Scout Unit

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

While 0 AD does have players start with a cavalry, given the importance of hunting as a source of food, it is often relegated to the task of gathering resources, while I have before argued for speed at which they gather food to be slowed down to make early game scouting more relevant, I think that ignores the fact that regardless of how glacial the pace a unit might gather, many would prefer to simply approach the game from a greedy perspective than scout, which I think makes the game weaker; scouting is a key ingredient to most great RTSs.  Thus, I think that an argument could be made to have a unit with little to no combat ability and economic value to improve what many have described as a slow and boring early game in the Training Time topic.  

First, I think that even if these units are only specific to niche skirmish maps, they still should have a place since they could provide good value for future campaigns.  If they were to be introduced to regular play, I think that there are some valid questions to ask such as whether they could be trained, how much they would cost in that case, and many more such implications.  

Athenian and Spartan scouts could be runners, which would obviously benefit any representation of the Persian Wars in campaigns.

Persia could have a courier unit, modelling the famous praise Herodotus said regarding the system.

Britons could have a smaller dog.

Again while I think there is an argument for such units existing in standard play, they certainly would find a great niche for scenarios.

[TheCJ]

10 minutes ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

Athenian and Spartan scouts could be runners, which would obviously benefit any representation of the Persian Wars in campaigns.

I'm gonna comment on this before @Emacz does;

We added running scouts to those civs in the "historical patch" mod and I believe it did indeed add to the gameplay!

[Genava55]

 

[Emacz]

yes indeed.  Pretty sure they were called hemerodromos.  And very specialized "units"

2 hours ago, TheCJ said:

I'm gonna comment on this before @Emacz does;

We added running scouts to those civs in the "historical patch" mod and I believe it did indeed add to the gameplay!

 

[Grautvornix]

Sounds like a good idea!

Scouting can be useful not only to find out where everyone resides. I have also successfully used scouting in the first minutes of an SP game (nomadic mode) to attract adverse citizen soldiers into a trap (one by one) so they were not able to establish their CC.

 

[Grautvornix]

Oh - and I also believe, Petra AI should need scouting as well and not rely on a revealed map as it is currently the case (possibly not easy to implement at all).

[Emacz]

2 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:

Sounds like a good idea!

Scouting can be useful not only to find out where everyone resides. I have also successfully used scouting in the first minutes of an SP game (nomadic mode) to attract adverse citizen soldiers into a trap (one by one) so they were not able to establish their CC.

 

main reason for adding to sparta and athens is becasue early on they were really known for using a lot of horses.  You can scout pretty well with cav in 0ad

[Deicide4u]

The standard game starts with a scout. If you want to scout, you're free to use it. You can always make another cavalry unit and use it to hunt.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

it is also quite common to use one of your starting infantrymen to scout. It kind of depends on how worried you are about getting stomped by a big rush.

[Seleucids]

In A27, any sane player won't rush you before your cavalry finishes the chickens (2:30), so you can do scouting with your cav afterwards.

If  you are up against Romans. Macedon or Han then you need to beware of the starting with 3 melee cavs strat. But the damage of this kind of suicidal attacks is limited and it can be defended quite easily.