I took a look at your fellowship on Win. You have a group that could rise a lot higher in rank. The spinning your wheels you're talking about- that would stop completely and you would would have extraordinary growth with one change to your city and the cities of your top 5-10 fellowship members. You have to stop trying to produce everything because it's impossible. The entire game is structured around this core concept and no one beats the system. Does your fellowship trade? I imagine your boost is over 200% at your score? You're boosted in plank, silk and dust. That's a great spread. Why produce all the other nonsense? You have other members- you have every single good covered in your top 5- do you know how fortunate that is? Have you taken a look at how much resource is wasted producing non-boosted?
Just those 2 scroll factories tie up 762 population, spend 60K+ in coin/day, over 6K in supply daily to get 804 scrolls?
Your #3 member is boosted in scrolls but she's making silk, you're boosted in silk and make scrolls??? With a 200% boost if you switched over from scrolls to silk you would get 2400 silk for the same cost in coin, supply and pop that gets you 800 scroll right now. Why make crystal?- it's expensive...let your #2, #4,and #5 people handle the crystal in which they're boosted . How much more would everyone produce and how much more of your limited resources could you channel toward city growth?
If you ran every Non-Boosted factory in your city 4x/day and once over night you would get 5,186 goods at a cost of 545,000 coin, 54,500 supply. It sucks up 4663 population and takes 7 expansions worth of space up--not including the space for the 1500 pts of cultural items
That's what you have tied up to get 5200 goods.
If you took out every one of those non-boosted manufactories and put in 3 planks, 2 silk, 1 dust, assuming a 200% boost. you would free up 3,000pop.
and save 300K/day + 30k in supply and you would still get 5,100 goods and free up almost 5 expansions worth of space.
I have 4 steel, 3 elixer, 3 scroll. And that's all i produce and i trade. I don't ever worry about the cost of unlocking something. If anything I'm overproduced in tier one and two, with only tier 3 under 20K because I've been upgrading so that's gonna shoot up too.
Produce boosted. Trade. Your city will grow, your fellowship will grow, and the game is a lot less onerous when you're not scrapping goods together, and a city at your level doesn't need to be.