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| Thread: Primary skill analysis: Scouting |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted October 16, 2001 07:33 PM |
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Primary skill analysis: Scouting
Scouting family of skills: Scouting, Pathfinding, Seamanship, Stealth
This skill is related to the adventure map and mainly affects speed of travel and fog of war effects.
Scouting: Reveals more of the shroud when travelling. Allows you to see troops/heroes which have a lower or equal level of Stealth.
Pathfinding: Reduces terrain movement penalty. Perhaps also allows you to travel further over land?
Seamanship: Allows you to travel further on the sea. Perhaps also reduces boarding / unboarding penalties, and makes you immune to whirlpools and similar hazards.
Stealth: Allows you to travel without being seen on the map (when travelling alone). Allows you to pass by monsters on the map of a certain level. My guess is that you need one higher level of stealth than the highest level of creature in the army you want to pass. What is required to remain unseeen to towns, mines and other structures is uncertain.
This skill is very useful and I reckon that all armies you have would want a scout skilled in Pathfiding and/or Seamanship to speed up travel. Stealth is a skill suited to heroes travelling alone, since it won't extend to creature stacks.
Since higher levels of stealth will allow you to bypass monster stacks guarding loot, this skill will see some serious use. A throng of Titans guarding a treasure? Split out the hero with grand master Stealth in a separate army, sneak past the Titans and pick up the booty they were guarding.
Scouting is a good skill and each player will want to develop the skill both to employ it offensively and defensively. Unless there are spells with similar effects the only protection from a Hero with grandmaster Stealth is a Hero with grand master Scouting.
This skill could be taken by both with might and magic heroes, whatever the case each army will like to have one Hero with this skill.
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"A brilliant light can either illuminate or blind. How will you know which until you open your eyes?"
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StormWarning
Promising
Famous Hero
Archmage of Thunder
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posted October 16, 2001 10:18 PM |
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If you have a Grandmaster Stealth hero and your opponent has no GM Scout, that hero won't show up on the map, though his army will. So if all they see is the creatures, they might consider attacking you when you really have a stronger force! Stealth will definitely be a player favorite, and for that reason Scouting will be extremely important.
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The calm before the storm is about to end.
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niteshade
Known Hero
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posted October 16, 2001 10:41 PM |
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Actually I think this is the one skill branch that it the most questionable. The primary skill scouting was considered one of the worst skills in H3, and the few other little things it does in H4 is unlikely to make it more worthwhile.
Seamanship was considered a bad skill on most boards in H3 as well, though there was the occasional board where it was essential.
Pathfinding may be good or it may not be. If it works like H3 pathfinding it will be good on some boards and not so good on others.
Stealth is only useful in certain situations. It's probably not a main hero skill. More something to develop in a non army leader.
So pretty much everything in this primary skill is something people tried to avoid in H3, or something they only took in specialized situations.
As a result I don't see many primary heroes taking this skill. Sure the occasional hero might slip by you, but what's he going to do on his own like that?
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Jenova
Famous Hero
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posted October 17, 2001 05:39 AM |
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I think it's a bad idea to name one of the sub skills (secondary skills?) also Scouting, because that adds to confusion. Either change the primary skill name, or the name of the skill which reveals a larger radius when moving.
Speaking of that secondary skill, I think it will be very useful with the new fog of war in place.
And if it has pathfinding then it will definately be a must for all my heroes.
Since there are 3 sub skills for each primary skill, will it be possible to learn all the secondary skills for all 5 of your primary skills? I really don't want to have to "miss out" on anything.
Which primary skill leads to Logistics?
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted October 17, 2001 08:59 AM |
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Quote:
I think it's a bad idea to name one of the sub skills (secondary skills?) also Scouting, because that adds to confusion. Either change the primary skill name, or the name of the skill which reveals a larger radius when moving.
Err...??? Scouting is a Primary skill and only a Primary skill. The Primary skills also gives some benefits or there would be no reason to develope them.
Quote:
Since there are 3 sub skills for each primary skill, will it be possible to learn all the secondary skills for all 5 of your primary skills? I really don't want to have to "miss out" on anything.
I suppose it will be possible to max out, because certain levels of the seconday skills will be required to improve the primary skills. With such requirement it seems restrictions for classes are bad to introduce. The problem you have is getting offered to develope the skill you want to begin with.
For Logistics: It would probably be included in Pathfinding. It doesn't exist as a skill of its own.
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Jenova
Famous Hero
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posted October 17, 2001 09:48 AM |
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Fair enough.. though the whole thing isn't very streamlined.
What I meant about the second point was whether or not there will be enough slots so you can select every available secondary skill (for each primary skill you have). Judging from the Fiona screenshot, there probably will be enough.
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UnkaHaakon
Responsible
Famous Hero
happily tilting at windmills
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posted October 17, 2001 12:27 PM |
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Offtopic: Bonus Applied
The bonus in this case is for the series and not for any one particular post. This series is stimulating some good discussion. Thanks, Djive.
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Some people say the glass is half full..Some people say it's half empty... I say "What're you asking me to drink?"
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NKW
Hired Hero
Tatalian Guard of Honor
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posted October 17, 2001 03:59 PM |
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Scouting will definitely be one of the most important skills in HoMM4. In HoMM3 its uses were questionable, most players avoided it as it was a skill the would at some point in the game lose its usefulness (not taking in account the shrouds of darkness).
With the appearance of fog of war in HoMM4 however this argument not only loses all its power, gathering map intelligence becomes more vital then it ever was before. Not only can enemy heroes attack any moment from underneath the fog, you also risc the attack of a group of wandering monsters (if your main hero is beaten by a group of maraudering titans in early mid-game, you might just not yet have the army to recuperate his body safely).
In addition to the vital action of removing shroud, scouting also allows detecting of stealth heroes and creatures, another very important feature. Imagine you didn't invest any points in scouting with any hero and your opponent has a grand master stealth, he could just run around your castle taking your mines & ressources, taking out your weaker forces without you even knowing where the hell he was.
In addition to this you also get the 'vision' spell cast for free each turn.
No ignoring scouting anymore...
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"What actually transpires beneath the veil of an event horizon?
Decent people shouldn't think too much about that."
--Provost Zaharov, Adress to the Faculty
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niteshade
Known Hero
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posted October 17, 2001 05:45 PM |
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Well if scouting casts the vision spell every turn that makes it a bit more useful. But I don't believe it's really as essential as you think for exploring the map and revealing fog. In fact exploring the map will be easier then ever before because you can just send lots of little groups of 1 monster running around to explore everywhere and keep an eye on the map.
The main thing is that this tree seems useful, but less useful then all the others. Scouting may not be useless, but it's less useful then any magic skill, or combat, tactics, or nobility. The fact that the primary skill has absolutely no skills in it that will always be useful, and only one that is even very likely to be useful on say 50% of maps will make many avoid it. It's not worth it to take a whole primary skill if you don't want any of the secondaries.
Finaly I should point out that the reason people didn't like scouting in H3 wasn't just because it eventualy becomes useless. It was also because even in the beginning of the game it wasn't all that useful to begin with. +1 scouting range is rather inisignificant.
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Jenova
Famous Hero
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posted October 18, 2001 11:31 AM |
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niteshade, the pathfinding (useful on most maps) and logistics (which is always useful) secondary skills are associated with scouting, so I think it will be very useful.
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StormWarning
Promising
Famous Hero
Archmage of Thunder
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posted October 18, 2001 04:04 PM |
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Niteshade, don't forget there's a limit of 8 stacks, so you won't see dozens of Bandits sent as scouts to reveal the entire map. Scouting will be huge because of the Fog of War and because of stealth heroes.
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The calm before the storm is about to end.
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niteshade
Known Hero
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posted October 18, 2001 07:34 PM |
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Jenova,
"niteshade, the pathfinding (useful on most maps) and logistics (which is always useful) secondary skills are associated with scouting, so I think it will be very useful. "
I'm afraid you are wrong there. There is no such skill as logistics in H4. Pathfinding is part of scouting, but it seems a bit questionable to take an entire primary skill just because you might or might not get a secondary skill later that is part of it.
Stormwarning,
"Niteshade, don't forget there's a limit of 8 stacks, so you won't see dozens of Bandits sent as scouts to reveal the entire map."
Nope, but you will see 5 or 6 which is all you need to scout most of the map and dispel the fog of war.
" Scouting will be huge because of the Fog of War and because of stealth heroes. "
Scouting will be marginaly useful because of these things. However it will take more then just these few little things to go from being one of the worst skills in the game to being "huge".
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted October 18, 2001 08:55 PM |
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"I'm afraid you are wrong there. There is no such skill as logistics in H4. Pathfinding is part of scouting, but it seems a bit questionable to take an entire primary skill just because you might or might not get a secondary skill later that is part of it."
I'd tend to believe that Pathfinding is a combined Pathfinding/Logistics skill. More, it seems to be the only skill you can have to increase your movement.
Now about splitting stacks to make a number of resource collectors. To prevent abuse and/or excessive use, was I designer of the game I'd probably assign a sizeaable movement penalty for BOTH armies for splitting and joining an armies, regardless of the size of the armies.
The usefulness of Pathfinding is not as bad you try to make it. True it mainly depends on how the map is created, and if you have roads between everything then who needs Pathfinding? I'd hope that the penalties are stepped up a bit so pathfinding looks something like this:
Dirt, grass: 100, 95, 90, 85, 80, 75
Lava, Subterranean: 120, 110, 100, 95, 90, 85
Rough: 150, 125, 110, 100, 95, 90
Sand, Snow: 180, 160, 140, 120, 110, 100
Swamp: 200, 180, 160, 140, 120 100
I've included a Logistics effects in the values, so you move further than normal (100) on some surfaces.
You still don't want the skill?
For seamanship, if it removes the penalty for waiting until the end of the day for embarking / disembarking then it's certainly worth a slot. It would be very useful even if the map just have a few smaller lakes stacked with tresure.
Souting is btw. an underrated skill in Heroes 3. You just don't realize how much it actually has helped you. (And of course poor map makers may make it redundant by adding a lot of mapmakers and not having any ways to return the shroud.)
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"A brilliant light can either illuminate or blind. How will you know which until you open your eyes?"
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niteshade
Known Hero
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posted October 18, 2001 09:21 PM |
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"I'd tend to believe that Pathfinding is a combined Pathfinding/Logistics skill. More, it seems to be the only skill you can have to increase your movement. "
Yeah, but every unit has individual movement points in H4. So it is not unreasonable that one unit cannot improve the movement of the entire army. So based on info we have we have no reason to assume that logistics is built into pathfinding.
"Now about splitting stacks to make a number of resource collectors. To prevent abuse and/or excessive use, was I designer of the game I'd probably assign a sizeaable movement penalty for BOTH armies for splitting and joining an armies, regardless of the size of the armies. "
Even if that is true, it's irrelevent because you wouldn't have to split your army at all. You'd just have to recruit a single bandit (for example) in town and send him out to explore and gather resources.
"The usefulness of Pathfinding is not as bad you try to make it. True it mainly depends on how the map is created, and if you have roads between everything then who needs Pathfinding?"
Actualy I think pathfinding is a reasonable skill. It's just not worth taking a whole new primary skill just so you can maybe (if your lucky) get access to that one skill.
" I'd hope that the penalties are stepped up a bit so pathfinding looks something like this:
Dirt, grass: 100, 95, 90, 85, 80, 75
Lava, Subterranean: 120, 110, 100, 95, 90, 85
Rough: 150, 125, 110, 100, 95, 90
Sand, Snow: 180, 160, 140, 120, 110, 100
Swamp: 200, 180, 160, 140, 120 100
I've included a Logistics effects in the values, so you move further than normal (100) on some surfaces.
You still don't want the skill? "
Well first off there is absolutely no reason to expect a logistics effect. If there is one, then it will be an amazing skill, but there is no reason to believe in one. Secondly your just making all those numbers up. Thirdly as I said above I never said I didn't think pathfinding was useful, just that it's not always useful and not worth investing in a primary skill for just that one skill.
"For seamanship, if it removes the penalty for waiting until the end of the day for embarking / disembarking then it's certainly worth a slot. It would be very useful even if the map just have a few smaller lakes stacked with tresure. "
Hmm......well first off you are only talking about ifs but you are right we don't know how the skills will work. But personaly I would not invest in grandmaster seamanship just to avoid embarking and disembarking boat penalties.
"Souting is btw. an underrated skill in Heroes 3. You just don't realize how much it actually has helped you. (And of course poor map makers may make it redundant by adding a lot of mapmakers and not having any ways to return the shroud.) "
No I'd say it is rated about as well as it should be. +1 sight radius is so insignificant to be useless. Even +3 is barely helpful. No of course if they up the sighting increases in H4 to something much larger it might actually be a good skill. And I don't think failure to litter the board with shrouds of darkness is a sign of a poor map maker.
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted October 18, 2001 09:58 PM |
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"Even if that is true, it's irrelevent because you wouldn't have to split your army at all. You'd just have to recruit a single bandit (for example) in town and send him out to explore and gather resources."
You could, but it is a bit risky. If said Bandit picks up some artifacts then you're risking the artifacts. Remember that nearby monster stacks will attack weak monster groups if they can win.
Also the gain only applies for resources you can pick up and removing the shroud. The bandit can't visit a mercenary camp for your hero or similar. Also another thing that might happen is that we may experience a reduction in the radius we normally see around creatures and heroes. If Scouting gives +5 radius, then we may see a reduction of the normal radius with 1 or perhaps even 2.
"Actualy I think pathfinding is a reasonable skill. It's just not worth taking a whole new primary skill just so you can maybe (if your lucky) get access to that one skill."
Well, all the skills are useful. Seamanship will have limited usefulness on some maps. But both Stealth and Scouting are important skills. On the other hand I would not want to duplicate this skill within an army. It's enough with one Hero who has it. (For other skills duplication could be considered.)
"Well first off there is absolutely no reason to expect a logistics effect. If there is one, then it will be an amazing skill, but there is no reason to believe in one. Secondly your just making all those numbers up. Thirdly as I said above I never said I didn't think pathfinding was useful, just that it's not always useful and not worth investing in a primary skill for just that one skill."
Sure, I'm making up the numbers... but they were not all that much different from Heroes 3. The point is that Heroes 3 only needed three levels to remove all terrain penalties. What we see from other skills is that Expert in heroes 3 overall maps to Expert in Heroes 4, so what extra benefit do we think will be added for the Master and the Grand master level? I'm fairly certain it will be something added. It could be logistics effect, but then again it could be something else.
"Hmm......well first off you are only talking about ifs but you are right we don't know how the skills will work. But personaly I would not invest in grandmaster seamanship just to avoid embarking and disembarking boat penalties."
No... no... I'd certainly hope you got the bonus earlier... Say on Advanced or Expert level. I'd not go to Grand master either for that effect alone.
"No I'd say it is rated about as well as it should be. +1 sight radius is so insignificant to be useless. Even +3 is barely helpful. No of course if they up the sighting increases in H4 to something much larger it might actually be a good skill. And I don't think failure to litter the board with shrouds of darkness is a sign of a poor map maker."
It has additional uses. If you have a plus three scouting bonus, it sometimes makes it possible to walk between islands using water walk.
Sometimes removing the shroud for a place which lies a few tiles further far away allows you to select another method of movement between two points.
There is for instance one shore in the Faerie Dragon campaign in AB where you can shorten the scenario by a few weeks if you have expert Scouting and Water Walk, because with expert Scouting you see a landing point on the beach become visible from the shroud.
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"A brilliant light can either illuminate or blind. How will you know which until you open your eyes?"
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Preserver
Promising
Famous Hero
Elemental Druid
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posted October 18, 2001 10:11 PM |
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This scouting sounds like some real outdoor and and ranger like thing to me (= interesting). I have no ideas about it though, so I'll remain a passive spectator and try it when the game comes out. 
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- The only alert the invaders had was the rustling of leaves on a day without wind -
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niteshade
Known Hero
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posted October 18, 2001 10:20 PM |
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"You could, but it is a bit risky. If said Bandit picks up some artifacts then you're risking the artifacts. Remember that nearby monster stacks will attack weak monster groups if they can win.
Also the gain only applies for resources you can pick up and removing the shroud. The bandit can't visit a mercenary camp for your hero or similar."
While all this is true, it's also irrelevent to the discusion. You are just using the bandits instead of the scouting skill. Your heros extra scouting radius can't pick up artifacts or visit mercenary camps either.
"Also another thing that might happen is that we may experience a reduction in the radius we normally see around creatures and heroes. If Scouting gives +5 radius, then we may see a reduction of the normal radius with 1 or perhaps even 2. "
A possibility, though I think it would make scouting more useful if they had it reveal more then +1 per level. In H3, if it actually revealed +3 per level people might actualy consider it a decent skill.
"Well, all the skills are useful. Seamanship will have limited usefulness on some maps. But both Stealth and Scouting are important skills. On the other hand I would not want to duplicate this skill within an army. It's enough with one Hero who has it. (For other skills duplication could be considered.) "
Well all the H3 skills certainly were not useful, but I'm sure we hope this will not be repeated in H4. The problem with the scouting tree is that all the skills have a reasonable chance of being completely useless. As a result your almost guaranteed that at least one or two will be useless. And chances you are you will not know which are good and which are useless until you have already picked your skills.
"Sure, I'm making up the numbers... but they were not all that much different from Heroes 3. The point is that Heroes 3 only needed three levels to remove all terrain penalties. What we see from other skills is that Expert in heroes 3 overall maps to Expert in Heroes 4, so what extra benefit do we think will be added for the Master and the Grand master level? I'm fairly certain it will be something added. It could be logistics effect, but then again it could be something else. "
Well this is a valid point I must admit. It would not be unreasonable for master and grandmaster to reduce open terrain costs to even less then normal. Even still this is only one skill, and one that requires alot of development to get universaly good.
"No... no... I'd certainly hope you got the bonus earlier... Say on Advanced or Expert level. I'd not go to Grand master either for that effect alone. "
A possibilty, though even if you got it on expert that would mean investing 4 levels worth of skills (1 for scouting 3 for expert). Plus you'd keep having things like stealth that you didn't want popping up under your skill raising options.
"It has additional uses. If you have a plus three scouting bonus, it sometimes makes it possible to walk between islands using water walk.
Sometimes removing the shroud for a place which lies a few tiles further far away allows you to select another method of movement between two points.
There is for instance one shore in the Faerie Dragon campaign in AB where you can shorten the scenario by a few weeks if you have expert Scouting and Water Walk, because with expert Scouting you see a landing point on the beach become visible from the shroud. "
Well be honest, the only reason anybody would take scouting on that map is if they knew in advance that that trick existed. If they didn't they would never waste a precious campaign skill on scouting instead of say earth magic or logistics. So yes scouting can occasionaly be really useful but only in rare cases where the map maker puts in a way for it to be good and the player knows in advance that that special trick is there.
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted October 18, 2001 11:16 PM |
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"While all this is true, it's also irrelevent to the discusion. You are just using the bandits instead of the scouting skill. Your heros extra scouting radius can't pick up artifacts or visit mercenary camps either."
The scouting skill would remove MORE of the shroud than if you let your bandit do it. (Having the Hero with Scouting on the main road is wasting the skill, but presumably you want to visit some desolate areas which are off the beaten track once in a while?)
"A possibility, though I think it would make scouting more useful if they had it reveal more then +1 per level. In H3, if it actually revealed +3 per level people might actualy consider it a decent skill."
Well, I'd actually guess that Grand master will give more than +5. Though, how much is difficult to guess.
"As a result your almost guaranteed that at least one or two will be useless. And chances you are you will not know which are good and which are useless until you have already picked your skills."
You are offered three skills each time. I'd say the chances are decent of having at least one good skill among them.
"A possibilty, though even if you got it on expert that would mean investing 4 levels worth of skills (1 for scouting 3 for expert). Plus you'd keep having things like stealth that you didn't want popping up under your skill raising options."
As I've said, I don't mind get basic Scouting and I don't mind picking up Stealth.
"So yes scouting can occasionaly be really useful but only in rare cases where the map maker puts in a way for it to be good and the player knows in advance that that special trick is there."
It sounds as if you haven't played all that much with Scouting. If you haven't used it all that much how do you know you would not benefit?
Often enough I find that I become aware of enemy activities one or two turns sooner than compared to the case when I don't have the skill. These turns sometimes prove to be very valuable.
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"A brilliant light can either illuminate or blind. How will you know which until you open your eyes?"
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niteshade
Known Hero
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posted October 19, 2001 06:01 AM |
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"The scouting skill would remove MORE of the shroud than if you let your bandit do it. (Having the Hero with Scouting on the main road is wasting the skill, but presumably you want to visit some desolate areas which are off the beaten track once in a while?) "
First off, no. The bandits can split up and go in different directions. The scouting skill can't. So the bandits still reveal more. Secondly if you have to go off the beaten path to use the skill and go places you would not otherwise go, then you are wasting time that could have been spent expanding and collecting resources. So it's kind of a wash. Trust me, there is a reason why the best players in H3 all seem to think scouting is a bad skill.
"You are offered three skills each time. I'd say the chances are decent of having at least one good skill among them. "
Well if I'm not mistaken, I believe you tend to be offered the choice of a new primary skill, a new secondary skill, or an improved already existing skill. There might be two chances to get a new secondary skill if your lucky but there will never be 3. It's like how in H3 if you get basic eagle eye for example you are not only screwed because it's useless, but you are screwed because sometimes it will come up as your only option as a skill to raise, or else you will have to take an equaly bad skill like learning.
"As I've said, I don't mind get basic Scouting and I don't mind picking up Stealth. "
I can't imagine stealth being useful for the average main hero.
"It sounds as if you haven't played all that much with Scouting. If you haven't used it all that much how do you know you would not benefit?
"
There are plenty of magic items that give you the same benefit stealth does, and there have been times I've been stuck with stealth from a witches hut. I've never found it useful. If a skill is only useful on rare occasions it is not a good skill.
"Often enough I find that I become aware of enemy activities one or two turns sooner than compared to the case when I don't have the skill. These turns sometimes prove to be very valuable."
That advantage was probably negated by you spending one or two turns wandering off the path, and by how much weaker your hero is having expert scouting instead of expert earth magic, logistics, offence, wisdom, or any of the many other much stronger skills.
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Jenova
Famous Hero
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posted October 19, 2001 06:48 AM |
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I'd like something cleared up: What's this about the 8 stack limit? Do they mean 8 stacks in an army? If so, I don't see what relevance that has on the scouting discussion. Or do they mean 8 *armies* total?
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