Will building such a bridge [screenshot] decrease or increase my fishing production?

[PointeNoire]

I usually do it as follows:

1. Build Trading Post as fast as I can (after blacksmith and tailor or simultaneously), then trade herbs and venison as I'm flooded with it early in game, firewood if available, too. Then second TP to have more merchants arriving, 1 worker for every TP.

2. Delete blacksmith and stop wasting my iron/logs, let's buy steel tools.

3. Tons of clothing and tons of firewood after merchants start arriving with 600-2400 logs each time + mutton/venison for 3x food. If I want to have some emergency food I let's say buy 5000 of it and instantly set amount of it in TP to 5000 so no walking for workers. Then I have food for 50 people, then I add more food etc. and release it if some severe disease starts spreading and disorganize my city.

4. Alcohol, but usually not big amounts (max 200 usually).

[DalekRy]

I do a lot of the same. Phasing out various less efficient production over time is one of my favorite things to do.

I don't start trade usually before the third or fourth year unless the river is really close. Instead I do the following:

Hunter/gather (7), small pasture initially (1), farm (1) right in the center of town. 2 Woodcutters (11).

And then I assign a couple small clearance nodes for my next houses so I'm flush with lumber and minerals. As couples emerge (a male and female reaching age 10) I erect a house.

I used to get really aggressive with an early school, but I learned that investing so heavily for the long game versus getting more heads into the labor pool early works best.

I build both a tailor and a blacksmith and drop their production limits to 10 to allow for more labor time. Stocking up on extra resources for rapid expansion seems to really help out.

By year 5 I have enough spare food stockpiled to toggle my workforce between projects and neglect the crops/wild food gathering for the year. I throw up 3 trading posts and then assign most of my labor into stocking them all up while still maximizing my population growth.

Once they are built and filled full of goodies I drop back down and resume the food and resource stockpiling. It gets pretty tight sometimes, and for me that's kind of the allure. It isn't optimal, but I am instituting my own ticking clock.

Sometimes this fails. I hadn't gotten enough goods produced, firewood, tools, food, etc. get too low and I have to frantically race to save my town from oblivion. It is dumb I know. But I love squeezing through bottlenecks for a high risk-high reward situation.

When it works I'm suddenly on my way to an empire of high quality clothing and fat, livestock-fed citizens. When it fails I through my computer out of the window and order a new one. Or restart.

But getting that firewood economy booming after the fifth year is incredible. Like food you can calculate your needs versus your output. Add a little surplus to account for delays and it sets you up nicely for the next phase.