Only just saw this and felt I should reply.
You're just another player who plays for himself. You want rank 1, you like the attention it gets you, yet you are probably utterly useless at trbal coordination, and have most likely played on 90% of the worlds released since you joined TW. Now, I'm not flaming you, so don't start yelling and waving your arms int he hope that it will deter me from posting against them, like some people are on these forums.
A player like silverflyingwolf is obviously in it for the long-run. If you stay low points, build up troops and wait before building an academy, you can get a better village that you won't have to waste resources building later on, and you can continue nobling the bigger villages and producing troops. But as I said, anyone who strives to be even top20 early game is in general a short-term player, and will leave when the next world comes out, or when their rank is threatened by war.
I have played 3 main worlds in 4 years playing, all very successfully. Even managed to get a top10 rank in the most recent one for a shot time. Each time I've played, I've seen the long-term players start outside the top20 and eventually move into the top20 when the top20 early gamers quit.