[Poll] Do you think the game would be better without these freebie scouting options?

[charlemango]

A lot of people complain that scouting is too easy because of the insane amount of free information you get. Do you think removing these options would make the game more skillful, and potentially allow for more surprise strategies?

[Hazza54321]

actually i wouldnt say scouting is that easy at all, although nat tps u shouldnt see

[Kawapasaka]

Always been unsure on the first one. On the second, score I think only really gives important information when mercs are involved (mercs should just show in score imo), otherwise it's basically just an indicator of whether you should resign or not. Third I think is a bit dumb - in some situations how are you meant to scout this apart from unit textures, once they've been upgraded, which may come significantly after the age up? For example, India probably won't be making any newly-available units until 7 Urumi pop out into your face. You could say you could predict it judging by the amounts of units, but this is already a thing for pushing pre-age up.
TP icons absolutely though, they're so easy to scout I see no good reason for why it's a thing. Destroys any native rush strats that rely on surprise.

[[Armag] diarouga]

I think the game would be better if you couldn't see your opponent's score, because you should not know for sure whether or not you're ahead. The ability to know if you're in a better or worse spots should be rewarded, and because of the score it isn't in aoe3.

[tedere12]

yeah game might be more fun that way actually

[vardar]

yeah some of these would be kinda cool taken away, I like the thought

[Dolphincup]

taking away deck visibility would promote greedy play and punish safe play, which would shake up the meta a lot. could be interesting.

[Imperial Noob]

The ability to see the opponent's TPs has been baffling to me since 2005. Just why? Should you see their artillery foundries and additional TCs too, "because they are strong / impactful?" This shouldn't ever be in the game. EP remove this one, pls

Ditto for deck-scouting. This is a broken relic from the very launch of the game, when you would learn for the first time other civs and their options this way. Now it just makes mercs, forts, age 4 shipments, water cards, eco upgrades completely expected. Imagine table card games with the possibility to see everyone's decks. How dumb.

I wonder about casted games here. I think that if this was to change, or even without the change, the casters shouldn't show decks to the audience in streams of competitive games. Stream sniping -> deck scouting should be impossible.

The score is a minor nuisance, but likewise I just do not understand who put it there in the first place.

I wonder what BS arguments will people who will be defending keeping these things in the game come up with.

Seeing the opponent age is not as clear-cut to me, but what we have now is "Player X's colony has reached the industrial age" => Player Y is basically told by the game to right-click his opponent's base. That's not fair.

[Garja]

I'm ok with removing score, I guess.
But nat post is firstly to be aware of TP count (trade monopoly) and then it's also because nat rush not scouted is actually super dangerous.
Deck visibility is just too important imo. I don't want a meta were I have to be afraid of every possible unit pop. Deck visibility is important to have a base from which plan the game. No deck is just too few info.

[Kaiserklein]

Seeing the tps and the score is kind of stupid, and removing that would reward scouting/knowledge more.

Seeing the age up is just totally logical. You have no way to scout it, so not having a notification when your opponent ages up would make going to fortress even stronger. That would btw nerf asian civs quite hard since you could still scout their wonders.

Seeing the decks is debatable. I mean, idk, the whole deck logic is weird and unique to aoe3, so it could arguably be either way. I guess not being able to see decks would make some interesting cards viable, but some cards are also basically impossible to scout if you don't see them in opponent's deck so idk, it would be a bit random. However, you definitely shouldn't be able to see which cards Japan has sent.

[Mitoe]

The ability to see the opponent's TPs has been baffling to me since 2005. Just why? Should you see their artillery foundries and additional TCs too, "because they are strong / impactful?" This shouldn't ever be in the game. EP remove this one, pls

I think the developers had hoped for Trading Posts to be a larger win condition/part of the game than they actually are, and I think the intention was to encourage people to contest the TPs more heavily by being able to see when their opponents went for them.

Safe to say that this isn't actually the case, and the game would probably be better off if you actually had to scout this sort of thing.

Ditto for deck-scouting. This is a broken relic from the very launch of the game, when you would learn for the first time other civs and their options this way. Now it just makes mercs, forts, age 4 shipments, water cards, eco upgrades completely expected. Imagine table card games with the possibility to see everyone's decks. How dumb.

Personally I don't mind this one so much. I think removing the possibility to see an opponent's deck could possibly make the game worse, rather than better. The truth is that many civs just don't have adequate ways to scout very effectively (e.g. German, British, etc.) and a deck is usually versatile enough that it can give you an indication of an opponent's plan or options, but doesn't actually tell you what they're going to do with any certainty (usually). Removing this would make it much harder for some civs to compete compared to others. Not to mention it would be a potentially massive buff to Japan

Seeing the opponent age is not as clear-cut to me, but what we have now is "Player X's colony has reached the industrial age" => Player Y is basically told by the game to right-click his opponent's base. That's not fair.

I think you have to be able to see your opponent's age for sure. I can't count the number of games that have been lost because one player didn't notice that the other player aged up. I even lost a tournament game for this reason recently (though it's unclear if it really would've changed the outcome, but it certainly would have been closer).

Aging is such a large power spike that going unnoticed or otherwise unbeknownst to the opposing player that I think it would result in a lot of really sad games.

In other RTS games it's different because tech usually relies on certain buildings that can be scouted. In AoE3 you can't scout an age up except by process of deduction, or else scouting an Asian wonder.

[yoqpasa]

Why no ''keep it as it is now'' option?

[Tim010]

- Removing score is the only one that has no real effect on games, it might result in longer games though. I think score is a factor that contributes to resigning. Seeing you are a certain amount of points behind seems to be a convincing reason to resign even though the game might not be over.

- I'm actually surprised so many people think hiding deck would improve strategy. If you check a deck there are 10 possible card for an age, leaving you with 10 possible reaction possibilities (in theory, it will be obviously a lot less). But with the possibility of shipping any card (wich refers to not knowing what your opponent sends), there are so many things to expect that reacting in an optimal way would be hard or impossible. Instead of the multiple variations I think it would just result in doing the safe standard stuff over and over. So i think strategy would convert to a state of "play-it-safe", more identical games, less variation. Other point is unit shipments would become much stronger, because anticipating (and thus reacting) them would be harder. So i am a fan of having some information to what you might expect from your opponent. It's still a guess, just keeps the game more balanced.

- Hiding the age up seems ridiculous, Age of Empires is an action-reaction game, well it is now, not sure it really is intended so. Aging up is a risk-reward thing, but the risk would be much smaller if your opponent doesn't know you aged up. Getting away with an age up would be even more gamechanging. Of course it can be scouted but scouts can be easily killed, walls can prevent, etc...

- The TP showing is something I thought to be stupid, but i have changed my opinion after Garja's post, he made a valid point about the trade monopoly. Nat rush would also expand to area you need to scout in a certain amount a time.


In general most of these removings would result in a more intense scouting game. With water on one side, TP line on the other, the need to check age up from your opponent, you need to scout a very large area, wich would according to my little gameknowledge take the speed out of the games. As a terrible scouting player, i would not recommend any change, game's gud! ~ The opinion of a PR noob

[Dolphincup]

- I'm actually surprised so many people think hiding deck would improve strategy. If you check a deck there are 10 possible card for an age, leaving you with 10 possible reaction possibilities (in theory, it will be obviously a lot less). But with the possibility of shipping any card (wich refers to not knowing what your opponent sends), there are so many things to expect that reacting in an optimal way would be hard or impossible. Instead of the multiple variations I think it would just result in doing the safe standard stuff over and over. So i think strategy would convert to a state of "play-it-safe", more identical games, less variation. Other point is unit shipments would become much stronger, because anticipating (and thus reacting) them would be harder. So i am a fan of having some information to what you might expect from your opponent. It's still a guess, just keeps the game more balanced.

If your opponent has less information, they are less able to punish something very greedy like maxing age 3 and 4 cards, w/ just a card or two in Discover and Colonial. Certainly this opens up the space of things people can get away with, which means it'll widen the space of strategies people will actually attempt. On the flip side, you wouldn't know if your opponent packed a treaty deck, or 6 Colonial unit shipments. So the game would be much cheesier, but also less 'semi-FF every game.' Not saying it would be better, but it might be an entertaining mix-up, at least for viewers.

[Dolan]

The problem with score is that if you can just watch the score to get a reading on how well your opponent is doing without scouting at all, then it's free unscouted information.

Even decks need to be checked, which requires an action from you.

Removing scores would probably result in some more interesting games, but also encourage players who have already lost the game to stubbornly keep playing a lost game. So it might also result in unnecessarily longer games.

[Hazza54321]

yeah imagine iamturk without scores.. *shudders*

[Jaeger]

Seeing the tps and the score is kind of stupid, and removing that would reward scouting/knowledge more.

Seeing the age up is just totally logical. You have no way to scout it, so not having a notification when your opponent ages up would make going to fortress even stronger. That would btw nerf asian civs quite hard since you could still scout their wonders.

Seeing the decks is debatable. I mean, idk, the whole deck logic is weird and unique to aoe3, so it could arguably be either way. I guess not being able to see decks would make some interesting cards viable, but some cards are also basically impossible to scout if you don't see them in opponent's deck so idk, it would be a bit random. However, you definitely shouldn't be able to see which cards Japan has sent.

You could scout the age up by looking at the designs of their buildings @Mitoe

[Jaeger]

I think it would be extremely cool and refreshing to remove some or all of the things in the poll, maybe we could at least have a smackdown out of it @Interjection

[Kaiserklein]

Is there a difference between age 2 and age 3 buildings? Since realistically that's the most important age up to scout

[gibson]

I like the idea of removing score

[Jaeger]

Is there a difference between age 2 and age 3 buildings? Since realistically that's the most important age up to scout

Ohhh I'm actually not so sure now....

[Squamiger]

it would be a good smackdown idea to try some games with all of these scouting options gone

[Mitoe]

Seeing the tps and the score is kind of stupid, and removing that would reward scouting/knowledge more.

Seeing the age up is just totally logical. You have no way to scout it, so not having a notification when your opponent ages up would make going to fortress even stronger. That would btw nerf asian civs quite hard since you could still scout their wonders.

Seeing the decks is debatable. I mean, idk, the whole deck logic is weird and unique to aoe3, so it could arguably be either way. I guess not being able to see decks would make some interesting cards viable, but some cards are also basically impossible to scout if you don't see them in opponent's deck so idk, it would be a bit random. However, you definitely shouldn't be able to see which cards Japan has sent.

You could scout the age up by looking at the designs of their buildings @Mitoe

Idk. Feels like that relies on a lot of game knowledge that doesn’t feel very rewarding to know or look for.

I think some civs may not have different graphics for different ages (particularly the Asian civs). Might not be the most fun to not be able to scout a well-defended or hidden wonder and then randomly 2 flying crows or 26 rattans pops out on top of your army for example.

I really do think that age ups at least should be known. It just feels like the outcome of the game would be more random without it.

Sure denying information incentivizes and rewards better scouting, but sometimes it can just as easily lead to forced risk-taking, which I feel would remove some of the skill / nuances from the game.

[Imperial Noob]

Is there a difference between age 2 and age 3 buildings? Since realistically that's the most important age up to scout

Looks like a job for @Omkar_Satapathy

[Kaiserklein]

Seeing the tps and the score is kind of stupid, and removing that would reward scouting/knowledge more.

Seeing the age up is just totally logical. You have no way to scout it, so not having a notification when your opponent ages up would make going to fortress even stronger. That would btw nerf asian civs quite hard since you could still scout their wonders.

Seeing the decks is debatable. I mean, idk, the whole deck logic is weird and unique to aoe3, so it could arguably be either way. I guess not being able to see decks would make some interesting cards viable, but some cards are also basically impossible to scout if you don't see them in opponent's deck so idk, it would be a bit random. However, you definitely shouldn't be able to see which cards Japan has sent.

You could scout the age up by looking at the designs of their buildings @Mitoe

Idk. Feels like that relies on a lot of game knowledge that doesn’t feel very rewarding to know or look for.

I think some civs may not have different graphics for different ages (particularly the Asian civs). Might not be the most fun to not be able to scout a well-defended or hidden wonder and then randomly 2 flying crows or 26 rattans pops out on top of your army for example.

I really do think that age ups at least should be known. It just feels like the outcome of the game would be more random without it.

Sure denying information incentivizes and rewards better scouting, but sometimes it can just as easily lead to forced risk-taking, which I feel would remove some of the skill / nuances from the game.

Yeah I think it would just make the game more passive. Would encourage you to age up and not push, since pushing would be really risky, while aging would be quite safe since opponent wouldn't do it. Would make for nice nr15 games