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.

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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.

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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.

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Base Design

A good base design is a must for surviving when you get your Town Hall to 5 plus and higher. Here are some tips to help you design a good base.

You must first decide whether you want to earn more trophies or build your kingdom and gain resources.

Collecting Trophies

If you want to do this, then make sure you protect your Town Hall at all costs, since losing your Town Hall means an automatic win for them. Your resources will get stolen a lot more often but you get to earn more trophies. Here is a base design to help you out.

As you can see, the Town Hall is placed in the center with towers protecting it. Elixir and gold storage are less protected on the outer areas. This makes it much harder for invaders to get to the center.

Building and Farming for Resources

For farming, you will want a base like this:

The Town Hall is located at the the bottom left corner. This allows your opponents to destroy your Town Hall easily, earning you the 12 hour shield. This way, you only get attack once or twice a day. You can then go raid bases for resources or build your kingdom during that time.

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