+1 to everything boon makes iron ~useless

[Manxome]

If you get one of those page 4 boons that gives all buildings +1 output when next to (something), then making tools out of iron basically stops being more efficient, so there's no longer an advantage to researching or building the advanced iron-based buildings.

Using copper, 1 action + 1 copper ingot => 1 advanced tool
Using iron, 3 actions + 3 iron ingots => 5 advanced tools

Normally, upgrading to iron is a significant efficiency boost. But with +1 to both outputs, they both produce 6 advanced tools using 3 actions + 3 ingots. But copper is cheaper to smelt than iron and you get the first output immediately instead of getting everything at the end of 3 turns, so with the boon, copper is basically just better.

For producing basic tools, it's
1 action + 5 wood => 1 basic tool
3 actions + 2 iron ingots => 5 basic tools

I guess there could conceivably be a situation where you'd rather spend 2 iron ingots than 15 wood, but in most situations the wood is cheaper, so it's basically the same result as the advanced tools: both produce 6 tools every 3 turns, but the lower-tech option has cheaper inputs and more flexibility.

This isn't necessarily a huge problem, since the issue only occurs if you get certain boons. In principle, it seems fine (or even good!) if boons change the most efficient way of doing things, even if that means the highest-tech option is sometimes no longer the best.

But the particular boons in question are amazingly good, so I always take them if they're offered, so in practice this situation seems more like the default than it does like an edge case.

Arguably that means those boons are just overpowered and should be removed. As long as some rare, powerful items are produced in a batch size of 1, these boons give you at least a 100% efficiency boost to those items. (Though the iron toolmaker also suggests a way one could work around that--if one were sufficiently determined--by changing a whole bunch of other buildings to produce 2 items every 2 turns, instead of 1 every turn.)

[Catman]

Thanks for the analysis. I have plans to make Iron more useful in general in the future, regardless of the boon, so that should solve the issue too