Scouts are the fastest of the troops. They are mainly used for spying to gain information of enemy cities or valleys, but you can also send them to attack your enemy.
SCOUTING
When scouting do not send any additional troops such as archers, warriors etc along with scouts. They will not return.
When you are planning to attack a city or valley, it is good to always scout it first. If your scouts are successful in scouting the enemy, you will get all the information about the enemy such as how big the army is, the amount of wall defences, the number of buildings and their levels and the amount of research they have done.
Based on this scout report you can decide how many troops you need to send.
The amount of information you get depends on the level of informatics research that you have done and the number of scouts you send. The level of beacon tower and level of intelligence of the mayor can also increase the amount of information the scouts can gather.
When you send scouts and the enemy city gates are closed they won't be attacked by the enemy troops or the wall defences. However, if the enemy city gates are open the scouts of the enemy city will fight with your scouts and try to kill them. If all your scouts are killed in fight then you won't get any information and your enemy will receive honour points.
So, it is advised that when you scout your enemy try to send as many scouts as possible.
Always send a hero along with the scouts. The scouts of the enemy city will always fight under the command of a hero, so they will have am advantage over your scouts if you send your scouts without a hero.
AVOIDING BEING SCOUTED
You can avoid getting scouted if your create a lot of scouts and keep you gates open. This way whenever anyone tries to scout you, their scouts will be killed by your scouts. The more scouts you have the more scouts the enemy will need to send to be able to scout you. As the game advances you should increase the amount of scouts and keep your gates open to prevent your enemy successfully scouting you.
At a more advanced stage, you need to create at least 130,000 scouts, as due to the limitation of the rally point, a player can send a maximum of 100,100 scouts from a level 10 rally point.
If he apply "war ensign" (which increases the capacity of sending troops by 25%) then he can send 125,000 scouts. This is the maximum amount of troops anyone can send. Now, if you have more than 125,000 scouts in your city then all the enemy scouts will be killed. Of course, if your enemy has lots of scouts then he may send waves of 100,000 scouts repeatedly and will be able to scout your city successfully, but most players do not waste so much or their resources and time just to scout a city.
SCOUTING NEIGHBOURS
You should not scout your neighbours too often as scouting is considered as an "Bad Manners", and could be viewed as a preparation before an actual attack. So, if you scout your neighbour often they could take offence and they or a stronger player may even scout or attack you back.
SCOUT BOMBS
Some players use scouts to attack the enemy. Scouts have very low attack and defence, but due to high speed they can even bypass the archer towers if the enemy gates are open and attack the enemy troops residing in the city. But as they have very low attack you will have to send lots of scouts to successfully kill all the enemy troops.
This method the called as "Scout Bomb" technique. However, scout bomb will completely fail if the enemy city gates are closed. In that case scouts will try to attack the wall defence sand will be very easily killed.
SCOUTS AND RESOURCES
Scouts are also very useful when you try to send your hero to one of your other cities. As a rule you have to send at least one troop along with your hero. So, sending a scout along with the hero makes him reach the destination city very quickly.
Scouts are also very useful, when you have to send some resources to you allied member very quickly. Though scouts can not carry a lot of resources, due to their great speed they carry the resources and come back to your city very quickly.