If I'm following the conversation correctly, I like the idea of being able to get decorations for gold instead of Empire Points. But it sounds like there is concern about what EP would then be used for, if anything.
What if there was a method similar to League of Legends, where everything is available for
both the premium currency and the in-game currency? It's a little different here because no one is actually paying for Empire Points anymore, but what if there was an EP price for the item,
and a separate coin price for the item that was pretty high, relatively speaking, and you could pay with either or? Spend those precious EP at the expense of less time invested but more value to the points, or coin, at the expense of more time invested by less value to coin? Or vice versa.
I haven't tested that thought critically yet. Just brainstorming openly and randomly inserting myself into the conversation.