I can tell from your screen shots that my approach has been quite different compared to yours. I built my last town as small and lean as possible; exactly 125 houses for 1000 pop at tier 4; only producing just enough of everything. I had an explosive economy at 500 pops, and by the time it had grown to 700 I was supporting 96 soldiers and about as many guards. I managed to get almost everything I needed inside a city wall about 65x65 in size. Small, compact, easy to defend; at least that was the theory. Basically Iāve been playing with a zero tolerance policy towards raiders.
So I may be going overboard with my military compared to other players, and trying different things is part of what keeps the game fun (at least for me), but itās a hard pill to swallow knowing that the āupgradedā buildings are drastically less efficient than their base counterparts. I can swallow a thematic justification for the deep mines; your villagers are spending more time going up and down the mine shaft? I donāt think itās actually a fun. Realism does not equal fun; if it did, DMV simulator would be a thing.
Not everyone can support 1700 pops on their rig, and not everyone will want to. Ideally Iād imagine they want to tune the game balance to support a variety of play styles.