Greetings Archon,

When saying this I reckon all are on level 20 agreements right?

Equites is best used for spying long distances.

Venators are better for spying in mix with normal scouts cause of their statistics too.

The person who gets spied lets say he has 50 spies.To get spied the enemy needs to have more than 50 spies and in total more 'spy power' but still he will loose a lot of them while the defender not but still he will succeed in spying the city. Best thing to do is to send all your spies so the spy power will get increased and you will have more chances of saving more scouts!

I do think the weakest ones die first, then there is a smaller % of venator/equite that will die because of their stats.

So far my experience has yield me those results.

P.S  I wouldn't use the equites, I find them extremely useful in spying long distances in a matter of minutes:) Equites+marauders can turn you into a monster raider!

I hope I have helped.

some extra info how to calculate it from wiki:

Mechanics work much the same as normal combat except both sides use the Scout stat.

Attacker Loss Percentage = Defenders Scout / Total Scout.

Conversely you can calculate the Scout strength of a target in a failed Scout by this formula:

Defenders Scout = (Attackers Scout / (1 - Attacker Loss Percentage)) - Attackers Scout Note:

This only works if you have troops come home alive. Don't expect to use this if you sent a single unit and it died.