Re: scouts in early age
 

Well, I never (unless nothing better is available or am desperate) recruit commanders from forts, indeps are always good enough for moving troops.

Just to be clear, I am talking early to midgmae, creating special forces like flying or stealthy raiders is something different, but that is usually later.

What concerns me is the time when recruiting another mage is important, so is a priest to bless my troops or scouts and not everything is established.

And scouts tend to be on the receiving end of the competition.

Re: scouts in early age
 

Yeah, commanders that can be thugged are an obvious exception to the recruit only mages when possible rule. Commanders with specific resistances can be another, using indy commanders with Abysia can be problematic.

The problem with the lack of scouts in EA is that you generally don't want an occasional scout here and there when you can't afford a mage, you want a lot of them. For scouting, gem carrying, etc. I've had problems with lack of scouts even when I've found a single scout province. But devoting a castle or two to just producing scouts is such a waste of money, even if you save by not building a lab or temple there.

Re: scouts in early age
 

I may have been misunderstood before, I will build them at a fortress, but will typically buy another mage first. But, if cash is a problem, I will default to a scout.

Re: scouts in early age
 

Bottom line: EA Ctis gets screwed. Indie scouts are rare and they can't even build national ones!

Re: scouts in early age
 

OTOH they can get a stable of black servants early, who scouts around until you pull them back and equip them as raiders.

Re: scouts in early age
 

I start off just using the starting scout and my dominion to see what is going on. I am usually lucky enough to find a province or two that produces scouts. If I can't, then I use leftover gold to recruit scouts from fortresses if I can't afford another mage. By mid game, I usually have enough black servants running around as PD killers to do scouting in addition to indy/fortress scouts I am able to make.

The indy scout is probably one of my favorite units in the game though. 20 gold in addition to not using a mage recruitment spot... absolutely priceless!

Re: scouts in early age
 

I'll recruit scouts from Niefelheim. Sometimes, they're a better choice than other units, due to their relative cheapness, in combination with the sacredness, the ranged weapon, and the stealth.

They aren't a Niefel, but you can still use them to take the occasional underdefended province away, especially if you Prophetize your initial scout (which I often do). Ambushing is fun!

Re: scouts in early age
 

I really don't know, Caelum seems like a fairly good counter to TNN.

Flying units break castles extremely quickly, faster than the enemy can mobilize units to a given corner of the map.

Death and Water with alteration (which you should get for fog warriors) gives you frozen heart and disintegrate to deal with thugs.

Although I admit glamour is a great advantage...

Re: scouts in early age
 

The reason scouts are so rare in EA is that the distribution of independent poptypes is very different from Middle and Late Eras. Most indie poptypes with scouts are crossbows or heavy cavalry ones, which don't exist in the EA.

This leaves just one specific poptype with scouts available in EA, while there are three or four in other eras and therefore more penetration. This has been reported to IW, but there hasn't been any change in any patch.

Re: scouts in early age
 

And I thought rare EA scouts is a feature.:)
Naive.