actually gold can be hidden and you can sustain your city and rise in ranking. if there's nothing to farm what's the point of going back? ;)
defenses should be your #1 priority not ranking. if you fail to realize that and just focus on raising your ranking then ummm stinks to be you when you come out of the 7 days protection.
i've raided cities with a higher rank then me but with not even half the defense i have and i seen war reports in my own alliance with cities with barely any defenses after i stress so much about it in alliance chat.
better to have a low rank with a good solid well defended city instead of being a paper tiger.
I played Travian and i think it's worse to be a new person over there than here. For one it takes forever to build anything and you barely getting any resources. Here the build times are a lot faster and you can get your city up and going in 2-3 days. I agree that it'll be harder to play this game if you start later but there are ways for new people to protect themselves and not become a instant farm when their 7 days protection is up.

