It's not mentioned much but what's worthwhile depends on where ur at along the story questline and what u consider to be winning in this game. From beginning to end it changes. I've always viewed rank as the indicator for my performance, I've been satisfied since I've steadily moved up. After finishing story questline it was not possible to move up the ranks w/o fighting, all the top ranked players r fighters. I'm quite certain i'll never get to #1 since I'll never do enough fights. I'm at 225 and slowly moving up on 224, last guy I passed resisted and has been doing a lot of fights/day. It's getting increasingly more difficult to move up. I've played for 3yrs7mos, it's pretty hard to catch up to someone who started early.
Guilds were mentioned, I played a solo guild until recently. expanded to 5 members, all r pretty low lvl. I still am the guild; I do more fights than the other 4 combined. My guild rank jumps around quite a lot going back and forth from platinum to diamond league, since I finished questline i've lvl'd my attack buildings up and gain ok # of game pts from the battlegrounds; able to do about 120 fights/day now. I do GvG, it doesn't consume enough to even notice.
Used to always be short on gold or supplies, that abruptly changed and with addition of extra event buildings purchased from the market went to a real excess, no complaints. I've never been short on goods or BP's, put up goods buildings and goods GB's early, had room w/only a couple of GB's and found a couple of big dogs to add to last spot for BP's. Had a couple of Shrines of Inspiration for probably 2 yrs, extra 700+BP's. Removed 5 GB's so far, considering removing another. I put up extra military buildings, built 12 Dojo Temples, built Royal Bathhouse, and completed all of the settlements for the emissaries. Had enough units to get thru storyline at that time w/o Alc, was a couple of eras ago, eventually built Alc, lvl75 is good for now.
I've ignored an area that is all important to many players, GB's lvls. I waited to even consider GB's standings, I look at top lvls a bit more now. Although 100 CD is getting there it's nowhere close to the top (149 for Sinerania). It's funny that my SMB is relatively high at 102, not a very popular building, but I've indirectly received more FP's from coin purchases than ahy other GB directly; SMB was quick to lvl up and it's pretty easy to get a high coin buff. Currently at 1236% coin buff and produce about 320M coin/day, been buying 120+fps/day for quite a while, purchased 48K FP's so far. lol, I get thru the gold collection quests really fast, just a couple of buildings, 7.6M/coin from Eagle Mountain w/o BG doubling.
I'll make some more changes after I lvl up my FP and attack buildings, I'll eventually remove gold buff items and replace w/something else. It's really slow go get descent items to replace what I'm using. I still have 9 Terrace Farms to switch, lol, down from 12. The Dojo Temples will also go along w/botanical gardens. Few others that have better replacements available.
One thing stands when I consider OP, being a farmer gave me a huge advantage over anyone that does not collect many diamonds. My town has been pretty much expanded to max for a long time, extra room makes it so much easier. My mining towns r shrimps and don't have a lot except for WW's, I do a bare minimum and continue along questline, have 452 diamonds coming up soon, just have to get there, lol.