[Zorfwaddle]

All, thank you for the constructive criticism :-) I do see what you are saying about "all eggs in one basket"

@JB I usually get at least one province where I can recruit indy scouts pretty quick, then I can switch to just recruiting researchers. Another thing about a lot of scouts is threat detection... the AI tends to may a bee-line right for the human player; I can detect the biggest armies fairly quick with a spread of scouts. I also locate the AI capitals pretty quick, and, if I have a spy recruitment capability, extra forts can generate those spies and mass them to instill unrest in the enemy capitals neighboring provinces. And if you are playing with the magic sites mod, there is one that can produce a flying, sacred assassin-seductress... pretty crazy against invading armies and all sorts of evil stuff :-)