My Lands: Black Gem Hunting

I am close to ending the first mentor quest and I have come to realize I have probably been wasting this oppurtunity. As a knight I have spent mose of the gold on either wood or iron but now I realize I havent been doing anything with the population bumps. I let them sit idle and disappear over time and get a small boost to gold production but really is there anything else I could be doing with it?

yep.
1. Build an army.
2. drags people from dead players.
3. go to step 1.