Autoscout and issues with the current meta

All the changes that have been made since DE came out have put fresh life into this game imo, but certain changes like auto scout should be looked at again

The idea behind auto scout was to allow less skilled players to still get scouting done while reducing their APM load. It would not be as effective as manual scouting, but would be way better than having an idle scout for most of dark age.

In my experience (and in most others that i have heard) what ends up happening though is that players who are more aquatinted with the game, but still wouldnt be considered top tier, will manually scout for all of dark age/early feudal, but once their starting scout is no longer important they will turn on auto scout. For Example, you go MAA opening and use your scout + maa to attack, then once you get pushed back your scout only has >10 health. Not that useful in a fight, especially if you are going into archers/skirms or are going up to castle, so it no longer really has value. But you can throw it on auto scout and still get massive value from essentially a dead unit.

And this is where the problem lies; before auto scout, scouting the “empty” portions of the map was a real skill, something that you didn’t really see too often before 1800+ elo. Having good map exploration was a mark of a good player, as it was something that they had to do in addition to their eco and military micro. Scouting relics, neutral resources, where their enemy is expanding to, all important things

Compare that to now when consistently players below 1000 elo will end up with 95% map exploration. And its game changing. You kill the enemy scout but yours is still alive? You now get +400 score, along with full map knowledge, whereas your opponent doesnt

IMO this should change. Autoscout should only exist in dark age, once the player hits feudal the option doesn’t exist. All the benefit for new players, none of the unintended benefit for higher level players

As for the current meta, im glad that we are starting to see more melee options be viable in DE after months of pathing issues causing ranged units to be superior. But I think most players would agree that with how little lag there is now it has become far too easy to ignore early aggression, especially melee aggression. To the point where scout openings became a meme among top tier players (even hera who is know for scout play).

The issue is that it is too easy to wall. Maps are too wallable, quick walls are too powerful. The devs could solve this a number of ways; increase the cost of palisade walls, reduce the armor on them while building them, reduce or remove the refund for deleting partially built palisades, they could also increase the wood cost for repairing palisade walls/houses. Obviously they shouldnt do all of these, but they should pick the options for what they see as the most egregious offender. Is walling into FC too fast and easy? Then increase the cost/build time for a palisade wall. Or buff feudal tower health so that the other player has an option to punish the FC player. Is quickwalling too easy in low lag? Reduce palisade armor while building and increase how costly it is to repair

Thank you for coming to my TED talk