Whats the point of the large quarry/mine?

[Sir Edward]

Am i missing something, or does it take 20 instead of 8 workers for the same amount of production AND not include the costs to clear around the deposits?

[🖤Miss Sapphy🖤]

Found after 5 second on update post "This is also a 3x3 structure you place on top of (rather than adjacent to) a stone deposit. It also produces more stone than 3 small quarries. While it produces more stone, the tradeoff is that is requires tools to operate. You'll want to make sure you have a blacksmith and tool production chain established before building this one."

As an addition to that, to my recollection, you can only attach 2 small quarries to an outcrop. So not only is it in theory, more productive than 3 small quarries, as a start. You can also get 1 that is worth more than 3 times, per outcrop. That's a baseline 150%+ efficiency per outcrop (ignoring the tool cost ofcourse). It's pretty straight and simple, as upgrades go. Higher cost, for higher output.

[YetiChow]

It's faster output, not necessarily higher -- if you're playing on Falle difficulty you still have the same amount of stone in the deposit, you just get to access it faster. This is still "helpful" since it allows you to build things more quickly (and get further 'ahead of the curve' of the ramping difficulty, giving you breathing room to complete the large structures before you have to start fully focusing on defence)

On easier modes where stone and iron deposits are unlimited, you do indeed get significantly more out of a large quarry/iron mine than 2 regular ones. Not only do they offer more output per work time, they also offer more benefit for master workers and other such bonuses (those bonuses are multipliers; so multiplying the larger base number has a greater effect.)

It's also worth noting that if you have tools, the regular quarries and mines will use them to boost production; so once again the large versions are more efficient -- two small quarries will use tools at about the same rate as 1 large quarry, but of course the large quarry is still producing more stone per minute/in-game year/however you want to measure time, so it's once again more efficient to use those tools to achieve the higher base rate (which can then be further boosted) than as a multiplier for a lower base rate.

[Sir Edward]

So my experience IN GAME is that large quarries and mines are NOT as productive as 3 separate quarries in the long-run in terms of man power, tool consumption, and output, but the mastery SOMEWHAT evens it out.

By the time you can afford to build these efficiently with all the rock demo usually required, you no longer need it.

It would be a much better deal if they did away with the fancy math and just made it literally a mine/quarry X3, which is still useful because it utilizes a resource point fully with the current cap in the game.

The large charcoal, tavern and chapel work really well early on because only having one charcoal plant, by the time you are building it, you need two at least. So it replaces the normal coal building for me.
Probably not the intention of it.

The large tavern especially replaces the small one in my mind because unlike the church, the tavern is cheap ish to build. The large tavern's biggest cost is wood but building that strategically early on allows for permanent critical infrastructure planning.

Now, casually these little things dont matter, but if you're playing on survival with maxed AI and hoping for world domination, every little bit counts.