Clash of Clans Best Trophy & Farming Base Layouts

Picking a good base layout is key to success in Clash of Clans. There are two types of base layouts in Clash of Clans: farming defense setups and trophy defense setups. A good farming base layout will help you keep more of the resources you own, making it difficult for enemy players to steal your hard-earned gold and elixir. A good trophy base layout will focus on protecting your Town Hall and structures so that it will be more difficult for enemy players to score 2 or 3 stars when attacking you (or even 1 star if they use a weak army).

Clash of Clans Base Layouts: General Tips & Strategies

in the links above, I have provided full base layout guides for each Town Hall level. Note that before TH7, all of the base layouts focus on protecting resources (farming bases), whereas at TH7 and above, I have provided guides for both this guide to base layouts, I have provided both farming base and trophy base guides. Early base layouts should focus on protecting your resources above everything else.

Trying to protect your trophies is pointless before Town Hall 7, as before that range, higher Town Hall players can easily wipe your entire base no matter what your setup with cheap units (due to superior army size and laboratory upgrades). Instead, if you want to push for the 1250 trophy achievement (for the 450 gem reward – useful for getting your third builder early) before TH7, you need to do so through attacking rather than defending.

Starting at TH7, you may want to work on saving trophies to push for achievements (since they give out a lot of gems) or for participating in Clan Wars. The rewards for Clan Wars before Town Hall 7 are very low and your base will be easy to 3 star by TH7+ players, so TH6 and below players are considered a serious liability and do not get much out of Clan Wars.

Note that you can now set up a separate base for Clan Wars. It is a good idea to set up a trophy-oriented base for Clan Wars, as this will help make it more difficult for enemy players to score 2 or 3 stars when attacking you (or even 1 star if they use a weak army).

Tip #1: Understand the Difference Between Farming & Trophy Bases

Rather than build your base to try and both defense your resources and your trophies, it is much more effective to build separate bases for each of these functions. The reason that you should separate your farming base from your trophy base is simple: with a farming defense setup, you always want to keep your Town Hall outside your base. If an enemy snipes your Town Hall and then forfeits the match, you get a 12 hour shield and barely lose any resources. As a result, you cannot have a great farming base and a great trophy base at the same time.

A good defense actually does not play a major role in trophy pushing until higher ranges when the army you need to build to get trophies takes longer to train. Before 1600 trophies or so, you can push with just Barbarians and Archers. You can get several attacks in (or more) without having to wait for units to train. While you wait for a large number of units to be trained, you can look for bases that have an exposed Town Hall that you can snipe with a few Archers or Barbarians. You can alternate between a few Town Hall snipes and a full out raid once your army fills up. Continuously play rather than base layout is key for trophies before TH7 (and really is the case for TH7/TH8/TH9 players too if you get high enough in trophy count).

Tip #2: Put Multiple Walls Between Your Resources & Your Enemy

When setting up your base, you want to make sure your enemy has to break down multiple walls to get access to your storage units. Before TH8, if possible, you never want more than a single storage unit within the same wall complex. After TH8, you never want more than two storage units within the same wall complex. Make sure your enemy has to always break down another wall to get to your next storage point.

Tip #3: Avoid 4-Way Joints

As often as possible, you want to try and avoid a 4-way junction between your walls. Our brains like perfect lines and shapes, such as a square-shaped base layout. This is a very weak defense in Clash of Clans. The reason is if you have 4-way intersection of walls, all the enemy player has to do is break down the center joint in that 4-way intersection and then they have access to 4 new compartments. It makes your walls much less effective.

Instead, most of your joints should be 3-way. Your square-shaped compartments have to be off-center with one another to prevent these 4-way joints from occurring.

Tip #4: Protect Your High Value Towers

While your most important towers vary by level range, it is safe to say that the Mortar, Air Defense, and Wizard Tower are high value defensive towers and as a result need to be placed centrally in your base layout (side note: things change a bit at TH10 in regards to Mortar placement at high level, but that is a rare scenario and 99.9% of players will never reach a trophy count where they have to worry about this).

The outside of your base should include your Archer Towers, Cannons, and Hidden Teslas. These towers should be your first line of defense. Mortars, X Bows, and Air Defense can protect your outer towers from the inner portion of the base due to their large range. Meanwhile, Wizard Towers should be placed near storage units to protect against Goblins and Archers.

Try and place walls between your important towers as well. While some players like to stack their mortars, you never want to stack Air Defense or Wizard Towers. You need to spread these out so that a player cannot easily take them out after gaining access to that portion of your base.

Tip #5: Funnel Giants Into Spring Traps

Giants (and at higher levels, Hog Riders) have a predictable pathing as they always go after the closest defensive structure. The easiest way to take advantage of this is to note where the enemy often attacks first. Right next to that tower, place 1 unit of space (make the gap just 1 unit of space wide with walls) and drop another tower. Place the spring trap between the two towers. After attacking the first tower, the Giants (or Hog Riders) will automatically head towards the other tower and go right into the spring trap.

You should set up these formations throughout your base, taking time to put these traps in for every spring trap you have. This really becomes an effective strategy at TH7 and above, as you really do not have enough walls or towers to set up elaborate traps before that level range.

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Top 10 best kept secrets in Clash of Clans

Like a lot of similar scale casual games, Clash of Clans has a lot of nuance that is not really documented. As such, there are little tips and tricks you can learn over time, which can amount to a significant edge against the competition. Here are the top 10 tips I’ve learned over my time playing the game.

1. Revenge is a dish best served often

Like it or not, it will often be the case that you get attacked while you are away and your shield is down.  Sometimes you will get plowed, and that sucks – but getting attacked also presents a rare opportunity! When reviewing the list of punks who defaced your village while you were away, you have the choice to “Revenge” – to attack them back. This is a huge strategic advantage, because you can look at their village before attacking, and plan your attack – even train different units for a special assault. I recommend checking their storages (which you can do visually, or better yet by clicking on them and checking their levels), and also the location of their Town Hall. Since you may have a big list to go through, check farmers first (folks that attacked you with just a few units then gave up) since they are likely to have big resource stockpiles. If an opponent is shielded or online, just check back later.

2. The Wall Breaker Elixir Bank

Did you think your Barracks was just for training troops? Wrong. If you hadn’t noticed yet, you can queue a large number of troops to train, even when you aren’t online. When you queue troops in this way the elixir you need to train them is “spent”, but you can cancel training at no penalty for any queued troop. This means you can queue all of your barracks till they are full, and Elixir spent this way will be “banked” safely away from would-be attackers. When you return to your village, you can cancel the queued troops and recoup your “banked” Elixir. Looking down the roster of potential troops, the Wall Breaker has the highest cost per slot. This makes it an obvious choice. As you increase the level of your Barracks and Wall Breakers you can protect several hundred thousand Elixir this way!

3. 1250 trophies is what it’s all about

Perhaps it isn’t a big secret that you get 450 gems for reaching 3 stars on the “Sweet Victory” achievement. What could easily be more of a secret is that this is really easy to do. Starting as low as a level 6 Town Hall (maybe even lower), you can search for villages which have a town hall outside of their walls. Taking out this one building guarantees you a star and some trophies. When you are just starting you might think “why would anyone do that?” SeeLeaving you Town Hall out in the cold. Though you may not yet understand why, plenty of opponents do this – and you need only search diligently until you find such a target, and then take your cups and smile.

4. Raiding and Town Hall level

There are a variety of factors that affect how many resources you can steal from an opponent, but there is one huge one: Town Hall level. If your opponent is at your TH level, or 1 level above or below, you get a 100% modifier on what you can steal. However, if your opponent is 2 levels above you get a 125% modifier, and if 3 levels above you get a 150% modifier. Moreover, that same opponent would get a 50% and 25% modifier (respectively) for any attempt to revenge you. Given the current Town Hall level cap, this makes Town Hall level 7 a very attractive level to farm from. It will be hard to take down TH 9 opponents, but there will be the occasional easy target – but more importantly your resources will be relatively safe from the toughest opponents. Your Town Hall level also affects the cost to search for new opponents when matchmaking, which can really start to add up at the higher levels.

5. Lightning Spell away mortars

After initially tinkering with each spell, you might start to think Rage is the only way to (or Jump if you’ve unlocked it). These spells are pretty powerful, and offer some huge strategic advantages, but they are also quite expensive and take a long time to create. Maybe you’ve forgotten, or given up on the Lightning spell because it seemed too weak. Well it’s time for a second look. A 4+ star Lightning Spell will almost wipe out a level 4 – 5 mortar. If an opponent has placed a wizard tower or second mortar nearby, you can take out the pair with two spells. Wiping out critical splash damage defenses like this can allow your horde troops (barbs, archers, and goblins) to shred the remaining single target defenses.

6. Dropping trophies with heroes

If you play the game long enough, at some point you will probably want to ditch some trophies. The game is basically about bullying people smaller than you, and after a meteoric rise you may find that the competition gets a little too tough for your liking. So you want to lose on purpose, but doing so generally costs you troops, training time, and elixir. Enter the hero. If you are lucky enough to have acquired one or both of these titans, you can use them to drop trophies essentially for free. Start a match, drop your hero, and then end the battle before they take any damage. After the fight, you’ll drop some cups, your hero will be ready to get right back in the action – and it cost you nothing!

7. Giving your hero a rest

After the version 3.25 patch, the regeneration time of heroes was significantly reduced. However, even for a level 1 hero, an hour can be a long time to wait. So it can be very frustrating when you are in the middle of an intense raiding session, take a five minute bio break, and come back to find that you’ve been attacked and your hero is KO’d. You can fix this! On the hero pedestal the middle button controls whether the hero is in “Guard” or “Sleep” mode. When you toggle it to “Guard” he/she will defend your village when you are away – risking KO. When you toggle it to “Sleep” your hero will sleep safely on his/her pedestal and remain fully charged and available when next you seek to use him/her for raiding.

8. Saving the Campaign for a last big push

There is a game tip during the load screens which says that if you are need a little more resources you can fight the goblins in the single player campaign. This is true, but if you played the early missions you probably feel that the resource pay out is ridiculously puny – and you’d be right. You can win up to 4.8 million gold and elixir in the campaign, but 3 million of that comes in the last 5 levels. These levels may at first seem impossible, but as you upgrade your units to around level 4-5 you’ll find they aren’t too bad. Also bear in mind that I’m speaking just about poaching them for resources, and not necessarily getting 3 stars. If you save these 5 levels for a rainy day, they can either cover a large portion or the complete balance needed for later upgrades like Town Hall Level 9, Barbs/Archers Level 5, or similar. The fact that you can rack up this loot while you are shielded means that you can get within striking distance while raiding, and then use the campaign to get you to the finish line stress free.

9. Leaving your Town Hall out in the cold

So you want to keep your Town Hall in the deepest most protected nook of your village right? There is no possible reason to leave your Town Hall exposed to the vandals who will defile and loot it – right? Wrong. There are several reasons, but the most important is that each time someone attacks and destroys your TH, you get at least a 12 hour shield. If you are trying to save resources for upgrades (and aren’t you basically always doing that?) then you want to remain shielded as much as possible. If you aren’t independently wealthy, buying shields is not really feasible – so the only way you are going to get them is by losing in a smart way. “But what about my trophies?” you say. It is a valid consideration, but at least in my time so far I’ve not found it to be a significant drag for several reasons. First, like I mention in 1250 trophies is what it’s all about you can seek opponents just like yourself and recoup lost trophies pretty quick. Second, you’ll randomly be attacked by farmers every so often that give you a bunch of trophies on their way down. Third, and perhaps most importantly – you can balance some losses by being a sneaky bastard. Learn more below inTraps and Teslas, the element of surprise.

10. Traps and Teslas, the element of surprise

The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist. 
– Charles Baudelaire

Supercell gives you many strategic options for defense, but perhaps the most powerful isthe element of surprise. Traps and the defensive Hidden Tesla do not appear to opponents when they look at your park, and while there are tricks to figure out where they are, a matchmade opponent will only have seconds to try and figure it out. Psychologically, many will find it hard to keep focus on the hidden as they struggle to analyze and consume all of the visible defenses and plan their attack. Use this to your advantage. Funnel units through a weakness in a wall, then blast them with bombs. Leave your Town Hall out in the cold, but surround it with Teslas to punish unprepared attackers. Clash of Clans is a game about raiding, and the odds are stacked against defenders. You won’t win every assault, but if you use the hidden elements in your arsenal wisely, you’ll win a good quantity often a majority – or at least enough to remain trophy neutral.

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Clash of Clans: Top 8 tips, tricks, and cheats!

If you just saw the Super Bowl, then you just saw the Clash of Clans commercial featuring Liam Neeson, who appeared quite... taken with the game. (Sorry!) If you're taken with it too, then you'll want to make sure you get the most out of it!

If you're not familiar with Clash of Clans, it's a a game where you build forts with gold and elixir resources. Buildings are dragged and dropped however players like, and resources are collected and stored whenever you hop into the game. Over time, they build an army of various troop types. They can be taken on single player missions to raze the villages of nearby goblins, or on raiding parties of neighboring villages. Similarly, other players can raid your town, but don't worry, nothing is permanently destroyed (though they can snatch some of your gold and elixir). Players earn and lose trophies through their multiplayer raids, and band together in clans in order to concentrate their attacks.

It sounds simple, but there's a lot more to it. And we're here to help!

1. Be patient, save your gems

The biggest caveat with any casual free-to-play game is the premium currency system. Just about everything is on some kind of timer, and as you progress, those timers get longer. Don’t cave and spend your precious gems on speeding up production - save them for something important that you get to keep. Make a point to complete missions and clear natural obstacles to build your gem count. Maybe it’s a building that’s only available for a limited time. Maybe it’s your next builder’s hut. The point is, you need to save the gems you earn from missions and terrain clearing for stuff that’s more than just a convenience. You shouldn’t even spend the gems they suggest you do during the beginning tutorial session.

When you do have enough gems, think long and hard about what’s important to you in the game, since if you want to get through this without paying dime, it’ll take awhile before you make another major purchase. On the flip side, you’ll have a hard time getting through the competitive end-game content without spending some cash.

That said, if timers have got you down, play a few other games and cycle through them. Candy Crush Saga and Tapped Out are both solid options. A top-ranked Clash player actually went out and made his own similar game, Samurai Siege, and Gameloft has a Rome-themed knock-off calledTotal Conquest.

2. Offense is the best defense (and vice versa!)

Your upgrade and build order will vary significantly based on if you want to sit back and collect resources, or take the fight to other players. Odds are you'll regularly be bouncing between these two. If defense is your primary interest, your first upgrade should be your town hall, then walls, then defensive structures - first mortar, then archer tower, then cannons. Mortar and air defense are your most important towers, so make sure they’re close to the middle and have lots of protection. After that, start working on your various resource production buildings, and make sure they’re fully upgraded. Some players intentionally leave a few elixir gatherers and mines outside the walls so other players can farm them without destroying everything they have, though it’s often practical to leave lower-priority buildings like those outside your walls so you can make sure the important stuff is better-protected with overlapping fields of fire rather than covering a wider area.

Also, remember that players with higher level town halls earn less from raiding lower-level players - don’t be in a rush to upgrade your town hall if you’re playing defensively. Just because you're playing defensively means you should neglect your barracks - in fact, you can queue up troops to train there, and then get a refund on those in the queue later on, turning your barracks into a kind of temporary, unraidable elixir storage.

If you’re getting aggressive, the order is similar. First build up your town hall, then get your elixir production up and running so you can start stockpiling resources right away. Then get your barracks and camps upgraded so you can get started on building an army. Neither of those structures provide resources to raiders, so feel free to plant them outside your walls. After that, flesh out your defenses with walls and cannons.

The only things left would be the laboratory for upgrading troops, spell factory for added offensive power, and gold mines for upgrading structures.Since matchmaking is based on trophy count, some players intentionally keep theirs low so they can clean up against lower-level players, so be careful about which fights you pick early on. That said, if you want to farm players that are lower level than you, intentionally lose trophies by raiding with a single unit.

3. Shields up!

Getting attacked can suck, but luckily if 40% of your town is destroyed, or your Town Hall comes crumbling down, you’ll have a 12-hour shield. If 90% of your base is wiped out, you’ll get an extra four hours. How do you best make use of this time? Well, don’t go out and start attacking right away, that’s for sure. That will cancel out your shield immediately.

The safety time is valuable, so use it to your advantage - take some time to figure out how you can improve your economy, build up your army, upgrade towers (since they don’t fire when upgrading) or simply stockpile and spend resources before the pain train comes rolling around again. Shields are useful enough that you may even want to voluntarily move your town hall out into the open; you'll lose trophies and some resources, but often the amount of safety time you get out of it is worth it. If you get really itchy for battle, remember that Clan Wars don't affect your shield timers at all.

4. Learn the lay of the land

The core strategic mechanic of Clash of Clans combat is to have as many walls between your resources and the outside as possible. To do this, you’ll want to make sure there are no gaps in your perimeter, and definitely make sure that there are no spawnable tiles within your base. You’ll want to make sure that structures are tight together, so cannons and other defensive structures can cover as many of them as possible.

Putting your buildings into small compartments formed by upgraded walls is vital to slowing an enemy's advance. You’ll also want to have your most powerful defenses positioned more closely to the center of your base; provide as much of a buffer zone with other buildings and walls as possible, so attacking troops have to take longer chewing on other stuff to get to the guns.

5. Pick your targets

When finding opponents, there are a few things you want to take into account before you start dropping troops. First, look at their Town Hall level - if it’s far lower than yours, you’ll be getting a smaller cut of the spoils. You’ll get to see exactly how many resources are available for plundering. At the very least, you want to be able to earn back the resources you spend on troops. If resources are all you're after, it's often more profitable to send in a handful of goblins than a full-blown assault.

Before you deploy your first troop, be aware of which resources you’re going for. If you’re going for trophies to climb the ranks, you’ll need to be investing a lot of troops to get two or three stars on your raid. You’ll also want to tap elixir reserves if you want to replenish (or earn back) resources for troops. Once you've done that, it's simply a matter of targeting the most powerful defenses for those resources.Use giants to draw fire from towers initially, then wall breakers to breach, then more giants to mop up defenses. Barbarians, wizards, and archers can chew on structures once areas have been cleared of cannon and mortar fire, while goblins can bee-line for resources. Be mindful of how many troops you drop in, though. You want to be able to pull off a win while burning through as few as possible.

Remember that you have no direct control over your troops - know what the unit’s favorite targets are and deploy accordingly. Barbarians will run head-first at the nearest building, which isn’t great news if there’s a well-defended mortar just a little further in. Send the wall breakers and giants in first to take care of that first. Smart players will create bases that funnel troops right into areas with a ton of traps, which can blunt your offensive very quickly.

6. Get raiding buddies

Once you’ve maxed-out your village level, gone through the single-player levels, and rebuilt your castle, you’re probably pretty hardcore about the game and ready to start getting into organized clan play. Not only are these great ways to socialize in the game, but coordinated attacks can help you bring in some pretty good hauls, too.

Keep in mind that although you can use clans to call in back-up, you’ll be expected to contribute troops too - it’s a team effort, after all. Communicate regularly about what you’re up to, get advice from senior members when you’re trying to figure out what to do next, and have fun! Your clan may have aspirations for competitive league play, which can get pretty intense.

7. Punch your weight in Clan Wars

Attack unstarred villages first, since you and your clan have the most to gain from attacking them. When picking targets for the first time in Clan Wars, let the game's matchmaking figure out a good opponent for you. If you end up succeeding against tougher opponents, your lower level allies may have a hard time dealing with an equivalent increase in challenge. If you go for easy ones, then you're taking away good opponents for those lower-level allies, forcing them into battles they can't win. Punch your weight, and the whole clan wins.

8. Tailor your armies in Clan Wars

You've got a whole day to prepare before war kicks off. Use the scout function for your target enemy encampment to get a lay of the land, and build your army around defeating it. If the walls are low level, go land. If the air defense isn't upgraded, go air. Make specific requests in your clan chat for the types of troops you want to send in. Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of who you are attacking will help you build the best army to take it on.

9. Your top Clash of Clans tips, tricks, and cheats!

For a casual game, Clash of Clans has a surprising amount of depth. If you've got any personal strategies for winning bigger, faster, and better, leave them in the comments, or sing out for help with particularly tricky situations.

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The Top 8 Must-Know Clash of Clans Tips

Clash of Clans Guide

Welcome to the most detailed and effective Clash of Clans strategy guide on the internet. Throughout this website, you will find dozens of articles discussing the best farming strategies, base set ups, upgrades to get, offensive tactics, army compositions, and more. Here are some of our most popular sections:

Below, you will find my top 8 must-know Clash of Clans tips. Before you do anything else, read the rest of this guide to learn these tips!

The Top 8 Must-Know Clash of Clans Tips

Tip #1. Save Your Gems

When you start playing Clash off Clans, you begin with 500 gems. By the end of the tutorial, you end up losing nearly 50 gems by completing structures instantly as instructed by the tutorial. If you instead save your gems, you will be able to add extra builders at a quicker rate.

Here are the costs for each builder:

• Builder 2: 250 gems (you add this during the tutorial)
• Builder 3: 500 gems
• Builder 4: 1000 gems
• Builder 5: 2000 gems

While builders 4 and 5 are a long ways off, builder 3 is achievable relatively quickly if you save your gems. Extra builders allow you to construct more buildings at once and as a result are very helpful. With the new Clan War achievements and a trophy push, you can unlock the 4th builder within a few months of playing even without purchasing anything. The 5th builder will require a major Trophy push (to Champion’s League) or more time to unlock some of the other achievements.

Tip #2. Use Cheap Units

One of the biggest mistakes new players make is not considering the cost of the units they use to battle. While Giants are great, they also cost a lot more to use than Barbarians. At higher levels, Dragons are great, but they cost a lot more to use than Giants. There is also the time factor to consider. While Wizards are stronger than Archers, they not only cost more to make, but each Wizard requires 8 minutes. Meanwhile, you could create 4 Archers in less than two minutes (Wizards are a 4-supply unit).

As a result, when your primary goal is to save up resources, you need to make an effort to use cheap units that are quick to produce. The best units to make depends on your Town Hall level; see my Clash of Clans Town Hall Farming Guide by Level for more details.

Tip #3. Only Use Spells When Necessary

Just like units, spells are very expensive and take awhile to produce. While they can be very effective, you need to make sure that the battle you are fighting warrants the use of such a spell. You should know that the Rage Spell starts at 23,000 elixir and the Healing spell starts at 15,000 elixir; each time you use these spells, you need to be sure that using the spell will allow you to earn at least an additional 15k or 23k resources (spell depending).

Tip #4. Slowly Upgrade Your Town Hall

The Town Hall “loot penalty” is one of the most important things to know about in Clash of Clans, yet it is not a publicly advertised feature in the game. It is not even mentioned during the tutorial or anywhere in the game, yet it is extremely important to how the game plays out.

This penalty reduces the amount of loot you can get from enemies if your Town Hall is a higher level than your opponent’s Town Hall. If your Town Hall is one level higher than your enemy’s, you will only be able to steal 90% of the normal amount available for loot. If your Town Hall is two levels higher, you will only be able to steal 50% of the loot. For three levels, only 25%, and for 4 levels or more, only 5% of the total available loot. The penalty is reflected in “Loot Available” – you do not have to do any calculations on your own.

As a result, we recommend getting up to Town Hall level 4 and then sitting in this range while you max out your defensive structures, your army camps, and your research. You can even max out your walls for extra credit before moving on to Town Hall 5. Repeat this process for every level.

Tip #5. Start Matchmaking Early

When you first start playing Clash of Clans, you get a three-day shield. However, thanks to the previously-mentioned Loot Penalty, very few players will want to attack you even if you drop your shield. As a result, you can start matchmaking right away when you need resources with no fear of reprisal. You can skip around and look for a base with exposed resource collectors and use a handful of Barbarians, Goblins, or Archers to attack them.

Even if you do get attacked, low-level Town Hall players have very little to lose. You will only lose a tiny bit of resources that can be more than made up for with a single attack.

Tip #6. Use the “Next” Feature Frequently

When farming either resources or trophies, you should always be skipping around with the “next” button in order to find the perfect base to attack. It only costs a tiny bit of gold to jump to the next base, so make sure you have a good base before you spend all your units attacking one. Also, be careful never to spend every last bit of gold you have on an upgrade – you need to save some gold in order to be able to use the “next” ability to continue farming!

Tip #7. Put the Clan Castle in the Center of Your Base

The Clan Castle is perhaps the best defensive structures in Clash of Clans, but only if you place it in the center of your base. The way the structure works is that when enemy units enter the Clan Castle’s range (it has a very long range), the units will pour out of the Clan Castle and attack the enemy’s attacking units. Note that your Clan Castle troops are capable of hopping over your own walls.

If you place the Clan Castle outside of your base, the enemy can simply lure away the units inside the Clan Castle and easily kill them out of range of your towers. If you keep the Clan Castle inside your base, the enemy will have to take damage from both your Clan Castle units as well as your defensive structures in order to take out your base.

Generally, it is best to ask for Archers to keep in your Town Hall for defensive purposes. This works very well because Archers will often shoot at melee units from behind your walls, allowing them to shoot down Giants and Barbarians without taking damage. Very high level players may choose different units, such as Dragons or Golems, but this requires a clan where members will donate these troops.

Note that this tip really only applies to players at Town Hall 7 or above. At earlier Town Hall levels, you do not have enough buildings to actually prevent the enemy from luring out units in your Clan Castle. Town Hall 7 units can still be lured, but it is tougher. At Town Hall 8 and up the enemy will have to destroy some buildings or a decent number of units to force troops out of your Clan Castle.

Tip #8. Focus on Dark Elixir

Once you reach Town Hall 7 and beyond, your limiting resource will always be Dark Elixir. Through normal play, you typically will max out all gold and elixir-based upgrades long before you acquire enough Dark Elixir to max out your heroes and Dark Barracks troop upgrades. As a result, you need to place a priority on Dark Elixir above all other resources, saving your spells and hero units for when you stand to gain a large chunk of Dark Elixir.

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