I used to think that fighting was not necessary to move along. I was working then for a while without it, and noticed as my ranking slowly crept up. I had a change of heart when I realized that the building points just could not grow very quickly as I progressed and waited for technology, and that there was no way for me to attack the continental armies until receiving some new upgrades. This meant waiting. Waiting and clicking.
Now I see that the key to getting ahead with points is to fight only with the inactive players, and keep alliances with the active ones. Then also fight as much as you can in the continent map.
One person, who was in first place in one of the worlds, told me that he got to first by attacking all in his neighborhood every day. The idea struck me as odd. Here is a statistic that should grab your attention:
You have to gather 300 gold coins to get one point.
You need 50 battle points for one point.
A battle with two spearmen without any damage earns you 240 battle points, so this is the equivalent of 5 points. This is like gathering 1500 gold coins or supplies So to get the same resources to get the same number of points as fighting, and winning against 10 neighbors, you would need to have gathered 15,000 gold coins. That is the equivalent of 714 clicks on a roof tile house with citizens enthusiastic, which would take 178 hours, clicking once each 15 minutes. Or, 18 hours of saving up on 10 houses.
So, if you want to try to improve your score, go right ahead. Click on those houses all day. 18 hours long, on those 10 houses. Or, kill of 20 spearman in rankings 70-80, without getting wounded. Maybe if you have a lot of time on your hands, the clicking on the houses is better. But in a military strategy game, the solution normally involves military, not mere resource production.
But one thing to keep in mind: it is really important to have good relationships with trading with your top 10 in the group, so it is probably useful to have a ban on sabotaging the top 10, so that none of them get miffed and decide not to trade.
Case in point. In the top 40 in my world, 23 of the people have 200 or more battles to their names (58%). In ranking positions 100-200, there are only 16 players above 200 (16%). So this seems to indicate that if you fight regularly with your neighborhood, and win on multiple occasions, that you have a better chance of climbing. And that if you do not fight, you might get a good score, but not a great score.
That is my two cents.
