Scavenging is low effort and low skill, so even if it doesnt bring quite as good returns a farming, it still doesn't 'suck'. why dont u put some definition to your 'suck' anyway
Hunny, my 'suck' has plenty of definition, trust me.
Okay, kidding aside, the question finally starts to fall in the ballpark, so I'll answer.
Scavenging "sucks" because in virtually all situation, trying to fuel your growth to prevent becoming an early farm (or othewise being dealt an early exit), scavenging will result in less growth than farming, when employing run-of-the-mill farming practices. If you have x troops, and you need something to do with them, you have a decision to make. Either send them scavenging, or send them farming. In nearly every scenario, the more profitable decision will be to send them farming. That much should actually be anticipated on its face, because scavenging only offers a maximum 75% haul capacity, and the time required for scavenging scales so that total capacity increases total duration. So it really only takes a 6th grade math level to be suspicious of scavenging being particularly useful.
That being said, there are instances where scavenging will be useful. Just not the ways that seem to be widely held as common "wisdom."
Much of the thinking on scavenging seems to revolve around the idea of finding a balance between x number of troops for farming, and z troops for scavenging, attempting to capitalize on both. This thinking is flawed, the most basic reason being that it is built on the assumption that scavenging is more or less equally as profitable as farming. Another major flaw is to look at scavenging as a simple question of investment/return in a one-off transaction--i.e. one can send troops scavenging and quickly enough net a profit on the cost of building the troops, therefore scavenging is said to be worthwhile. That thinking entirely circumvents any comparison between scavenging versus farming. But most importantly, it fails to understand that time is the most important resource in tribal wars.
The correct way to decide if/when to use scavenging is to assess your current and reasonably anticipated farming as resources per hour, and compare to the same for scavenging. In fact, this really underscores the terribly misguided thinking that seems to permeate regarding scavenging. When it comes to farming, we all know it's a question of efficiency. But when it comes to scavenging, efficiency questions go out the window.
(Based on a speed 1 world) If you have 100 spears, and you're sending them out to farm once every two hours (whether because of your activity level, or travel distance), then they will generate 12.5 res/hr, 9.3 res/hr, or 6.3 res/hr, based on 100% hauls, 75% hauls, or 25% hauls, respectively. These are simple benchmarks, easy to calculate, and easy to reference. Level 2 scavenging will only generate 3.4 res/hr, and level 3 (which would take very nearly two hours, incidentally) would only yield 6.8 res/hr. So, if implementing basic micro-farming practice will allows you to collect farming hauls about 75% full, then you should send those spears farming. Period. The only reason to scavenge in this case would be if the hauls are coming in around 25%. And in that case you should put them all into level 3 if it's available, not split them up between levels.
The decision making is that simple. None of this even takes into consideration that scavenging has investment costs that have to be recouped.
The question then becomes,
if you should bother making troops just for the sake of scavenging, and how many you should make. And for the most part, the math does not favor investing into extra spears just for scavenging purposes. Because as you are pushing out these troops, the value of scavenging with them only increases fractionally. That value has to first
catch up to the income value from farming with them. And yes, it's true that with more spears on hand, the value of their average farming potential decreases, because micro-farming will require either an increasing travel range, an increase in number of nearby farms, or an increase in those farms' production in order to avoid empty haul space increasing as the size of the farming group increases. But nonetheless, farming value and scavenging value will first have to converge, which basically means that the cost of spears to get you up to that point is itself an additional investment before scavenging even starts to make mathematical sense. And after that, the net profitability itself will only be incremental. So, after investing in maybe 600 additional spears that you wouldn't have otherwise built, you finally reach the point where scavenging produces 1.5 res/hr more than farming with those 600 spears.
At 90 resources per spear, it would take 36,000 level 3 scavenging hours for the investment to fully be recouped.
Scavenging is just not very useful for the early phase of the game. It takes a great many troops before scavenging can generate better income than farming. And to realize that potential, you have to commit those troops to very long tasks. Scavenging is, instead, most ideally suited to stages of the game where players have many villages, many troops, and particularly large turtled players who can devote a substantial number of spears to scavenging while still having enough available to stack against attackers.
And this is the ultimate reason why scavenging really and truly sucks. Because it was a feature that was supposed to be beneficial to newer players, players who were comparatively smaller, and players who were less active. But in fact, scavenging increases the leverage of larger players can exert over smaller players, later starting players, while making it more advantageous for larger players to avoid fighting it out with each other.
Scavenging makes it easier for larger players to maximize resource income with relatively little activity, while smaller players would have to exert obsessive activity levels to maximize their income, because farming will be more productive for them. It greatly benefits pp abusers, who only want to click the easy button as they artificially inflate themselves very quickly so they can just ride the momentum of their mass for the duration of the world. And as a result, it is a major contributor to the game devolving into fast, small worlds of less and less interest. Players who start a world later will end up at a more extreme disadvantage than used to be the case, and end up more likely to quit early and never return.
