TheRodent,
Before I continue with my response, I would like to point out that the repeatable quests definitely help to progress through this game, though a few of them are just way too open to abuse.
That said ... (to me) you stating that this game would be unplayable without them just sounds like an inefficiency issue on your part.
I don't understand how you can possibly not get enough gold from your residences for your needs. The only thing that would explain it is if you're dumping all of your gold into KPs.
For example, I currently have 15 plank MFs, 6 silk MFs and 6 dust MFs, and I still ALWAYS have a surplus of gold.
Per day, every day, all of my MFs do 5 x 3 hour productions and 1 x 9 hour productions.
Lets throw some maths your way:
My daily plank MFs:
15 MFs doing 5 rotations of 3 hours and 1 rotation of 9 hours
Total 3 hour rotations: 75
At level 15, each 3 hour production eats up 1100 gold and 110 supplies per rotation.
Total 9 hour rotations: 15
At level 15, each 9 hour production eats up 2020 gold and 202 supplies per rotation.
So total daily plank expenses are: 112,800 gold and 11,280 supplies.
My daily silk MFs:
6 MFs doing 5 rotations of 3 hours and 1 rotation of 9 hours
Total 3 hour rotations: 30
At level 15, each 3 hour production eats up 8,720 gold and 872 supplies per rotation.
Total 9 hour rotations: 6
At level 15, each 9 hour production eats up 15,900 gold and 1,590 supplies per rotation.
So total daily silk expenses are: 357,000 gold and 35,700 supplies.
My daily dust MFs:
First off, I haven't maxed out my dust MFs yet, so lets just say that on average, they are Level 9
6 MFs doing 5 rotations of 3 hours and 1 rotation of 9 hours
At level 9, each 3 hour production eats up 36,800 gold and 3,680 supplies per rotation.
Total 3 hour rotations: 30
At level 9, each 9 hour production eats up 67,200 gold and 6,720 supplies per rotation.
Total 9 hour rotations: 6
So total daily dust expenses are: 1,507,200 gold and 150,720 supplies.
Now if you add all of that up, every 24 hours I spend 1,977,000 gold and 197,700 supplies on my goods.
While this could seem like a lot, the residences I have built, I only built enough of for the population to support my town and I only have 8 workshops. To add to this, not all of my residences are connected to roads, meaning I get the population boost from them, but no gold income whatsoever.
So all this says to me is that you need to make your town more efficient, and in your case, just seems like to you need more of and higher level residences and most likely less tier 3 MFs. Looking at your town, you have 21 residences. 12 are level 11 (assuming this is your current max until you research further) and 9 are level 10.
In my experience, 21 residences are definitely not enough to support 14!! MFs, especially 4 of them being dust MFs.
TL : DR
You're over-reaching, too many MFs and not enough residences.
Good luck,
NecroDee..