Darvin: The only benefit to efficiency you get from placement is travel time. The shorter the distance the peasant must travel, the more time he spends working. With wood-cutter shacks are possibly the most finicky in this regard, but it's not the stockpile that's your priority; you'll actually get better returns by placing them nearby the wood itself.
A woodcutter's work pattern looks like this:
workplace -> tree -> workplace -> tree -> workplace -> tree -> workplace (work) -> stockpile -> workplace
As you can see, most of his travel time is from the workplace to the nearest tree. If your stockpile is far from trees, then placing it near the stockpile could be incredibly inefficient.
For hunters it's not as big a deal:
workplace -> deer -> workplace (work) -> granary -> workplace
Because deer actually move around, there's not a whole lot you can do to improve the efficiency of hunters. Also keep in mind that he has one of the faster movement speeds of any peasant, so distance isn't as big an issue for him.
Most of the time, your real concern is with defense; place your structures somewhere
safe. Most peasants take a few minutes to complete their routine and return with resources, so there's
a lot of time for an enemy to walk up and kill them or smash their workplace. That's far more important than shaving off a few seconds of travel time.
Well, come to find out Darvin is correct. After playing a while longer, this is true. Thank you for that observation, Darvin!
