I do not know if I am doing something stupid, if it is a know issue (or non-issue), or if there is really something weird going on with my drafts.

If I stay away for a while, like 8h, I get a large draft size. After that, if I continually get the drafts as soon as they become available, I get a constant amount based on my armies/s (I am not considering mercs or caches here). That is what I consider normal behavior and it works early in the maps.

When I get mid to late in a map, though, my draft sizes stay the same whether my last draft was six minutes or two hours ago.
An 8h gap still raises more armies.

Am I overlooking something? Is this happening to someone else?

I'd say without some numbers that's hard to argue here. On the one hand, it could be possible that mid-level you are constantly below the targeted percentage of drafts and therefore always get the max (hence always the same), but that clashes with the statement that long(er) pauses cause larger drafts, because if you ever reach max you won't get even more for waiting longer until the next draft. Another idea would be that while mid-level you have a steady income of caches and mercs that keep your drafts at a higher level, but in the level-start part you explicitly excluded these types of income so I'm not sure if you would have forgotten to consider them mid-level. And given that you mentioned armies/s I guess it wouldn't really surprise you that with a higher income you get higher drafts. The only idea I have that you might haven't considered yet is that each time you bump up the army camp income, the previous drafts decrease in percentage (when previously you had x% of your army income from drafts compared to the armies/s, with a higher permanent army camp income the drafts make up less percentage in comparison now). For every increase in army income, you will get larger draffts (to some extend) to again get back to the previous percentage. So, if you upgrade your army camps often in the mid-level stages, this might be one possible explanation.

I wouldn't completely rule out that drafts are perhaps buggy, but based on your statements there are still way too many questions to get to a reasonable conclusion about draft sizes.

Thank you for the well thought out reply, Phoenix.

Right now I am playing Fort Harbor, at 42,06 kArmies/s and stuck with a 16M draft. When I get huge caches or Merc camps it does bump my next one or two drafts. I am indeed constantly using money to upgrade army camps. I do not have the stats advancement, but I am willing to provide further details if I can.

The game tries to make your armies from drafts 15% of the total armies earned. If you get alot of army chaches, buy mercs or simply don't take a draft for a while, you get more armies. Once you reach the 15% cap, it get's low again.

I don't want to force you into investing APs that you could use otherwise, but without the Statistics advencement it's especially hard to judge the exact effects of drafts. As L.L. said, drafts target a fixed percentage compared to the overall earned armies so far. So, if you only have the current (relative) army income, but not the total absolute income since start of level, you can't really (somewhat) accurately approximate what draft size would be expectable at any given point. And a bug would always mean that the expected value and the actual differ. In this scenario we could probably reverse-engineer your overall army income based on the drafts (instead of estimating the drafts based on the army income numbers), but without anything to compare to, we can't confidently say anything.

So, if you have the APs and are willing to unlock the army income statistics, then we can take another look at this. Otherwise I would for now assume that the drafts are probably about where they should be. Not that I want to diminish your sense of deserved drafts, but I would just conclude that there are factors that you just haven't considered yet that result in the drafts you see. And if there were major bugs with the drafts, other players (not me, because drafts isn't a concept I would rely on / spend any thoughts on usually) likely would have found them already. That said, what we - the community - think to know about drafts is based on reverse-engineering as well, so who knows if the drafts are meant to function the way they do and the way the community assumes they do. ;)

OK. Thanks guys.

Once I finish the current level I will look onto that stats advancement (if I do not impulse buy something like the last few times =).

Albion,

Not sure what it is you find odd, but what you described falls in line with what exactly as LL described. If you are gone for 8 hours (assuming you have that much idle time available), you should get a relatively large draft because 8 hours is 48 drafts bundled (if you are collecting every 6 minute intervals).

If you are confused check out this thread, notably Fizzer's explanation
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/549257-increased-draft-size

You don't need to invest in statistics (I personally haven't and don't plan to, at least not anytime soon)

Hi Jose.

My question is not why do I get a large draft after 8h idle, but why do I get the same size draft after I am gone for 6 minutes or 2 hours.

Ah, that is most likely due to hitting the draft cap. There is a max limit to the draft (once you exceed the threshold, you can't get more per collection). There is a mention in this thread.
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/641894-draft-boost-epic

Personally, I've only experienced hitting the cap upon getting (relative to my army income) super large army caches or buying or inspiring all mercenaries from a particular mercenary camp, but I have yet to invest AP to increase the draft size nor do I possess any artifacts that boost my draft collection

Probably not, because I still get larger drafts with large caches and 8h idle.