My mom-in-law plays this game. She logs in once every couple of weeks due to her schedule, and plays for maybe 2 hours. She votes religiously; and stockpiled her gold. She had almost 150 gold just from voting. I told her that if she were to sell all of that gold for EC, she'd have enough EC for r8. She ended up spending it on leveling instead, but she still has a lot of gold from just voting, not donating, do sell for EC if she chose to do so.
Moral of the story--if you can only play for a couple of hours a day and can't farm: VOTE. Then sell the gold for EC.
The economy's swimming in EC and the only way it goes out is through r8. So yeah. The pace you get EC, albeit tedious is just fine.
