Averoth made its gold by investments and had a good gold ethic ...
FWIW - Near the end of Averoth, while the devs were dealing with the multitude of clanning/abuse accusations regarding Averoth (and honestly most of them provided no evidence but were just "Hey, these guy's *must* be cheating!"), the devs did do quite a bit of investigation. It was found that when you totaled up all the debt that the Averothian characters had to their families, it totaled up to over 30,000 gold. IIRC the majority of it was not from characters that had ever been in other realms, or other islands. These were characters that were created in Averoth, and never left. A few were carryovers from Thulsoma. That means that Averoth was the beneficiary of nearly 30,000 gold siphoned from family coffers. This was the primary motivation for yet another overhaul of the family gold restrictions to include things like gold from your aunt via family-home visits, and various other restrictions.
So, yeah, you made some investments. There's no questioning that fact. It's a smart move. But to claim that Averoth built level 7 walls, large high-quality RCs, and fielded 20K CS(?) of troops based on investments and food sales is simply absurd. And I know it, because I saw the figures. 30,000+ family gold debt doesn't lie.
