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.
I consider the type of raiding I will be describing here to be a form of farming. Not all will agree with me on this point. Some people seem to believe that farming requires super-low trophy counts, and/or using massed goblin armies, exclusively.
I consider anything that is mostly intended to gain resources (rather than to win trophies) to be a form of farming - especially when you are looking for an easy match, rather than fighting someone of your own level or higher.
What does this matter? Well, this is also going to be my "Farming" guide as well. I really don't enjoy doing those other types of farming (the massed goblins, or the super-low trophy count). So don't look for any other farming guide out of me, unless the game changes in ways that significantly change existing methods, or create entirely new farming techniques.
Benefits of Raiding
Raiding has one main goal, and all I will discuss in this chapter is in that effort: to capture resources. We’ll discuss going after both Gold and Elixir in this guide, as they are nearly identical when trying to steal them. Generally gold is more valuable to players, as it is easier to spend (instantly on walls, or on defenses) than elixir (limited to offensive buildings and units).
Raiding lets you augment your income with quite literally limitless resources. The amount of gold and elixir that is available for you to steal is limited only by your skill, and your time investment. But just note that you lose about 20 trophies every time you fail to get the town hall.
The Ideal Raid
The ideal raid deploys as few troops as possible, and targets whatever resources that are easy to steal only, skipping better-protected storages or mines.
The ideal raid has two main success factors. First, and what I’m sure you already know, is the amount you can steal. That is what we’re here for, after all. Secondly, and just as important but often overlooked, is your investment to get those resources. This means both the actual cost of the units you deploy when raiding, and also the time it will take you to rebuild all of them.
Don’t believe that unit costs and build time matter?
Take these two raids as examples:
Example Raid 1
Example Raid 2
Gold Stolen
150,000
15,000
Elixir Stolen
150,000
15,000
Goblins deployed
20
2
Archers deployed
46
2
Barbarians deployed
20
-
Giants deployed
18
-
Healers Deployed
1
-
Wall Breakers Deployed
4
-
Notes
An example of an all-out attack, using one of my favorite army compositions.
An example of picking off just 1 full elixir collector and 1 gold mine, and ignoring the rest because they are protected.
Both are nice raids, right? Now…
Which attack was more effective as a raid?
Example 1’s army costs around 55,000 elixir (depending on exact unit levels), while Example 2’s army costs a maximum of 600 elixir. This means the net total profit (gold + elixir) was ~145,000 for Example 1 and ~29,400 for Example 2. Clearly, Example 1 gains more total resources… However:
Example 1’s army takes a total of 5990 seconds to train, or 1.3 hours total*. Example 2 army takes a total of only 110 seconds to train. This means that while the player who used Example 1 is sitting around waiting for their army to finish, a player using Example 2 will be out raiding again, and again, and... This does not just mean a player doing Example 2 is less bored, it means Example 2 will actually have a much higher income per hour.
Note: This is the total time to build; the actual elapsed time to build this army is that number divided by the number of available barracks, likely either 3 or 4.
I’ll prove that for you:
Assuming 3 minutes to find a match (for both players), Example 1 will attack once every 28 minutes. During the same 28 minute period, Example 2 can attack 9 times, gaining a total of 264,600, compared to the 145,000 stolen by Example 1. Example 1 gains 310,000 resources per hour, and Example 2 gains 567,000 resources per hour.
While I used made-up numbers for this example, this has been proven before by both myself and other players. Lots of little raids will be more profitable than a few large, all-out attacks. There is another factor at play as well: Little raids are less vulnerable to failure: your total investment is low, and you can just abandon the attack with little loss if needed. Finally, doing lots of little attacks is simply more interesting than sitting around for 25 or more minutes waiting for your army to finish training.
Picking the right Base to Raid
So, now that we know what the ideal raid is, how should we pick the bases we will be attacking? There are several factors that are important
Quickly reviewing a target
Here, in order, are a list of things you should quickly glance at when determining if a base is a good choice to raid.
Resources - Total
The first thing you should glance at is the total number of resources. If this number is terribly low, (<10,000 of each is a good cutoff probably, but it depends on your level and your situation) just immediately move onto the next match. But don’t just look for very high resource totals… because the difficulty of stealing the resources is also very important.
Resources - Determining Source: Storage vs Collectors/Mines
If a base's total resources are sufficiently high, the next thing to determine is where the resources are in the base. They will be in either the storages or the collectors/mines, but different bases will have different ratios in each. The skill of being able to tell how much is in each is quite important, and will be VERY beneficial to those who master it.
First thing to look for is back at the total resources: Are the total amounts of each resource nice round numbers? (such as 50,000 or 36,500 or 42,750 – These are all ‘round’ numbers.) If yes, this is great news! This is someone who has not logged in for a long time, their collectors and mines are full, AND they have nothing in their storages. This occurs after they've been attacked and 3-starred at least once (often more) in the recent past. Why is this important? It means you can simply raid their collectors/mines to steal 100% of their resources. Literally nothing will be in their (usually far-better protected) storages. You can simply raid their collectors, and walk away happy.
Determining if target has been online lately (and collected their resources)
Is the total amount not a
Example
Gold
Elixir
Example 1
57,028
3,102
Example 2
7,001
152,515
Example 3
1,234
40,808
Last Resort Method: Eyeballing
Not a nice round number, and both numbers are sufficiently high in count? Well, now we need to eyeball how much is in those collectors/mines. Look at the collectors. There is a graphical representation that shows how full it is. See the images below. Elixir is much easier to eyeball than Gold.
The missing resources graphical glitch is, as my name for it implies, a glitch where a 100% full elixir collector or gold mine can appear as empty. Often when the glitch occurs, well more than half of the collectors will appear as empty. Sometimes all will appear as empty. When attacked, however, it will reward the correct amount of the resource, along with the accompanying animation which shows lots of elixir bubbles/gold coins pouring out.
You can detect this glitch quite easily once you've trained yourself to look for it. If there is one collector or mine that is full, and then several that are empty right next to it (and they're all the same or nearly the same level) it is quite easy to tell that the graphical glitch is occurring. A very easy way to detect this glitch is if it is accompanied by the 'Nice Round Numbers' indicator discussed above. You can also look at the storage and if they appear in the 'empty or nearly empty' graphical representation, and yet there is a TON of resources available to be stolen, the resources are likely to be in the collectors and mines yet invisible due to this glitch. Alternative (and harder) ways to detect it include looking for signs of abandonment, such as lots of uncollected tombstones.
Should I attack or not?
Finally, once you've figured out how many resources there are, and where they are in the base, you need to make the decision to attack or not. In the end, it is up to you to determine if the Risk vs Reward makes a base worth attacking, or if you should keep looking for another base.
Risk Factors
Reward Factors
How many troops will you have to deploy?
How many resources are available in total?
Chance they have clan castle troops?*
How many resources are easy to steal?
If they do have CC troops, are they in a good spot? Or can you draw them out easily?
Are there collectors you can pick off for free? How much is in them?
Chance of hidden Teslas? (TH7 and above)
Exposed or semi-exposed storage(s)?
Look for tombstones indicating clan castle troops may have already been killed in a prior attack.
Use all of the above steps to determine the risk/benefit of attacking a particular base. You can ‘scan’ the base in 10 to 30 seconds quite easily. Are you getting close to the end of the 30 seconds? Just let the 30 seconds run out! If you don’t deploy troops, you can still click “End Battle” without taking a loss. Use the extra time to determine if you actually want to attack the base or not. Remember, once you deploy troops, you can't 'Undo'!
3-14 Let's Play Clash of Clans - Getting to 1 Million... Maybe? (Gameplay Commentary)
Great example of The Picker: Don't deploy more than you have to!
4 Wall Breakers, 2 Giants (optional) and the rest: 25% Goblin, 25% Barbarian, 50% Archer
How to use: Use Archers to pick off exposed buildings. Learn ranges on turrets to make this more effective. Use Barbarians to soak up turret fire, and Goblins to steal resources that can't be picked. If you opt to use Giants, use them to distract defenses. Otherwise, just use Barbarians.
How to use: Slower and more expensive than The Picker, but more able to attack strong bases to get at resources. Giants can overwhelm (or at least distract) defenses depending on if you're attacking someone of equal level or lower level. Use the Archers to pick, as in The Picker, and Goblins and Barbarians to rush in and get storages. Wall Breakers are more important in this army composition than in The Picker, as they will seriously help Giants reach the defensive weapons faster. Don't deploy all, or even any, of the Giants if it isn't needed! Remember the 'Ideal Raid'!
The Striker
(For those with Healers unlocked only) (upgraded Poker army)
How to use: The Striker has lots of attacking power against all bases except super well defended Air Defense Turrets. Just like with The Poker, don't deploy your Giants or Healer unless needed to get at protected storages that you've determined are holding enough resources to make it worth it. Slow to train and replace, the Striker lets you choose if you want to deploy 40 Archers to raid the exterior of a base, or deploy a massive Giant force to three-star your victim ... IF they have the resources to justify such an expensive attack.
Clash of Clans - Raiding Giants with Healer, Rage spell! 1600 Trophies
The Striker: Higher level attack (goal: elixir)
Bad Army Compositions:
The Rusher
10 Wall Breakers + 100% Goblins. Look for high resources, then deploy all Goblins. No brains required; not very detail-oriented. Why is this a bad raiding army? Well, it will get the job done: unless you run into a bad case of Wizard Tower, you'll probably capture all, or nearly all, of the available resources. The problem with this army composition is it basically relies on deploying mass amounts of units, which slows down your training time when you must replace them all, which in turn lowers your income. The three previous armies all give you lots of options to handle various different situations - they won't force you into all-or-nothing deployments.
Raiding Tips and Tricks
Train your army while you attack for more frequent raiding
Queue up additional soldiers before you go searching for a match! They will start completing as soon as you deploy your first unit in battle, so you will return to an already half-built army. Decreases your waiting time between raids.
Test for Clan Castle troops
The first unit you put down when raiding a base should be to check if they have clan castle troops. You don't want to be surprised when your plan goes wrong due to a bunch of enemies pouring out to distract your oh-so-carefully-placed-archers, drawing them into the line of fire of the defenses.
Trophy range considerations
Keep an eye on your trophy count! Different levels of bases should raid at different trophy ranges. These ranges also change over time, so what worked two weeks ago might not still work today.
Maximum Resources Available to be Stolen and Maximum Stealable from different sources
You can't steal all of an opponent's resources. The maximum amount offered to you when you view a base is actually comprised of some resources from the storage units (if any), some resources from the collectors, and some resources from the Town Hall (if any).The breakdown is like this:
Building
Amount you can steal of actual maximum
Capped at a maximum amount?
Town Hall
100%
No
Storage
25%
Yes, 198,000 of each resource
Collectors/Mines
50%
No
Dark Elixir Storage
5%
No
Dark Elixir Drill
75%
No
Resource Penalty for attacking lower level Town Halls
There is a penalty for attacking bases that are lower level than you in Town Hall level. This is to prevent higher levels from farming others who are significantly lower level than themself.
When attacking someone ___ TH levels lower than yourself...
... there is a ___ penalty applied to the maximum number of resources you can steal.
Meaning you can only steal ___ of total amount
1
10%
90%
2
50%
50%
3 or more
75%
25%
Conclusion
Thank you very much for reading! I hope you learned something useful.
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