Is it better to craft your armies weapons, or craft goods and buy the weapons with the gold earned?
I have a bunch of random stuff I can craft, can you only craft things that you get "the message" from?
Craft goods and sell them, then use the money to craft the weapons and armor. You really shouldn't buy anything outright, unless it's the really cheap stuff.
Getting the message gets you +3 points on whatever equipment you have on you at that time and -1 point to anything else you had points on already. So if you had 12 points in Throwing Axes but were carrying 2 Javelins and no throwing axes, you would end up with 11 points in Throwing Axes and 6 in Javelins (+3 points, x2 since you were carrying two).
Each point lowers the crafting cost of the item and increases the number you can potentially make per turn. Really I think you'd like to get 12 points or so in anything you want to produce. 1 point is a 30% cost discount, which is nice, but you'll barely make any. 12 points is decent.
Watch out as there is currently no way to tell it how many you want. If you have 30 skill in some item, you could burn up all your money quick as you end up building a dozen or two per hour.