Scouting

[cleverphox]

Details: In a certain Chapter (maybe 16-Embassies) have research train another scout so that 2 scouts could be exploring simultaneously or providing a speed return for the 1st scout.
Instead of waiting 5 days (or 7 in my case) for a scout to get back from his vacation (What the heck are they doing while they're away) we could send a second scout out for reconnaissance to another city. Or, perhaps, it's a tracker looking for the first scout in case he fell into bad company or a trap of some sort (you know those darn Amuni). Or, some combination of the 2/3 revealed players on the outskirts of the explored province (such as Pirates [Traders of Unur] brought a shipment of poison darts [Amuni] to arm the Ultimate Creature army [Revenge of the Exile] but ran into your scout and tied him up).

Benefits / Pros: (1) During certain events that take 2 weeks to complete, if one week is spent waiting for a scout to return home to complete the quest it could prevent you from completing the quest line for the event. I know that Time Instants can be used to speed up the mission but that is generally frowned upon during the acquisition stage while in the Spire. And I realize that the event normally has an alternate option for completion, but doesn't that take away from the storyline? (2) My understanding is that if a province has been explored/scouted, the revealed surrounding players can trade with you with no additional costs (less one star trades).

Downsides / Cons: There is a slight possibility that players will run amuck scouting way beyond the scope of their projected cleared province area and hence cause a strain on your servers trying to keep the additional scouted provinces under the players' belts.

Miscellaneous: Was it by design that a scout would take so long to explore or is this just a calculated number based upon the number of provinces cleared thus far? Inquiring minds want to know

 

[defiantoneks]

i feel like it was intentional, knowing that there are only a certain number of province expansions that can be earned. so they said "lets make the scout take a longer time, so they dont overscout and use up provinces too quickly).
that said as an aside i would love to see some development that made completing provinces a new achievement at those higher chapters. trigger so that once your final earned expansion is placed, now when you complete a province you earn toward a different reward. that would keep us engaged in the process. maybe you're earning toward a new building type, or a new troop type. anything that would be attractive and worth continuing to do regular battles.

 

[StarLoad]

I like the idea, but implementing this so late in the game does not seem to benefit if all you have is an ever more significant number of provinces to clear to get an expansion, event issues aside that is.

Also, you may have discovered a far-off player and you can trade without a fee but they can't trade with you without the fee, just a minor difference in wording.

Ed