This is not necessarily a ‘bug’, but it is obscenely unclear on what many of the stats/improvements do, due to the way that things have been coded in this game. I am certain that it has been mentioned before and I am also sure that it would be a fair deal of work to fix these variables, but it needs to happen to make mechanics more clear.
I am speaking, of course, of mechanic variables such as ‘reload speed’, ‘production speed’ and other variables that do nothing more than obfuscate what is actually going to happen with a tech or civ buff in a clear, meaningful way.
Lets look at Military Academy, for example. The tooltip tells us that this tech ‘increases production speed by 33%’. This…means absolutely nothing, because what it is ACTUALLY doing, in terms of real, applicable mechanics is reducing the training time by 25% (except trebuchet, which seems to follow different rounding rules than every other unit this affects). We cannot see the mechanics and stats on the production speed of building in-game, so this value means nothing in a practical application. What we can see is training time and these techs should inform on what their actual, practical effect is going to be.
Anything that has to do with training time or attack speed is just an absolute mess to try and math out in any kind of practical way. It’s even MORE confusing, when you seem to have an internal variable called ‘attack speed’ that does not seem to directly correlate to the ‘Attack Speed’ stat that we see in game. Take Rolling Shutter Triggers for instance; Tooltip says that it "increases Springald attack speed by 25%'. Any logic person would read that and expect to see a difference of 25%. But, what it is actually doing is decreasing Attack Speed by 17%, give or take. And…I understand that increasing attack speed results in a decrease in time between attacks, but…that is kind of my point. Everyone already knows that the numerical value assigned to the Attack Speed stat is an indication of time that passes between each attack…So, why even state an ‘increase’ at all? We know that lower number means a faster attack, because less time between attacks. So…just come out and say that it ‘decreases attack time by %’ and get rid of all the math gymnastic, involving a bunch of hidden stats, that needs to be done to figure out what the actual affect is going to be.
It’s even more confusing, because…the game doesn’t even follow a set standard. Some times, an upgrade is affecting some hidden stat, instead of the visible stat, while other times it IS affecting the visible stat. Compare the above Shutter Triggers to Arrow Volley. “reduces their time to attack by +1”. I’ll excuse the part where it says REDUCES and then says “by +1”, instead of just saying reducing by 1…but, at least it does what it actually says it’s going to do. Longbowmen Attack Speed is 1.62; I activate that and, as expected, the new Attack Speed is 0.62, just as it’s written on the can. Every speed affecting technology or bonus in the game (whether it’s training time or attack speed) should be this clear cut and easy to decipher. Sorry for the rant, but thank you for your time.