I’m in chapter 5 and love the golden abyss. Mine is only level 6, but it is providing 607 people, while my level 15 residences provide 420. Since it is a function of working population, its efficiency really depends on how many people you have employed. It doesn’t look like this is an option for the OP right now though.
Until you get to chapter 3, crafting is impossible unless you spend diamonds to do it or disenchant the event buildings if you have them. I would not recommend this for an early chapter player and will agree with everyone else that these are an excellent source of population and culture.
@Angelita Moon, after looking at your city I would highly recommend trying to get today’s exclusive in the event if you have keys to spend. This will give you an instant population boost. You could put it where you have your whispering trees now if you don’t have a 3x3 space to place it. I would also recommend upgrading the lower level residences first because the upgrades are cheaper and faster if you are looking for population right away. You could also consider slowing down a little on tier two goods production. Maybe just start with building your boosted tier 2 and try to get the others via trading or from your traveling merchants. (If you start to really need space, I would consider letting those traveling merchants go.) I would plan to make some space and save some population to make more tier one good manufactories. In chapter 3 and 4, I noticed that I needed way more tier 1 than I had and never used as much of my tier 2 as I had. I would echo
@samidodamage and advise you to stop building/upgrading tier 1 nonboosted as soon as you are comfortable doing so. Once you get your trading community built up and your boost percentage up, it just doesn’t make good use of space/culture/population to try to make all three goods in each tier. I was able to let mine go in chapter 3. When you can comfortably build only boosted will depend on how active your fellowship and map area are. You aren’t doing anything wrong, though. This game is a constant challenge of balancing everything, and there are some spots in the game where it’s especially hard. Just be patient. You will find a formula that works for you and the way you want to play.