How do people keep their resources low?

[newbie4]

I'm in realm 3 with about 40,000 points.  I see a lot of players in the 20,000-50,000 point range who have virtually no resources all the time.

They can't be using depot stations at this point range.  And there's no way that they can keep buying things ... it just take so long to buy something ... in just a couple of hours you build up a lot of resources ...

I can understand how to keep resources down in maybe 2 provinces ... you can get a loan to keep your province 8 low, and you can have an army in another province.  But what about the others?

For me ... even after I start building something really big, like a level 7 fortress, I still have at least 200,000 resources left over ... how do people get down to practically nothing -- and practically nothing all the time?

[Polymeron]

Simple. People buy wood and iron and produce more troops. Not enough room? They build a barracks, then more troops still.
Though personally, I always have something to spend my money on. If it's too slow, research more university/arch to speed things up!

[renis]

Polymeron is right. Generally they spend in soldiers. Even with high level of university and architecture, some researches or buildings are very very slow. And generally is also another point. You can build "just another farm", but why building that, instead of hiring soldiers... Is easy to spend the money. The dilema is: for what 

[TanJiAe]

they are right, I usually use resources to hire more soldiers or level up my research. I also send some of it to other provinces to hire more soldiers. hehehe. basically I make it a point to use the resources available and not an easy target for other players.

[SFF_libert]

I prefer hiring more troops . . . in fact only troops can powerfully protect what you have and raid for what you want. I normally hire a lot of soldiers though they usually make negative gold . .