Clash of Clans: Battling - stop punishing the player

Clash of Clans: Battling - stop punishing the player

Training troops consumes Elixir and takes time. The better troops you produce the more Elixir it costs and the more time it will take to produce them. But time and Elixir are not the only ones restricting players from building the most massive army. Every better unit takes also more housing space, which creates demand for bigger Army Camps. Army Camps need to be upgraded, this takes resources, time and of course upgrades to the HQ... and you're back in the devilish interdependent economy of Clash of Clans.

Clash of Clans is spreading like a virus across the world. After topping the charts of every game store, this game saw many clones emerging in different styles. If you want to play the war in real world with Clash of Clans well, you must know a lot about strategies. If you want to have a try, you can download it via 9game easily.

Units cost Elixir and time. Better units require more space limiting the size of player's army.

Here comes the sad part from player's perspective: all the troops you use in a battle are consumed win or lose. So you face a situation where you build and army, attack and lose every single troop even if you won the battle by a landslide. 

Sure from economy perspective consuming the whole player's attacking force creates a great sink for Elixir but from retention point of view I really think battling should be reworked. Kabam's Edgeworld does in my view the battles better as it allows player to retreat (raid other players) as well as to keep all the units who survive a won battle. Not only is this approach more user friendly but it also creates demand for super units, which player can take from one battle to another. And believe me, super units, in which players emotionally invest to, sell like pop corn in a movie theater. 

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Clash of Clans: The Progress

Clash of Clans: The Progress

Solid retention in Clash of Clans is mainly due to the steady and visible progress players have in the game. Second key factor in the retention is the well extremely well designed core loop, which reward player for being active and promises progress for each return session. Finally it's also about those notifications, as just when you think you won't be coming back to the game any time soon, you'r iPhone and/or iPad informs you that the awesome building you forgot you were even building is ready now.

Clash of Clans is spreading like a virus across the world. After topping the charts of every game store, this game saw many clones emerging in different styles. If you want to play the war in real world with Clash of Clans well, you must know a lot about strategies. If you want to have a try, you can download it via 9game easily.

Clash of Clans has some great first time flow, as it creates emotional attachment to the game area aka. player's village in a matter of 5 minutes. Game starts with Player entering her village, which is after a couple of dialogs attacked by goblins. Player defends the village with a cannon (learn defense) and launches a counter attack (learn battling). After the counter attack player gets back to the village and goes quickly through the core loop (build resource production, build barracks, train troops) till it's time again to launch a second attack against the goblins. After the second attack the game slows down to normal progress speed and introduces the achievements (which work in the beginning as quests) to the player.



But progressing is not only about getting more resources and upgrading your buildings and troops. Progressing is also a lot to due with the way you village transforms visually. The puny village of the first session will slowly but surely transform into a combination of Lord of the Rings and Warcraft.



What's cool and new with Clash of Clans compared to similar games is the single player mission flow. Sure it's super hard compared to the rewards you get for beating goblins and yes Edgeworld had also single player missions but the way they are presented on a separate map makes them just really compelling - till player engages in the player vs. player battles...



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Clash of Clans: The Virality

Clash of Clans: The Virality 

The ultimate goal in Clash of Clans is to beat other players and be a part of a winning clan. First few days player is protected from attacks from other players but once this shield is dropped you become free game. In other words after the shield is dropped your village will be destroyed between 1 - 3 times a day. Protective shield is re-activated for several hours after each lost defense.

Clash of Clans is spreading like a virus across the world. After topping the charts of every game store, this game saw many clones emerging in different styles. If you want to play the war in real world with Clash of Clans well, you must know a lot about strategies. If you want to have a try, you can download it via 9game easily.

There are two ways player can stay away from destruction (or so we are told). Firstly players need to build up their defenses, which defend the village automatically in asynchronous PvP battle. Walls, traps, cannons, watch towers, mortars - you name it! Secondly players need to join a clan by restoring the castle next to their village (awesome way to introduce clans!).

The broken clan castle is found on the game fiel. Great way to set up a long-term
goal and avoid overwhelming new players.

Once in a clan players can chat and in theory plan attacks or revenge in behalf of other clan members. In practice yes, you can chat and even donate some troop but you can't coordinate attacks, simply because in Clash of Clans you can't really choose who you will attack. You can only revenge to someone who once attacked you or you can just attack random opponents who're close to your own experience level. 

So what's the point of being a member of a clan apart from getting few low quality reinforcement troop for your next attack? Well, if you're a member in a powerful clan, you all get awarded. There are weekly tournaments and those who wreck the most combined damage get awarded. So yeah, clans are fun for few dozen of people but not for the vast majority of daily players. Plus it would be nice to even get a notification that a weekly clan tournament has been restarted.

Second issue is with friends. Players can sync up via Facebook, which enables them to see all of their playing friends. But after syncing up things fall flat. You can visit your friends or view their clans (and join them). You can't attack your friends. You can't message your friends. You can't gift your friends nor can you request anything from them. Not to mention that you can't even invite players who are not playing to start playing.



Third issue is the lack of World Map is a serious downfall as map creates true rivalries between players and rivalries fuse retention as well as monetization. For example in Kixeye's Backyard Monsters you can see you neighboring players, attack them, conquer new territories onto which you can create outposts.




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Clash of Clans: The Monetization

Clash of Clans: The Monetization 

Clash if Clans has a whale based monetization because the prices increase as the game progresses creating a situation in which majority of players (retained users) pay higher prices than minority (new users). In short: ARPPU goes hand in hand with retention.

Clash of Clans is spreading like a virus across the world. After topping the charts of every game store, this game saw many clones emerging in different styles. If you want to play the war in real world with Clash of Clans well, you must know a lot about strategies. If you want to have a try, you can download it via 9game easily.

In Clash of Clans players pay for speeding time and boy there are a lot of waiting in the game. As described in the core loop chapter every action takes time from building to upgrading and from training to improving units.

Gems are used to instant finish what ever player is doing. And that's where the catch is. In the beginning whatever you are doing takes little time, which not only is good for retention but it also encourages to instant complete production with the free Gems you have from the start. So in the beginning it's pretty useful and cheap to progress fast and the free Gems you get for completing achievements just push you in that direction (+ first time flow forces player to use Gems so many times that it starts feeling right). But as the game progresses the production times increase. Pretty quickly you are waiting days for productions to be completed - and some players will continue paying (now tenfold) to skip the waiting.

Gems can also be converted into Coins or Elixir. I usually like to sell separately virtual and premium currencies as it encourages paying players to make several purchases. For example if resources were sold separately buying Gems would help the player to instant finish a production. Then the player would want to start a new construction right away, which would create demand for Coins or Elixir. Player would lack the soft currency because he just speeded up the production instead of waiting so not enough time has passed and the resource production facilities are empty. Of course players can instant finish resource productions but that doesn't create re-buys in the same session - only increases consumption of Gems.

Also Clash of Clans still lacks power ups. Magnificent consumable weapons players can use to improve the success of their attacks (don't underestimate players' willingness to revenge the attacks on their villages). That would convert players who have progressed far but don't find it compelling to pay $30 to speed up a single production.

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Collecting Resources - beautiful use automated farming mechanics

Clash of clans: The Core Loop

What makes Clash of Clans a great game is the trademark Supercell winning formula approach to game development. First you take an existing social game theme. Then you benchmark and reverse engineer the best titles in that genre in order to create a strong and natural feeling core loop. You follow up by building a game around that solid core loop. Sprinkle a new and improved game play twist and dress it up in stunning graphics. Finally you polish the game to perfection with a limited beta launch by making the game available only in Canada. Once it's polished and the KPIs look solid it's time to come out with a bang and take app charts by storm.

Clash of Clans is spreading like a virus across the world. After topping the charts of every game store, this game saw many clones emerging in different styles. If you want to play the war in real world with Clash of Clans well, you must know a lot about strategies. If you want to have a try, you can download it via 9game easily.

But even though Clash of Clans is the best there is it's still not the best there could be. Despite being extremely polished and reworked on the basis of the genre benchmarks Clash of Clans has plenty of room for improvements in some key game play mechanics as well as in the virality and even monetization features.

There are three major parts in Clash of Clans' core loop: Collecting Resources, Building & Training and Battling. Nevertheless not all of the parts of the core loop are equally important as the importance of each part is influenced by player's ongoing goal in the game, which creates different style game play styles from resource gathering and building heavy to active battling.

Collecting Resources - beautiful use automated farming mechanics

Coins and Elixir are the two soft currencies in Clash of Clans. In order to produce Elixir and Coins player simply needs to have Elixir Collectors and Gold Mines. Resource production is automated meaning that player doesn't have to initiate resource production nor wait till resource production has finished production. Also to be noted is that the resource production facilities have a maximum cap, meaning that they will keep on producing resource till specific amount after which they will stop production till player has collected the accumulated resource. To increase resource production maximum cap player needs to upgrade the resource facility.

The resource production is perfectly done in Clash of Clans. Firstly it's always rewarding to return to the game as you can harvest all of your resources at the start of every session. Secondly the automated farming mechanics encourage new players to visit the game more often as the resource facilities reach their max pretty quickly in their early stages.
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Clash of Clans Builder: Town Hall 5 Defense

Clash of Clans Builder: Town Hall 5 Defense

Clash of Clans is spreading like a virus across the world. After topping the charts of every game store, this game saw many clones emerging in different styles. If you want to play the war in real world with Clash of Clans well, you must know a lot about strategies. If you want to have a try, you can download it via 9game easily.

This is a great base for players looking to protect trophies and not worried about resources. Players will find it hard to wipe out your town hall. Most will settle for the easy win and take out your resources.

Check out this gathering of Town Hall 5 village layouts and adopt one of them to match your attack, defense or farming strategies!
1. Defensive Base Setup



This mid-level Town Hall Setup should offer you some ample protection against mid-level raiding armies. This base places your Town Hall outside of the Walled up areas and places your Gold/Elixir storage within them. A few Cannons, Mortars, Wizard Towers and Archer Towers should do the trick for this design.
2. Defensive Base Setup




Thankfully, your Town Hall gets placed in the center of your fort. Your Storage containers are lined up at 4 different corners around your Town Hall, which are all defended by several Cannons, Mortars and Archer Towers. The Wizard Tower resting to the left of your Town Hall is great for taking down invading enemy troops nearby. Feel free to place a Wizard Tower in the Archer Tower’s position if you have the Elixir to do so.

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3. Defensive Base Layout



The Walls setup seen here provides some great defensive layering with this village layout. The Town Hall is laid up real nice in the top right corner near the Walls. Raiding troops will get torn to shreds if they even make it past the Walls seen here. The nearby Traps are a last resort Defensive setup that’s supplemented by Archer Tower’s, Cannons and a sole Wizard Tower.
4. Farming Base Setup




Farming-minded players who want to keep their collection of Storage containers safe should adopt this Town Hall 5 setup. Your Gold and Elixir are trapped inside of closely knit Walls layouts. Your outside Wall enclosures feature a good gathering of Defensive Buildings, such as Wizard Tower’s, Mortars, Cannons and Air Defense buildings.

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5. Farming Base Setup



Each bit of Gold/Elixir Storage seen in this Town Hall 5 Farming Base is laid up next to a good mixture of Walls. They’re enclosed right near Cannons, Mortars, Archer Tower’s and Air Defense buildings. Traps are lined up near the outside perimeter just in case so you have that extra protection against raiding armies.

Available free on 9game, Clash of Clans is a game you should install today.

COC: Mastering League and Beyond with Archers 

For starters I cannot guarantee champion unless you have ALL of the following with no exceptions, Town hall level 10, 4 maxed army camps, maxed spell factory, lightning spell level 5+, clan castle level 5, and most importantly maxed arch. I can't stress enough that any other buildings besides those DO NOT MATTER if you are looking purely for cups. Even with maxed defense's at the champion level you will lose every time on defense. The key is to gain at least 30 once your shield runs out before you log out to go on defense. This will ensure that even if you get beat for 15 cups on defense you are still in the green for cups gained on that day.

Being that I know it's not realistic to have everyone with all the above buildings leveled and maxed those of you with town hall 9 can still make it to master 3 with ease and even up to master 1. For this to be possible the following will be needed to ensure maximum results. Town hall 9, All 4 camps maxed(220 spaces), spell factory maxed (4 spaces), clan castle level 4+ (25 spaces), lightning level 4+ (preferably level 5) and again the most important thing MAXED ARCH. (Lv 5 Archers will get them to Master 3, but not Champion) None of this is possible without maxed arch so please do your best to at least get those. Do not fear if you don't have all of the following listed above, I reached master 3 with only 205 spaces in my army camps.

Preparation for attack

Let's get started, first things first. Train and fill camps with all archers, fill spell factory will all lightning spells, fill clan castle with all arch (some people will use arch/wiz or a pekka but I prefer all arch with the occasional wizard thrown in) make sure you are requesting for max arch as well. Make sure king and queen are fully healed as well before attacking. (It goes without saying the higher level your king and queen, the better chance you will be more successful. Do NOT jump the gun and attack without all of the above filled, I did and I lost many many times at 49%. Patience and dedication is key. You will lose but learn from your losses. I want to see everyone posting their losses just as much as their wins if not more. Those of us that have this technique down cannot teach you without first seeing your flaws so please do not hesitate to post all of your losses and ask for advice.

The cc setups will also affect what you're looking for when nexting. Breaking up examples will assist everyone in allowing some customization to their playing style. 1) 30 x Archers
2) 7 x Wizards & 2 x Archers
3) 1 x Pekka & 1 x Wizard, 1 x Archer/Barbarian 1 x Pekka & 5 x Archers/Barbarians
Please Note the stats below as it shows why Barbs are listed. They have a growing trend in popularity in the cc as fillers since Archers take 5 shots from a Max X Bow, while Barbs take 11. Max Teslas 1 shot Archers, but take 3 shots to down a Max Barbarian.

The use of Barbs over Archers depends on if you're trying to shoot over walls or rush them to a defended building for that precious 1- 2%. The Pekka received a significant boost with this last update and its use also varies on your preference. I recommended it to Haakan as it had worked wonders for me.

My personal strategy was to drop this either at the beginning to tank hits if there were a lot of defenses on the perimeter, or if it is a deep base, I'd drop the Pekka & Barb King at the same time with a Rage Spell. The combo acted as a 1-2 punch of Wall Breaking & Wrecking to get to the 2nd layer of the base for the 1-2%. Haakan found that dropping the Pekka near the 3rd Mortar or near a Wiz Tower distracted them long enough for the Archers to do their job.

Max X Bows 80 dps / 10 per shot
Max Teslas 87 dps / 52 per shot

Max Barbs 110 HP
Max Archers 44 HP

If you have 5 spells in the Spell Factory, another option is to pack 4 Lightning & 1 x Rage Spell.

Attacking

For everyone below crystal 2, I highly recommend town hall hunting to help boosts cups quickly, everyone can easily get to crystal by town hall hunting, but make sure to practice the full arch attack along the way, losses at lower cups are easier to swallow than losses in the master league and above.

When looking to attack someone there are some critical things to look at

1. Where are the majority of the buildings located?

For this strategy to work you will need to destroy 50% of all the buildings which is approximately 38 building (for a TH lvl 10). I make sure all the resource pumps are outside of the walls, if they are not, I normally just next the attack.

    TH8 = 28 buildings for 50% - This is assuming 2 Builder Huts. Add 1 -3 for each extra builder hut.
    TH9 = 32 buildings for 50% - This is assuming 2 Builder Huts. Add 1 -3 for each extra builder hut.
    TH10 = 35 buildings for 50% - This is assuming 2 Builder Huts. Add 1 -3 for each extra builder hut.

2. Location of the wizard towers

If the wizard towers are on the outermost layer of their walls, I next the attack, wizard tower tear archers apart so you will want to avoid them.

3. King and queen

I've found that it is easiest to just avoid villages that have a king and queen awake. It's much easier to attack a village when they are not running around chopping your troops up. You'd be surprised how many villages will have the K/Q either asleep or healing when you start to look for it.

4. Levels of defense

Don't be afraid of attacking max defensed villages, max archers are much stronger than you think especially when you have 220-240 of them. For now though, until you start to climb the master league, you will be able to find bases that are low level defense, so focus your attacks there.

5. Amount of cups available for taking

Uuntil I reached master 1, I only looked for and attacked bases with 28 or more cups available. This allows you to gain at least 8-11 cups an attack. (Preferably looking for 30+ cups every time). It is easy to get lured by a base with godly loot available. DO NOT TAKE THE BAIT IF YOU ARE SEEKING CUPS. More often than not, its deceptively well guarded and you will find yourself at 48 or 49%. Players at this level purposely expose enough buildings to nab themselves a cheap shield and a win for 40-49%.

Laying Out the Attacks

1. Drop the lightning on the two mortars that will be causing you the most trouble, if the mortars are not going to affect you at all then hold on to the lightning, you may need them to drop on a builders hut or king/queen base for an extra 1-5%.

2. Next you will drop your full clan castle at the opposite end of where their clan castle is.

3. Starting at a corner of their base hold your fingers down and drag/release your archers around their base (slowly) ensuring there are no gaps between the archers.

4. Immediately drop your king and queen away from where their CC comes out or where there are still buildings standing on the outsides of their walls. Use the queen first to use her ability, then the king to avoid direct attack on the king. Then watch hulk smash with the kings ability.

5. Once you get to 50% I suggest quitting so you can prevent longer heal times on your king and queen. Unless you KNOW that you can nab that extra star, this is critical.

Gems

- If you are against gems that is fine, you will still be able to reach these rankings without them however 5, 10 or even 20$ will speed your attacking up immensely. You only need to boost the spell factory which is 10 gems per boost. This way you are only waiting 30 minutes for 5 spells instead of waiting 2 hours. The only other things you would need to gem are your king and queen healing spells if they are high enough level. If the king and queen will be healed before 30 minutes then there is no need to boost the healing. There is no reason to boost barracks training time because all the archers will be done training before the spells are finished.

I know all this seems like a lot to grasp but it will get easier as you practice.
Make sure to share your attacks, good and bad, so the clan can learn from each other. 

Clash of Clans: Earthquake Spell Not Adding Up!?

Clash of Clans: Earthquake Spell Not Adding Up!?


Clash of Clans is spreading like a virus across the world. After topping the charts of every game store, this game saw many clones emerging in different styles. If you want to play the war in real world with Clash of Clans well, you must know a lot about strategies. If you want to have a try, you can download it via 9game easily.




Hey guys,
I was trying to make some sense about the earthquake spell, and things didn't seem to be adding up. Am I missing something, or not doing the math correctly haha? What is described in the description/stats of the earthquake spell seems to be different than what is observed in game play. I will be focusing on walls here:

A lvl1 earthquake spell says it does 6% damage to remaining hitpoints, and does 4x damage to walls. This can be either interpreted as taking 24% damage away from walls, or taking 6% damage away from walls 4 times (0.94 ^ 4 = 0.78075, so that would be equivalent to 21.925%. I will show both in this article.




Below is what I have observed in the game using lvl 1 Earthquake spells. I got these percentages by taking screenshots of the game after each spell, and using photoshop to count the pixels of the percent bar. I would say this is accurate to roughly 2% or less.



As you can see, what is observed in the game does not correlate with the claimed 6% damage (x4) at all. You can also notice that the observed percentage of damage taken away for each spell is not even a consistent number (1st spell appears to take away 28%, second spell takes away 26%, 3rd spell takes away a whopping 36%!, and then the 4th spell destroys the wall completely).

Now lets talk about the threshold at which the building collapses. In the earthquake spell description it mentions that buildings with low health will suddenly collapse. The reason for this is that if you only rely on a spell taking away a percentage, it will never reach 0 ever (its an asymptote), so there must be a threshold of some sort.

I did the above calculations with a Lvl4 spell as well, and the 3rd spell takes walls down to 18%, and the 4th spell destroys the wall. This would imply that the threshold percent we mentioned earlier is less than 18% (like 17%?). In order for lvl1 spells to get a wall down to 17% it would take 7 earthquake spells... but the observed shows it only takes 4.

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And speaking of this threshhold percent, the observed threshold for lvl1 earthquake spell implies that walls will collapse at roughly 25 - 30%, but as you can see with lvl4 earthquakes - the 3rd spell takes walls down to 18% and the wall still remains. Is there different mechanics between lvl1 and lvl4? If that is the case, it almost seems better to leave the spell at lvl1! haha
So you might be wondering why I care about all of this. This brings up a lot of questions for me:

Is it worth upgrading to lvl 4? Some of the above information would go to show that keeping it at lvl1 is just fine, and better in some scenarios.
Is it hard coded into the game that there is a spell counter on the walls, and if any wall gets touched by 4 earthquake spells then it is destroyed - regardless of the damage done to the wall?
What if a wall is already at 72% damage (damaged more than the first spell would do), would it take 4x more earthquake spells to destroy it? It looks like it might.
If you drop an earthquake spell on a wall that is heavily damaged in an attempt to collapse it, what is that threshold? According to a lvl1 earthquake its at 25-30%, and according to a lvl4 earthquake its at roughly 17%.
Is there some kind of a bug/glitch going on here that supercell might want to know about?
So the only conclusion I can make at the moment is that the game mechanics for earthquake spells is completely different than what is described in the spell description. Let me know what you guys think

EDIT:
It was also brought up that it may be 4 multiplicative factors of 1.5% to get the 6%... which would be (1 - ((0.985)^4)^4) * 100 = 21.48%, which would make the discrepancy even larger.

Available free on 9game, Clash of Clans is a game you should install today.

COC Farming Strategies: Healer/Giant

COC Farming Strategies: Healer/Giant

Clash of Clans is spreading like a virus across the world. After topping the charts of every game store, this game saw many clones emerging in different styles. If you want to play the war in real world with Clash of Clans well, you must know a lot about strategies. If you want to have a try, you can download it via 9game easily.

The Healer/Giant strategy is based around using the Giant's high hit points to attract all the fire, using the Healers to make the Giants last longer and using the Giant's Defence targeting to take out Mortars and Wizard towers before they destroy your lower level troops.

The general army composition is to use 8-20 Giants, 1-2 Healers, 0-12 Wallbreakers and the rest a combination of Archers, Goblins and/or Barbarians.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The Healer/Giant Army is a bit slower and a lot more expensive to make than the previous combinations, however it is very versatile in that it can target a wider variety of bases and has more capability to take down stronger bases with better protected storages. It is not a good combination for hunting for Elixir due to its high cost.

The biggest weakness of the Healer/Giant army is its susceptibility to well placed spring traps as they will fling your giants away and leaves you with nothing to 'Heal'. Apart from this, the only other real weakness is the cost and time to make, however bases with medium to high level splash defences that are well segmented will be much harder to take out.

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Bases to Target

One of the huge advantages of the Healer/Giant combo is its versatility. You can use it for collector raiding by just dropping the Archers, Goblins or Barbarians as in the Barb/Archer army, or you can target more heavily defended bases. You can also drop just a few giants and/or wallbreakers as in the WAGG strategy for medium level strength bases.

When raiding entire bases (ie: storages and collectors) it is best to look for bases with all their splash defence in one wall enclosure - the more spread out the splash defence are the harder it is for your giants to attract all the fire.

Attack Tactics

1. Lure and kill Clan Castle troops and Heroes (more about that in the general tips)
2. Drop 1-2 Giants as a meat shield to attract fire - focus on the fastest path to the most dangerous or highest concentration of splash defence - or attack an area with exposed Air Defence to make your healers last longer
3. If you have them drop 1-3 wallbreakers to get past the first wall
4. Deploy the rest of your giants (if you have lots, save 2-6 for later)
5. Drop your healer(s) behind the giants - if there are Air Defence towers close by then wait until the giants take them down first
6. Quickly drop a few lines of Archers/Barbs behind the giants to provide them with faster tower takedown (if you can then save 20-30 archers for later)
7. If you have them drop more wallbreakers in groups of 1-3 to direct your giants through the walls (more about this in the tips at the end)
8. If a group of your archers/barbs/goblins are approaching a splash defence tower that will not target the original group of giants you can drop your extra 2-6 nearby to protect them
9. Use your extra 20-30 archers to target any extra storages or collectors that have lots of loot and have been missed by the main group - alternatively use them as backup for the giants if your main group is destroyed.
10. Once your other troops have taken out the main defence you can use some goblins to target the storages and/or collectors specifically

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Watch out for!

Watch out for bases with tricky walls that funnel your giants and/or other troops into areas where they will be exposed to traps or heavy splash damage. If you see bases with maze-like wall configurations then chances are there are a bunch of traps within the maze. Use wallbreakers to create a different path and avoid the maze at all costs.

Also be careful of bases with unlurable (ie: centralized) Clan Castles. A Clan Castle full or archers can absolutely decimate a group of giants because the giants are so slow and have low DPS.

Available free on 9game, Clash of Clans is a game you should install today.

COC Farming Strategies: WAGG (Wallbreakers, Goblins, Giants)

COC Farming Strategies: WAGG (Wallbreakers, Goblins, Giants)

Clash of Clans is spreading like a virus across the world. After topping the charts of every game store, this game saw many clones emerging in different styles. If you want to play the war in real world with Clash of Clans well, you must know a lot about strategies. If you want to have a try, you can download it via 9game easily.

The WAGG army is one of the most common farming armies for lower townhalls (it isn't anywhere near as effective from townhall 9 and up). Goblins are the main force behind this army, however they can be supplemented with Giants (as Meat Shields) and Wallbreakers (to assist in looting harder to reach storages).

The essence of the WAGG army is to get to the collectors and storages as fast as possible and loot them before the defences can take down your goblins. Giants can be used to distract the Mortars and Wizard towers long enough for the Goblins to do their thing. If Mortars are far enough away from the Goblins then often the Goblins will move fast enough to be missed by the Mortar shots.

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Strengths and Weaknesses

The strength of the WAGG army is its ability to just target loot, it is a fast build, low cost army where you can use minimal troops to achieve maximum loot. However the weakness is that it is harder to maintain a certain trophy level with the army because you will rarely be able to win battles with it. In addition High level Wizard towers will decimate Goblins easily so they need to be distracted with Giants.

High level collectors outside the walls are easy to target.

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Bases to Target

The best targets are ones with full collectors outside the walls, or storages that are all grouped together - even better if the splash damage coverage from the Mortars and Wizard towers are poorly placed or low level.

Watch out for!

High level Mortars and Wizard towers will eat your Goblins for breakfast. High level walls will also be hard to crack unless you Rage your Goblins or pack a few wallbreakers

Available free on 9game, Clash of Clans is a game you should install today.

COC Farming Strategies: Using the BAM Army

COC Farming Strategies: Using the BAM Army 

Clash of Clans is spreading like a virus across the world. After topping the charts of every game store, this game saw many clones emerging in different styles. If you want to play the war in real world with Clash of Clans well, you must know a lot about strategies. If you want to have a try, you can download it via 9game easily.

The BAM Army is a variation of the Barb/Arch where you add Minions in to speed up troop creation time by utilizing the extra Dark Barracks. BAM does cost some Dark Elixir to produce so it isn't ideal for farming Dark Elixir, however it can be great for speeding up attack frequency and getting you more Gold and Elixir. As with the Barb/Arch army, it is often used in combination with Lightning Spells.

Preparing to BAM

The key to the BAM army is quick attacks, so you want to cue up your barracks before and after every battle. I cue up 2 barracks with Barbarians, 2 with archers, and 1 with minions (this can be 2 barracks, but it may produce too many minions). By going for an exact ratio, it defeats the purpose of the quick attacks and queuing up barracks so troops are producing whilst you are attacking, but I generally aim for about 90 barbs, 70 archers, and 20 minions. I also like to bring 2 rage spells for more difficult but loot heavy bases and 1 lightning spell just cuz I can! I also recommend bring a CC full of archers or other strong troops and your hero(es) for back up. Once all of this is prepared, you are ready to go steal some poor soul’s loot.

Strengths and Weaknesses

As with the Barb/Arch army the primary strength is the low cost and fast production time, however the addition of the flying Minions also makes the combination great for attacking bases with poor Air Defence or low level Wizard Towers. The two biggest weaknesses are the overall susceptibility to splash damage and in particular with BAM some people are not a fan of the Dark Elixir cost.

Bases to Target

As with Barb/Arch the BAM Army is great for attacking just collectors - in particular the flying minions provide a way to easily take out collectors that are only protected by Canons, Mortars or Ground Targeted X-Bows. Sometimes you can even just use 1 minion to take out a collector.

The tactics for attacking storages is similar to the Barb/Arch combo, however with the addition of minions it is possible to attack on the side with the Air Defence and/or Wizard Towers on the edge and take them out fast so that the Minions last longer and can decimate the rest of the base unopposed.

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Attacking from one side is also a good idea with the BAM Army - however sometimes if there are exposed Air Defence on the other side of the base it can enhance the attack if you take them out too.

Look for bases with low level and/or exposed Air Defence and Wizard Towers - low level Mortars helps too.

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Watch out for!

Avoid bases with high level Wizard Towers and internal high level Air Defence towers as they can decimate a BAM Army before you can take them down. Also be careful of Air Bombs and always drop a few Minions first to set them off - One air bomb can wipe out a whole army of Minions.

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COC Farming Strategies: Barb/Arch (Barbarians, Archers)

COC Farming Strategies: Barb/Arch (Barbarians, Archers)

Clash of Clans is spreading like a virus across the world. After topping the charts of every game store, this game saw many clones emerging in different styles. If you want to play the war in real world with Clash of Clans well, you must know a lot about strategies. If you want to have a try, you can download it via 9game easily.

'Farming' at its core is the tactic of ignoring the quest to gain trophies and focussing on gaining loot instead. Generally most farmers will focus on gaining gold, however it is also possible to farm for Elixir or Dark Elixir depending on your needs. Trophy level are not completely irrelevant however as different levels will (on average) hold different strengths of bases and quantities of loot depending on your townhall level. Farming strategies will be covered in more depth in a later guide.

Barb/Arch (Barbarians, Archers)

As indicated by the name the army composition is primarily Barbarians and Archers with possible a few wallbreakers thrown in depending on taste. The primary goal of a Barb/Arch army is to produce a fast and cheap army that allows you to attack very frequently at low cost.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The major strength of the Barb/Arch army is its very low cost and fast production speed. This make it ideal for farming for Elixir as the cost to produce the troops is so low. It is also a great strategy to employ when you have a fair amount of free time and can attack very frequently.

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However, its greatness strength also leads to its weakness, which is that as a low cost and fast army it is also moderately weak on attack and can be wiped out by bases with strong splash damage.

A common strategy with the Barb/Arch army is to take out the main splash defence (usually Mortars) with Lightning Spells before attacking. If you are going to employ this strategy it is best to decide to do this straight away, as generally if you leave it until halfway through the battle it is too late and half your troops are already gone.

Drop troops in a line or arc to avoid splash damage.

Bases to Target

The Barb/Arch army excels at attacking just collectors for loot. If the collectors are on the outside you can drop a few barbs, or if they are behind walls you can use some archers. Generally it takes about 5-10 archers to take out a collector (depending on levels) and it is a good idea to drop them in an arc around each collector so that a mortar or wizard tower doesn't take them out all at once. The best bases are ones where all the collectors are in a line on the outside - you can actually drop less troops per collector because the defence fire will be split between the entire line of troops and will take them down slower.

You can also, however use the Barb/Arch army to attack medium strength bases with full storages. The tactic is to drop a line of barbarians first and then follow up with a line of archers behind them. You spread all the troops out to make them less susceptible to splash damage (from Mortars and Wizard Towers) as these are their biggest threat. Don't drop all your troops at once, release them in waves of Barbarians and then Archers behind so that they don't cluster up.

It is generally a good idea to focus on one side of the base only, as splitting up your attack strength will actually expose you to more fire at once and will reduce your overall effectiveness.

Remember the primary goal of Barb/Arch is speed and efficiency - so if you don't need all your troops, or if dropping more will not get your much more loot then save them for the next attack!

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Watch out for!

The main thing to watch out for with Barb/Arch is splash damage. Avoid any bases with well placed high level mortars or wizard towers. If you do have to attack these towers make sure you drop troops in an arc around them so that the towers can't target all your troops at once. Mortars also have a small radius at their base where they can't attack, so if you can get barbarians into this radius you can take them down without retaliation. Also, now that big bombs are cheaper many players have started using them - if there are empty spaces within a base that look like they might have traps try to deploy a small amount of troops there first to set them off.

Available free on 9game, Clash of Clans is a game you should install today.