Lets Play Clash of Clans: A Look at Defenses: Mortar

Sorry about the lack of updates everyone.  With a Baby on the way, a wonderful Girlfriend, an Amazing 4 year old and a full time job life has kept me running lately.

Quick Base update.  Few more walls upgraded but most importantly one of the regular Barracks has been upgraded to level 10 and my Spell Factory to level 5.  This finally gives me the PEKKA and Freeze Spell, though I have to admit the level 1 Freeze Spells 4 seconds is not all that impressive to start with.  I have also finished construction on the final XBow that I am planning to use primarily in an AD role.

At the moment in high level game-play it is very common for an attacker to be able to fairly easily 1 star a base, 2 stars is easily achievable with the standard high end army comps and a small amount of skill while 3 stars is considered difficult due to the time constraint and the effectiveness of the high level defenses.

The Main thing I wanted to cover today is the beginning of a series looking at the various Active and Passive Defenses. Lets start with the Mortar

Starting at level 1 the Mortar has a dps of 4, but that only tells part of the story.  The Mortar fires every 5 seconds which in turn gives it a damage of 20 per round.  This means that against lvl 1 Goblins it takes 2 shots to kill them, Barbarians take 3, while Archers can be 1 shotted.  Giants take a whooping 15 rounds to kill which in turn equates to 1 Minute and 15 seconds.

One thing I found particularly interesting, and perhaps it is a reaction to the archers popularity, is the Mortar has the ability to 1 shot Archers of equivalent level up to level 6.  The Mortar however has 2 more levels to hit its max.

The Mortars max out at level 8 with 13 dps and 65 damage per round.  This means at max level vs the standard "farming" troops of Barb/Gob/Archer a Mortar can 2 shot Barbarians and Goblins while retaining the ability to kill Archers in a single shot.  This essentially maintains the balance started at level one while slightly nurfing the effectiveness of Barbarians as they can now be killed 5 seconds faster.

As you steadily Climb the Trophy Ladder the Barbarian Army gives way to BArch, then BAG, followed by BAM.  Though even now in Crystal 2 I find the army I am most often confronted with is BArch with Giants or mass Archers.

Given the Preponderance of Archers I face in my base defenses I have found that against my most common opponent the Level 6 Mortar is actually about as high as you need to go to defend yourself against a run of the mill farming attack.  This gives me the ability to kill maxed Barbs in 4 shots and Goblins in 2, though both troop types can be predamaged for easy killing with careful bomb placement.  I must point out though that typically I rarely find myself facing maxed versions of either Barbs or Goblins.

Against a more determined attacker using Wizards, Witches, Golems or Hogs the Mortar loses some, but of course not all, of its effectiveness.  The most telling and for the Mortar damaging transition is when you move from Giants to Golems for your tank troops.  A Golem takes up 30 spaces, meaning you can fit 6 giants into the same amount of space.  At Max Level those 8 Giants give you 5,640 hp, a Maxed out Golem has 6,300 hp and when it dies creates two Golemites with an additional 1,260hp each for a total of 8,820.

The reason the switch from Giants to Golems is so hard on the Mortar is found in its splash damage.  While the 8 giants 5.6k hp sounds impressive the fact the Mortar is a splash defense means its hitting each of them simultaneously reducing their effective HP to each individual Giants 940. This means instead of the 87 rounds to destroy the giants one at a time it can instead kill them in a mere 14 or roughly 6 times faster.  This is further amplified by the damage of multiple Mortars, Cannons, Infernos etc.  The Golems massive health Pool in affect turns a bases splash defenses into single target ones for the first 6.3k of its hp.  Its not until the "death" of the Golem and the birth of the Golemites that the splash defenses regain some of their prior capacity but even this is muted by the fact there are only two targets (each of which has more health then a giant) to minimize a bases ability to defend itself.

A competent attacker will strive to keep his tanks in front of his dps as well as healers in a serious attempt on your base, against this kind of attack several of the other defenses start to gain importance.  Given all this I think for my own purposes I will only level my Mortars up to level 6 to maximize its abilities vs standard farming troops then focus my upgrades after that on improving the abilities of my other defenses.  For my next Look at Defenses I will focus on the Wizard Tower to see if it suffers at higher levels as much as the Mortar does.

Until Then Rev signing off, and get your Clash On!

Lets Play Clash of Clans: The Rush Continues at TH10

Rushed Town Hall 10 Episode 2

We are now one week in to recovering from a rushed partially upgraded TH7 base.  The most obvious visual difference this week is my swapping from Orz's excellent Tempest trophy base to one of my own design.  The change in design came about due to my second Inferno Tower coming on line as well as my 4th Hidden Tesla and 2 of the 3 X-Bows.  In addition to the defensive differences I finally have the other pair of dark elixir drills working.

The current configuration of the base was designed around several priorities.

• Preserve or Increase Trophy Count
• Prevent 2-3 stars in Clan Wars.
• Protect Elixir and Dark Elixir
• Provide minor protection from Hog Attacks.

In order to Achieve the first and second Priorities I decided to heavily overlap my defense structures even at the expense of pushing the Gold storage's I had given a lower priority to out to the outer structure of the base with nothing more then expendable structures and a single wall for protection.  This did allow me to create a potent overlap with my splash damage structures deeper in the base protecting the more vulnerable single target defenses while simultaneously being protected from Giants/Golems etc both by the outer walls and the outer ring of single target turrets/towers.  This double layer of defenses is then in turn protected itself by Multi Target Inferno Towers and Ground Targeting X-Bows.  The result is during attacks the attacker finds himself simultaneously fighting 3-4 defenses or more simultaneously from every avenue of attack. 

In addition to the the overlap of the various turrets/towers I took the step of making the Clan Castle, Not the Town Hall, the center of my base.  Typically for donations I request High Level Archers, Wizards or Witches, the placement of the clan castle means that only serious assaults that start to breach my outer walls will trigger the CC Troops and my choice of Ranged defenders means that they will often have at least 1 wall protecting them from attackers allowing them to add their firepower to the active defenses while simultaneously making them extremely hard to lure out.  

While the Archer Queen and Barbarian King are excellent defensive units most skilled players now know how to deal with them so I allowed them to be pushed to the edges of my defenses but then split them on opposite sides of the base in turn forcing any attacker wishing to lure them out to deal with them separately burning up offensive troops.

The third Priority of protecting and preserving my Elixir and Dark Elixir dictated their position in slightly from the outer walls behind the outer defensive ring of active defenses.  To provide additional cover I placed two AD to cover them in addition to a false wall with both ground and air based passive defenses along the most exposed avenue of attack.

With the increased use of Hogs in high level attacks I moved my passive defenses, spring traps and bombs, inside the base and set the Inferno Towers to Multi Target to prevent healing spells.

Farmers are slightly protected from my defenses by the fact I have pushed them so deep into the base to create that overlapping field of fire that a true farmer just hitting my pumps/mines can skim those off if they are willing to accept a high attrition rate and the loss of trophies.

Since the reconfiguration of my base to the current design I have been attacked 15 Times in 5 days.  6 of those attacks were people dropping trophies, of the 9 remaining attacks  I have lost 2.  

The first loss was to Mauricio of Black Dragon BR a 50% loss costing me 11 trophies, 39k elixir and 37k gold.  A standard farming attack using 3 lvl 4 WB and a BAG composition with 45 each Barb/Gob and 104 Archers all level 5.  This comp cost him 37k for a measly 2k elixir gain so presumably he was after gold or trophies.

The second successful attack was by Richi9000 of CoC Elite another 50% loss that dropped me 8 trophies, 145k gold, 11k elixir and 60 dark.  Richi used a BArch attack with 114 Level 6 Barbs backed by 78 level 6 Archers, a Level 6 Barbarian King and a Level 5 Archer Queen.  In Richi's case its obvious he was only going after gold as he focused very heavily on the two exposed gold storages then pulled his Queen out at the last minute to hit the 50% mark.  His army comp cost him 40.5k so he lost 28.5k elixir on the attack.

The 7 Victories are a mix of farmers and 1 serious attack that failed miserably when his giants ran into the spring traps then Large bombs in the bases upper structure just as the Inferno Towers, Wizard Towers, X-Bows etc lit into him.

Going forward I am saving currently to get my 3rd X-Bow online which I will probably use to thicken my Air Defense and starting a steady upgrade program of 1 Splash defense, 1 Single Target, 1 Offensive structure, 1 Resource structure all upgrading simultaneously.

The core Leadership and Members of Outback Cowboyz formed a new clan, House Arya, and successfully won our first War under the new name against Guyomard; but that is a post for later this week.

I am also Planning on posting about the difficulties of farming with a TH10 base and the Army Compositions I've tried in that regard as well.

Until then this is Rev signing off, and get your clash on!