Scouts suck and hunters are great.

[BloodyPork]

I usually spend all my starting experience to promote 2 hunters to veteran. They are really good. Their accuracy gets better as they get promoted and since late game with high morale and fortune favored they can critical hit twice in a row with quick shot. Walking the shot makes them much stronger.

Hunter's accuracy is capped at 95% so they do not miss if you invest in them. Also w/ walk the shot they potentially quick shot and critical hit twice (fortune favored + max morale/leadership), and w/ point blank will critical hit twice guaranteed, theoretically, when combined w/ quick shot deals highest damage possible.

On the other hand, scouts are very useless. Scholar's skills seems good until you realize he take up one slot and dies very fast, but he is still better than scouts! If you play in higher difficulty where ai deals higher damage w/ high critical hit rate, most reliable strategy is construct barricades all around you, hunter shoots and doctor heal ranged damage. This works for most battles. So barricade, spikes, mictlan crystal. If that doesn't work for some battle, use 2 doc 1 sword/shield soldier choke point who spam second and first ability in that order, w/ lanterns while hunters shoot. Soldiers should learn +10 endurance, +5 range and melee def and halve critical hit (if ai critical slider maxed).

Scouts will die in 2 (charge skill)-3 hits like a dbag and so are useless in anything above easy colombo difficulty and maybe normal. To make it worse they can't shoot at all, so they are totally useless in harder battles of the game such as "defending the fort" or hispaniola's second to last battle survive for 10 turns. People who says scout is good should play on higher difficulty, they always get targeted first by the ai and die.

So how do you actually survive with scouts at higher difficulty? Plant spikes at every tile while they stand in the corner? but they will still die from ranged attack, and if you charge forward they get slaughtered by the melee units..

[Jake]

I have found scouts to be very good. They have insane movement I use them with the sneak attack bonus. You can use them to pick off opponents hunters that are standing at the back

[starkmaddness]

I play on insane, and hunters are nearly useless. Scouts have 100% chance to hit. They have insane movement, and their Sneak allows you to setup flank attacks for them and your soldiers. It also allows them to back away if wounded. Their fast movement also allows them to run 1/2 way across the map and lock their archers into melee.

The chance to hit with both quickshots is rather small. Even if you do, the damage is matched by a single flank attack from a scout.

[Pheace]

I wouldn't want to play without a scout, their movement speed is great for catching enemies and with their sneak ability I can get off several flanks at a time by simply moving behind an enemy with sneak, having a soldier do a flank attack, and then moving my scout behind another enemy so another soldier can flank as well that turn, it's lovely.

[Tuidjy]

My experience has been the opposite of that of the original poster.

Properly played, scouts are extremely effective, both for their high mobility and their ability to bind enemy hunters. There are a few fights in which hunters may be better than scouts, but in general, scouts deliver consistent damage exactly where you need it. Hunters cannot match their scout's damage with single shots, and double shot's failure rate is significant.

Furthermore, to make hunters shine, you need barricades and traps, and this costs money. In a large part of the game, that money is much better used for equipment.

[Xara]

I've never spent one reale on buying stuff for barricades and traps.
That's what patrols and tinkering are for.
Hell I have more inventory stuff than I can even put to use. There's plenty of combat maps where smart positioning and play negates the need for using inventory items.

I think scouts AND hunters are both good. I currently use two of each on hard mode iron man.

Does the promotion increase the hunter's ACCURACY, not just damage? My scouts and soldier are my high-ranked guys at the moment - I'm not sure I'd change that in the future since they are the ones taking the hits and the defense helps

[Hannibal Barca]

Scouts are best unit imo, I got mine with Ignore armor and relentless they've 1 shot Soldiers(2 attacks on one move), hunter have horrible hit% and low damage compared to scouts
Also My hunter had +5 walking shot and 95% hit and still missed 2 titles away, scouts 100% hit without investing 1000 exp pts!

[Nova]

Yes, the accuracy increases drastically as you promote your hunters.

[Ghastous™]

wish i could get into this combat at all but to me its meh every time i try win a battle i end up getting my ass kicked but other tactical games like Xcom im fine on but this nope cant win ♥♥♥♥ making me feel like ive wasted money on this

[Nova]

You could try lowering the difficulty :P

[Jonas]

Also: watch out for attacks of opportunity. Use your scouts to flank. Use your soldiers to protect your hunters and doctors. Make traps to place when there's a preparation phase. Have your units stick together whenever possible. Remember to spend your XP to level up your people, make sure they've all got as much equipment as possible, and use their active abilities well :-)

Other than lowering the difficulty (there is no shame in that!), I recommend checking out some Let's Play videos to see how other people play it. That might help you get into the flow of combat.

[Lonetac]

scouts with sneak attack are insane. While i respect the OP's opinion i almost wonder if he is trolling or playing on really easy mode?

And LOL to the guy who thinks cause he cant beat the game on harder difficulty means he wasted his money. Others are doing it and just fine, this isnt xcom. You might be doing something terribly wrong (obviously) and it might not be a fault of the game at all...

[Jonas]

Man, I couldn't beat X-COM on classic. I made it half-way into the storyline and then started over on Normal.

[ocimpean]

Scouts are useful to have in the group. I have sometime enemies soften up by hunters, that are still far so I send the scout to finish them then retreat him behind the first line. Due to the high movement ability, this is a feasable strategy, unlike soldiers, who are to slow.

[Zee]

After a full playthrough, the most useful units were definitely warriors because of their stun. You could easily win all battles with 4 warriors, 2 healers, or even 5 warriors 1 healer.

Hunters become very useless quite quickly, they don't do that much damage and they miss alot even at 80%+. I only found them useful with point blank shot for garaunteed crit, so you stun with warrior and the walk up with the hunter and crit them without retaliation. But even then they miss quite a bit (even my rank 3 hunter..).

Scouts can be useful once they get stealth, because they can move into flanking positions and hit and run, and the throwing knives can be handy.

Healers are required, I only ever took one though, didn't really need 2, but I could have easily got rid of my hunter and taken a second healer instead because th hunter didn't really help that much.

I only used my rank 5 scholar a few times in battle, he was pretty useless though.

Finally, the Amazon warrior that you can get is probably the best unit. She can crit for 100+ and oneshot people, she has great abilities including ranged.

[nanaki]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Jonas:

Man, I couldn't beat X-COM on classic. I made it half-way into the storyline and then started over on Normal.

funny that you made this game then :P. I did not find xcom classic much harder than impossible on this game (new patch should have made it equally challenging)


scouts dont suck if you make use of the flanking bonus+stealth ability