Auto scouting is useless for intermediate to pro players. It takes less than 10 seconds to shift+right click everywhere you want to scout on the mini-map if you want to auto scout. I tried auto scout once, never gonna do it again.
Its a good idea for beginners though. I would have really liked it when i first started playing.
I have tested it in a number of games now and absolutely hate it.
Contrary to what is claimed here all the time, it is not useless, even at a fairly high level (Iām top 200 on the 1v1 ladder). It is useless at the beginning of the game of course, but in feudal and early castle you can use it to explore every last corner of the map. You will know where the extra res and relics are. This is even something that top players often fail to do, so just taking this away from the game seems like a bad ideaā¦
What is more, the fact that only the starting scout has this ability makes it super weirdly luck-based. You lost the starting scout but your opponent did not, or it dies in the enemy base? Too bad, now you have a big disadvantage. More generally, I donāt like adding singular units with special abilities to the gameā¦
Same here. Top 200 player and itās really useful for finding extra res and relics in the mid game. It can easily scout hidden buildings on the map as well, which makes it tougher to sneak production buildings or take neutral golds.
Wild idea (has probably been suggested already, but I havenāt read it yet): what if the scout loses this ability either in feudal or in castle age? Similar to how the scout gains line of sight and speed when going up to feudal? Itās no longer powerful in mid to late game, and if they lose the ability in feudal age in particular we can forget all the issues caused by only the starting scout being able to do this as well.
The main issue with the idea is probably that learning to do dark age scouting around your own base is relatively simple compared to later scouting, so the feature becomes less useful even for the target audience.
auto scouting doesnāt change at all. I have still never used it and im only 1300 in 1v1. What effects almost every single game is units attacking closest targets vs units right clicked on
This is why people in general doesnāt like it (me included, and Iām just 1150 in DE)
Contrary to what is claimed here all the time, it is not useless, even at a fairly high level (Iām top 200 on the 1v1 ladder). It is useless at the beginning of the game of course, but in feudal and early castle you can use it to explore every last corner of the map. You will know where the extra res and relics are. This is even something that top players often fail to do, so just taking this away from the game seems like a bad ideaā¦
Exactly, even experienced players can use auto scout in a smart way to extend apm during certain times. The argument that it is useless because manual scouting is more effective is incredibly shallow. I have seen many twitch streams already where players put on auto scout and it scouts the black parts in a highly efficient manner. This directly removes skill and nuance from the game. Scouting costs a lot of apm and often requires out of the box thinking since you are constantly distracted, early castle age in specific.
I donāt like adding singular units with special abilities to the gameā¦
FE and āspecial abillitiesā are in my mind almost synonyms. They love implementing gimmicks.
Thank god there are people left with good reasons
What is this? I did a CTRL+F search of the page for āexplorerā and it only finds your post. If itās anything like an AoE3 explorer, no thank you! Really dislike AoE3ās explorer
I may have used the wrong term, but I thought someone had mentioned having the scout āexploreā unknown areas only (black cloud). I thought thatād be better than the current scout since it doesnāt seem to follow a discernable pattern and ends up veering off.
Ahh, I see! Thanks for clarifying. I hadnāt seen that idea. Itās good in theory, but for me, Iām okay with some imperfection (explained above and summarized below). I also often play āAll Revealedā against AI and I just, simply, donāt want to worry about manually scouting for sheep, turkeys, water buffalo, etc. I prefer to focus on other stuff.
For a long while I did enjoy scouting for these food sources on a black cloud map, but it just doesnāt do it for me anymore. Maybe years of playing the franchise does that to a person. So, I really like the option to auto-scout. And I donāt want or need it to be perfect. Some built-in imperfection makes it so talented humans can still do better or much better at scouting than an opponent using auto-scout. They can still enjoy scouting and reap the fruits of their labor by getting a better start against their opponentā¦ as many of them seem to want. If I choose to be lazy or if manually scouting is not my strongest point, I should not be rewarded with beautiful scout perfection. Especially not for the entirety of the game; thus, my 5 or 10 minute timer at start of game for it. 5 minutes is probably enough. Or maybe adjust it depending on map size. 4 mins for Tiny map; 5 mins for Medium; and so on.
I think thereās some built-in fear that auto-scout will be better than manually scouting, and will be available for the entire match, and, so, who would want to manually scout? Well, as long as the devs donāt make this happen, then weāre okay.
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, thereās a lot more strategy involved in the game than planting 30 flags, right? Iād rather dedicate my focus on other things at the start of a game.
Dudeā¦ youāre a total hypercasual that plays vs AI. You clearly donāt know how to scout but you are here constantly talking about how its not a big deal for experienced players and how it should be allowed in all game modes. You have nothing to add on this topic. Not a single decent player would scout using 20 waypoints. Also no one is against the feature in SP.
Itās okay, we have different philosophies. I donāt think itās a huge deal if DE has a basic auto-scouting ability (nothing extraordinary) for the first 5 or so mins of a match.
You donāt even realise how ridiculous you sound since you clearly have never taken the time to learn this game properly. Just stop it.
I also often play āAll Revealedā against AI and I just, simply, donāt want to worry about manually scouting for sheepā¦ For a long while I did enjoy scouting for these food sources on a black cloud map, but it just doesnāt do it for me anymore. Maybe years of playing the franchise does that to a person.
No wonder you find it boring when you play vs a stupid Ai you can cheeze. Youāre not a competitive person so stay away from competitive discussion. Your whole perspective has nothing to do with what is discussed here. Again no one is against auto scout in SP.
Honestly surprised pro players arenāt using auto scouting at all. Probably the stigma. I believe maps only get about 75% explored throughout the course of the game. How easy is it to just put the scout on auto scout to get the remainder after youāre in castle/imperial age and have enough military that you already can constantly see what your opponent is up to?
Well, I am fairly noob, DE ELO around 1300. At my level, the scouting skill used to have impact on the game. Right now, wellā¦ I already played against this dumb auto scouting feature. My opponent obviously did not autoscout in dark age / early feudal. But he started later on. Man, that was annoying. The scout was able to abuse holes in my walls and I literally struggled to chase it down in my base. The map was golden pit so army focus was in the center. Not to mention the scout revealed my expansions to the sides. I still won by a small edge but thanks to the auto scouting I could have lost easily. Scouting often decides win/loss but you took this aspect from this game. Sure, this probably affects only some range of players. Total noobs are not really affected, neither are pros. But the averageā¦ It just blurs lines between a wide range of still quite noob to average players. Yeah, I could autoscout myself but I donāt want to, ok? Just my opinion, I donāt like it at all.
Since you are talking late game I guess you already know how bad it would be for Pro players to put on auto scout in early game. Viper even tried this for the lolz one game and left his scout on auto scout the entire time. He actually had to send villagers out to drop outposts because of how blind he was. Anyway for late game the pros usually will have scouted everything important so they dont have to get a 100% map explored since they already know where the relics neutral golds and their enemy is. Also since your scout is scouting by itself you dont actually see how many ājust passingā situations happen when you would have noticed them if you were manually scouting.
So yeah I dont think any pro player will ever use auto scouting. Even in the late game.
A lot of the negative responses are more or less - I can beat people at my level and auto-scouting might mean I canāt.
If you replace some of the arguments that contain auto-scouting by āif opponents at my level got better at scoutingā they donāt make any sense. Like auto-scouting ruins sneak strategies -> my opponents scouting better ruins sneak vil strategies.
If auto-scouting is really unbalancing the game at your level, we should probably removing palisade scanning (in case some people donāt know to use it), and also the fact you can just click scouts and knights into an opponents base and if thereās a hole they auto path into it even when you canāt see it.
Q. How does auto-scouting change the way you play the game? Please explain.
It really doesnāt. Iām still trying to get above 1100 but my late castle to imp game isnāt great. Most of the time Iāve forgotten about my starting scout by castle or imp - thereās something else to focus on and itās more than likely died in a scout rush or drush or something.
Q. Would you consider auto-scouting āusefulā given your skill level? Why or why not?
Given my skill level I donāt think it does. It wonāt help at the start because even playing against the hard-extreme ai they miss sheep, so why would I use it to miss out on my resources. My scout might idle a bit a times but I can still use it better than that 
Could you tell if your human opponents were using auto-scouting? How did it change the flow of the match?
No, people including me also walk scouts into tc fire so it doesnāt just have to be the autoscout.
Did you encounter any issues (not already listed in the known issues ) with the feature?
I donāt think so.
Yeah, thatās the problem I see people talking about. My proposed solution would put an end to that. Either have it on a timer to be usable first X number of minutes in game, or just allow it in Dark Age only. Done; everyone is happy 
Auto scouting should turn off after you increase the difficulty past Moderate.
This means new people can use auto and people can turn it off in competitive play by raising the AI difficulty to hard.
There would need to be other changes to go along with this idea, then, since the aggressiveness of wolves is controlled by the AI difficulty setting. Changing the AI difficulty in multiplayer (above āStandardā difficulty, which pretty much always has been the conventional difficulty) would make strategies such as forwards more difficulty to execute since wolves would be more aggressive.
On the positive, we might finally see Magyars used? (1 hit wolf kills)