Scouting

Scouting is basically finding ruins and exploring the map. Ruins bonuses are in the form of food, wood, and wealth in age 1. Later you get metal (after age 1) and oil (after age 5) ruins.

Scouting is very important for a faster start. At start you have 200 food, 200 wood and 100 wealth.
By scouting you will get more bonus resources (i.e ruins) which will eventually help you get a faster start.

Which of the 3 resources do I get in ruins?

You'll get the lowest one of the three(four). Suppose you have 50 food, 100 wood and 100 wealth. Here the lowest is food. You will get a food bonus ( eg +25 Food) when you hit a ruin.
Note that you don't get knowledge in ruins.

How does a ruin look?

How to scout?

Scouting is an art. Different players scout different ways. It needs a little micromanagement. A player having an expert level of micromanagement can get huge ruins bonuses upto 500-600(Approx) and a great start.

Steps to scout:-

- Get 2-3 villagers and run them along the map.

- You can keep your scout at auto-scouting. But I'll suggest to scout manually.

Note that at start you get a free scout.

- Get cyclic paths so that your villagers come back to your city.

Various scouting styles:-

    

Scouting with lakota:

- Scout with 4-5 villagers and scout.

While scouting, along with ruins look for rares. Find useful rares. I'll emphasize on different rares later in my posts.

Your scouting varies according to different maps. In great lakes, you will find a lot of ruins in the center. So pick them before your opponent gets them.

Scouting will help you not only to get ruins bonuses but will also show you rare positions and resource locations (wood, mine and oil wells). Eventually you will have the whole map visisible to you.