How the F do you kill scouts?!?!?!

[David]

They block all production and construction if they stand on your tiles while you're at war, and the AI has a tendency to just send scouts marching up and down your territory.
That'd be no problem if there was a way to kill them, but attacking seems to do absolutely nothing. I had armies, scouts, mounted scouts, all attack moving onto their tiles, moving pre-emtively where they would go, ranged attacking them, encircling them so they can't move anywhere...
EVEN if I am on their tile for 1 turn they still have the ability to move before any damage is dealt, which is BS, it means they're essentially invulnerable. No matter where they go, they can always slip through before any damage is dealt to them.

[bmrigs]

What an oversight. I didn't know that.

[JDPUK]

Oprindeligt skrevet af David:

They block all production and construction if they stand on your tiles while you're at war, and the AI has a tendency to just send scouts marching up and down your territory.
That'd be no problem if there was a way to kill them, but attacking seems to do absolutely nothing. I had armies, scouts, mounted scouts, all attack moving onto their tiles, moving pre-emtively where they would go, ranged attacking them, encircling them so they can't move anywhere...
EVEN if I am on their tile for 1 turn they still have the ability to move before any damage is dealt, which is BS, it means they're essentially invulnerable. No matter where they go, they can always slip through before any damage is dealt to them.

+1

[spacedog]

This... 100% this. I was barely hanging on in a war, and a scout goes running across my territory and stops on the region with my armory. Gunpowder production stops, and a legion of assault infantry goes *poof* and disbands. A 150 strength death stack essentially taken out by a single scout.

The production stoppage mechanic makes sense, but scouts currently wreak all kinds of havoc on your economy during wars and there's basically nothing you can do about it. I mean, I guess you can park land forces on important regions to keep them away, but the unit cap prevents that from being a feasible strategy.

Edit: Actually, I just realized "special forces" like scouts don't count against the land forces cap. So I think one "solution" is to build a scout per region and leave them fortified there, and just eat the upkeep cost. You gotta fight cheeze with cheeze.

[Takfloyd]

It honestly makes no sense to me. Sometimes, a unit on the same region as an enemy scout will fight it. Sometimes, they just stand there doing nothing and the scout can move away safely.

Maybe it depends on whether you use the "attack" or the "move" command when you move into the scout's region?

Even if you do, the scout might simply move away before your army moves into the region though, based on some nebulous "Initiative" stat that is mentioned in tooltips but never shown anywhere.

[David]

Oprindeligt skrevet af spacedog:

Edit: Actually, I just realized "special forces" like scouts don't count against the land forces cap. So I think one "solution" is to build a scout per region and leave them fortified there, and just eat the upkeep cost. You gotta fight cheeze with cheeze.

Yeah but even if they stand on your unit, they can still move before any attacks happen so it will only help that one region. They can and will still walk past your units like they're not even there.

[David]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Takfloyd:

Maybe it depends on whether you use the "attack" or the "move" command when you move into the scout's region?

Trust me I tried every attack, ranged attack, move combination you can think of, none of them ever did any damage even when the scout moved on MY tile, it was able to move again before any damage was done.

[spacedog]

Oprindeligt skrevet af David:

Oprindeligt skrevet af spacedog:

Edit: Actually, I just realized "special forces" like scouts don't count against the land forces cap. So I think one "solution" is to build a scout per region and leave them fortified there, and just eat the upkeep cost. You gotta fight cheeze with cheeze.

Yeah but even if they stand on your unit, they can still move before any attacks happen so it will only help that one region. They can and will still walk past your units like they're not even there.

Right because their initiative is higher. But that's why I said park a fortified scout on EVERY region in your city. Even if they move before they get attacked, they'll end up on another occupied region and get attacked when they arrive.

That said, I was mostly pointing out the absurdity of such a thing. Obviously they need to fix this.

[hannibal_pjv]

Scout to go after scouts?

[spacedog]

You know... I just assumed they do, if you're at war. Maybe they don't without an explicit order. I never tried...

[MEGACHAD]

Oprindeligt skrevet af David:

They block all production and construction if they stand on your tiles while you're at war, and the AI has a tendency to just send scouts marching up and down your territory.
That'd be no problem if there was a way to kill them, but attacking seems to do absolutely nothing. I had armies, scouts, mounted scouts, all attack moving onto their tiles, moving pre-emtively where they would go, ranged attacking them, encircling them so they can't move anywhere...
EVEN if I am on their tile for 1 turn they still have the ability to move before any damage is dealt, which is BS, it means they're essentially invulnerable. No matter where they go, they can always slip through before any damage is dealt to them.

Use your ranged units to shoot them

[ShadowDragon8685]

Oprindeligt skrevet af spacedog:

This... 100% this. I was barely hanging on in a war, and a scout goes running across my territory and stops on the region with my armory. Gunpowder production stops, and a legion of assault infantry goes *poof* and disbands. A 150 strength death stack essentially taken out by a single scout.

The production stoppage mechanic makes sense, but scouts currently wreak all kinds of havoc on your economy during wars and there's basically nothing you can do about it. I mean, I guess you can park land forces on important regions to keep them away, but the unit cap prevents that from being a feasible strategy.

Edit: Actually, I just realized "special forces" like scouts don't count against the land forces cap. So I think one "solution" is to build a scout per region and leave them fortified there, and just eat the upkeep cost. You gotta fight cheeze with cheeze.

Wow. The stupidest part of this is that your doomstack of line infantry just go "poof" without their gunpowder maintenance.

Sure, there should be some *pretty gnarly penalties* applied to them, but they shouldn't just disband and sod off if they run out of supplies like that - their fighting effectiveness should suffer, and both food and gold should have special qualifiers:

If they run out of food, they'll start foraging, which reduces their speed to one tile/turn, whilst also reducing their combat effectiveness, and if they run out of food and stay that way for more than three turns, they disband, because the army basically runs off back home to take care of their families.

If they run out of gold, they'll keep soldiering on, but with an increasing -10% penalty per turn. To get them back to fighting, you have to pay them back all of what you owe them. If you can pay them something in a turn, they won't lose effectiveness that turn, but they won't go back to normal. Once you are caught up and no longer in arears, they go back to normal. If they hit -100%, though, they desert; if you're in a war, they actually defect to the enemy! If you're not in a war, they turn into bandits and start pillaging your territory, unless they're in territory of another nation - then they defect to that nation instead, if that nation will pay them, and they don't even need to pay them ten turns' arrears; just start maintenance payments and a lump sum.

[David]

Oprindeligt skrevet af MEGACHAD:

Oprindeligt skrevet af David:

They block all production and construction if they stand on your tiles while you're at war, and the AI has a tendency to just send scouts marching up and down your territory.
That'd be no problem if there was a way to kill them, but attacking seems to do absolutely nothing. I had armies, scouts, mounted scouts, all attack moving onto their tiles, moving pre-emtively where they would go, ranged attacking them, encircling them so they can't move anywhere...
EVEN if I am on their tile for 1 turn they still have the ability to move before any damage is dealt, which is BS, it means they're essentially invulnerable. No matter where they go, they can always slip through before any damage is dealt to them.

Use your ranged units to shoot them

They can't. The ranged unit fire order can only be done on a unit, not an area, and since most units have a range of 1, at least early on, you will never be able to shoot before they move out of range.

[mr_root]

Take own scouts or make more smaller formations ;)

[VDmitry]

Oprindeligt skrevet af mr_root:

Take own scouts or make more smaller formations ;)

Basically wage wars in WW1-2 style during Medieval times.

[Aio]

yea blocking your prodction from scouts (wich is meaning exploring unit not something like worker-union or specialforce or terrorists) is realy questionabel. i can easy outmaneuver my enemy with outmaxed number of scouts xD