10 essential Clash of Clans tips for victory

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Clash of Clans is huge. Seriously, you cant even believe how big it is. So many people play Clash of Clans that CoCs developer, Supercell, reportedly rakes in nearly $2.5 million every day. Were talking about a player-base of millions! If you're looking to break out of a crowd like that, you're going to need some help.

That's where we come in. In this guide you'll find tips, tricks, and best practices to ensure your clans steady growth and protection from harm. Follow our lead and you'll soon be pillaging with the best of them.

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Take it easy (or, Town halls and why you dont want to rush)

You'll want to be very careful when contemplating upgrading your town hall. The temptation to unlock new buildings, defensive turrets, and walls will draw new players into rushing their upgrades. Resist this temptation at all costs! Players are rewarded for attacking a base with a higher-level Town hall, but are penalized for attacking a less sophisticated base, so if you upgrade too quickly you'll be easy prey for those beneath you.

When should you upgrade? The answer will depend on your own circumstances but as a rule of thumb, don't upgrade until you've completed the previous level. Your troops should be maxed out, you should be comfortably safe from enemy raids, and you should ensure you've upgraded all of your defensive buildings. It might seem slow, but you wont be at the mercy of raiding parties.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

If you want to satisfy your ambitions, you'll need to protect yourself. Walls are the basic defensive unit, and smart wall placement is key to success. Enemy units cant move past your walls until they've found (or created) a breach. Once they're inside your base, the enemy units are free to pillage your valuable gold and Elixir stores. As a general rule, you should always use defense in depth. Use walls inside your base to create compartments or pockets--no one breach will allow enemies to steal everything you have.

Youre not going to be able to squeeze every building inside your walls, so dont even try. You might be tempted to try and make a huge outer wall to encompass as much as possible, but a large perimeter fence is difficult to defend. Instead,create interior bulkheads that section off interior space for only your most important buildings: Town Hall, turrets, Gold Storage and Elixer Storage. Those buildings will be targeted by raiding parties, and losing them will cost you the most. Keep them safe behind your walls.

Tower Defense

Walls are all well and good, but if you want to kill the bad guys you're going to need some firepower. That's what defensive turrets are for, and they come in two flavors depending on what kind of damage they deal. Basic structures like Archery Towers and Cannons deal fairly high damage to a single unit, but are easily swamped by massed charges. If you want to destroy whole armies, you'll need to look into bigger guns.

Certain defensive towers, notably the Mortar and the Wizard Tower, deal splash damage--that is to say, they deal damage to an area, rather than a unit. How can this work for you? Well, think about this: after a few upgrades, a single mortar round can kill a barbarian in one hit. If the mortar round lands on a *group* of barbarians, they all die. Because splash turrets like the Mortar and Wizard Tower are so powerful, you'll need to ensure that they are properly defended. Keep them inside your walls, and make sure that other turrets can defend them.

Protecting your resources

Even the strongest of walls will be breached. No matter how well-placed your towers are, no matter how strong your walls, somebody is going to break in to steal your gold, elixer, and trophies. You cant prevent it 100% of the time, but you can take some steps to minimize the damage.

Clash of Clans has a very important quirk built into unit production: you pay full price for a unit when it you queue it and can cancel that unit at any time for a full refund. Here's the catch: the resources spent on units in the queue cant be stolen in a raid! You can deposit cash into the bank by filling your production queues, then withdraw it when you feel its safe. Wall Breakers are a good choice for banking elixir, since they cost a lot and have a relatively long production time, but the principle is applicable to any unit.

Know your units 1 (Infantry)

If you want to conquer, you're going to need to get familiar with each and every unit in your army, and there's no better place to start that with the infantry. These units tend to be weak, but very cheap. Take care around turrets like the Mortar that deal splash damage--a well lucky shot can ruin your whole army.

Barbarians--Your basic attacking unit. Decent health and damage output makes them flexible. Best of all, they're dirt cheap!

Archers--Archers are a basic ranged unit. They have a great attack range, and can even attack over walls, but they're more expensive than Barbarians.

Goblins--Goblins are effective raiders. They deal double damage to resource collection/storage buildings, and are so fast that traps wont hit them!

Know your units 2 (Heavy/ Special)

Infantry units are cheap and flexible, but as you become more powerful, you gain access to bigger, better troops. These tend to cost more, and take a long time to train, so be careful not to rely on them all the time.

Wizard--Wizards are your basic glass cannons. They're expensive and fragile but they pack a whallop.

Giant--Tanks. Giants are slow and expensive, but they can take a beating. They're best used to deal with walls and defensive towers.

Wall Breake--As you might expect, these kamikaze fighters are best used against enemy walls. Use them to punch a hole your other units can exploit.

P.E.K.K.A.-- Expensive bruisers that take forever to train, but dish out the pain like no other. Plus, they have the health to take a beating and fight on.

Know your units 3 (Aerial)

Flying units don't need to worry about pesky little things like walls, and most melee units cant attack them directly. All are vulnerable to Air Defense Towers and Archers.

Balloon--You can think of Balloons as airborne Wall Breakers. Balloons destroy defensive buildings, but are especially vulnerable to anti-air fire.

Healer--This flyer does exactly what you think it does: seeks out the nearest unit and heals it to full health. They don't have any attack, and cant heal other aerial units, so you'll have to take that into consideration.

Dragon--Big, expensive, and powerful. Dragons have lots of health and a great attack, but are too expensive to use regularly unless you're as wealthy as a Lannister.

Know your units 4 (Dark Elixir)

You wont be able to extract Dark Elixir until your Town Hall is upgraded to Level 8, but these late game units usually have some special skill or trait to make them worthwhile.

Hog Rider--These boar-mounted assault troops have high health, high damage output, and can leap over walls. Very good attack troops.

Minion--Not very powerful, but Minions are fast and cheap. Their flying ability protects them from cannons and mortars.

Witch--You can think of witches as a form of summoner. Rather than attacking directly, Witches spawn skeletons to attack for them. So long as the Witch is alive, shell replace any skeletons destroyed in the battle.

Golem--Golems are very similar to Giants: large, high HP, and slow movement speed. Golems have one other trick Giants lack--Golems split into a pair of Golemites when killed, and the new units continue attacking.

Managing your trophy count

Trophies are a key component of matchmaking in Clash of Clans. When looking for opponents, the game will automatically pair you with other players that have nearly the same number of trophies. This is all well and good, but a run of good luck might land you in deep water, surrounded by sharks. Fortunately, there are a few different ways to shed those unwanted trophies.

The easiest way to drop trophies is simply to lose trophies is simply to pick fights you intend to lose. Start a battle, drop a single cheap unit on the field, and hit the surrender button. Congratulations, you've successfully donated trophies to another player. If you want to slow down a bit, you can invest a few more units, and try to capture some loot before surrendering. It wont be much, but then each battle wont be a total loss. The choice really depends on how desperate you are for resources, and how quickly you want to offload your trophies.

Tools of the trade

The internet is a marvelously creative place, and nothing brings that to the surface like gaming. If this guide wasn't deep enough for you, a quick google search can take you to entire online communities dedicated to devising, analyzing, comparing, and evaluating Clash of Clans Strategies. Need help deciding on a base layout? You can find it.

You'll also find a slew of online resources. Want to know how quickly units improve when upgraded? Somebodys done it. Need to know the damage output of a Level 7 Mortar? This Wiki has you covered. Heck, there are even tools to help you calculate the cost and production time of your next raiding army. Where there are nerds, there will never be a shortage of help.

Parting Shots

Clash of Clans is a deeper game than outsiders give it credit for. If you don't take care, you'll find yourself at the bottom of the pile. This guide should give you a decent foundation from which to build. Keep improving, and you could reach the top of the charts--Lord of all you survey.

Burning and Pillaging not your cup of tea? Looking for something a bit...sweeter? Check out our Candy Crush Saga guide!