Are buildings too expensive?

I kinda find buildings to be a helluva lot more expesive than RTW. I know now that there is more buildings to build but the increment for every next level spikes up absurdly. Even the included benefits are not enough to justify the price. Because of this I have to sacrifice some turns without construction in order to keep my income smooth. Its not that I'm poor or anything I have income in the hundred thousands but thats through not building every turn. As a result a lot of my settlements are under developed.

I think that the building system is actually pretty good in just what you describe - it forces you to choose.

You cannot build up all your settlements to be perfect and I sort of prefer it like this. I find that I tend to upgrade most settlements to the basic techs (1200 or less florins) but then I have to start choosing. I tend to prioritise my "core" cities over the border cities that I might lose in a bad situation. Also, some border castles I build up to get good troops to the front.

In M:TW1 the trade system got you a huge amount of florins rather easily and that allowed for full teching up of all settlements, but now that is gone and I like the new system a lot more.

The only drawback to expensive buildings is that some factions do not really get good benefits from some top tier buildings. It sort of makes those buildings obsolete,but why care about that.

I don't find them too expensive, but then again I picked a rich faction (Turkeys). I'm getting 30,000 florins a turn easily, so the costs aren't to bad, but building 10,000 dollar buildings in 40 separate cities every turn can get tiring on even the best economy. I don't think they're expensive, but then again I haven't played a poor faction yet.

It really does set a certain flavor with the game though. As HRE for instance, you're forced to use cheapo armies early because you can't afford the top tier research, which sounds pretty accurate to me.

Same goes for nations like Russia, or in contrast, Egypt.