I’ve received a couple of questions regarding proper scouting in archaic basically asking how to cover as much ground as possible without spending all your time controlling the scout. So in response I decided to write up this article which I hope will help people to some degree or another.

This guide is split up into 4 sections, the first covers the Greeks and Norse, the second deals with Ra and Isis, the third deals with Set, and the fourth deals with specific maps. I hope this is of some help to you, but bear in mind that the guide is meant to help out a lot of different skill levels.

Section 1: Greeks and Norse

For the Greeks and Norse the actual process of scouting is pretty simple, however there are two theories on how to micro your scouting efforts. I notice that some people like to watch their scout constantly, controlling every little detail as to where it goes. I feel this is more micro than it’s actually worth so don’t use this method. As well this method is a lot harder for lower level players I think as they might end up spending too much time watching their scout, and not enough on their TC and economy in general. Another problem is that very often your scout will go idle if you are watching your economy as much as is needed. The other method used by many people is to simply way point their scout in circles around their base going further and further out until the map is explored. This way is much easier to manage for most players however it also has a flaw in that your scout will very often go around large cliffs to get to a spot where you don’t really need to see that badly. This happens often on maps like alfheim where there are large ridges and plenty of forests. I personally prefer a third way which I’m sure many people already use. Basically the method I use is to scout using waypoints as normal. Most of the time in archaic I watch my economy to make sure everything is running smoothly, when I have spare time I go back to my scout to see how things are going, very often I find him running the long way around something when I really don’t need to see what is going to be revealed, at this point I just reset his waypoints to a new set that will hopefully be better. I just repeat this process, and it tends to give fairly good results, my economy runs smoothly and I don’t miss out on any large spots of the map, nor does my scout spend much idle time, or time running around large cliffs.

In the beginning:

Usually at the start of the game the first thing you should do is find a source of food for your villagers, and then get them building a mill by it. What I do in general is scout in the direction of the villagers first food source. This is ussually the best way to start your scout off I find. The reasoning behind this is that you will be able to quickly find your villagers next source of food, as well hopefully you can find some good hunting that your villagers won’t waste too much time walking to. If you scouted the opposite direction from your villagers and then found a huge spot of hunting it would be a huge waste to walk your villagers back across your entire town to use that source of food. There is a good chance you will find the same thing on the side the villagers are already gathering on, so you may as well start scouting there. Pretty simple to remember, but it can be of great help.

The rest of Archaic:

Beyond the starting it’s pretty simple, just make your scout go around in growing arc’s away from your tc. If you are playing as Norse, by the time you finish your first arc it will probably be close enough to a good time to build your first house. You may as well build it within your base in most cases, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to run your Ulfsark to your base and throw down a house really quickly before finishing off your scouting. This isn’t always true however as you may want to use the house to keep track of a fairly narrow entrance to your base. Chances are if you are Norse you won’t scout out your enemies base until after you have your temple up, but as Greeks you should be able to scout out most of the map before you hit classical. The best way to scout out the enemies base in my opinion is to first make a perimeter, trying to find woods, where possible defensive towers are, and the best angle for entering the base undetected. Keep making tighter circles making sure that you stay out of tc firing range the whole time, you should be able to find where your opponents gold is pretty easily, after you’ve found his wood operation as well as his gold pit(s) (he should have the same amount of pits as you) continue scouting out the outlaying areas.

Dealing with corners:

One minor mistake that many people, myself included tend to make more often than not is scouting out the corners in an inefficient manner. What tends to happen in corners is that a strip only as wide as your scouts line of sight (LOS) will be left unrevealed. So your scout gets sent in to uncover this last part of the map only to have to run out again, covering the same ground over again. I know this seems like a minor thing, but if you are trying to perfect your scouting you will want to avoid this whenever possible, especially as norse. The best method to deal with this is to scout the corner in lines when you are nearing the end, you can either zig-zag your scout back and forth, or you can make small arcs going out from the corner. The best way to describe what I mean is by illustrating so here are a couple of pictures to show the way points your scout should follow.

Following this scouting patern will reveal all of the map.

Following this scouting patern might miss bits and pieces of the map, but in general is faster than the other method.

If the map has a section like this in it it’s probably a better idea to just scout it out with sheep rather than wasting your scouts time.

Classical scouting as Greeks is slightly different from what you are doing in Archaic, what you want to do basically is scout out enemy movements as well as where their economy is producing from. Scouting out enemy movements is pretty vital because knowing where they are going to strike before they actually strike can gain you a large advantage. I know it seems silly to think you can ambush an army in this game, but you really can. If you catch their army moving towards your base with your scout, you can then try to head them off before they get there. What this does is gives your opponent a little surprise, they might not be watching their army and so you can get a few free whacks in on their units before they notice what’s happening. One of the keys in Classical is most definitely to watch outlaying gold mines, the more you can keep track of your opponents economy the better your raiding ability will become. As greeks keep your scout moving as much as you can, if you get caught out in the open by a gold mine your opponent tries to use, chances are they will switch gold mines and you’ll be left out in the cold with your scouting.

As Norse you will likely still have a lot of the map undiscovered by the time you hit classical. I suggest that once your military buildings are up and you have enough houses built up that you finish off scouting the map excluding where your enemies base is Ulfsarks tend to die pretty easily so you want to keep a bit of space between your scouting Ulfsark and your opponents units/towers. It’s pretty important to scout out the remainder of the map for in general, so I would try to remind yourself every game that you need to see the rest of the map.

Odin’s Ravens and Pegasus:

While I don’t use pegasus too often due to the popultation drain it puts on you, they can be pretty handy. They can basically be used the same as Odin’s ravens with a couple of differences so I’ll lump the two of them together. With Odin’s ravens I personally suggest to use 1 raven to finish scouting off the map for you. The other raven I usually put up near my outlaying hunters/food gatherers to warn me of any incoming attacks. Once you have the map scouted out fairly well just keep your ravens moving around to try and track enemy movements. Putting them down narrow exits from your opponents base is a prety good way to keep track most of the time. Lots of people will simply camp a raven out on one of their enemies close gold mines after they finish scouting out the map. I personally prefer to use them to keep track of enemy movements early on, however I do switch them over to watching gold mines after the first few minutes of classical. When you switch them over is entirely up to you, but I personally follow a little rule myself. The rule I follow is fairly simple, keep track of how much gold you have left in your starting gold mine(s) and judge by that when to start scouting out exterior gold mines. If you are playing vs. an Egyptian opponent they are likely to need extra gold faster than you will, likewise with a Thor opponent, so start scouting out those gold mines earlier than you have to switch your own villagers over to a new gold mine. Against another Norse player you should be using gold at roughly the same rate, but judge for yourself, for instance, if you see a ton of Einhenjars for instance you should know your opponent is using more gold than a player who uses Valkyries. A greek opponent is likely to be using roughly the same amount of gold as you, however if he is using all Hippikons then he might be using gold slightly faster, again judge for yourself. Beyond that keeping track of settlements in heroic as well as possible extra bases where you don’t expect them are the best use for ravens and Pegasus alike.

I think that just about covers it for both the Greeks and the Norse so that just leaves me with Egypt.

Each of the Egyptian cultures has different scouting, but I think for simplicities sake I will lump Isis and Ra together.

Section 2: Isis/Ra

The reason I’m lumping these two Gods together is that they really have the exact same options for the most part which is to scout out with obelisks. It’s really rather simple when you get right down to it, start scouting in the same manor you would with either the Greeks or Norse. Send your priest in the same direction as your food gatherers and start making obelisks. Where to build obelisks is the big question, and one not really easily answered, but I’ll try. Of course build the obelisks as far apart without leaving much black space, that’s fairly obvious. Aside from that though try to place the obelisks in forests, you can actually put them 1 row of trees deep which makes them tougher to see on the screen. As well after your initial scouting, try to place them out of the way of what you suspect will be often used routes for enemy troops, however try to make sure you place obelisks within LOS of those paths. Placing obelisks on the outskirts of the map is also a good idea at times. While it might seem silly due to the fact you only get to use half of the LOS the truth of the matter is your opponent is less likely to see those obelisks, and therefore less likely to kill them off on you. As well placing several within range of each other in important places isn’t a bad idea. Putting one on one side of a gold mine where an opponents villagers might walk by, but then putting another one on the opposite side that still watchs over the gold mine might help you out and trick your opponent into a sense of relative safety.

Replace destroyed obelisks as soon as you can. This is kind of stating the obvious, but if your opponent doesn’t want you seeing that area of the map, chances are it’s an area of the map which will be very important to be able to see. Building obelisks by a forward army that is holding ground near the enemy base is also a good idea. This can give you great scouting on what your opponents army is being composed of, allowing you to queue up the proper counter units as soon as possible.

That’s about all I have to say about scouting with Isis. With Ra however I must say that in most cases I personally do very little scouting in the archaic age. About the only scouting you might want to consider is one lap around your base with your pharoah early on to get an idea of what the map is going to be like. It all depends on your strategy though, if you plan on fighting in classical it wouldn’t be a bad idea to use your starting preist as a scout to start with. If however you are planning on going Heroic quickly it might be more beneficial to just scout out with your pharoa early, and concentrate more on your economy. However at times I do scout out with sheep when using Ra, I find it very helpful to simply send 2 sheep out, 1 to each of the near corners, sending them back and forth tends to give me an idea of where settlements are placed as well as where a secondary gold mine might be found.

Section 3: Set

Set easily has the best early scouting available in the game. You can use your vision to give you a good idea of where some animals are on some maps. You can also use it to find out where your enemies dock is going to be built on maps like anatolia. As well you can save vision for a particular strategy such as shifting some villagers into your base, or a quick heroic followed by shifting siege and rams into your opponents base. On top of using vision you can quickly scout out a lot of the map with your starting hyena in the same fashion you would scout out with Greeks or Norse. Above and beyond that you can easily scout out the entire map with any converted animals as well as any apes you happen to summon in archaic. This all adds up to one great big revealed map. However don’t stop there, with Set you ussually have control over the centre of the map early on. Use this to your advantage by assigning a priest to build obelisks all over the map. You should be able to keep track of things fairly easily with a lot less worries that your obelisks will be knocked down due to the fact you can play more offensively early on then your opponent. Putting an animal that takes up 1 population on each of the gold mines around the map is another option as you will quickly be notified of any enemy attempts to mine gold outside their base.

That’s about all I have to say about scouting with Egypt, if anyone has anything they would like to add feel free to add comments at the bottom and I will add in anything that I feel makes sense, with credits to you of course.

Now I’m going to get into some specifics about some of the maps out there. Some of the maps require a bit more attention and care than others so I’ll use this space to let you know what to look out for on each of the maps.

Section 4: Map Specifics
Watering Hole:

This map is pretty unique and is easily one of the tougher maps to scout out properly. What I tend to do is scout out one side of my base first to hopefully find some safe hunting, then proceed to scout out the centre of the map followed by the enemies base and surrounding areas. On this map I like to use goats to scout very often. Despite their low LOS they can be quite handy to show you a couple of things. First off they can show you extra routes into your base, it’s pretty easy to find out; just send your sheep to the opposite corner from where you originally scouted, then send him down (or up) along the edge a little ways. After this simply tell the goat to head towards the centre of the map. If the goat turns around and goes back towards your base then you know that there is no extra entrance far up the side of your base. If he heads fairly straight towards the centre of the map you know there is an extra entrance into your base. After this you’re not done though, it can be handy to see how far down your stretch of land goes, sometimes it will connect directly to your enemies land which is very useful. So all you really have to do is tell your goat to head towards the corner on the same side he is already on, if he starts heading in that direction stop him and send him a little further to the side, if he goes in the same direction you are very likely connected to your opponent by that piece of land. That’s about it for this map.

Ghost lake:

Instead of doing large semi-circles around your base sometimes you would be better off just scouting out the areas that can be built on rather than scouting the centre icy area. You already know the centre will be icy, but who knows how much hunting you may find along the outside edges. Other than that keep track of gold mines as there can very often be less than 4 gold mines on the entire map (aside from your starting mine).

Mediterranean:

Scout out one side of the map first, do a lap around the water and then finish scouting the other side of your base, this is usually the best way to do things as you won’t end up covering the same ground too much early on. As well you’ll find where your enemies docks are located and where their base is likely located. Other than that it’s pretty much the same as other maps.

Alfheim:

Fairly basic, just make sure your scout doesn’t cover the same ground over and over again by going around large ridges.

Savannah:

Pretty basic, just keep track of gold mines as they can be very spread out on this map leaving it very open to you to control.

Well that’s it, this ended up being a lot longer than I had anticipated, as always comments suggestions are welcomed, I hope that this is of some help to someone out there.