Shuck's Defense Guide

As a Clan Leader I feel that it is my duty to help my clan succeed as much as humanly possible.  I have been asked for base advice on multiple occasions from fellow clan members and while I don't claim to be an expert, I give what knowledge I can.  I created this guide because I felt I could explain things better here than several back and forth conversations in the Clan chat.  Also, it was starting to get very repetitive.  Now I can refer someone to this page when needed.

As a primer I would suggest you check out Flammy’s Strategy Guides on the wiki:

http://clashofclans.wikia.com/wiki/Flammy%27s_Strategy_Guides/Total_Newbie_Guide

Here is another good guide:

http://forum.supercell.net/showthread.php/62781-Tips-Tricks-Base-Design-for-Dummies

There is a ton of good information there that I will not go through in this guide.  I may touch on a few things they mention but only to the extent of explaining some of my design decisions.  I will assume you understand the basic principles outlined throughout those guides.

DISCLAIMER: This guide is purely my opinion.  These design considerations are by no means the absolute best defense strategy.  My conclusions are based my own personal experiences and research I’ve done on the net.  This guide is also only going to contain advice up to Town Hall 7 as I have had no experience beyond that and don’t feel comfortable giving advice based on possible ignorance.

Design Decisions:

Defensive Grids! – Don’t just put one big wall around everything, place walls around each of your defensive buildings.

The more walls your attacker has to go through the longer they aren’t attacking your defenses.  If there is one massive wall around everything all they need is a few Wall Breakers and they’re in.  From there they just need to release the appropriate troops to take what they need.  This is bad design.

Figure 1 - Bad Base Design

Too many times I’ve seen a base like in Figure 1.  Let’s break down what’s wrong here:

1) Obviously, there is only one wall between the attacker and the resources he desperately wants. Also, the wall isn’t even completed!  This allows the attacker a cheaper victory because there is no need to use wall breakers, or at least very little.

2) Each building you own (wall, mine, etc.) has one space area around it where attacking troops cannot be placed.  By combining buildings together this area becomes very large (note the light blue in Figure 1).  I’m sure you’ve seen the faint box when you move one of your buildings in the game.  If you’re not careful you end up with the situation above where two buildings are too far apart and create a gap inside the walls where troops can be placed.

3) Mines, Pumps, and Storages are gathered together in groups.  This means goblins will travel less to attack and steal each resource.  It’s best to have goblins running around while your defenses slowly lower their health.

4) There isn’t any equal coverage going on in this base.  Defenses are strewn about the base in a completely unorganized manner.  The Archer Towers and Cannons should be circling the base and the Mortar should be near the center.

Try using compartmental sections of your base to delay buildings from being destroyed.  Some people will often put everything in single boxes.  This isn’t always the best design as it uses up walls fast.  I try to put two to three things inside one compartment.  You can also use funneling channels to save walls.  This will be talked about more in depth later in this guide.

--------------

What to Protect? – So what is important to put inside the walls and what isn't?

Let's start with what you should never put inside you walls. The Builder's Huts, Laboratory, Barracks, Army Camps and Spell Factory don't matter if they get destroyed.  No resources or game progression is lost.

Gold Mines and Elixer Collectors are up for a little more debate.  These have some consequence if they are attacked as any uncollected resources could be stolen.  However, when you have limited walls you have to make a decision as what is most important to protect.  If you are active enough these should be fairly empty most of the time and left outside the walls next to Cannons and Archer Towers.  If you aren't active enough I would try to put your highest level mines and collectors inside the walls.

So that leaves your Town Hall, defenses, Elixir Storage, and Gold Storage.  These should all be within your walls.  If you're not as concerned about trophies the Town Hall could be placed outside for a cheap shield but defenses and storages definitely need to be inside.

Traps are a little less definitive.  I like to make Funneling Channels (see below) and other surprises inside the base. Some people like to put Traps outside the base in front of key entry points.  Hidden Telsas are good at killing Wall Breakers and protecting resources.  They are also good at protecting a Town Hall that's placed outside the walls.  So, in the end it's really up to you.  I'll add some more of my input on some of these later in this guide.
--------------
Design Against Wall Breakers – Avoid “X” sections and double layered walls.

Figure 2 - "X" Section

Figure 2 shows what happens when you make just a solid grid of walls in your base.  I call these “X” sections.  They hurt the overall design because Wall Breakers have a splash radius of two spaces, which means any wall within range is disintegrated.

Instead you should design your walls such that you create “T” sections that are two spaces away from each other.  See Figure 3.

Figure 3 - "T" Sections

Another big design flaw that I see so many players make is the double wall strategy shown below in Figure 4.  This is partly due to being ill-informed, but it’s also partly due to people not doing all their research.  When Wall Breakers were first introduced they couldn't get through double walls.  Supercell introduced an update a while back that gave them splash damage completely wiping out the old strategy.

Figure 4 - Double Thick Walls

A better approach is to create a space between the two walls as seen in Figure 5.  The Wall Breaker cannot reach the second layer wall in this arrangement.

Figure 5 - Double Wall Separation

--------------

Mine & Pump Placement – Maximize your collector protection by paying attention to defense ranges.

In Flammy’s Advanced Base Defense Guide there is a section on Turret Range Considerations.  There he tells you the best spot to place your collectors outside your walls.  I want to take that a step further and show you why he suggests this.

Figure 6 - Archer Tower Range

Figure 7 - Cannon Range

In Figure 6 you’ll see that an Archer trying to attack an Elixer Pump from the corner is still within the Archer Tower range but if you replace the Archer Tower with a Cannon, the Cannon misses by just one space.

With this in mind I’ve tried to design all my bases so that buildings on outside corners are defended by Archer Towers.  If a Cannon is on a corner I either leave the corner open so that the Archer can run into range of the cannon or place something small like a Builder’s Hut or a single wall so that the Archer will still be in range.  This is actually a type of funneling technique, more on that later.

--------------

Storage Separation – Make it tougher for those pesky goblins to get your resources, put walls in between them.

Let’s take our defensive grid and now apply it to our resources.  By putting walls in between resources you have halted an attacking army while they break through.  Meanwhile, your defenses continue to attack said troops.

Figure 8 - Group Storages

Figure 8 only requires one wall to be broken to have access to all your stored resources.  Figure 9 makes the attacking army work for it!  This brings me to another design point...

Figure 9 - Separated Storages

--------------
Gold and Elixir Alternation – Distribute your Gold and Elixer Storages/Pumps evenly around your base.

This protects a single resource from being completely wiped out.  If all your Gold Mines are on one side of your base someone who is farming for gold just needs to attack the one side to maximize their loot.  By alternating gold and elixir it forces them to attack the whole base weakening their army or take half the loot with a full strength army.

--------------

Circulation – The best way to spread your defenses is to put them in a circle.  Or more appropriately: triangles, squares, and pentagons.

Figure 10 -Tri Mortars

Figure 11 - Quad Archer Towers

Figure 12 - Penta Cannons

The idea behind this is symmetry, at least in defensive coverage.  You want to arrange the base so that you have equal overlapping coverage over all the things you want to protect.  Note that the above examples are ideal, though.  There isn’t anything to offset the perfect geometric patterns they achieve, such as walls or other buildings.

What I wanted to point out using these examples is that you can use defensive buildings of the same type to cover each other.  Here you see double coverage on every structure.  Of course you can do this with mixed defensive buildings as well but I tend to try to first cover with the same type before covering with other types. Covering with more than one type is even better.

At early Town Hall levels it’s important to have the Mortar near the middle of the base and surround it with your Archer Towers and Cannons.

--------------

Funneling – Force units to take the path you want, keeping them away from your valued resources.

Let’s take our separated storages example in Figure 9 and modify it to funnel some Giants:

Figure 13 - Funneling Channels

By adding a few Spring Traps between each of the four compartments you have effectively created a funneling channel.  Because Giants want to take the least resistant path to defensive buildings they will always travel through an opening rather than take down a wall.  In this case you are protecting your Mortar while they walk in circles around it.  This is good because not only are you springing Giants into the stratosphere but because you are continually dealing all the giants splash damage with the Mortar.

The drawback here is that Goblins now have free access to all the resources.  I would typically do this around the outer edges of the base where my Archer Towers and Cannons are.

The same concept can be done to funnel troops into a Giant Bomb.

Figure 14 - GIANT BOMB!

If you haven’t noticed by now, troops can go through two corner walls pointing towards each other.  You can use this strategy and the previous hole-in-the-wall one to funnel a ton of troops into a small area for the Giant Bomb to take out.

A few notes about the Giant Bomb. ALWAYS place it inside the walls; otherwise it’s just a waste of gold as most troops running by it will just set it off destroying only a handful of troops.  The best placement of a Giant Bomb is where you know a group of troops are going to all gather up together, such as right next to a Storage.  If you can funnel Goblins to attack a specific side of a Storage unit then the Giant Bomb could take them out easily.

--------------

Other Design Considerations – These are my quick bullet point placement criteria. I’ll go ahead and recap previous considerations in this as well for a clean reference.

• Use compartmental grids in your base.  Don’t put everything inside one wall.
• Buildings to put inside walls:
• Town Hall, Gold Storages, Elixer Storages, Cannons, Archer Towers, Mortars, Air Defenses, X-Bows, Inferno Towers, high level Gold Mines & Elixer Collectors, Traps*
• Buildings to put outside walls:
• Builder's Huts, Laboratory, Barracks, Army Camps, Spell Factory, Gold Mines, Elixer Collectors, Town Hall (farming), Traps*
• Offset “T” sections in Walls to prevent openings in multiple compartments at once.
• Don’t double up on your Walls, Wall Breakers can still break second layer.
• Circulation. Place defenses geometrically around the base.
• Archer Towers have long range.  Place them near the corners.
• Mortars cannot protect themselves.  Place them near center of the base.
• Separate your Storages!
• Alternate Gold Mines and Elixer Collectors.
• Mortars and Wizard Towers are complimentary.  Place them close to each other.
• Wizard Towers are great at wiping out Goblins.  Place them near Storages and/or Collectors.
• Air Defenses destroy flying units quickly.  Keep them behind walls, near center if possible.
• Clan Castle troops can be an essential defense.  Place them near valuable buildings.
• Funneling channels distract troops from the middle of the base.  Place Spring Traps in these.
• Giant Bombs can be expensive to re-arm.  Place strategically inside walls.