It does also fail to find your opponent before feudal (and it looooooves to run circles in your corner of the map for some reason) But it’s true that once you give it enough time to run everywhere, eventually it will feel better than human scouting. I guess limiting it to the starting scout partially fixes it, and that something like a timer on the function would further limit it if it proves to be a problem.
Is it possible to make a button in the lobby, to enable or disable this feature ? This way everybody will be happy they can use it or not in their game, the OP decides.
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- It makes game more “user friendly”. At beggining I scout manually so I can find my sheep and boars. Then I switch to autoscout so I can focus on ECO and rush attack or defend.
- Useful - It makes player to more focus on game itself. Improves patience over fight and building ECO. It is not broken as it still is no reliable to find sneak attacks. Your scout might be on other side of the map.
- It depends. When people use auto-scout, sometimes scout gets lost in enemy base and gets killed.
- Scout runs into enemy base and gets killed.
It is great feature as in real life, kingdoms had plenty of scouts to identify enemy attacks. I suggest it should be available for all scout line units, not just first scout.
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** The auto-scouting** makes the game easier and more stupid. Every auto- option remove the need of brain how and where to click. In stead of auto-scouting, the players may play at Explored map.
In stead of Auto- scouting, I preffer the player to receive Message if an enemy building or other units are in the of SIGHT of my villagers, or military units, as when I find sheeps. Also it will be nice if I can choose from a List of the Notifications( messages), which Notifications to receive( be displayed at my screen).
Now I receive a message, only when I am attacked.
I’ve noticed there’s no option to auto-scout when you play a map where all is revealed at the start. I’d like to be able to auto-scout even when the map is revealed, as I use it for finding sheep, too.
At first I thought it was maybe an oversight that it wasn’t there, then I realized it’s probably by design. (With the map revealed, devs maybe thought we didn’t want/need auto-scout.) I’m here to say that it’d still appreciated even when the map is fully visible, for sure! 
Hoping it can be added in.
- Almost in no way. If my scout survives my manual scouting and I do not have more to scout I turn autopilot on.
- No.
- I am not sure, but I believe some could use it. Some not at all.
- No, because I do not use it for scouting.
You really shouldn’t auto-scout for that. Auto-scout is really bad at finding sheep and will often miss at least 2.
The algorithm could be improved then. But, yeah, I want auto-scouting available on any and all maps, and any and all game modes/settings.
Even if it’s not 100% efficient at finding sheep, at least it finds some. And just because the map is fully revealed, I don’t need auto-scout behaving as though it knows exactly where all the sheep are. It can just scout in its normal way. It’d feel a too over-powered if it just went straight to all the sheep.
There are so many resources on these DE maps that not finding a few sheep right away isn’t the end of the world. Actually, I think DE has too many resources, in general. But that’s a different thread for a different day
I really like the feature as a primarily solo, casual player. But I don’t think it belongs in multi-player, especially competitive play. Seems like the community mostly agrees. Easy fix for the developers, to make it optional as has been said numerous times. I also like the Explorer idea since the scout behaves irrationally. Whatever the auto scout really should be off completely for ranked tho…
I also don’t think I understand how it functions exactly based on what I’ve read here. In my experience, I only had one scout, but others here have talked about selecting groups.
No, that’s making the game play for you… without disadvantages.
You can have groups of auto-scouts in various campaign missions or by playing a random map that begins with multiple Scouts (maps such as Budapest that start with multiple TCs start with multiple Scouts).
Sounds great. If I’d prefer the scout to auto-search for sheep for the first 5 or 10 mins of game – which I would – then I’m going to express my desire for that. And not every game element implemented needs a disadvantage either. If that were the case, we would not have farm re-seeding queues, unit construction queues, double-click multi-building selections, multi-building unit creation queues, unit formations, etc. That argument could be used for virtually everything in the Age of Empires franchise, in general, tbh; all the way down to ‘should villagers auto-walk from the resource being gathered to their collection point and back’ … for that is ‘the game playing for me without any disadvantages.’
Regardless, since this thread asks for each person’s individual thoughts, I’m sharing mine in hopes it can be implemented. Not only would I like auto-scout added to ‘fully explored/fully visible’ maps from a gameplay perspective, but it also keeps the functionality consistent between the variety of match configurations that get set up.
Since a good number of my games are with friends vs. AI, it needs to be in multiplayer, too, imo. We connect via a multiplayer lobby, and we like auto-scout. We also play with map fully explored and all visible. We want auto-scout for that, too.
As I’ve said before, though, I would prefer that the auto-scout capability only be available to use in the first 5 or 10 minutes of a match. After that, you’re on your own. So it’s not like the end of the world or anything.
What is this? I did a CTRL+F search of the page for ‘explorer’ and it only finds your post. If it’s anything like an AoE3 explorer, no thank you! Really dislike AoE3’s explorer 
There is a whole lot of difference between automating a decision making gameplay element like scouting and automating simple farm-reseed.
What do you want next? Efficient auto-economy? Efficient auto-army fighting?
Auto-scouting should have never been implemented because it can’t be good and efficient or else everyone will start using it and then you lose a major gameplay element of the game.
Auto-scout is a lose-lose situation, it’s either bad and makes you create the bad habit of using it, losing a lot of effectiveness towards a win, or it is good and makes everyone go for auto-scout, heavily dumbing down the gameplay.
Features that automate important decision making are extremely stupid in design and should only be implemented in the game the same as “allow cheats” and “full tech tree” options.
In the past, when a match starts, I select the Scout and manually plant 20-30+ flags in the ground, and he goes on his merry way for the next several minutes. How automating that 5-second mundane interaction would all the sudden heavily dumb down the gameplay is beyond me Surely, there’s a lot more strategy involved in the game than planting 30 flags, right? I’d rather dedicate my focus on other things at the start of a game.
I don’t think auto-scout should use machine learning or anything to have grand-master chessplayer abilities or anything. Just the skills of an average or mildly talented player; nothing great. That way, great and expert players can still work their scouting magic to get a leg up in scouting, if they want.
The other element to this is Accessibility. Some people have physical or learning disabilities that make AoE hard enough as it is, so they can’t scout very well. They need to focus on villager and economy building, so multi-tasking the Scout at the start of the game is hard. Imagine a straight line going across the map, and then the Scout sitting idle for minutes until the player has time or realizes to move it again because they’re so busy creating and assigning villagers, and, generally, getting their econ off the ground – unable to dedicate time to the scout. Not having auto-scout capability is a real shame and detriment to these players; it can put them at a decent disadvantage within the opening moments of a game, for something that shouldn’t create as much of a disparity, imo, just based on disability. Granted, DE’s interface simplification of planting flags (just use right-mouse button) when compared to HD’s interface should help quite a bit… but still.
It’s okay, we have different philosophies. I don’t think it’s a huge deal if DE has a basic auto-scouting ability (nothing extraordinary) for the first 5 or so mins of a match. When the 5 or 10 mins ends, signal a flare on the map with a Scout whinny/neigh (or whatever the low-pitched sound they make is called), and a quick chat message notifying you the auto-scout time expired and you need to start moving him manually if u want… or some other subtle, creative notification if that’s too much. Great players will plant their own strategically great flags at that point (if not before), good players won’t do as good of job of planting flags or continuing exploration, not-as-skillful or -adept players might not do anything or do so poorly… and, thus, the separation you want between good vs. great players regarding skill levels and levels-of-effort used kicks in even more.
how does it change the way i play? not much. i like to find the early resources fast, and after that i send the scout to find the enemies. now with autoscouting, i enable it after i’ve found those things, just to get more map exploration. before autoscouting, i used to set many many waypoints at once, so i don’t see an extreme difference. it just saves me a few clicks.
would i consider auto-scouting useful? i would say it is useful as it saves me those few clicks setting many waypoints, but i don’t think it has changed the game so much as others claim.
could i tell if a human was using it? yes, but it didn’t make much of a difference, i mean, whether you use auto scout or manually scout, the scout will be able to only be in one place at a time. and from the times i’ve used auto scouting for the entire match, it wasn’t really good at considering the important parts of the map. it just goes round trying to explore 100% of it.
i haven’t encountered issues with auto scouting.
The answer to addressing all the different opinions on the topic is obvious. Make auto scouting a game setting that can be turned on or off when creating the game. If the intent of auto scouting is to make the game more accessable to new players, then they’ll have that option. But for pro games and more experienced players they can turn it off to ensure that both opponents are doing their own scouting manually and not “cheating.”
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Auto scouting is very inconsistent with finding starting resources and the enemy base in a reasonable amount of time. The first time I tried auto scouting, the Scout ignored four sheep that were close enough to the TC to have one sheep in the TC’s LOS. I’m sure auto scouting scouts just to scout and never looks for anything specific, which is probably why it runs into enemy TC’s. I prefer to manually scout starting resources and the enemy’s base before turning on auto scouting.
Question for the devs: how much thought has gone into making the autoscout exactly good/bad enough? I assume the scouting of the hardest AI opponents is better than this. I’m also pretty sure using it or not would be a less fun choice if the autoscout was too good. So what kind of balance were you aiming for?
Hopefully this video will explain why auto-scout won’t live upto expectations. Even if it was supposed to make the game user-friendly.
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