Civilization – Do new units get the bonuses of previous unique units

Your scout can just move into the water and sail all by himself. It's called embarkation.

The ability to embark a unit into shallow water is unlocked by the optics technology. The Astronomy technology expands this ability by allowing units to also move across ocean tiles, not just shallow water.

Some notes:

• Embarkation is a promotion. A unit has to have passed through your territory at least once since you have researched the technology in order to gain that promotion.
• All Polynesian units receive the embarkation promotions for free.
• Movement speed of land units in water is 2. You get another movement point once you research Astronomy, and another after Steam Power. Adopting the Naval Tradition policy also increases moves by 1. Danish units also receive 1 extra move and England gets 2.
• Embarking (moving from a land tile to a water tile) and disembarking (the other way around) waste the entire turn, i.e. you only move 1 tile. Danish units are exempt from this penalty when disembarking.
• Your land units are helpless in water unless they have the embarked defense promotion, so consider escorting them. All Songhai land units get this promotion for free.
• Embarked units are not considered as water units (for example, the great lighthouse doesn't make them move further).
• Embarked units cannot pass through friendly cities like ships can - they must embark and disembark to cross them.

Experience gained from combat with barbarians is capped at 30 xp. You need to fight city-states or other players to go beyond level 3.