It's really not. It's only better when looking at it purely from a paradigm of "this passive is worth this much action", which is less beneficial than it seems at first glance. When looking at it from a paradigm of how useful and practical it is in actual gameplay, the steady temp econ drip of double Agriculture is better. Not having to constantly worry about temp econ...isn't a gamechanger, but it is close to one.
It means we can spend heavily on temp econ and still be able to adequately deal with crises the next turn. It means having more resources on hand to spend heavily in the first place, on a far broader selection of things than infrastructure. It means if there's a number of things demanding our attention, we can spend all our actions dealing with them instead of letting one fall by the wayside because we need to spend an action doing Sec Expand Econ.
We've already been suffering the issues that come with insufficient income. The problems are only going to get worse once we get the next Secondary, not better. The flexibility and resilience that two Agriculture passive policies would give us are highly important and are what truly matter.
EDIT: Optimisation models in general tend to shorten a civilisation's lifespan rather than lengthen them, especially the more powerful the civilisation is. They commonly make the civilisation more fragile by retarding its ability to respond to crises and new developments, which often results in some form of collapse or death spiral. The Arthwyd are absolutely powerful enough that optimisation would hinder more than it'd help. The Arthwyd would benefit most from stability, resilience, and flexibility, not yet more power.
There's another way to not have to constantly worry about whether or not we'll have enough temp econ to deal with crises/splurge on large projects.
Save some Econ for the bank in advance.
One way to do this is by committing to doing SEC Farming whenever we're not in a crisis(for which the extra SEC action is going to help a lot). This gives us flexibility and resilience for when we actually need it and fully exploits the Bronze-Blooded and Agricultural Innovators legacies that make farming actions so much better than the passive.
The only reason Econ is a problem is because we're hovering at ~8 temp when we have a capacity of 60-ish. We have a small but steady drip via our Census and our temp econ does still
have some degree of regeneration still, even if the system change has slowed things down a bit.
The issue is voter will, not ability.
The problem can be offset further if we spend more of our normal turn actions to study or do diplomatic/trade expeditions, as those don't cost temp econ. Compared to leaving research and foreign affairs to our passives? This has the advantage of letting us pick the categories* we study and the factions we interact with.
Support the Grythwyd(avoid Gerontocrat quest failure) and Empower the Cadlon(Monarchist quest reward) would've also been effectively net-neutral or net-positive in terms of temp Econ this turn(and failing the Gerontocrat quest just bumped our max Econ down a point).
And switching Support Subordinate(Forluc) to Diplomatic Outreach(Forluc) would've given us the chance for a relationship increase without costing us temp Econ if we really want to save the manpower.
*admittedly, Passive Study does have an advantage in allowing us to roll the Administration category, but we can just buy administrative innovations during a golden age.
