Sheep should not double as scouts

Scouting with sheep, to me, seems like a cheat. Their movements shouldn’t permanently reveal the map. Instead, I think you should just see a small sphere of vision from them as they move around, with no terrain permanently revealed on mini-map or viewport.

3 Likes

please don’t change how the game was played for decades

31 Likes

to me this is one of those unintended but fun things i’m completely okay with it, but that’s just my opinion.

by this logic though, the only units that should be able to uncover unexplored portions of the map are the scout and eagle line.

9 Likes

If we used the same logic: A scout that is killed cant give info about the map. So the terrain is permanently revealed after he came back to your TC. They died somewhere unknown. Why would you known everything he scouted?

Good game design isnt always the most realistic option. I have no issues with this point. Sheep scouting is fine.

25 Likes

Scouting with sheeps is a very nice feature and easily helps to seperate new players from more experiences ones (like pushing deer, using boars etc.). People should acknowledge that there are a lot of players out there who are playing this game for 20 years; changes like that are not needed and unneccesary.

And now? This is a PC-game, not a historical accurate encyclopedia. The fakt, that 5 elephants need the same space in a transport-ship as 5 vills is also unrealistic, but designwise a logical thing.

9 Likes

I had to think about this good old meme:

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I hope you like getting lamed and know how to play without a boar and missing 4 sheep cause that’s what’s going to happen if you stop scouting with sheep.

3 Likes

That’s already happened in multiple ways. Auto-farm queues and auto-scouting, to name a couple.

I can understand that. I like when games don’t try to predict and manage/dictate every single way someone will or should play the game, and so make a ton of rules and limitations that ruin the fun. This, to me, though, seems like a distracting error. It amounts to very cheap exploration by exploiting what I’d see as a game design flaw.

For sure. Why using sheep as cartographers remains to be a viable and universally appealing method for map exploration is odd to me. For me, I’d rather do it in what seems like a more legit and challenging way, as well as considerably more realistic: using your own human units.

If it remains for Age II:DE, cool (yet bummer, imo)… but I hope it doesn’t find its way into Age IV.

PS: Since the colloquial joke about sheep not being cartographers failed all around, I’ll remove that part to avoid confusion, and diversion tactics such as “…but villagers aren’t cartographers” :slight_smile:

1 Like

Sheep scouting isn’t that easy tbh, you have to control them and your scout at once, and you also have to make sure they will come back in time to be eaten.

6 Likes

I’ve said it before and i’ll say it again.

good micro should be rewarded.
if you have the speed and control to be able to scout with your scout and sheep at the same time, as well as queue workers and organize your villagers on tasks, more power to you.

11 Likes

No. Just, no. This is one of the thing that every civ and player can do. It’s not even unbalanced.

2 Likes

This I agree with - it takes a lot of skill to manage so many things at once and it’s available to all civs and all players at all levels. Some extra difficulty could be added by allowing wolves and other predators the ability to attack farm animals within a tile or two of them walking by, but there are way more important things that need work before needlessly adding more complexity to the game. Still, it would be fun though, right? Could force players to pre-emptively kill predators to protect their vills and livestock. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

i don’t want to argue, but these are QoL feature, (quality of life) they help new players jump in, and it’s something everyone wants
sheep scouting has been in the game to long to take out, it makes things harder, not easier, the devs have anyways expanded on sheep scouting

that’s okay

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In principle I agree with you but as stated by others a game cant be totally realistic, even simulators are not always that. Lets be happy that the sheep doesnt “tell” other sheep that they should go to the TC :slight_smile:

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There should be a little border collie dog herding the sheep around the screen.

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How can you name auto scout in a good light…

The other day we eliminated one flank from the opponents 3v3 team, their pkt starts calling him names for quitting or whatever.

I tell pkt, maybe if you did not spend so much time microing that scout in my base and instead helped flank it would be different.

He says to me; “Microing?? I was just auto scouting”

I died a little bit inside. He got all that intel from my base for free…

This is really what happened guys, they put some stupid AI mechanic into our beautiful pure game. Its disgusting. (And this has nothing to do with allowing the feature for casual players, as it should be optional in SP and perhaps MP when both parties agree)

About sheep scouting? Where else am I gonna go over 300 apm in the game, allow me some fun man.

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Could not even manage to kill an autoscout… feels so bad about it

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2 Likes

If I knew it was auto scout I might have trapped it. I took him for a high apm player so did not even try. Not only is there auto scout, it’s up to me to figure out in the moment if it’s on or not. At least give it a bright orange circle around the scout that screams "Kill me I’m controlled by a dumb AI and my player is a noob so probably target him first "

4 Likes

Bahahaha I love this idea :joy: that way we can auto-scout shame people hahaha

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If sheep couldn’t scout, what would you do with your extra brain cells in the first 60 seconds?