Sunday, January 17, 2016

General Layout Strategies

     The way a base is designed depends upon the intended use of the base.  If you are farming, you will focus on protecting your resources, and if you are trophy pushing or designing a war base you will try to protect your TH and make you CC hard to pull, possibly even sacrificing resource storages to protect those structures.  Here though, we will discuss some general tips you can follow when designing any base.


Buffers

     A buffer is a line of buildings that you place on the outside wall of your village to force enemy units to attack those buildings before attacking the walls or buildings within.  Typically, good buffer buildings consist of buildings that don't hold resources and don't cause you to lose anything besides % destruction when they are destroyed.  Buildings that work well as buffers are barracks, dark barracks, spell factory, dark spell factory, army camps, laboratory, and resource collectors (if you plan to collect them often).
     Builder's huts can also act as buffers, but they have extremely low hit points so they won't slow the enemy down much.  Some people like to place the huts in the corners of the map, so that if the enemy ignores them initially, they will likely run out of time before reaching them and will only earn 2-stars from the attack (a good trick to use on your war base).  I have seen many instances in wars when an attack is going to be an easy 3-star and ends up being only a 99% 2-star attack because the troops couldn't reach the last builder's hut all the way in the corner on the other side of the map before the timer ran out.
     When you are a lower TH level, you may not have enough buildings to create a complete buffer ring around your whole base.  That's okay, use it to your advantage.  Since most likely the enemy will attack from the side that has the least buffer buildings in the way, put down all your traps in that area so that if they do decide to come that way they will lose a significant portion of their troops before they even get the raid going.  This will greatly weaken their attack, and save you a load of resources and trophies.  This sounds too easy and you're probably thinking no one would fall for the, but it happens far more often that you would think.  To help make sure the traps aren't wasted, you may want to place them so that the attacker is not able to drop a single troop and trip the trap.  The best way to do this is by placing most of the traps just inside the walls in the areas that don't have a buffer.
Their troops will bunch up while going through the wall,  so you will get far more of them caught in the blast of the bomb or bounced out by a spring trap than you would by placing them on the outside of you walls.


Trap Placement

     This is a good time to talk about proper trap placement. While it can be tedious and time-consuming to work out the best spots to place all your traps, it will pay off for as long as you have that layout if you do.  Since it costs resources to re-arm your traps (especially big bombs) after they have been tripped, it is well worth it to make sure that your attacker can't trip them on a single troop and completely waste them.  The worst thing you can do is create a layout and just put all your traps around the outside.  This allows the attacker to possibly trip them using only 1 troop, so if you are going to put any traps outside your walls, put them between a buffer building and the outside walls so that the attacker will have to get through the buffer building before springing your trap (also giving their troops time to bunch up more).
     When placing traps inside your base, try placing them in spots that you know the enemy will be trying to get to, such as the TH, storages, and defenses.  An effective way to get the most out of each trap is to set the trap between two defenses or between a defense and storage that are separated by walls by taking out the center piece of wall.  This will force the troops into a bottleneck, ensuring that you catch the maximum number of enemy troops in the trap (this is a great place to put a spring trap).  If two defenses or a defense and a storage are in the same enclosure, place traps between them to ensure many enemy troops are hit by the trap as well.  A few well placed bombs between a wizard tower and a storage can weaken the troops to the point that the wizard tower will finish them all off with a couple hits.
     Leaving 2 2x2 spaces next to one another between 2 rows of buildings allows you to use the double bomb strategy.  This instantly kills all hog riders that are caught in the blast radius, and will take a huge amount of life from Giants or other tank troops that get caught in them.  If you use this strategy, make sure to have multiple spaces that could contain the double bombs so that the enemy won't know which spaces actually contain the bombs, otherwise they will simply avoid that area.
     Teslas can be deadly when they are within range of one another.  When 3-4 teslas are shooting at troops together they will make quick work of almost anything.  The same strategy works here as well; try to have multiple areas that could contain teslas so that the enemy won't know which spaces actually contain them.  It is a good idea to have teslas in range of both the TH and any storages you can fit in range of them, as they will be able to finish off many of the weakened troops before they are able to take down your TH or steal all your resources.


Defenses

     Defensive building placement is extremely important in minimizing the amount of loot and trophies you lose through defensive attacks.  A good rule of thumb for cannons and archer towers is to place them on your outermost line of defenses and try to have the radius of each cannon cover as much of your base as possible, and do the same for the archer towers.  Space out your cannons so that each cannon's range just barely overlaps with the cannons on both sides of it, and the same goes for the archer towers.




     The splash damage buildings should be placed in a more protected position more towards the center of your base.  It is usually a good idea to have your wizard towers covering storages as they can wipe out a horde of goblins in just a few hits, it also helps to have the wizard towers covering your mortars if possible, since the mortars have a blind spot range near them the wizard tower can fend off attacking troops if they manage to close in on your mortars.  The mortars should be well protected, and since they have such a large range you can place them near the center of your base and they will still be able to target troops as they reach the outer walls.  Don't place mortars too close to one another, they at least need to be outside the blind spot range from one another.


 
 
     Air defenses are your main deterrent against dragons and other forms of air attacks.  At low TH levels when you only have one air defense, it isn't as important to protect it, since most of your enemies at this level will not be using air attacks anyway.  At later levels, however, you will need to protect the air defenses just like mortars and place them somewhere near the center of the base, and not too close together.  Ideally, you want to have your air defenses far enough apart that they cover most of your base, but also close enough that they are in range of one another and can help defend one another should dragons or balloons manage to get to an air defense.  For war bases many people like to use storages as shields for their air defenses.  This works extremely well against dragons since they will have to destroy the high hit point storage before approaching the air defense, the whole while the air defense will be picking them apart.
     X-bows are aquired at TH-9 and add a new dimension to the defense of your base.  X-bows can be set to attack both ground and air troops or only ground troops.  The payoff for only targeting ground troops is that it gives the X-bow a substantial increase in range.  For wars, it is usually a good idea to have at least one set to attack both ground and air to make attackers think twice before committing to an air attack against you. If you find yourself rarely facing off against dragons and you see a lot more gowipe or other ground based attacks (typically starts to happen after your air defenses are max level for TH-9), you can probably set both X-bows to ground only so you can make better use of the increased range on that setting. X-bows should be at the innermost part of your base, with the CC and TH. Having them near the TH allows better protection of the TH since the X-bows have very high hit points. This way, the enemy forces will be stuck pounding on the X-bows in the center of the base while basically every defense is targeting them, and most of the attackers will fall before even reaching the TH let alone destroying it.
     Inferno towers buildup damage the longer they are on a target, and also cancel out all healing on their targets. These should also be placed in the center with the X-bows, or maybe just outside them. Inferno towers can be set to either target 1 troop at a time and can build up massive damage (enough to quickly kill any troop in the game), or target up to 5 troops at a time for less build up damage. It seems in most wars that you will come up against multi-target infernos, which can eat up wizards and lower hit point troops in no time. 


Walls

     Walls are the highest hit point structures in the game and can be the difference between a good base and a great base. You should shoot for having all buildings except buffers enclosed at least partially by walls. You should also try to create several divisions inside your base so that the enemy has to go through as many walls as possible to get to everything in your base. As far as upgrading goes, walls can usually wait until you get most of your defenses upgraded, but keep in mind that if you find yourself always being matched against enemies in war that have more advanced bases than yours, upgrading walls (as well as heroes) is a way of enhancing your base that doesn't weigh heavily on your war rank or opponent. When upgrading walls, first upgrade intersections where multiple sections of walls meet, because troops tend to target these intersections when they want to move into a new enclosure, and upgrading these walls first significantly lengthens the amount of time it will take them to get through that wall. 
     Secondly, it is very helpful to upgrade the innermost walls that surround your TH and other important structures. Since wallbreakers typically won't make it that far into a base, the troops will have to work their way through, and higher hit point walls mean more time spent attacking walls while they get pounded on by all your defenses. 
     Thirdly, upgrade sections of walls that divide two enclosures. Same principle here; higher hit point walls means more time spent hacking at the walls while getting hit by all your defenses. 


Heroes

     The King and Queen should be placed in a location that allows them to cover a good portion of the base and also cover the TH from opposite sides so that no matter which direction the enemy comes from, they will have to contend with one or both of the heroes if they manage to reach the TH. 
     It is also a good idea to make sure the range of your heroes doesn't go outside your outer walls so that the enemy attacker can't pull them before launching their main force. Placing the King and Queen on opposite sides forces the opponent to have to decide which hero they wish to engage first, and doesn't give them the option of engaging both at once. Keeping all this in mind, you will likely want to put your heroes somewhere in the area just outside the center of your base. 

This was a very long post, but if you made it this far and understood it all you should be able to make massive improvements to your base, and even be able to teach your clan mates a thing or two about base design. Later, I will talk about each of these topics in more detail in their own separate posts. Thanks for reading, good luck and clash on!

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