Why scout?
You can only see so much from your own holdings. Somewhere out past your borders is a dense, prosperous district worth claiming — or a buried treasure worth the detour. Scouting lets you send outriders to survey ground you haven’t set foot on: it reveals how rich each territory in an area is, and flags any treasure your scouts turn up — all before you spend a single kilometre marching there. It turns “I’ll run somewhere and hope it’s worth it” into “I know exactly where the good ground is.”How scouting works
Scouting is powered by Scouting Writs — commissions you spend to send a scouting party. You start with a small grant of writs, earn more through consistent play, and can always buy more in the Market.Pick an area on the map
Long-press any point on the map to choose where to scout. You can scout ground up to 2,500 m from your nearest holding — your scouts range out from land you already hold, not from anywhere on earth. Tap a point that’s too far and the app tells you why instead of spending a writ.
Confirm and spend a writ
Confirm the survey. Each scout costs 1 Scouting Writ. If you have none, the button becomes Earn a writ and points you to how to get one rather than letting you stumble.
Read the Scout Report
Your scouts return a Scout Report — a single list of every territory inside the surveyed area (a ~600 m radius around your chosen point), each showing its prosperity (the same pip scale used across the game) and a treasure marker wherever your scouts found buried spoils. Tap any territory to jump straight to it on the map.
Where treasure comes in
When a scout finds treasure on a territory, it’s marked with a wax-seal token on the map and in the report. Claiming or holding that ground lets you take the spoils — treasure pays out in Gold and other rewards straight to your Treasury. Treasure is the payoff that makes a scouting party worth the writ: you’re not just window-shopping for land, you’re hunting caches.Worked example: you hold a Keep on the edge of downtown and wonder whether the riverside district two neighbourhoods over is worth a march. You long-press it (about 1.8 km away — well within the 2,500 m range) and spend 1 writ. The report comes back listing eight territories in that ~600 m circle: most are middling, but two are richly prosperous and one carries a treasure marker. Now you plan a single campaign that loops through the treasure tile and claims the two rich ones — instead of three exploratory runs hoping to get lucky.
Getting and spending writs
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Starter grant | 2 writs |
| Cost per scout | 1 writ |
| Most writs you can hold | 6 |
| Buy a writ in the Market | ◉ 200 Gold |
| Scout range from a holding | 2,500 m |
| Scout report radius | ~600 m |
| A reveal stays fresh for | ~30 days |
Where next
The Treasury
Where writs are bought, and where treasure and tribute are banked.
Conquering Land
Turn a scout report into a claim — how prosperity and territory work.