Scouting from the travel page is actually something I've had sort of poking at the back of my mind for a long time. I think something like that would be an excellent idea—just have multiple links after each region you can travel to, one for travel, one for scouting. (Suitably separated, to make it harder to misclick.)
The political map doesn't currently have popups, and it would be non-trivial to add them.
