Author Topic: Scouting doen't feel fun (IMO)  (Read 792 times)

Offline Pumpkin

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Scouting doen't feel fun (IMO)
« on: April 22, 2015, 06:55:09 am »
It was something that bugged me from the beginning but now that many things have been fixed, it's the one that catches me the most. But maybe I'm missing something; maybe I don't use scouting as it's intended. The following post assume that there is no other way than describe; if there is one, then consider my suggestion canceled.

I have to manually scout each turn if I don't want to lose my "scout power". So I need to build many scout stations and use them rarely if I want to have a fun scouting: not being bothered by it while I do something else, and being able to scout a large area each time I care about scouting.

The easiest path to fix it and make scouting fun (to me, at least) is to stack "scout power" over turns and being able to use them all in one turn. I understand that an infinite scout stacking would be broken. My suggestion is to have, like crowns, a scout "income" and a stack. The scout station produce 1 scout per turn and after 10 turns not scouting I would be able to scout 10 times in one turn. The stack would have a limit, like the number of scouting planes ready to go for a mission. There would be sort of civil airports or plane warehouses that increase the quantity of "scouting missions" available at once, and the scouting station would supply it (build planes, refuel, repair, etc).

For example, I just build a scout station that produce 1 scout and can store 1 scout. Each turn, I'm able to send one scout mission, like it's possible now. Then I build a plane-warehouse/civil-airport/etc that can store let say 10 scout planes. Now I can wait 11 turns, send 11 scouts in one turn, and go back to city business for 11 more turns. Then I can build two more scout stations and send 12 scout missions every 4 turns. Then again I could build more airports to send more of them at once but with more turns/time between each pack of missions.

Maybe these numbers are a bit overpowered, but the core idea is here.

EDIT:
I just find that scouts are automatically sent if they would be lost. This may be new because I didn't noticed earlier. Well, it solve the problem of losing "scout power", but autoscout doesn't feel fun either because I can't seek something special and I'm not there when something fun is discovered. I still feel that a stacked scout mechanism would be both more fun and more streamlined.
« Last Edit: April 22, 2015, 06:58:56 am by Pumpkin »
Please excuse my english: I'm not a native speaker. Don't hesitate to correct me.

Offline Misery

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Re: Scouting doen't feel fun (IMO)
« Reply #1 on: April 22, 2015, 07:36:49 am »
I've honestly been just mostly ignoring it so far... it just never seems relevant to anything.  There's just nothing I really need to know regarding the surrounding area.  I drop a scout station or two, occaisionally will click to activate it, but most of the time I ignore it and just let it do whatever.  The surrounding landscape and tile types just.... dont really matter.  The only real types that matter are ground VS water, and that's pretty much it.  Or if another civ is REALLY close, but I dont need to scout all that much to find something that's that close to my own city. Or at least that's been my experience with it so far.

Offline ptarth

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Re: Scouting doen't feel fun (IMO)
« Reply #2 on: April 22, 2015, 09:46:57 am »
Scouting is pretty tedious. The tooltips as some point talked about the scouting being lost if not used, but it has been automated for many version now. Sonar was also automated in this patch (at least the tooltip says so).

The eXploration is weak. The other problem is that I'm at turn 227 and I have scouted everything. The building are now sitting their eating power and doing nothing. Should I reward their loyal service with a bulldozer... Questions a benevolent dictator must face.
Note: This post contains content that is meant to be whimsical. Any belittlement or trivialization of complex issues is only intended to lighten the mood and does not reflect upon the merit of those positions.

Offline Captain Jack

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Re: Scouting doen't feel fun (IMO)
« Reply #3 on: April 22, 2015, 12:36:09 pm »
Don't see why not, it's not like scouts have feelings. Or any reason to be kept around, since fog of war isn't a thing.