Placing labor limits on production buildings results in the spamming of that structure thus narrowing the road to the cookie-cutter end-results that everyone working to optimize production will gravitate to.
This is especially acute in early tier production facilities that have no upgrades.
The Cobbler shop especially under-performs, thus requiring massive repetition.
Just two or three Foragers (on most maps) can produce so much Willow while gathering a few Herbs and Root that half a dozen or more Basket shops still drown in it while storage fills, so we spam them too hoping for Traveling Merchants to buy the excess.
It would not be so evident if structures placed contiguous could interlock with like kind, to create a larger facility with extra labor over individual structures.
A ninety-degree increment adjustment in placement alone will not prevent the optimized production/proximity requirement mold we’re all falling into.
The ability to add more labor to a work facility has in the past been of great help, the Market being an excellent example.
Tier upgrades to add labor, or maybe joined facilities, some way to improve the performance of production without constant repetition eating up the map.