It would be nice if the moderators would provide some more input into the more advanced aspects of current game play, I do appreciate the insights and information of you more astute players however.
Moderators are just players who volunteer their time. They're not in general any more informed than the rest of the population. Inno employees mostly don't post apart from announcements.
with regards to the ranking system and the change:
As people's GBs started to explode in the old system, their points went up exponentially. The *only* thing that counted anymore was basically your highest GB level(s).
Under the new system:
GBs can still count - there's certainly plenty of people whose rank is primarily GB points. Other than the base points they give for construction it's simply 15 points per FP in a completed level. So you have to get the buildings really high to make it count. Also note that treasury donation GBs give you the points of the goods they donate to treasury, so getting those extra high counts double. And Arc drives the whole process AND makes those donations.
For most people battle points are the biggest slice of the pie. This means getting to one of the end ages so that you get more points per fight. And fighting GvG a lot (any fights count, but only GvG is an unlimited source of them - getting to the endgame age and fighting all your neighbors daily might slowly catch you up). To fight as much as you need to you need to increase the efficiency of your troops so the ones you have go further, and your production of them. This involves high level military GBs, which takes a high level Arc to get there. Many high ranking players aren't high ranking because they care about rank, but because they care about GvG.
Goods production technically counts (you just need to donate your goods to the guild to get the points for them - spending them other ways work too, hoarding them in inventory or trading them does not). I however have not seen someone use goods as the staple of how they get their rank.
A high level chateau is also a staple of trying hard as it can become your main source of coins, supplies, and goods.
As for coin/supply balance, it can still be a factor in your pre-endgame scenarios (i.e. if you're starting a new world and trying to catch up without dumping diamonds). But yes, level 80 GBs sort of make it irrelevant. The startup to get to that point becomes the core of most strategy now. What age are you going to switch to focus on levelling GBs to the point where the core of the game becomes trivial? How early are you going to focus on GE? (it's possible in your first week in iron age to complete GE4, but it's a challenge.) How much time are you going to spend twiddling your abort button for quests and which styles of quests best suit your playtime? With that in mind, designing your initial city layout is also still very important. It's going to be a long while before wasting space is no big deal. There's a lot of pressure to get in good GE rewards (especially Terrace Farms) that help level your GBs along with all the stuff needed to keep running GE and getting more good GE rewards.