Factories by themselves gave hundreds of thousand each during the last patch I tested. But that's kind of abusive IMO.
Selling manufactoring product gives quite a lot of money. Otherwise, play peltians and unlock the social progress "unused crop = printing money machine".
Personally I don't find it useful to push for more money than about 30k / turn and that's achieved at about 3k to 5k pop with banks and commercial offices, and a few industry buildings.
As much as I hate to say it, I have yet to even get to the point of manufacturing anything; hell, I dont even know how it works or what it does. I've so far every time gotten bored and lost interest before I ever get near that (this time it just happened faster than usual). The game doesnt really agree with me very much at all so far. I'm getting the feeling that this fact isnt changing anytime soon, if ever.
For now, as I've no real drive to play it currently, I'm just going to step back and observe from a distance again. Provided I dont forget about it.
You make a strong point here I wanted to raise around. Truly, manufactoring ain't that fun of a mechanic currently, and it's kind of hidden and not intuitive. But that's currently a minor concern, more or less, because as long as diplomacy ain't in the game, well it's half a game we're playing, given what Chris told us about the game. Which also makes me remember another point I want to raise, there is quite a lot of resources in this game (and I don't mean the "extractibles ones"). I mean you need to take care and balance:
- crops
- meals
- population
- jobs
- entertainment
- about 7 (I think ?) different types of manufactoring
- "map" resources
- building themselves (as they are tied to population, I consider them somewhat as a resource)
- crime
- energy
- 3 kinds of social progress points
- tiles (yes, since they give bonus to the player depending on building, I count them as resources)
- pollution
- terraforming (4 things to manage here)
- temperature
- victory progress
- research
- language (times the number of AI in the game)
- it's going to change, but whatever thing will take care of diplomacy times the number of AI.
- "rogue" progress and it's counterpart the planet appeasement
- crowns
- military
- territories
- ... and I think I forgot some. I'm rushed here, gotta go to work...
Depending on how diplomacy is done and combat changes, there could be a need to either explain all of those much better than what's done now, or to remove / automate / simplify some in order to focus the game on what's important. Actually, Misery, you'd be a good tester for this. From what you're saying, if only a few mechanics feel pointless you'll feel bored and quit
(and currently, there's quite a few which do).