Hypotheses:
- The sleigh builder produces coins, supplies, few medals, little guild power or some goods
- The arc undirectly produces a lot of medals
- Goods can be gotten easily from DT or CF
- Guild power can be gotten easily from GE
- Coins and supplies are useless
- A special production building is useful if at least one of its productions is useful
Thesis: The sleigh builder is useless
Demonstration:
- Coins are useless (5)
- Supplies are useless (5)
- Guild power is useless (4)
- Medals are useless (2)
- Goods are useless (3)
=> The sleigh builder is useless (1; 6) □
I wouldn't be using it for the productions in the first 5 slots (5mins through to 8hrs) on a everyday basis personally. However for the goods (1 day) I'd love to use it for that. It's by far one of the most efficient for its size in goods production by the time you get to double lane roads
Yes you can get goods from DT/CF. But unless you're camping in low eras indefinitely the DT will only stretch so far and the CF would require the user to have enough patience with questing for that to be enough on its own.
You've also still got to put /something/ in all the space that DT/CF isn't taking up.
The other thing is you have to have some current age production buildings in your city if you wish to keep being able to do event quests even if you wanted to use blacksmiths wherever possible. So if you intend to go through the tech tree that leaves a few options:
(1) special productions that produce something more useful then just supplies for the space (preferably goods or FPs)
(2) Terrace Farms (So huge! Good thing they can produce FPs and some refined goods but really lousy amount of goods for the size in comparison)
(3) Normal/Premium production buildings. (also huge)
So having the sleigh doubles up both for goods in your normal play, and completing production quests whenever a quest comes up. Even if you have normal production buildings having a few special productions gives you some extra wiggle room for completing those quests
Another thing is CF tends to produce for current age. Whereas if you wanted to move up in the tech tree but keep selling goods from a certain age once you've exceeded that age you still need something to be producing that. Any age worth producing goods to sell won't be as efficient or small with normal goods buildings as the Sleigh is at producing goods. So either you leave some of your event buildings at that age, get something like the sleigh specifically for producing in that age so you can sell more then one age at a time, or rely solely on CF to build up your stocks before moving on and once you run out of those stocks you've run out.
Personally I wouldn't have the time, energy or motivation to be relying on the Chat Front for all my goods needs. It's just too time consuming and repetitive for my liking. Of course for some players the Chat Front is a wonderful thing to rely upon solely. And great for those players. But it's not something I'd recommend a player jump into without first deciding how big of a role they intend to assign it for their game play and understanding what that involves