For some time now, I've been curious as to whether importing good to improve housing solely for the sake of getting more tax income is always worthwhile.

There isn't any question that the tax income from the higher luxury class housing is sufficient to justify importing whatever it takes to get to those heights, but in some of the working class housing levels, the practice is questionable. To get some numbers I set up the following situation:

I imagined a housing block consisting of 100 squares. These squares had evolved into 20 1x1's and 20 2x2's. I then tried to calculate the financial returns given four resource patterns:

• Barley, Clay, Potters, and Brewers were all available - No imports needed.
• Barley, Potters, and Brewers were available. - Clay had to be imported.
• Barley and Brewers were available - Pottery had to be imported.
• Both Pottery and Beer had to be imported.

Detailed info can be found by following the above links. Below is a summary of what I found:

Looking at this, it seems to me that:

• Unless the goal is to evolve luxury housing, importing both pottery and beer is not a good idea.
• One finished good (either beer or pottery) can be profitably imported when the ultimate goal is to get housing to Elegant Residence level or higher.
• If you have the ability to make pottery and brew beer, but need to import one raw material, it makes sense to do so if you are going to end up with Modest Apartments or higher.
• If you must import both raw materials, you should strive to evolve your housing to Elegant Resident level or higher
  

There are, of course, other than financial reasons to evolve housing. In those cases you do what you have to

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