Every building and what it actually makes - a noob's full tour after 2 weeks of clicking around

ok so when i started this game i was completely lost looking at the build menu because there is SO many buildings and i had no idea what any of them do or which ones i actually need. like the names kind of tell you but not really. so after about two weeks of clicking around, building stuff, sometimes building the wrong stuff, i kind of made my own mental map of what each building makes and what its for, and im gonna dump it all here because i would have killed for a post like this on day 1. im not a pro, im still figuring out the deep strategy, but at least i can tell you WHAT the buildings are now. im gonna go roughly by category. raw materials first because thats where everything starts. so the WOOD FACTORY. this one makes wood, obviously. but heres the thing i didnt get at first, wood is not just one little thing you sell, its used in a TON of production processes, especially construction. like you need wood to build other stuff. so a wood factory early is honestly really useful because you will always be needing wood. dont sleep on wood, its boring but its the backbone. then STONE QUARRY (stone quary in the game spelling). this one extracts stone, but not just generic stone, its different types: limestone, sand, sandstone, andesite, cement, marble. all used heavily in construction. and heres a cool secret i learned, at level 5 the stone quarry also starts giving GOLD ORE. yeah. gold ore, which you then refine into actual gold at the gold mine. so a high level quarry is not just rocks, its part of the gold pipeline. i thought that was pretty neat, didnt expect rocks to lead to gold. next METALS FACTORY. produces metals like copper or aluminium. these are used heavily in construction and also in weapons production. i havent really touched weapons yet as a noob but good to know the metal feeds into that. for now i just know construction eats metal too. CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS FACTORY, in the game i think its the clay pit / construction materials one. this makes a whole bunch of building stuff: clay, bricks, glass, doors, tiles, pipes, curbs and more. basically all the processed materials that new buildings and upgrades and renovations need. so between wood, stone, metal, and these construction materials, thats your construction supply chain. when i finally understood that buildings need MATERIALS to be built and these factories are where materials come from, the whole game clicked for me. you either make the materials or you buy them from other players, but they have to come from somewhere. ok now FOOD and FARM stuff. FARMS produce things like milk, eggs, leather. farm products then get used in a wide range of other products, like food, and leather goes into clothes. so farms are a middle step, they feed the food and clothes chains. VEGETABLE AND FRUIT GARDENS, these produce tomatoes, tobacco, pears and a bunch of similar stuff. again used especially for food production, and animal farms. tobacco im guessing goes into some product too. basically gardens plus farms = the inputs for food. then RESTAURANTS. ok restaurants are cool because they have a double role. one, they produce a wide range of FOOD. two, they give influence to nearby buildings, some buildings need a restaurant close to upgrade. so restaurant is both a food maker and a support building. i talked about influence earlier kind of, but yeah restaurants pull double duty. BARS, same double role as restaurants but for drinks. bars produce a wide range of alcoholic beverages, AND they provide influence that certain buildings need to be upgraded. so again, makes a product and supports your town. i kind of like these dual purpose buildings, feels efficient. now the stuff i think is underrated as a new player: CLOTHES FACTORY. makes wearable clothes, a wide range of garments. but the key thing, and this took me a while, is that clothes are not just to sell. once you collect them you can WEAR them, and worn clothes give you a steady DAILY ENERGY BONUS for as long as they last. for a new player who is always short on energy (energy is the eternal struggle lol) this is huge. higher level clothes factory unlocks better, more powerful items. so building a clothes factory is kind of building yourself a personal energy generator. i wish i did it sooner. JEWELRY WORKSHOP. very similar idea, it crafts precious accessories, and worn jewelry also gives a steady daily energy bonus while it lasts. higher level workshop = more valuable pieces. so jewelry is the fancy cousin of clothes, also an energy bonus source if you wear it. between clothes and jewelry you can keep a nice little daily energy bonus going if you keep making fresh ones before the old ones run out. WAREHOUSE. ok this one is not glamorous but its IMPORTANT and i learned the hard way. warehouses store your products, like wood or stone. depending on the level a warehouse holds between 2000 and 10000 products. and heres the painful part: when your citys storage reaches its limit, your city CANNOT receive new products anymore. so your factories produce but theres nowhere to put it, and things back up. i hit this wall, my production seemed to stop and i didnt know why, turned out my storage was full. so build warehouses, upgrade them, give your stuff room to live. nobody tells you this and then suddenly your town is constipated lol. SCHOOLS. schools train your citizens who have no qualification into actual jobs, everything from cook to priest. why does this matter? because certain buildings, like churches, cannot hire unskilled workers, they only take professionals. so if you want to staff the fancy buildings you need trained people, and the school is where you train them. as a noob i ignored schools at first and then couldnt figure out why i couldnt staff certain buildings. its because those need qualified workers, and school is the qualification factory. i should also mention the GOLD MINE since everybody asks about gold. gold mines extract gold, somewhere between 0.005 grams and 0.025 grams in a single process depending on the level of the mine. the higher the mine the more gold per go. one thing to know, the gold mine hires regular workers and it expires after 30 days, so its not forever, you rebuild it. and remember what i said, the stone quarry at level 5 produces the gold ore that gets refined into gold at the mine. also from what i read the cost of mining gold goes up the more gold has been mined recently, so its kind of self balancing, you cant just infinitely farm cheap gold. i dont fully understand the gold economy yet so i wont pretend, but thats the basic. and then theres the SERVICE buildings, police, fire hall, church, hospital, and so on. these dont really make a product you sell, their job is to provide services and influence that OTHER buildings need to function and upgrade. they hire workers and a lot of them also expire after 30 days. i wont go deep here because its really its own topic (how buildings need neighbours to upgrade), but just know when you see police, fire, church, hospital, those are support, not money makers directly. oh i should add some of the dumb mistakes i made related to all these buildings, because honestly you learn more from the fails. first week i built like four different raw material buildings because i thought more = better, but i had no processing or storage, so i just produced a pile of wood and stone that filled my storage and then everything stopped. i basically built the bottom of the pyramid with no top and no room to store it. lesson: balance your chain, dont just spam one type. second mistake, i didnt build any clothes or jewelry for like ten days, so i was constantly out of energy and miserable, meanwhile i could have been wearing clothes for a daily energy bonus the whole time. dont ignore the energy bonus buildings, they pay for themselves in how much smoother the game feels. third, i kept trying to staff a building and it wouldnt let me, and i raged about it, and it turned out (a) sometimes i needed trained workers from a school, and (b) sometimes the building wasnt connected or didnt have its influence neighbours. so when something wont staff or wont upgrade, its usually not a bug, its a missing piece in the chain, a road, an influence building, a trained worker, or full storage. its almost always one of those four. i now go down that checklist instead of panicking. also a quick word on what you DO with all these products once you make them. some you use yourself in further production (like wood into construction), some you consume for energy (food and drinks), some you wear (clothes, jewelry), and some you can sell to other players on the trade market for money if you have extra. so a building is making something thats either an input for your own chain, or something you use directly, or something you sell. when i started asking myself for each building which of those it is, i planned way better. and one more, dont forget these buildings need WORKERS and workers need rooms (houses) and the workers also dont live forever, depending on their house they live somewhere between 10 and 100 days. so its not enough to build the factory, you need a person inside it, and that person needs a home, and that home determines how long they last. its all connected, which is overwhelming at first but kind of beautiful once it clicks. everything depends on everything. so if i zoom out, the way i now think about it is like layers: raw material buildings (wood, stone, metal) are the base. processing buildings (construction materials, farms, gardens) turn raw into useful inputs. production buildings (food via restaurants, drinks via bars, clothes, jewelry) make the final products people use. support buildings (market, police, fire, church, hospital, school, warehouse, roads) dont make money directly but make everything else possible. and the gold mine sits on the side as the precious one. when i finally saw it in layers like that instead of just a big confusing menu, i stopped randomly building stuff and started building with a plan. ok this got way longer than i planned, classic me. but if even one new player reads this and doesnt waste their first week confused like i did, worth it. if i got any detail wrong the experienced folks please correct me in comments, im still very much learning. gl have fun, and seriously, build a warehouse before your storage explodes.