this IS NOT original The Syndicate as there are almost NO original TS players still playing a lot of them quited over the years, this TS is just a group of players who done good work in Sinope and organized for the next world nothing more.
A quick look at them tells you otherwise...
Balrog, Billy, Mungus, Slobodan, thats what, their top 4 from Zac?
Then throw in Joseph, irgr8 and several others
As for Balrog. Lets say you spend x amount of gold over the period of a server, theres a strong argument that its best to spend the bulk of that right at the beginning. resources etc are key in speed 1, and getting 2-3 cities very early in the server will pay for itself ten times over.
Id say gold spend on this server so far is pretty low though, there are players in the top 20 that have spent very little