Scouting (again)

[TheVampire100]

Gaaah, I guess you cannot stand this topic anymore and i guess I'm already the hundrest person that tries to come up with a solution.
A lot of people think that the scouting currently is not... well done. For most part of it, it is because it is automated, their is no meaning to it (if you saw soemthign you will see it forever) and so on.

So here another idea that might not be worth it but at least think about: Visual ranges of buildings. Instead of having one scouting building that scans the entire map all your buildings will have different visual ranges (reveals everything in X tile range). Military have higher visual ranges than civilian buildings. The pld scouting building has the biggest visual range.
This brings some new developments towards scouting: You have to build further away in order to see what is there (exploration part of the game).
You risk loosing your scouting buildings.Also you have to conquer more territories in order to see more.

If you loose a building, the region it has revealed get blurred (you still see the terrain/tiles but you won't see anything new that happens there).

I know this might be a big step in the game but at least you have a more dynamic scouting system compared to the static current one.

[crazyroosterman]

personally at the moment I don't really care to much about scouting at the moment Id rather some work be done on diplomacy at the moment to make it more interesting for me right now the diplomacy just doesn't feel useful in any real way which really sucks because that's the thing I find interesting in games like this and civ 5.

[x4000]

I'm not much a fan of fog of war -- I wrote about why in great detail somewhere, I forget where it was now, though.

[TheVampire100]

Okay, then this is a given thing. Like crazyroosterman said, it's not THAT important.

I'm really impressed about territories btw. They make organizing citiys easier and more fun. What I like most about them is that stuff that had a tile range before now instead affects the entire territory. This saves a lot micro management while still mantaining city planning. Very nicely done, big plus. 

[keith.lamothe]

Possibly scouting could be tied to territories? So you see your territories, and any neighboring ones, and maybe there's a scouting wonder that reveals territories two steps away, but there's no scouting stations or manual/auto scouting.

[kasnavada]

I'm for a complete overhaul of the exploration system - scout buildings, explorer camps and so on. But, since territories changed quite a lot, I'm not sure what would be nice.

What I suggested "before" the change on the "scouting building" thread was:
- exploration is automatic "around" the lander / district center / military camp (forgot the name), and expands 1/turn until a limit is reached (or not).
- you can "sacrifice" one explorer camp to "explore" some area (just as the scout action does, except for the sacrifice part). Also, limiting the number of explorer camps is necessary (maybe 6 ?).
- you can "sacrifice" the scout for 2 "scout actions".

With territories, if it "feels" right, maybe the same "scouting" behaviour around lander : similar could be kept, but limited to the territory it's in. Then sacrificing could be used to explore a neighboring territory fully (proposed numbers, of course, to be tweaked).

This would probably require getting rid of the science and government points for the explorer camp, or tie them to the new "explore" action, or move them to the lander. Not sure if it's a bad thing to do so. Giving "bonus" science points / events for exploring sure sounds like a good idea though.

In hope it gives you ideas.

I'm for this myself (copy / paste, it was an answer last time I wrote this).

Basically as keith said, tie exploration to territories souds like a good idea with the current system.

[Cinth]

Possibly scouting could be tied to territories? So you see your territories, and any neighboring ones, and maybe there's a scouting wonder that reveals territories two steps away, but there's no scouting stations or manual/auto scouting.

Would it come with monsters only being able to attack neighboring territories too?

[keith.lamothe]

Possibly scouting could be tied to territories? So you see your territories, and any neighboring ones, and maybe there's a scouting wonder that reveals territories two steps away, but there's no scouting stations or manual/auto scouting.

Would it come with monsters only being able to attack neighboring territories too?

They should only be attacking neighboring territories now. Is that not the case?

On the scouting, my suggestion would probably not give sufficient intel on the rest of the world by itself. Perhaps when you hit language level 6 with a race it reveals their territories and neighboring territories too. Not because they handed it over willingly, but because your agents finally understood how to use that race's equivalent of Google Maps.

[Cinth]

Possibly scouting could be tied to territories? So you see your territories, and any neighboring ones, and maybe there's a scouting wonder that reveals territories two steps away, but there's no scouting stations or manual/auto scouting.

Would it come with monsters only being able to attack neighboring territories too?

They should only be attacking neighboring territories now. Is that not the case?

On the scouting, my suggestion would probably not give sufficient intel on the rest of the world by itself. Perhaps when you hit language level 6 with a race it reveals their territories and neighboring territories too. Not because they handed it over willingly, but because your agents finally understood how to use that race's equivalent of Google Maps.

It could have been the way the territories were shaped in my last game, but it seems like they have an insanely large reach.  I'll get back to you if I see something weird.

[kasnavada]

On the scouting, my suggestion would probably not give sufficient intel on the rest of the world by itself. Perhaps when you hit language level 6 with a race it reveals their territories and neighboring territories too. Not because they handed it over willingly, but because your agents finally understood how to use that race's equivalent of Google Maps.

That sounds like a good idea independantly of what the scouting system is.