Does Advanced Scouts work properly?

[hoopity]

The Advanced Scouts research implies, though doesn't directly state, that activating it will reduce scout time by 25%. See that little -25% in the circle down there?

But, looking at scout time examples in a couple of my cities, it really seems like it only reduces scout times by 20.5% (typo?). For what it's worth, I only have cities that can verify this between chapters 5 & 6, so it is possible that it's unique to that chapter.

I maneuvered two pairs of my cities to have the same number of provinces scouted where one was in Chapter 5 and the other Chapter 6. The difference in the scout times between the cities (for the same ring level) ought to be 25%, if this works as intended. Instead this is the result (bear in mind rounding issues because display time is in minutes, not seconds):

	Chapter	Scouted Provinces	Scout Time for Ring Level 6	Scout Time for Ring Level 7
City A	5	108	437 (7:17)	547 (9:07)
City B	6	108	347 (5:47)	434 (7:14)
Reduction as: 1 - (City A / City B)	-	-	20.59%	20.66%

	Chapter	Scouted Provinces	Scout Time for Ring Level 7	Scout Time for Ring Level 8
City C	5	116	610 (10:10)	793 (8:05)
City D	6	116	485 (13:13)	630 (10:30)
Reduction as: 1 - (City C / City D)	-	-	20.49%	20.55%

 

[Pheryll]

I also calculated a 20% loss for that chapter 20 technology, when comparing my scout times with others. The 25% could be a typo or it could be that a reduction to cost does not proportionally reduce scout time.

 

[Count Rupert]

I think it's likely the reduction is based on the base time required at the point the advanced scout is triggered and not necessarily the figures you're seeing in game which are the modified time. You can see the difference that can make just looking at the time different for 108 scouted provinces (City A) and 116 scouted provinces (City c) at Ring Level 7. Similar to how the hobby room works. If you select to get an 80% increase in your marble production, it's not based on the figure you see in production; it's based on the base production. All 4 of these cities have scouted more provinces than the completed provinces required to advance to the next chapter. Time to complete the next scout increases with each scout which will distort the percentages compared to the base as you complete more and more scouts.

 

[Pheryll]

I think it's likely the reduction is based on the base time required at the point the advanced scout is triggered and not necessarily the figures you're seeing in game which are the modified time.

This makes no sense. If we are subtracting out base time then 4x of 25% reductions (or 5x of 20% reductions) would leave us with 0 scout time. But if you are arguing that future scouts add a constant that is not based upon a proportion to the original scout time, remember that at chapter 20 I saw a 20% decrease in scout time. If you are not scouting you can see the effect of advanced scouting on the cost to scout the next province before and after taking the tech.

 

[Iyapo]

Assuming you are overscouted and I am not and that we both research the same Advanced Scout Tech.
If my scout times are 20 hours, I would get a 5 hour reduction. If your scout times are 26 hours you get the same 5 hour reduction. So I got 25% and you did not but we both got the same reduction

 

[Count Rupert]

Not sure where you're arriving at the reductions leaving us with zero based off what I said. That would be correct only if the base never changed. The base for a given manufactory changes with every completed tech for that manufactory. The base could similarly change with every chapter (or every Advanced Scout tech). What I'm trying to say is we might not be making the right comparisons in trying to determine whether we're getting 25% or so other value. What I'm trying to say is the value whether it is 25% or some other number is applied to some value they decided on. Whatever that value i; it's a formula aka as math. It should be returning the same number if the arguments make in the OP are correct. The fact the samples show numbers that are not the same suggest it's not correct. Which means something's off. Not by much. The calculations in the OP I believe are distorted by all the samples having scouted more provinces than required for the completed provinces necessary to advance to the next chapter. So in the case of the chapter 5 cities that's 70 provinces. I think what we need are the time it took to scout that 70th province and then the time it takes to complete the first scout after completing Advanced Scouts (which needs to be the 71st scout to be the most accurate as you're paying full price since it would not have been discounted yet) for this type of comparison to be the most accurate.

 

[hoopity]

I think it's likely the reduction is based on the base time required at the point the advanced scout is triggered and not necessarily the figures you're seeing in game which are the modified time.

I think you're mixing together two different concepts with this sentence. The second part about modified time is exactly the thing I'm investigating. By comparing two cities with the same number of scouts at the same ring level, but with 1 advanced scouts research different, I'm trying to determine how the base time is modified into what is displayed in game.

The first part though, about the timing of when you activate the Advanced Scouts research being a factor is possible. It seems weird to have programmed it this way, but I could imagine someone deciding to just keep track of the previous scout cost and add an amount driven by a formula based on province number and ring level. Here's a simple example of how they might look (holding ring level constant) assuming a 25% reduction on Advanced Scouts and adding 10*Ring*Ring every province:

Province	Ring	Advanced Scouts @ 20	Advanced Scouts @26	Advanced Scouts @ 33
19​	2​	760​	760​	760​
20​	2​	610​	800​	800​
21​	2​	650​	840​	840​
22​	2​	690​	880​	880​
23​	2​	730​	920​	920​
24​	2​	770​	960​	960​
25​	2​	810​	1000​	1000​
26​	2​	850​	790​	1040​
27​	2​	890​	830​	1080​
28​	2​	930​	870​	1120​
29​	2​	970​	910​	1160​
30​	2​	1010​	950​	1200​
31​	2​	1050​	990​	1240​
32​	2​	1090​	1030​	1280​
33​	2​	1130​	1070​	1000​
34​	2​	1170​	1110​	1040​

This would be very easy to test with the glut of newly minted Chapter V / VI cities from the low-level account migration. Take two cities ready to advance to Dwarves, have one scout 10+ more provinces than the other before entering the new chapter, catch them up to be level in terms of provinces, compare the timer values. For what it's worth, I don't think my data above confirms or rejects this idea, by my memory they advanced around similar province counts, and I don't have the actual number.

Assuming you are overscouted and I am not and that we both research the same Advanced Scout Tech.
If my scout times are 20 hours, I would get a 5 hour reduction. If your scout times are 26 hours you get the same 5 hour reduction. So I got 25% and you did not but we both got the same reduction

If I'm understanding this right, you're suggesting that you think the Advanced Scouts reduction is a flat value and is not proportional to things like provinces scouted or anything. Hey I could be wrong, but I can find no evidence of that in the data. If you can find some, please let me know!

It should be returning the same number if the arguments make in the OP are correct. The fact the samples show numbers that are not the same suggest it's not correct. Which means something's off. Not by much. The calculations in the OP I believe are distorted by all the samples having scouted more provinces than required for the completed provinces necessary to advance to the next chapter.

As above, it's possible that you're right about the timing of activating Advanced Scouts. But, the small discrepancies in my reduction numbers above (eg 20.59% vs 20.49%) are almost certainly cause by rounding issues. The underlying clock for scout times (and everything in the game?) is in seconds, but the displayed value is in hours:minutes. If I had access to the seconds value, I believe those differences would all but disappear.

 

[Iyapo]

I do not understand why inno has to make everything so difficult.

@hoopity maybe you can make heads or tails out of this:
Post in thread 'Advanced Scouts' https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/advanced-scouts.6701/post-51578

 

[Pheryll]

Assuming you are overscouted and I am not and that we both research the same Advanced Scout Tech.
If my scout times are 20 hours, I would get a 5 hour reduction. If your scout times are 26 hours you get the same 5 hour reduction. So I got 25% and you did not but we both got the same reduction

The amount I was overscouted at chapter 20 was more than 2/3 increase in scout time. I should be seeing much lower percentage change than 20% if it was a flat value being subtracted.

 

[Pheryll]

I do not understand why inno has to make everything so difficult.

@hoopity maybe you can make heads or tails out of this:
Post in thread 'Advanced Scouts' https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/advanced-scouts.6701/post-51578

That is a display of the total contribution of 25% scout reductions. In this display advanced scout technologies each multiply the total cost by 0.75.

Edit: Laying this out for clarity
First technology -25%: Total reduction from all advanced scouts = 25% or 100% - 75% = 25%
Second technology -19%: Total reduction from all advanced scouts = 25% + 19% = 44% or 100% - 75% x 75% = 44%
Third technology -14%: Total reduction from all advanced scouts = 25% + 19% + 14 % = 58% or 100% - 75% x 75% x 75% = 58%

So functionally the calculation was always intended to multiply the scout time by 75% regardless of when it was taken. However, early on it had a display which seemed to indicate diminishing returns.

 

[hoopity]

This might be a conversation better suited to the beta forum. I can't imagine nobody has collected the data for this before.

 

[Iyapo]

They gave up. It has been attempted.

 

[hoopity]

They gave up. It has been attempted.

Have a link or a name?

 

[Iyapo]

<Edit>

 

[Pheryll]

This might be a conversation better suited to the beta forum. I can't imagine nobody has collected the data for this before.

If it could be posted there, I am sure someone like Karvest might have an answer.