crackie
Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
Possibly. Possibly not. If you do the math on it, it might also be better to sell now than sell later. Here's an old post calculating the things from a time perspective. In that example, it would take about 35.5 hrs for the Traveling Merchant to make what my boosted factory makes in 3hrs. Unboosted manus produce goods at even worse rate than traveling merchants. So even if your trades for unboosted goods sit in the trader for OVER A DAY, you'll still get more and get them faster than trying to make it yourself. Unlike Traveling Merchants, your unboosted factories are also tying up a LOT of population, which might be better used for boosted factories, workshops, or armories. So one can also argue that the sooner you remove them, the sooner you can either upgrade other buildings with that population or build more boosted factories and make more goods in general (trade for unboosted).I will be reducing the amount of unboosted manufactories I have, soon, and Upgrading the ones I'm keeping.
"I've invested too much into them to give up on them this early", if that makes sense. But I'm learning.
The other important key here is you would want to list your own trades and not be a shopper. You are a small city so many large neighbors will prob gobble up your trades easily and quickly since they can take your trades at no fee because their scouted network is far wider. If you try to take trades from listings, you might still be seeing a lot of trades with trader fee due to your smaller scouted region.