Scouting With Your Dog

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Omega
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Scouting With Your Dog

Post by Omega »

Source: Omega at original EE Train Forum

"Scouting with your Dog isn't hard once you know what to do--although a lot of players who don't know what to do often fail at scouting very well, either by scouting too little (more common), or scouting far too much (less common but still a problem).

Therefore, once you start making your Dog at your Capitol, while your Dog is still being produced you should set multiple rallies so that your dog will scout clear around your capitol, outside of it's line of sight (more on just how far outside capitol LoS in a second). Set these rally points by holding down shift and right clicking. If you don't get all of your rally points set by the time your dog finishes, don't worry--by selecting your dog and holding in shift again you can see previously placed rally points and set more to be added to the rally queue. Don't forget to change the rally at capitol to something else before your first Citizen finishes.

As for how far outside Capitol line of sight you should rally your dog, the correct answer is however far your dog can see so that you will have unbroken (or close to it) explored map between where you can see/have seen and where your dog has explored. If you explore your Citizens at start, you can have your Dog scout outside of that area that they've explored, or you may decide to simply bypass that area as already being explored with no need to explore outside of it, depending on what you are doing. You will get a feel for Dog LoS after awhile, so don't worry about trying to remember something like 'Dog LoS is 2 tiles to north, south, east, west and 4 tiles to NW, SW, NE, SE' (IIRC that's all correct, just don't bother with remembering it because it's not worthwhile as getting a feel for Dog LoS is rather easy).

Obviously, you should find most if not all of the stuff you need exploring around in a circle like that--but you may not. Sometimes, you might not find some mines that you need doing that, or you might find a hippo or something. If you absolutely need something you didn't find, continue exploring around your base until you do (use the same shift+right click thing to set rallies for your dog around unexplored area just like you did originally). If you don't really need it, then you are faced with deciding whether or not to continue scouting your base looking for it or to continue and scout your opponent's base--this is a call only you can make, and it depends a lot on situational factors like what strategy you're doing, how's the map look, and what strategy you think your opponent will be doing.

Another choice you may want to make is to stop scouting your base early once you've found everything you need and continue on to scout your opponent's base (or in 1vs1 look for your opponent's base, then scout it). You will most likely want to do this when you are forward rushing a player.

Either way, you always want to make sure you've found everything you need in your base. If you can't find something you need, keep looking for it until you find it (or until you are entirely convinced that you don't have it in your base).

Next you need to find and scout your opponent. If you are playing a team game, you should have a very good idea of where your opponent is located, so you won't have much trouble finding your person at all. If you are playing 1 vs 1, you won't have any idea of where your opponent is until you start scouting. To begin scouting for your opponent, you will rally your Dog around the edges of the map, an equal distance (roughly) away from the edge that your Capitol is. You will want to keep checking at what your dog has found, as sometimes people won't be exactly where you're sending your Dog but they will be close--clues to that include seeing units that belong to your opponent, especially citizens, hippos/seals, hunt (especially any dead hunt that was killed by a citizen), a bunch of mines, or a forage patch. If you see any of those, you really should spend a little time and check the area out further. Another thing to look out for before you start scouting for your opponent in 1 vs 1 is the direction that their Dog comes from if it gets to you early--you'll want to send your Dog in the direction theirs came from if this happens, as this probably means that you will reach them quickly. (There are other ways of using your Dog to locate your opponent in 1 vs 1 than just sending the Dog around the map as I have mentioned here--I may add to this describing those strategies later, although they are similar to this for the most part and don't generally perform better...)

Once you have found where your opponent is (i.e. you've found his capitol or something), scout his base in the same manner that you scouted your own (in fact, if you've found his Capitol you can just rally around that like you did yours!). Rally your Dog around in a fashion that reveals the most map possible to you, and don't stop scouting your opponent's base until your Dog either dies, or until you've found everything you need to find in your opponent's base.

You should keep the health of your Dog in mind when scouting your opponent's base, as a dead Dog that hasn't found everything you need to find is of no benefit to you. Don't rally your Dog in a fashion that will cause him to be hit by an enemy tower, and try to avoid rallying your dog into masses of melee units or archers that will make it die.

Once your Dog has found everything it needs to find in your opponent's base, you have several options with what to do with it. You can have it continue to explore other areas of the map, which can be a good idea (either rallying your dog if you want a specific area explored, or just by hitting "L" to explore). If you think your Opponent has forward-rushed you you may want to use your dog to re-scout areas around your base that the forward building might be hiding. You can use your dog to stay in your opponent's base and continue to monitor what they are doing (in ages/situations where that's actually viable), you can bring your dog back to your base to warn you of an incoming econ raid from a certain direction (i.e. place the Dog far enough out but on the path they'd come in at), you can use your dog to speed glitch your army with, and you can also use your Dog to distract their army when you attack (this works best against melee and archer-type units, but it can also have a decent effect on gun-type units by eating the first couple shots instead of your units). All of which are viable options, which one you pick is up to you and should be decided on situational factors. However, please don't just let your dog sit around somewhere useless, like in a corner, or let your dog sit around in your opponent's base when you won't learn anything from it and your dog will soon die--that's a pointless waste of resources that gains you nothing."
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