Also we ended up making whole territories, NA clans end up scattered and spread out, whereas Coalition, Greys, Druz, Templar, Wolves, Mercs and Nords staked out large territories for themselves from the start, some large enough to trade even interiorly for a decent profit. Easier to control more fiefs that way.
I wouldn't agree with this - hsopitallers had the steppes, occitan and FUPA the desert, Velucan empire had the velucan highlands, and we had the north and north east - big territories, but meaningless with half as many fiefs.
Internal trade within those borders of eu territories would be 200-250% max - about what we had, but not worth it. What really made difference is carebear alliance with trade safely across entire western continent from north to south without intereference and all working together getting 400% trade bonus with more fiefs therefore more S&D. In NA north and south actually fought or didnt freely give their allies access to S&D.
NA has fought and lost almost same number of troops as EU - which means we fought as many large battles with half as many fiefs, half as much S&D and therefore half as much gold. IF EU fought their proportional amount of fights for their number of fiefs they would have had more issues with gold.