All of you saying that losing the scout is the player’s fault are 100% correct.
All of you giving tips how to avoid losing the scout — great tips, thanks!
None of you are addressing the issue. Games can be decided by a small mistake in the first few minutes. Which should not be the case.
I still stand fully with my point - it’s way too easy to lose a Dark Age Scout. It’s way too impactful for the game. It should be changed.
Its really not. Pay attention and you’ll be fine. Learn fro. Your mistakes. A pro even gave you tips on how to identify if youre nearing a tc.
Do you want me to put stats? I’m afraid I don’t have any.
But I bet you $10 real money at least 10% of games around 1300-1800 ELO level lose a Dark Age Scout to TC on Arabia.
That’s 10% of games severely impacted by this. Way too frequent for solid players. 1300-1800 is not amateurs anymore, those are people with builds, quickwalls, etc.
Why shouldn’t it be?
No. Thats 10% of games you’re assuming are impacted by this. With no evidence to back it up.
1300 to 1600 minimum are certainly amateur. The definition of amateur is unpaid. How many people playing aoe2 are actually gettinf paid to play? Maybe 200 tops take home any sort of real money a year
It also means incompetent or inepr. If youre failing at scouting id say your pretty incompetent or inept at it.
… Why would you assume that i imply you can train more than one…
My idea would be: it is free but it costs 75 secs to produce.
Because you didn’t say otherwise? And there aren’t other units in the game that have a cap? So if your proposing a unit being trainable, the assumption would be you can train as many as you want lol.
Thanks for elaborating on your idea, I’m still not sure that would be functional since 75 seconds = 3 vils. I’d much rather have 3 vils then a scout, so I think exercising that option would still leave you worse off then if you just have no scout.
Please read the original post. In short:
Good game design: mistakes size increases with game progress. This allows for the player behind to catch up.
Bad game design: mistake early in the game leads to an insurmountable disadvantage and the game is basically over.
I believe we are in the second category here. Because
Literally not true. Every rts ever you have been more punished for lost resources, units, workers, etc early game then later on by virtue of having lower incomes.
So does every rts game in existence have bad game design?
Yes, there are the kipchaks for your ally.
That is the point, to give you an option: worse eco or vision. As you have to be punished. If the training time is too much, you can make it of 2 vills.
Haha ok, sure Kipchaks in team games, clearly the exception not the rule, but I’ll give it too you 
Yeah maybe it could work! 
No. You are misunderstanding me.
The same absolute loss is bigger early than late, for sure. 1 vil out of the first couple is WAY WAY worse than 1 vil late in the game. That’s clear.
What I am talking about is a mistake. Not an absolute amount like 1 unit, or 1 resource.
For example, a lategame mistake is not having a key upgrade. That can decide a game. See Hera vs Yo in Semifinals: Hera only won because he had Warwolf upgrade. A mistake would have been not to get that.
Another example, a midgame mistake is running archers into a mangonel. This can be a mistake by the opponent, that lets someone behind catch back up.
Thus, the size of the possible mistakes get bigger as the game goes on.
Did I explain that well enough?
You should not lose the most important unit of the dark age, if it happens it’s always your fault.
The game is not over if you lose your starting scout.
Again, I am not saying it’s not the player’s fault. It 100% is the players fault. People keep repeating this so I will keep repeating:
Losing a scout is the players mistake. It is, however, an easy mistake to make, which leads to a huge disadvantage.
Now we are talking.
I think it’s a huge disadvantage, worse than losing a vil to a boar. You lose
How big is that disadvantage really?
Well, I personally have about 25% of players insta-quit the game on me when they lose their scout to TC. That’s maybe one game every 40.
It’s like getting lamed in that regard, people rage-quit / insta-quit when they can’t find a boar or got lamed.
But that’s my intuition.
If you have the ability to run stats I would love to see them. Find a player with 1k+ games that’s not a noob, filter his games for losing scout in Dark Age, and check win percentage. I would bet it’s below 40% winrate (with winrate normally being ~50%).
the game is full of maps for beginners
things aren’t over if you lose your scout because you barely ever need it. it has almost no utility in xbow spam, and that’s all these noob maps in the ranked pool are about
having or not having a scout makes little difference if every map is just wall + xbow. yeah i’d rather have it alive, but all this drama about the game being instantly over is not based in reality
“Thx de”? It’s an optional tool you have available. Nobody, including DE forces you to use it. Why blame the game mechanics for something you don’t have to use and is of no disadvantage to not use? Just wondering.
It is possible to lose a game of chess in two moves.
I’m sorry you don’t like Chess. By extension, I wish you’d accept that there are people who like chess in spite of it’s ruthlessness the same way people like AOE 2 in similar circumstances. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to impose a rule that the king is immune for the first 5 moves to solve your personal problems with chess, the same way I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to apply early protections to the scout to solve your problems with AOE 2. Don’t like your scout being killed by TC? Play with a treaty.
it is an essential element of early game, you try your best to take out enemy scouts while protecting your own and scouting the weak points of enemy base.
True, for closed maps it’s not a big deal.
My point applies to Arabia, Valley, Steppe, Kilimanjaro, Serengeti and Socotra type of map, where the scout is very important in Feudal age as army backbone.
Yes.
Normal mistakes in a chess opening lose a pawn or put your bishop into a bad spot.
Things that can be fought back with a tactical move in the midgame easily.
That’s goo game design and part of the reason why it is so popular.
For reference: In a Blitz game I pretty much never see a player resign in the first 10 moves, even when they lose a pawn or blunder a piece. Whereas in Age, I have it regularly happen that a player resigns in Dark Age.
Do you agree there’s a difference there?