Being a rabid gamer, yes I watch everything, and pay attention to every detail I can. At the moment, due to the great disparity of levels, there really is no way for those of us "little ones" to get close to the big guys.
yes, Chris is pulling 11 and the rest of the top eschelon are pulling 5 or 8 if i remember correctly, yet having 10 people gaining 5 while 1 person gains 11, means that the one person will easily outstrip the 10. Unless you know something I do not, beyond getting attacked there is no way to give my gold to an opponent. As Such, Chris can easily take his coin and spend it equally on defense and offense and none of us will be able to reach his pinnacle.
Consider, Chris owning 2000 troops at 25 gold per hour.... that equals 50,000 gold per hour. yourself Icuburn, are his nearest competetor, and you have a mere 844 troops (lets round to a nice even 850) so you are making 21,250 an hour. Now Chris's defense by virtue of his numbers of troops, is solid (and the disparity between himself and everyone else is growing day by day). In 10 hours time, Chris can buy either the top of the chart offense or defense. something you, (if you do not get atacked) can do only once a day. So, Chris can augment his offence and his defense with 1 piece of the top of the line item every day, whereas you can augment either your offense or your defense once per day with a top of the line item. And.... that is only if Chris ignores you. No, I'm willing to bet, that if you allowed your coinage to reach into the millions (which is what you would need to work on overcoming Chris's troop advantage) I'd be willing to bet, that Chris would look down upon you, and smite you mightily. You need 2,560,000 to go ahead and up yourself to 9 troops per day yes? (judging from the early progressions). Well I'd be willing to wager that a tasty target like that would not be ignored by the mightiest of all.
Although you mention we are gaining 1 person a month, we are also losing people every month. When I joined, there were 20 players, with the two people recently joined, now we have 19. And, I'm willing to bet both Rusty, and Crickrunner will either be leaving soon, or will remain in play meerly as gold farms. Rusty has already expressed his agnst over the inability to move forward in his game, Chrysalia, has already deleted due the huge disparity, others who I didn't even get to notice have already deleted, and considering the disparity of the top eschelon verses others is only growing wider, more people will follow.
Chris is the big winner of this game, He has kicked some serious butt. grown bigger thatn anyone else and, no one challanges his superiority. Next year at this time, No one will continue to challenge his authority. yourself Icuburn, are securely in second place. Has anyone even tried to challenge your position? When was the last time you had someone beyond Chris attack you? Are you even a little bit concerned that an attack from anyone but Chis will breach your defenses?
Now you mention that Chris is not attacking. I believe the reasoning behing this is twofold. First of all, he doesn't have to, he will continue to pull further and further away from any imagined competition. Secondly, because he is already so far beyond everyone else in the game, him attacking will cost him troops. For Chris, attacking is actually working to defeat his increasing lead.
This game is a game of numbers, and about the only thing I really understand is numbers. And at this point, the numbers say one and two are locked in. I'd wager in 6 months there will be a clear number 3 from the group of four that are vying for position. and the disparity between the top player and everyone else will continue to grow. This disparity between number two and the everyone else will continue to grow, and we will see a solid number three, who will also be outstripping the players below him.