Board & Card Games Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people who like playing board games, designing board games or modifying the rules of existing board games. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
The game manual says that if you conquer an enemy scout that is alone, you can take a loot as if you had won a battle. It doesn't specify that it is a battle.
The reason we need to know is for Code of Laws. Upon winning a battle, you can get a coin token to place on that research for future investing. So is conquering a scout that is alone considered a battle?
No. If you aren't drawing square unit cards, a battle isn't taking place
From the FFG rule book (page 23)
Battle is the struggle of one civilization against another for dominance. When an army figure moves into a square containing a village marker, an enemy army figure, or an enemy city, a battle takes place.
If you had continued reading the section ENEMY FIGURES, you should have realized that.
Scouts cannot enter a square containing enemy figures. If an army enters a square containing any enemy figures, its movement immediately ends. If the square contains only enemy scouts, the scouts are immediately killed and the attacking player collects loot as though they had won a battle (see page 25). If the square contains at least one enemy army, a battle occurs (see page 23). If the square contains a mix of both enemy armies and scouts, a battle occurs, but if the losing side in the battle has any scouts in the square, they are killed along with the armies; loot is then collected as normal.
