Hera made a nice vid about why scout rushes are kinda useless today. To summarize his points about why scout rushes are not popular any more:
Tracking replaced for an instant +2 LOS when hitting Feudal age. This is a buff for spotting scouts with spears. It also buffs drush / M@A openings, which are most likely the alternative for most scout civs.
Current map generation makes walling easy. You can wall before hitting feudal age, so scouts has no change to get in, thus they cant deal damage. Even if the enemy dont wall, they just quick wall when scouts arrive, so you still cant pick of vills.
Most non arabia maps, like hybrid maps dont favor scout rushes. For example: hybrid maps are more about water control. Civs that excel on hybrid maps are mostly arb civs. So those civs will be pick more frequently. Also other maps have better strategies to open then just scouts.
Pathing issues with melee units.
Strategies starting with scouts arent the best. Things like scouts into Knights runs also in the issue of path finding. Scouts into skirms into Skirms + knigts has also issues with pathfinding of knights and Elite Skirm is nerfed with DE. And full scouts in feudal dont really can do a lot, because earlier points, like being walled. So you never really get the momentum to hit opponents. In most games archer openings do more damage, because you can hit units behind walls.
Less ping is a buff for microing archers, so they will be stronger and thus a more preferred option to go for.
For me most of his points were eye openers. I thought it was only the pathing issue, but know i understand there are more nerfs to scout rushes at DE. All points seems pretty valid to me. So, how to fix these points? I came up with some ideas.
I would revert the changes of tracking. No auto +2 LOS of infantry anymore when hitting feudal age, but lock it behind a tech which players needs to resource.
Decrease the costs of the elite skirm upgrade and/or make it quicker to research.
Make walling more punishing to your eco by increasing the costs and/or build time.
Give scouts (and maybe even more units) a bonus to unfinished buildings.
Make open maps less wallable. It seems like something is changed to the map script for for example Arabia. Most maps are much more wallable then before DE.
Note: Introducing them all at the same time can result in a big swift. Maybe it is just better to pick one or two. Then have a look at the effect on the balance in the game, before they add another point.
Scouts are the way to go in maps more open than arabia. Land madness is almost unplayable without scouts.
Anyway, because of the pathing issues, archers are the strongest moment of the AoE2 history, so it is clear that we see more archers (maa-> archers is easier than scouts → archers).
One simple idea would be to give scouts (probably only to scouts) a hidden armor bonus so that the do not disappear if hit by a spearman…
I would say that the main reason is maps. Most maps are too easy too wall and promote a FC strategy. Quickwalling has also become more and more common even at lower skill levels, so that’s another factor. I think we should greatly increase the damage that building foundations take from melee units, right you can just drop walls/gates/building foundations and basically completely stop a melee push. Then you can just delete the foundations and get back the resources…a bit too convenient imo
Land Madness is one of the maps were scouts are the way to go, based on Hera’s point of view too.
Spears are meant to be a counter to scouts and have bonus damage against scouts. Instead of introducing some hidden armor for scouts, you can much better decrease the hidden bonus damage of spears to scouts. Result will be the same, but the explanation is much more logical.
I dont think changing the damage output from spears to scouts is a real solution to the issue.
He never said that we dont see scouts anymore. The use of scouts is much more rare then before. So yeah, you still see them, but they are much less effective then in the past.
Thinking scout rush needs buff is ridiculous and quite laughable.
The reason while scouts are used less, even when that is not the case anymore, is because of quickwall and melee pathing. First is a valid strategy, second depends on devs.
Funnily enough, one year or so back, the conception was rather the other way around. Not only used pro players to frequently play scouts with non-cav civs like vikings (to get more farms early on and only afterwards transition into archers) but also knights and skirms was as dominant as archers are atm. Many people thought skirms were too strong and I guess this is why the elite tech cost was increased.
Imo it should stay as it is (preparing counter units instead of gold unit is supposed to set you back in eco, after all) and the talking point should be the pathing. Of course, melee units still behave a bit weird sometimes even after some patches. But what strikes me as the main reason why you can’t engage with cav vs archers properly anymore is that you can’t run on top of them anymore. If you want to surround them, now, you have to attack from multiple directions at the same time while before DE you would just click in the middle of them, press stop and all of the sudden you were basically standing inside the archer group with your cav. I’m not sure if that was changed intentionally in DE or to what precise technical aspect this is due but I bet if this is reverted the balance between melee and range will be fine again.
There is something you guys might not have considered though, concerning scouts :
Why should scouts be made viable as an effective early game military unit?
I mean, the purpose of the scout unit is to “scout”, to get vision on the map and information about what your opponent is doing.
Maybe it wasn’t originally designed to be an efficient early game raider or to be efficient at fighting other military units. So the fact that it became weak at doing so nowadays, might just be that it actually found its rightful place in the game, more respectful to the original design.
For raiding and fighting efficiency, you have to wait for the Light Cav and Hussar upgrades.
Scouts = vision, map awareness, gathering of information.
When you think about it, if you give the early game scouts raiding efficiency, fighting against archers efficiency, in addition to amazing LOS, speed, and vision control. That unit just becomes too powerful and too useful compared to every other feudal units.
That’s the purpose of the starting scout but not the (main) purpose of a scouts build. Of course you’ll have better map vision compared to other openings but the idea is to have a mobile army that puts you in a position to decide where and when to engage in fights while also getting an early eco boost (due to having more farms than a non-scout player and potentially due to picking of vills here or there).
Except a “scout build” is something players came up with, it’s not something that was planned in the game designing of the scout unit. Maybe feudal “scout builds” weren’t supposed to exist to begin with, or at least were not supposed to be very strong to begin with.
If we look at it that way, the current situation is actually fine and brought the feudal scout back to its original place.
Even if that is so (honestly, who can tell?) why care about some original design? Games evolve over time by experience and testing. Do you think stuff like drush or men at arms rush or tower rush have been “planned” in that way? It’s what players made out of it and that’s great because it allows for a broader range of strategies in terms of openings.
Exactly, but the issue is that people use the argument “scouts builds used to be strong”, to advocate that the current situation is bad and that we should “Make Scouts Great Again”.
My point is that this argument isn’t valid because maybe, scouts build weren’t supposed to be that strong to begin with, and scout is a unit that’s supposed to play for vision not for military achievements.
To illustrate my point, take the Eagle scout for example. It sucks in terms of raiding and military fighting, because the point of this unit is to get vision and some sort of map control early on, not to beast out other military units or destroy your opponents’ eco at the start of the game.
You can somewhat use eagle scouts to counter skirmishers, but so is the case for scouts.
If you want more than that (aka raiding power and military power), you have to wait for Eagle warrior upgrade in castle age, which is fair.
Similarly, if you want raiding power and military power on the scout line, you wait for Light Cav upgrade and later on Hussar upgrade.
This kind of game design is fine. Strong feudal scouts is a possible game design as well, but it’s not more legitimate than weak feudal scouts game design, for the reasons I mentioned above.
To some degree, yes they were. Militia and men at arms are offensive military units. It makes sense than there are strategies that use that offensive ability they inherently possess.
Towers is another issue and more debatable. Because yes it wasn’t designed originally to be a strong offensive building, but a defensive building. That’s the reason why it was actually nerfed (villagers now do more damage to towers), and rightfully so, to bring them back to their original purpose.
Tower rushes still happen but they are not as strong as they were in the past, which is a good thing.
Just like Scout rushes still happen but they are not as strong as they were in the past, which is a good thing, in my opinion at least.
Actually the argument (at least mine) is that you want to have a balance between different form of openings. Each one has it’s own strenghts and weaknesses but they all should have its place. I even think Hera is a bit exaggerating but he aptly captures the tendency.
That’s a different thing, imo. Meso civs all have great archer options in feudal age and going eagles as an opening is very rare while there are certainly civs which prefer going scouts over (maa into) archers.
Light cav in castle age isn’t really a thing and has never been. Usually just a waste of food unless maybe you play slavs or khmer and have a food overflow but still far from optimal. If the scout rush gets removed from the game (and I don’t think that’s entirely the case) you pretty much remove the scout line until post imp (except for arena but there are different reasons for that.
They still function as an offensive strat, nowadays usually to punish fc. And I agree the nerfs (the vill bonus was super long ago, the nerf that reduced tower rushes lately was giving them less hp in feudal) were good because it gives a better balance.
hahaha and i was complaining about magyar being so 1 dimensional, and so many people were “but they have a great scout rush”
i agree with the idea that scouts should be better, and that pathing will fix it, but i still wonder how hard it will be to fix the melee pathing, for me ive rage quit many times due to even scouts not being able to fight archers due to bumping, target loss, etc , nevermind bleeding garbage militia
and i think archers in general are too dominant, even if we ignore the scout “issue” archers in general dominate too many games too easily (britons FFS!!)
but im not sure about the whole walling issue thing though, since ive only been playing AOEDE and no AOE before that except AOC… so i havent been “bred” into any preconception on how maps should or shouldnt be…
because the game was built around a counter system,people didnt abuse the game into scout rushes, it was simply a viable option like tower rushing, the term scout is just a name for cavalry, IF the scout was called light cav, the light cav called hussar and the hussar called winged hussar, you would literally have no argument, it is simply a name
eagles are half way between scouts and knights, they’re a whole different ball game due to a number of different reasons: much easier tech trees instead of foot and mounted, available from the first military building, with softer counters(trash is useless vs them, so you have to use gold, and they can run circles around the gold units, so unlike pikes that are dirt cheap and can be left anywhere, militia cant just be left anywhere and arent as hard counters as pikes are to scouts), they arent just meso “scouts”
If we consider the feudal scout as a counter unit in a counter system, then it is the counter to skirmishers. It doesn’t have to be a good raiding unit on top of it.
It already fullfills its role of counterning skirmishers, and doesn’t have to be buffed. Just like spearmen already fullfill their role as a counter to scouts, and they don’t have to be buffed into raiding units.
Neither spearmen nor skirmishers are good at raiding. Why should scouts be?
Having powerful feudal scouts that allow strong scout builds is subjective and depends on personal tastes. There is no necessity on the part of the devs to favour scout lovers over spearmen lovers.
If we have scouts that can :
raid villagers and destroy opponent eco
destroy other feudal units
get map control and vision control
get information about what your opponent is doing
and all of this easily, then we have a feudal unit that is way above all other feudal units, while it’s original purpose wasn’t necessarily to be this way.
That’s a good meta for scout lovers only.
It’s a good thing that there is some counterplay to scouts that make them weaker (like walls), not a bad thing, imo. Otherwise we end up with a meta like Land Madness, where scout build is actually the only viable option and every game is a feudal scout fiesta.