way points later in the game when you have to true objectives for it. I am also very happy they only let your starting scout have this because unleashing a horde of auto scouts to basically scan for things you were missing would be a much cheaper alternative to the spy technology.
yeah exactly, I feel like it’ll happen a lot where you throw it on auto and just like the AI occasionally it’ll wander to close to a town center or something and die and then you loose out on your scout and yeah only getting it for one is big.
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