[Vynd]

You get an intelligence report for every province that borders your empire. That's what Liga meant by provinces that are close to you. You don't have any intelligence reports for provinces that are next to you on the first turn because the reports are generated at the end of each turn.

I suspect that if you're finding the value of your reports to vary wildly, it is probably because some of the reports are based on your dominion while some are based on the neighboring province reconaisance.

From what I have seen, dominion alone gives you less information than any other method. I think that it does depend on the strength of the dominion. For instance, I am pretty sure that once you get to level 1 dominion you can read the name of a province. I've never had a dominion level in a non-neighboring province much higher than 1 or 2, though, so I can't say what kind of info you get from really high dominion levels.

As for the scout/spy question, having a hidden unit in a space generates a more accurate report. Scouts are no better at this than any other hidden unit, they're just the cheapest and easiest to use for this purpose. Spies generate more accurate military reports than scouts and can see revealed magic sites and troops inside of forts.