Its actually not that different from before. Pre-January every 1 gold you made in cRPG meant you made 1 gold in Strategus and the only other way to make Strategus gold was by:
1) mercing for other people's fights for a fee (was capped at 1000 gold eventually, hope that is changed to 10000 gold)
2) owning a fief and collecting revenue
3) transfers between Strategus individuals (usually a trade like 1000 troops for 75,000 gold)
It sounds post-patch it will include:
4) heirloom sales from cRPG
5) daily grind from cRPG (same as before but without the double gain in both strategus and cRPG)
But since creating armor and weapons is a manufacturing process that will require goods and time you once again enter the area of demand and supply. If too many people try to grind their way to buying equipment, the non-grinders who just manufacture their own equipment on Strategus will be able to raise their prices and mak even more gold, which will help pay for hiring mercenaries, paying upkeep for troops, buying troops from other players, and buying different equipment or buying fiefs outright.
The market forces will automatically correct themselves so even the richest cRPG millionaires will find they can only go so far with it and will eventually realize that it is better to conserve it for essential purposes (mercs, upkeep, fiefs) and manufacture the rest like everyone else or risk spending it all on one campaign to find that they can't make gold quick enough to compensate for their outgoing expenditures in trying to use gold for everything.
This natural equilibrium showed itself in old Strategus where the cost of troops steadily decreased near the end because fief holders made too many troops a day, the number of factions with fiefs decreased and most were allies of each other so less expenditure of troops. When there was more warmongering earlier, the cost of troops was very high for landless clans. Plus you had to retain enough gold to outfit your troops with decent gear (roughly 150K gold per 1000 troops). Looking forward to a full fledged market economy, but the first release will not have it from the sounds of things, market will only come out several weeks after that along with the other new features.
