Not sure why are you surprised by this. It is mostly due to insecurity, for most players that are somewhat new or not skilled enough in this game, TBD looks like an all-stars team. Granted, by combining all those wins & crowns - yeah they are, no doubt. That doesn't mean everyone is all in or they are willing to give their best performance each day and each week. From what I've seen a lot of you guys are simming but that's something your enemies can't figure out since they're blinded with some sort of unrealistic fear. If they think it's impossible to take down anyone from TBD then they should fold right now and stop trying. Their solution is to play an average 3v1 game thinking that numbers will be in their favor however there were some examples on previous worlds that TBD is not unbeatable - which is normal! No one from that group thinks they are Grepo gods, the thing is they play together for years and years, it's a well-oiled machinery with a great team spirit combined with a decisive leadership that rarely changes. Why is it you may ask... Because there's no space for drama and every single member of the team feels appreciated and useful. Played with this group for years and whether I was active or not, whether I was killing everything in sight or being a pebble in their shoes I always felt appreciated and they as a group really care about you. Team spirit is usually very high, mostly kind people surround you and are willing to help you out as much as they can, leadership knows the drill and keeps everything in order with a solid plan.
Does this mean they are the best? Well, no. As I said, we've lost several worlds to teams that were more organized. No one is flawless. Can an alliance of 35 beat 35 TBD players? Absolutely! You just need to be spot on with your decisions, core settlement and motivate your players not to be feared to strike + prevent any dramas or disputes inside your organization. This is the thing no one gets - by looking at their grepo score they look like best of the best but in truth it's the team effort that counts. None of them won singlehandedly on previous worlds, that's all thanks to the team. Keep that in mind folks and start thinking like a champion.
I'm not acting as their advocate, in my case I fought against them 3 times so far. Lost 2 times due to internal dramas and once due to attrition after almost 6 months fighting constantly (speed 4 world so that's a long time) so their organization and leadership is what have beaten us. Skill-wise we were almost on the same level even though their crown count was much higher but that's not even relevant.
If anyone thinks they can outperform a team like TBD by having more manpower then it is a waste of time, MRAs have more people to take care of and more potential risks and losses to focus on, so having more players is not even a blessing, it's a curse. But then again, most people have to learn from their mistakes as many did before (myself included) and many of them will in future.
There are at least 2 or 3 teams I know of that didn't drop on this world as far as I know due to awful settings. Not sure why but Inno keeps insulting us with past revolt world settings while CQ ones are far more interesting. This world wasn't even advertised, having like ~300 players on it is just a joke. No wonder no one else showed up even though previous revolt worlds are basically over and revolt players have nothing else to do except to play this one or to wait for the next one. There is no competition on this world from day 1, there is TBD and a handful of great players in other teams with dozens of average ones so it is already over. Just a matter of time honestly, and the pain of building wonders on a very slow world in the end.
On these forums there are several threads and polls about revolt worlds but screw that... Let's make the opposite of what people want and let's launch a world with a low speed so we can accumulate more gold purchases because it's unplayable otherwise.