You are most assuredly not just imagining that this is in fact not happening to you. A clear case of conspiridence if ever I saw one!
I personally have convinced myself that a dev watches forgers and based on your forum behavior they tend more towards the “give hard hitter repeatedly until forger screams” button than they do towards “give forger devastating damage and busy bee while special gum is active” button. This is most definitely a fact, I have evidence… but I lost it in the great Dub-T paint fire of 2020.
What I think is actually the case though… when you get hard hitter, you decon, you try again, you get hard hitter… etc, etc. When you successfully get the boon you are targeting however… you simply carry on forging. I believe the technical term for this phenomenon is a “conspiridence” so I stand by my initial statement and suggest you ask for a refund from whoever it was that sold you the faulty centraforge and most definitely complain in writing to your gum/compound supplier as all the provided evidence proves without any doubt that he is watering them down .