In this thread over at the Heaven's Forum, we're discussing scouting and someone suggested (and was quickly shot down) a 2 scout strategy.

Determing whether to build an early 2nd scout is not that easy. While the cost intially looks pretty steep, there are multiple intangible benefits:

• A second scout brings in additional ruins you might not otherwise get. You'd probably need 4-5 extra ruins to make up the difference. Additionally, a scout heavy start might benefit from an early SCI2, depending on the number of ruins on the map. A third scout might also be cost-effective if you could bring in an extra 3 more ruins


• You can steal ruins from your opponent - giving him less resources (every ruin you get that he didn't get effectively doubles the difference in resources)


• You're safe from the rush - you've already researched MIL1 and have a barracks up


• You'll find rares earlier, which might influence later play (setting up cities, tailoring economy to benefit, using more merchants to capture, etc.)


• Enemy may assume you're rushing and devote resources to defense


• You could pump some HI and actually do a rush, or just feint a rush with a couple HI


• You'll have better scouting of the enemy and can improve strategy planning

Overall, I wouldn't rule it out. It's probably very map specific and less dependable than straight booming.
posted by Tim at 7:00 AM