Can't say I'm pleased that gold isn't transferable, but that doesn't mean new strat won't be different. I guess strategus ignores the fact that armies were paid in gold though, regardless of how you got that gold. From merchants, bribes, fiefs, gold was just that, gold. Whoever had the most, generally had the best troops, maybe not the most experienced, but certainly the best equipped and possibly the largest force. Strategus is linear in both aspects, troop recruitment and quality of equipment. There's absolutely no room for a merchant guild.
Lets look at other things as well, either with new strat or the current one. Being an information broker for example would be impossible, you could make more gold just sitting in a city not doing anything just racking up gold over time. To spy, one has to travel to the required destination meaning you're not able to sit in a territory to recruit troops or work for gold so whatever information you sell, has to be worth more than the time it took you to get to that destination, which isn't likely(otherwise your employers would just do it themselves). With gold being transferable to strategus, it's far more likely that you could make more gold this way(depending on just how much competition there is) than sitting in a village doing absolutely nothing.
To people who complain about stockpiling gold, you can only stock pile for so long, eventually you have to spend it. And then once you spend it, it's gone, so much for the life savings. A few weeks down the road after a few battles, you've already lost all your gold and the vast majority of the troops and equipment that gold bought. Seems to me that this would only be an issue "initially", if even at all.
