Alright, let's analyze how the Facebook version of this game works, and what it means when they ported it to PC in the most direct and un-tweaked way possible.

The Facebook version has two in-game currencies:

Coins - These can be earned in-game, or you can buy 50,000 for $13. Roughly 25 cents for 1000 coins.
Diamonds - These can only be bought. 200 for $15, or 7.5 cents per diamond.

So a 1000 coins is worth about 3-3.5 diamonds.

Say you want an expansion 5-pack for your capital city. That's 40 "diamonds" in the facebook game. That's about 12,000-12,500 coins, or $3.

But you'd have to buy the $15 bulk package of diamonds to do that, so you'd spend just $5 for 50 diamonds, or if you want unlimited turns on Facebook, you'd just spend the $15 for unlimited turns, two expansion bundles, and 30 diamonds left over.

If you bought Triple Town at reduced price on gog, you paid about $4, leaving you to "pay" $11 or so for expansion bundles. $11, times 4000 coins per dollar... 44k coins for two expansion bundles. Expansion bundles in-game cost 40k on the gog version.

Keep in mind that coin gains are kept impractically slow because they want Facebook users to get out their wallets after a while. That's fine if you're looking to milk casual gamers I guess, but left as an artifact in a take-home fully-owned product, it's a bit harsh and anti-fun.

The DRM-free PC version is balanced with the USD-for-coins mechanic in mind, and it shows.

Patches would be great. Maybe even add a few decorations exclusive to the Facebook version, I don't mind. But the PC user probably expects and prefers a different experience.

Not sure where you're going with all the numbers being thrown around in your post, but to be fair, an expansion bundle is by far the most expensive item available for purchase in Triple Town - and it can be afforded after five (probably even fewer by pros) well played games. I agree that the cost of outpost-usable items is worthlessly high the vast majority of the time, but I don't think the problem is really how fast a good player can earn coins, but the extremity of the curve on which those coins are earned during gameplay. (ie almost none for hundreds or however many turns, then huge increase for crossing arbitrary point limit into 'town' status and such.)

The numbers are from Facebook. I could have copied something wrong or botched a calculation on top of that.

I'm only getting 1-3k per run myself... usually end up Village or Hamlet. I had to buy a crystal at 98% progress bar the one time I got a Town.

I guess it's good to know that if you can't get to a Town, you may as well cash in. But then again, a couple lucky turns and you can turn around the whole map a lot of the time...

Anyway, it would be neat if there were one-time achievement awards for reaching a settlement type, and if the coin flow was more continuous. Anything I do after Hamlet is usually a waste of time. Maybe I should just make Hamlet and lose fast from now on...