It's unfortunately the same for a tiny city that I took over from my son a couple months ago. He left the city long ago, and I recently decided to develop it because it had some cool old event buildings on it. I just started chapter 5 in it, and all of the provinces are hard or very hard, and yet I still need a ton more scouts to open the next chapter, so they'll definitely all be very hard by the time I get close to the end of the chapter. None incomplete and I've done all squad upgrades. Scouting in rings; none of this straight line stuff. Since I know all the newbie mistakes now, I should not be faced with this horror, but I am. When I first started in October 2019, there's no way that I had to slog through all this garbage just to open the next chapter. I think they've slowed new players down on purpose by making the provinces harder. Maybe they realized that new players were all overscouting so they tried some of their heavy-handed "fixes." Anyway, it's a lot less enjoyable now, and that's not because I know more or any other reason, other than the fact that it is, indeed, harder than it used to be.
Edit: I have to modify this because I do now see a couple of provinces that I scouted and haven't completed, and one medium province still to do along with the hards and very hards. But overall, the same.