Bring the Scout to the Battlefield!

[Esthlos]

Let's discuss/come up with other ideas now

How crazy do you want them to be?

Here's one: a toggle where infantry have their "Start Attack" button that assigns the selected Scout troop to army feeding instead of serfs.
They're faster, can defend themselves, adding saddles to their sprites shouldn't be too difficult, and it would make massing armies in front of a sieged enemy easier without killing your economy every time your troops are hungry.

What do you think?

[sado1]

a bunch of crazy ideas: (I still don't care about the scout anyway, but since you do...)
-make scouts able to get "uncaught" (but it's waay against KaM spirit)
-make them able to steal food from the enemy
-make them hit the enemy troops very fast (to make it good against bowmen... just hit and run)
-make scouts uncatchable by ranged units - I mean: infantry and cavalry can catch them, but if scout is killing ranged units, he can always quit doing that and flee (this idea might be a bit against KaM spirit)

[Tiank]

Actually I like some of sado's ideas, like:

-make them hit the enemy troops very fast (to make it good against bowmen... just hit and run)

Something like charge possibility for them, but instead of faster movement, make them be ready to attack immediately as they reach enemy troop (now every unit first got engaged in battle, then make first hit). This will make them more powerful against ranged. But on the other hand, they will be more powerful against every unit, which can make them too powerful.

-make scouts uncatchable by ranged units - I mean: infantry and cavalry can catch them, but if scout is killing ranged units, he can always quit doing that and flee (this idea might be a bit against KaM spirit)

This would probably be solved when they had this first ability, to make first hit faster.

-make them able to steal food from the enemy

This idea could be good for vagabonds (yes, vagabonds, if we are making changes for scouts, why vagabonds shouldn't have them? But this idea is for different topic).

I imagine, that every mounted unit should have it's own ability. Vagabonds - stealing. Scouts - charge. Knights - well, they just powerful, that's enough.

[Fallheim]

i like the idea of a faster scout, im wondering why people would be against this. isnt the idea of a scout do be a much faster relatively weaker knight, to scout the enemy position to gain a favorable engagement. being faster then the knight also makes sense in that a scout has less armor and weapons, his horse would be lighter allowing for more speed and better endurance

[The Dark Lord]

So if the scout can be faster than the knight because he is only lightly armoured, should the militia be faster than the axe fighter and way faster than the sword fighter? Shouldn't all leather units be faster than iron units?
I don't even think that increasing the scout's speed will resolve this problem. Sure, it's great to scout with, so you might want one or two scouts; but they are still useless in battle if you face a good player. Even if they would be three times as fast: a defended flank is a defended flank. And even if you manage to flank some bowmen, the scouts are so pathetic that you can still shoot them if you just turn around or split them up.
Then there is something else: the animation. Just speeding up the animation might look pretty weird...

[Killer!!]

I jst got an idea what could solve everyproble :p.
What if the host is able to press a button what means "random units" so you are able to only train that kind of troops as the computer will select.

Example: you are in a lobby with 6 players you pressed the button for a game with random units. When the map is loaded and the game starts everone gets a general message which says the you are only able to train Scouts,Lances,Xbows and pikeman (for example) so if the pt is ended you are only able to press the button on the barracks of the units the AI has chosen.
I think there will be much more variety in the game.
Maybe you should be able to select the ammount of random types of troops to, or maybe even better, The host is able to set the type of units himself like if you want to play a game with only xbows and lances the host select only those troops in the lobby.
I think you could get every kind of games you want

EDIT: I don't know if this was already suggested.

[Ben]

That is absolutely...crazy XD No need for such an option, this can already be done with scripting anyway

Keep the (new) ideas coming guys. Maybe we'll think of something someday

[WhiteWolf]

New idea, scout has now 35 attack points. Turn this into 40 and you'll have a stronger scout.. Slightly better but not absurdly overpowered ?

Or, make iron more expensive in the market.

[Michalpl]

Nah Scout is for scouting its not a dam warrior with double edged axe

[Leeuwgie]

I'm pretty sure that the only weaknesss of this unit is the horse itself because:
1 The horse makes it too weak/risky because of the hardest counter in the game (pike).
2 The horse makes the scout a too expensive unit to make.
3 The horse makes it impossible to spam the unit.

If horses for this particular cavalery unit are more spammable somehow I'll probably train them more than only in ironless lategame situations.

[Islar]

If the problem is the horse then i think for one the cost of the horse should be reduced. But then this will also be for the knight so that is a problem. Unless you have two kinds of horses. One horse for the scout (cheap to breed) and one horse for the knight (regular cost to breed). Ingame there are 3 different coloured horses breed in the stables. Brown orange-like for the scout and white for the knight.(and one light brown coloured) I don't know if this will solve the problem or if it even possible. Just an idea.

[Ben]

Well it's something. But if we have different horses then we would need to be able to have our stables have an option to train different kinds of horses, similar to weapon ordered. I don't like that at all.