Scouts are kill on Arabia?

Just curious what people think, it seems the person who goes Scouts always falls behind in early Feudal and then either mixes archers, or goes full Scouts and might or might not win, but Scouts generally seem not worth it in Feudal, MAA with 1 spear mixed beat Scouts, and later on, any amount of archers with 2-3 spears inside trade well vs any number of Scouts basically. And if opponent goes full Scouts and makes like 8+, his Castle age time won’t be very competitive, so you can almost always pile up on the advantage with Xbow timing, forward Siege etc.

MAA → Archers or pre-Mill Drush/2 militia Drush seem overwhelmingly stronger than Scouts as an opener on Arabia, which I find sad because in a way Scouts are meant to be the Knights of Feudal age, strongest early on and fall off later on in mid-Feudal.

1 Like

Scouts are good on open maps.
Arabia is not open any more.
As soon as the other player is walled, scouts are almost useless.
And as early walling into boom is the meta, yes I agree, opening scouts on arabia is a bad decision in most cases.

this doesn’t fit my experience at all, current Arabia is very open, getting full walls down early is impossible at high level since you need to get Archery Range etc. down fast. It’s more like, the starting 3 MAA trade super well vs Scouts and once opponent mixes a Spear as well, you are basically done.

Scouts get beaten by MAA opening, get beaten by Drush(cuz it comes faster), and probably get beaten by a very defensive Viper-style Horse Collar boom “let’s just sit at home and react”.

For last of couple of weeks, I’m thinking scout upgrades costing 450 food in Feudal is just too much. If you commit that much, you’re stuck in Feudal. And if you don’t invest that much and skip one of the following 3 - Forging, Scale Barding Armor, Bloodline - you either simply can’t kill enough villagers (skipping Forging) or die to archer (Armor) or spear (Bloodlines). The only tech you may skip is Bloodlines as it is not only the most expensive but also idles your scout production.

1 Like

Well if thats your experience ok, but what do you mean its impossible at high level? I watch pros stream like Mbl, St4rk, Nicov etc getting full walled before minute 8 almost every game. Its not only possible, its in fact, a winning strategy.
At my elo (around 1800) its exactly the same, people even go drush fc and i just die to it when i do a scout opening. Its very frustrating.

not sure what you are on about, every high level game does have full walls yes, however you don’t stop making army until you got the walls down, it’s like the golden rule of mid/high elo. MbL and Nicov sometimes wall early yes, but Nicov also loses a lot cuz due to early walls he doesn’t know what’s coming (straight Archers or MAA) and doesn’t seed farms in time (early wood goes to walls and not farms/production buildings).

I mean if the map allows for it, sure. But that’s not always the case on Arabia. Drush fc is frustrating to lose against but typically then it’s not just drush FC, it’s some OP civ bonus for the strat like opponent being Celts or Saracens or even Poles which can capitalize on the FC by insta killing you. Even so, less-than-conventional strats still have a chance vs drush FC, for example vs Celts you can go full Scouts and mix maybe 3-4 Archers if he goes mass Spears, vs Saracens you can tower around his base while he ages up or something like that.

SC is a functional unit only good in pros hands. You shouldn’t use them to fight due to the high value of food.

It is all about micro. SC can still fight MMA + less than 2 spears in equal number. Need to snipe the spearman first
When opponent got more than 2 spears with archers, you need to add a few skirms to hit and run and use your SC to kite around. Archers can hardly hit your SC without ballistics, spears can’t really damage your skirms with 3 attack.

People below 1.4k Elo just don’t know how to use scouts, They always run from TC. 4 scouts with only 1 upgrade are enough to kill at least 1 villager under TC, You might be able to kill 2 villagers if you have 2 upgrades or opponent does not have Fletching.

This is what I usually do till 1.8k where people get smarter.
The opponent can cancel his upgrading and the 3rd scout so I can only take minor advantage and it will not affect the result much.
Sometimes the opponent decided to all in and bring the tower, wall can’t stop him if my terrain is bad.

I wonder if change scouts cost to 60F 20W is a legit alternative

this complicates the game and makes it too AoE4-like, I’d rather get something more simple like Scouts +1 attack for example.

After all Spears are very strong vs Feudal Scouts and early walls counter them too, with such a buff you just might do that infantry armor in Feudal which nobody currently does since Spears win so hard vs Scouts already.

2 Likes

Ok, now it’s enough.
Can we please slug the battle of archers v cav IN THE GAME and not IN THE FORUM?

We just had the unbalanced one-sided nerf to xbows in castle age despite all stats on arabia clearly showed a winrate discrepancy in favor of cav civs!

This nonsense has to come to an end. The forum can’t be the battleground for Team Archer v Team Knight. Especially as we all know that there are way more people out there prefering Knight play.
This can’t end well.

Edit: And if this continues I have to bring the classic “git gud”, despite I don’t like the disrespect. But if you can lie about your intentions here, I can also just take your lies as gospel. If all stats show winrates for cav and you say scout play is suicide you must be really, really bad in your scout play, like seriously.

3 Likes

Feudal is different, I’m definitely “Team Archer” but Scouts are just a bad opening these days.

Archers probably need a buff because you both need very good macro and there are mechanics that can instantly end you (e.g. Mangonel), such mechanics are absent for Knights.

I thik you then just really need to work on your scout play.
I also was bad at scout play until I learned how to use them effectively. Esepcially that you usually don’t want to make a lot of them. It’s actually impossible to make a good counterplay vs just 3-4 scouts. The investment is always higher to stop them than to make them if they are used well.

Then ofc you need to work on your defences cause if you make only few of them the oppoent will push out at some point against you. But that’s also something you can leard.

If you then get the faster Castle Timing your Knights with upgrades can clear up every lefover feudal army of the opponent.

Ofc this is kind of idealistic, but scouts aren’t supposed to overwhealm the opponent forces in feudal, it’s not how they are designed. They are a herassing tool, setting up for your later powerspikes.

If you throw your Scouts into archers + spears you deserve to lose, it’s that easy.

3 Likes

The player who thought he can dodge Mangonel deserved to lost all archers, Mangonel is mean to counter common foot archers. He can just pull archers back and nothing will happen.

Ok maybe I need to learn more. I don’t “throw” into spears + archers, sometimes obviously there is a little bit of desperation/forced hand, for example if opponent is on top of your gold, you have to take the fight… but overall I find that say 3 MAA vs 3 Scouts can go either way depending on micro, Scout player probably has the advantage but I can’t click small units very well in those early Feudal fights… in any case even if you do win the fight, you can argue that you came out ahead (80f x3 for Scouts, 60f x3 + 100f upgrade for MAA), but still it doesn’t feel good to have 2 Scouts both left with 11 HP or something… those in Castle age can be very useful (snipe Monks and control the map), but in Feudal they will die to anything breathing on them so basically you can argue that they aren’t there.

sure, what is the mechanic to instantly destroy a group of 15 Knights again? Oh wait you are saying there isn’t one? Sounds like a cav civ bias.

1 Like

You have usually 2 gold patches. If the opponent has a superior force on one of them you usually tower the 2nd one and take it. Towers have no feudal counters, so from that on it’s usually a race to castle.

Vs Maa you usually wait until you have a slight numbers advantage. Scouts v MAA isn’t ideal, but if you micro back your damaged scouts you can get really good trades even if your numbers advantage isn’t great. Don’t forget as MAA are infantry they are Supposed to kind of counter Cav, that’s nornal. So yu want to have the numbers there, definetely.

The issue most people have with scouts these days is actually their raiding potential. Sounds weird, but Scouts barely win fights vs loomed vils, especially if the vills have the numbers advantage, scouts can fall like flies. Against that you usually want to retreat with the scouts and just take the caused idle time. And ofc Walls, Walls are the cryptonite of scrushes.

1 Like

Are you serious? It’s very open

If you run your knights into the counters, you can lose them as well
When your knights see a lot of pikes or camels, normally you want to avoid them.
When your archers see Mangonels, you should try to avoid them too instead of thinking of that " oh the Mangonel user is stupid he won’t attack ground, my archers can dodge and kill them". The instant kill just won’t happen if you make the right decision.

The archers are the strongest units on Feudal and early castle age till 10+ knights got 2+2, sure you can ask for buff for late game vs paladin , but the Mangonels example is not legit, archers shouldn’t be able to take advantage of their counter.

Although a scouts build usually is easier to pull off as an opening it’s a bit less streamlined than going archer because decision making in mid/late feudal is more complex. If you’re opening archers vs scouts you basically follow through your plan (irrespective of if you went drush maa and whatnot before) while with scouts you in theory have the eco advantage and earlier uptime but also usually face the necessity to make skirms.

The timing of the range and the amount of skirms and upgrades play a crucial role. Ofc you can try to get full walled before archers are in high numbers and defend with market walls or towers but that’s probably gonna be pretty awkward in a lot of cases. Anyways my point here is the decision making at that stage is more difficult compared to playing archers where you basically continue to make your main unit until you click up.

2 Likes

1450 elo and play scout rush 90%+ of games.
I think these comments are mostly confused about the purpose/role of scouts. Scouts do not win fights. They allow you to not have to. The point of making scouts is that they kill villigers. And they can get around defenders, by literally just running around them. If unit A is faster than unit B, then the person with unit A gets to choose whether or not to fight unit B when attacking.
The only way for unit B to force a fight is for them to attack. When you get attacked as the scout player you have a few options such as: keep killing villis with your scouts and just trust that you can kill faster than your opponent can kill your villis, wall, make spears and/or skirms and/or archers. With the former options you’re hoping for a fast castle age time + knights, with the latter option you’re hoping to keep fighting in Feudal and eventually gain a lead due to having gotten those early villiger kills.
None of this involves fighting army with scouts or getting any scout upgrades. I can’t remember the last time I got a single scout upgrade in Feudal. Only happens if you do invest into lots of other units, and then the opponent techs into skirms, and then you add a lot more scouts, and the opponent is still open, then I get upgrades. Maybe. Otherwise no point you aren’t going to be fighting you’re just going to be killing villagers so leave the upgrades.
If the opponent big walls, come forward and make a tower. If the opponent small walls, add 2/3 archers.
But in my experience, if you open with 1 spear, that spear + your starting scout can keep the opponent open until the next scout arrives.

2 Likes

I think also…
The guy who makes these threads needs to learn that most losses are because of skill and mistakes. Even at the highest elo. Not because of simple unit interactions.

It’s always easy to blame something different than yourself, but most of the time it’s actually yourself that lost a game.

But I found it sometimes nice to rethink and analyze the meta, trying to formulate the actions involved. Even if I couldn’t go into details why the meta is as it is (and the why is usually only a personal perception) - I think it’s good for the community in general to have these strats formulated for once, to build up a higher consciousness about the meta.

3 Likes