Which flavors are there
The main competitions are
Raise Kingdom Power (Single Player)
Raise your Kingdom Power faster than anyone else.
Raise Kingdom Power (Alliance)
Raise the summed up Kingdom Power faster than any other alliance. You might have guessed it: A small alliance has nearly no chance against a big one. At least if the big one is composed of active players.
Raise Feast Points (Single Player)
Get the most feast points within 48 hours. A big feast takes 48 Hours. Don’t start on within this timeframe. Won’t help.
Raise Alliance Exp (Alliance)
Raising the Exp of you Alliance is nothing you shold only do while this competition is up. So do the same as usual: Do your Boss-Fights, do your Donations with Adv. Alliance Charters. Good luck. Bigger alliances will most likely win – don’t blame them, you’ll get free items too, its just less.
Raise Tourney Points (Single Player)
Raising your Tourney Points faster than anybody else.
What is a good rank
A good rank is a rank you can obtain without loosing too much resources and which gives you a good benefit.
That means if you have the resources to get to place 15 without much pain, and 11 to 20 get the same stuff being on rank 20 is better. But consider that someone else might also know that and might try to catch a place 20+ within the last minutes, so maybe 17 would be the safer option. Being ranked 21 so you used resources nearly like place 19 would have taken, but only get the bonus for place 21-50 would be a bad thing.
This means the output should relate to the input. Putting much effort in and getting only low output is bad. Butting low effort in and getting an ok output would be fine.
If you want to go for gold (1st Place) be prepared to fight for it. Maybe even in the last 2 minutes of the competition. It’s hard up there and it absolutely kills resources. And you’ll get enemies, because you can’t get there without bothering someone.
Getting a good rank
To get good ranks I advise you to save your items till you need them. For Quests, which help you gether more items or for competitions, which help you gather more items, because you get a good rank.
Only raise as much as you need to. If you get something extra for raising it daily, raise it till you get the bonus you want and stop there.
On the last day, as close to the end of the competiton as you can raise it till you are at the place you feel output and input matching. Anytime sooner and you can’t know how much you need to raise it.