MaidenFair
Chef - Head Philologist
The problem as a new player trying to evaluate this kind of thing is that most of the advice comes from really well-established players who have lots of event buildings in inventory, an already established playstyle, and lots of interconnected buildings/processes that work in a very delicate balance. When you're starting out, you don't have all of those things yet, and so the practicality of certain assumptions may not be the same. Like the advice to not count the culture buildings unlocked in the tech tree because better buildings are always available in the events; that's absolutely true, and I don't think I've built a culture building from my building tab menu since chapter 3. Yet, if you're going to do the math on this kind of thing, I think it's best to use those numbers anyway, for the precise reason that those buildings are always available and have a set value. If you want to upgrade or build something now, you don't want to have to wait for an event that offers a good building for the culture/pop/goods to support your upgrade, since as a new player, you probably don't have oodles of them already in storage. Also, the event buildings offered differ from event to event, so even if you get a "superior pop/culture building", it may be heavier on one thing over another, or lower in both, but it also offers goods, and so on. There is also an element of luck in acquiring those. And what if you want to do some upgrades between events? Or the event offers mostly culture-heavy buildings, while you're short on population at the moment? Or you change chapter but don't have the RRs to upgrade the buildings with you? That math gets too fuzzy, too quickly to be useful in actual calculations, imo.
Since you're looking at tile efficiency, I'm going to open a can of worms here with an observation I've made recently; I've been doing some similar calculations, and have come to the surprising conclusion that upgrading manufactories is not always the best use of space. Yes, if all you count is the production number, it goes up, but when you factor in the additional population and culture needed, it can save space to actually build new manufactories instead of upgrading the ones you've got.
Practical example: a few weeks ago, I had 4 lvl 9 marble manufactories. A lvl 16 (Human) manufactory is almost exactly double the base production of a lvl 9 (142 vs 69, 3-hour productions). So I could double my marble production by just upgrading them all to lvl 16. However, that would require another 2934 people (the equivalent of 5 residences as upgraded as currently possible) and 1631 culture (combined needs of the manufactories and residences; 22 squares, based on my highest available building menu option), plus the manufactories themselves each grow by 3 squares (4x3 to 5x3), meaning that upgrading my 4 lvl 9 manufactories to lvl 16 would use 84 squares (only 12 of which belong to the manufactories themselves). Now the interesting part: if I added 4 more lvl 9 manufactories instead (also doubles my marble production), they need an additional 48 squares of space themselves, which sounds bad, but only 1304 people (2 residences) and 798 culture (11 squares), making the total space usage for the second option only 79 squares. At this level, to build 4 new manufactories, instead of upgrading the 4 I had, saves me 5 city squares in total!
I ran this math for a number of different levels and several types of manufactories, and it's not just a peculiarity of my particular situation, it holds true across the board...the manufactories start becoming less efficient, as far as the number of squares needed to support them, somewhere between level 9 and level 15 for all the types I checked. It gets proportionately worse as the levels climb. Now of course, for an established player, if they have wonders or event buildings that have effects dependent on building levels, number of residences, working population and so on, then applying this math might actually cost them, and very possibly is not a useful observation. But for a new player, who doesn't have other things dependent on those numbers yet, it might be worthwhile to consider actually not upgrading manufactories, but run some numbers and see if it would save you space in the long run to just build new ones to a certain level instead.
(Just to forestall confusion, I realise the sentient goods, which I have not reached yet, cannot be produced without manufactories of a higher level. I am only talking about basic goods production here.)
Since you're looking at tile efficiency, I'm going to open a can of worms here with an observation I've made recently; I've been doing some similar calculations, and have come to the surprising conclusion that upgrading manufactories is not always the best use of space. Yes, if all you count is the production number, it goes up, but when you factor in the additional population and culture needed, it can save space to actually build new manufactories instead of upgrading the ones you've got.
Practical example: a few weeks ago, I had 4 lvl 9 marble manufactories. A lvl 16 (Human) manufactory is almost exactly double the base production of a lvl 9 (142 vs 69, 3-hour productions). So I could double my marble production by just upgrading them all to lvl 16. However, that would require another 2934 people (the equivalent of 5 residences as upgraded as currently possible) and 1631 culture (combined needs of the manufactories and residences; 22 squares, based on my highest available building menu option), plus the manufactories themselves each grow by 3 squares (4x3 to 5x3), meaning that upgrading my 4 lvl 9 manufactories to lvl 16 would use 84 squares (only 12 of which belong to the manufactories themselves). Now the interesting part: if I added 4 more lvl 9 manufactories instead (also doubles my marble production), they need an additional 48 squares of space themselves, which sounds bad, but only 1304 people (2 residences) and 798 culture (11 squares), making the total space usage for the second option only 79 squares. At this level, to build 4 new manufactories, instead of upgrading the 4 I had, saves me 5 city squares in total!
I ran this math for a number of different levels and several types of manufactories, and it's not just a peculiarity of my particular situation, it holds true across the board...the manufactories start becoming less efficient, as far as the number of squares needed to support them, somewhere between level 9 and level 15 for all the types I checked. It gets proportionately worse as the levels climb. Now of course, for an established player, if they have wonders or event buildings that have effects dependent on building levels, number of residences, working population and so on, then applying this math might actually cost them, and very possibly is not a useful observation. But for a new player, who doesn't have other things dependent on those numbers yet, it might be worthwhile to consider actually not upgrading manufactories, but run some numbers and see if it would save you space in the long run to just build new ones to a certain level instead.
(Just to forestall confusion, I realise the sentient goods, which I have not reached yet, cannot be produced without manufactories of a higher level. I am only talking about basic goods production here.)