do scouts, recon units & skirmishers exert ZoC?

[ESonix]

Do scouts, recon units and skirmishers exert ZoC (zone of control)?

The basic ZoC rules for units seem to suggest that ranged types do not exert ZoC, however it is not clear to me if these recon units are considered "ranged" or "melee" (or neither) since many of the recon units do have ranged abilities (ranger, skirmisher, Warak'aq, etc.)

[Rhudda]

Scouts do, but they're the one melee unit of the bunch. I don't know about the others yet, sorry, but will look out for it when I play next.

[gimmethegepgun]

Scouts and Rangers do in vanilla. Presumably the other tiers do as well.

[ESonix]

thanks for the info, appreciate the help!

[ESonix]

Ok, I just did a few simple experiments to test some of this using MP hotseat, playing against myself.

Scout -- does exert ZoC
Warak'aq (Incan recon UU) - does not exert ZoC (tested this both on units and cities)

The Warak'aq has ranged capability, so I'm wondering if this might mean that recon units with ranged ability lose ZoC control. I will try a few more experiments with late era starts to try some of the other recon unit types and will report back here if I find anything useful.

Part of the reason I started thinking about this was because it seemed that the Incan Warak'aq, with 2 ranged shots per turn (and range of 1), might make for a good early city rush & siege strategy, especially if it was possible to siege a city with only 3 units (using ZoC).

(Note, if it matters, I have both GS and R&F expansions.)

[Dray Prescot]

I played a couple games as the Inca. The Warak'aq is a very nice unit in many respects. However let the enemy get some crossbowmen in range of them and they die pretty quickly. I had to play very carefully with them so I would not lose my high experience Warak'aq units. If they just had a promotion that helped on defense against ranged fire, they would be a lot more useful.

I think that ranged fire units may not have a zone of control normally.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Units classified as ranged have access to a promotion that allows them to exert a zone of control. Without that, they don't exert one.

The Warak'aq is a recon unit, so it doesn't have access to that promotion.

[ESonix]

Thanks for the continued comments & info, very useful!

I finished a bit more experimentation in MP hotseat. Here's what I found:

Ranger (Gathering Storm) - does not exert ZoC
(Ranger (vanilla on iOS) - does exert ZoC)
Spec Ops (Gathering Storm) - does not exert ZoC

So I guess in one of the patches or expansions they must've updated the recon units' ZoC behavior. Also, as mentioned in comments above, I can confirm that none of these units appear to have access to the ranged unit ZoC promotion (Gathering Storm version).

[Aachen]

As far as I remember, recon-classed units have never exerted ZoC in VI.

[ESonix]

That wouldn’t surprise me, however I found it strange that Rangers appear to exert ZoC in vanilla iOS version while they do not in current Gathering Storm version (on PC). Scouts, on the other hand do appear to have ZoC in GS. (Unless my experimentation was somehow wrong).