Why waste your city space for WS if their production is used only for wholesaler? There are much more useful things you can build instead.
Ah, who doesn't like overly broad generalizations?
OK, I'll bite:
- There is nothing that I can build in that space that would offset loss of event rewards (close to zero rewards without leveled WS), so
- I need leveled WS during events, and
- Events are on considerable amount of time throughout a year, and
- In order to keep on-event / off-event setup, I'll need 5 teleports for workshops (and more if I want to move out pop as well) + likely more for the "better" stuff that is in place of workshops - that is, if I can even teleport that "better" stuff, or
- Alternatively, I can rebuild 5 leveled WS, which takes a long, long time without a TON of timeboosts - and this still leaves a problem of moving the "better" stuff out; which means
- Yeah, my WS are here to stay
On top of that, what would be that elusive "better" stuff?
- It can't be expiring buildings, because I will need my WS back for events, and I can't drain expiring buildings in the short time between events, and I can't teleport them
- Any non-standard buildings will need to be teleported out, which will need a ton of teleports for the short period of time they can be useful
- Being at the end game, the only regular stuff that is even remotely useful would be regular goods producers (for tournaments)
- Rebuildings manufactories takes a long time, so again, useful period where they contribute is fairly short; not rebuilding requires teleports again (see above)
- Given costs of tournament catering at the end game, any temporary incremental goods production has very marginal impact on the end result
- And so my WS are staying put where they are, even though I don't really need them
for supplies
Which brings us full circle to where we started - that with 1d productions you're losing a lot of supplies vs 3h productions. While it is true that sustained output of 3h production is higher, it is irrelevant as long as your production meets your needs. Excess supply production is worthless. By the same token sustained production of 5min productions is higher than 3h ones, but I don't see a lot of people optimizing in that direction.
And I am sure that there are some people who use every supply that comes out of non-stop 3h WS productions with PoP applied and culture maxed out, and as such will struggle if they had to live with toolbox productions, this by no means is applicable to everyone. And really, if an advanced player can't last less than a week that FA is on 4 times a year or so on supply instants from events alone, WTH are the doing during the events NOT to sit on bazillion of supply instants?