w/ a city of 11-19k people, you need 2 clothes, which require 2 labor to make and roughly 1 labor to harvest the wool for, assuming you have the cloth shop. 3 labor a turn in exchange for +1 to morale? You could just put those 3 labor to harvesting food and get a morale bonus from lots of food instead
No, with the clothing shop 1 unit of labor makes 2 units of clothes, so it's more or less 2 labor for +1 morale. More efficient than extra food, especially if you don't have tons of irrigated plains.
It only looks more efficient when you ignore the fact that the sheep don't sheer themselves. Upgrading hills to be anything but a drain in resources takes more labor then irrigating the landscape. Pastures take more resources then irrigation.
Irrigation: 2 labor
Pasture: 1 wood +3 labor
Thus the fastest route to being able to afford clothing is probably going to be irrigating two hills, not building a pasture.
Pasture option:
Spend 3 wood/stone and 5 labor building infrastructure (cloth shop+pasture). Then spend 3 labor a turn producing +1 morale and +1 food. This means you need another 3 food to support these guys. So feeding them requires irrigating a plain for another 2 initial labor and spending another labor a turn farming that field. Total cost: 3wood/stone 7 labor and 4 labor a turn.
Irrigate the hills option:
Spend 2 wood/stone and 6 labor building infrastructure (cloth shop+pasture). Then spend 4 labor a turn producing +1 morale and +4 food. The initial investment is only slightly higher (trading 1 labor for 1 wood/stone), but these guys don't need anyone supporting themselves at least.
Or just grow more food:
Spend 6 labor irrigating plains. Then spend 3 labor a turn producing +9 food. This is enough for a morale bonus up to 18k people. This spares a labor every turn however, which could be used to irrigate another tile, giving you a morale bonus up to 24k people (at which point 3 wool are needed...) Even if you are forced to irrigate marginal land, it's a competitive option.
Summery of total cost
Method Initial Labor Invested Resources Labor Upkeep
Pasture 7 3 4
Irrigate hills 6 2 4
Grow Food 6 0 4 (1 of which is doing further investment)
But of course, all of this is ignoring the much larger problem, which is how does clothing stack up against everything else? Look at almost any other option available: build a building, build a unit, research a tech. All of these give you a permanent increase of some sort. Clothing on the other hand is going to keep burning resources every turn for a marginal bonus.
The way the balance is stacked right now, clothing seems to me like a huge waste of resources.