A modification to my earlier idea that i think would make it a bit better have the rewards be based on a gold earned count and only reset that for the winners that way people still get the joy of building higher and higher and the rewards still get distributed to active players while still giving some advantage to long term players but also allowing newer players to win some as well

and perhaps an option to not accept the win this round either passing the win down to the next level in the list or putting the prize back in the pot for the next round but leaving them a better chance to take a higher win posistion in the next round