DragoShadow's Strategy Guides/Defense Strategy Guide

Hey everybody. So everybody loves dat gold and elixir right? You wanna take as much as you can in raids and just get the hell out of there right? When people attack your village, they think the same way. So how exactly do you protect your goodies from those other... players? This guide will hopefully get you started on building a better defense to keep your goodies protected.

Prevention
So as I said in the intro, people go after resources (unless they have no life and attack people just for fun). And furthermore, they go after villages with a lot of resources; not some kind of noob village with 1k of resources total. For example, I go after villages that have at least 150k of  each resource (so basically 300k in total).

Now that you know how most people think (they want resources, if you still haven't gotten the point yet) you can prevent attacks by not having what they want. In case that sounds confusing (and it probably does because even I have trouble understanding what I just typed), I'll reiterate it in different words. You just want to get rid of all your stuff that might attract raids- gold and elixir.

Ok... so now what???
Right now you're probably thinking: "What the heck is this page talking about? Philosphy?" No it's talking about COC, but I'll get to the point now. Get rid of gold and elixir... but no don't just burn your gold and then throw it in acid; use it in ways that are productive and efficient, but use quite some gold and elixir.

For example:

Elixir: Gold:
 * RESEARCH!!! Not only does researching take a crapload of elixir, it also boosts your troops power and attack and stuff and makes them look better and wickeder (is wickeder a word er somethin?)
 * Queue up troops even when your army camps are full. This saves you a ton of time because once you go on a raid, your extra queues will be in automatically. And of course it also takes away some of your elixir and your some of your "proneness" to attacks.
 * WALLS!!!. Upgrade your walls. Yup upgrade those walls too. And those ones. Mmmmhm. Just don't upgrade the spawn forcing walls that you use to push enemies' spawn points. (I'll talk about that later.)
 * Upgrade your defensive towers, especially wizard towers. Why wizard towers? Cuz they're good, duh. Defensive towers that take a lot of gold to upgrade are usually good. Just a rule of thumb in life. < But no that rule of thumb does not always apply.

That will conclude this first section. Hopefully just by doing that every time you exit COC will prevent attacks. But... there are always those people who have no life and attack you just for fun. Reeeeemember?

OK, I tried prevention but haters still attack me.
So you tried prevention? And it doesn't work for you? Okay well then, it's time for REAL defense strategy. YAY!!

This is a top 4 list  of what I feel are the most essential defensive towers or... defensive items if you will. So right now, you're probably wondering 1 thing. Why is air defense so important?
 * 1) Wizard Tower
 * 2) Mortar / Air Defense
 * 3) Walls / Archer Towers / Cannons
 * 4) Clan Castle Troops (mainly archers and giants)

Okay so as you advance in TH level, actual level, and league level, (lots of levels in COC) you will see more and more people using flying troops like dragons and minions and especially healers. So once you start seeing all these flying troops you should already have a minumum of a lvl 3 air defense to counter and slow down all of these flying troops.

Types of Villages
Packed base:

A packed base is essentially what it sounds like. Everything in the village is crammed together inside one single layer of walls. Send in 3 wall breakers at most to break the walls and boom you've pretty much won the battle. If you have this village, fix it to another base type asap. It has almost no defensive advantage.

Corner base :Basically a packed base but up against a coner of the map. There are no walls in the corner in which the village is up against. To attack this village, you don't even need wall breakers since you can spawn in corners and in the forest outside of the village. This base also sucks. Change it if you have a corner base. Remember people can spawn troops outside!!

Split base:  Essentially 2 different bases on the same map. That's all it is. No really. A player splits his base into halves and puts them on different places of the map. If you think aobut it, they are half as powerful as they could be if they were together. Split bases are not... that good. Change your base if you think that your base looks like two neighboring bases instead of one single base.

Pocket base :The name of the base describes it perfectly. Buildings each have their own compartments or pockets. Some buildings may share a compartment with another tower. Pocket bases are decent, but not the best.

Spiral base:  Again, the name describes the base perfectly. Buildings spiral around with the walls acting as the spiral. This base is very common in I'd say TH8 or 9. A very common type of spiral base is where people sprial their defenses around and around in a loop. Thus giants and hog riders go around and around in a merry-go-round and get shot at by defenses. Effective base if used correctly. Very good for rendering hog riders' jumping ability useless. Also a very good base for traps.

Bulkhead base:  Probably the most commonly seen base at high levels. The bulkhead base is basically a base where if when one half of the base gets "taken over," the other half can still survive on its own. This is generally, the most effective base. This serves as the conclusion as the "Types of Villages" section of this guide. ONWARDS... to defensive tower placement.

Building Placement
When your're building your base, make sure to put your Town Hall at the very center of your town because if your opponent destroys that one single building, then you just lost, even if they didn't destroy anything else. Put your storages in the second most inner layer of walls or even the most inner if you're all over your resources (I'm gonna shorten resources to res). Put your mortars in the center as well. Some people put their wizard towers in the most inner layer, but I don't do that becuase the wizard tower has a very limited range (I'm not sure exactly how many tiles). By the time your opponent gets to the center of your base, the wizard tower is not going to be any use. Mortar towers however have a range up to 11. This means that they can shoot all the way over to your 3rd or even 2nd layer depending on how thick each layer is. (1st layer=outer most layer)

Archer Tower/Cannon/Wizard Tower
Anyways, put most of your archer towers and cannons in your 1st, outer most layer. They serve as a good first line of defense and are a good deterrant against wall breakers. So if any wall breakers "stop by to drop off a present," your cannons and archer towers will easily snipe them off. However, if wall breakers send in their buddies, like giants, in first, then archer towers and cannons will shoot at the giant(s) while wall breakers blow up the walls with no problem. There is no real, effective way to prevent this. Anyway, in your first layer, I suggest placing a few wizard towers as well to help out with the mobs and hordes. If you put them any later in your defense, the horde (probably around 70+ troops) will easily wipe out all of your buildings in the first layer and go to the next and next. So, again place a few wizard towers to prevent this.

Mortar/Wizard Tower
Mortars... They're especially good at range, but they suck at close up and when either (1) a dragon is breathing fire on them (2) a skeleton is dropping a bomb on them and (3) a minion is spitting on them. OK so you don't need a tower to support the mortar's ranged fire- it's good enough, but you need a tower to cover the mortar's 4 radius blind spot AND to support the mortar from air units. I highly suggest using an archer tower. Some people use cannons, but they forgot the fact that cannons cannot shoot at air units. Archer towers can. Some people use wizard towers, but I would use wizard towers some where else. Besides, the mortar would have already taken care of all hordes using it's splash damage. Wizard towers are also weak against single units. So when a single or just a few units come at your mortar, the archer tower will be more effective than the wizard tower.

So we went over archer tower, cannon, mortar, and wizard tower placement. I'm not sure if I want to go over like 4 more towers, so I'll just keep this guide aimed at TH5-TH7 ish. TH8 people, you could read this guide, but you probably don't need it.

Who beats who?
This section of the guide will give my view on the best tower to beat each troop and the best troop to beat each tower. This way you will know which tower to use to cover another tower. REMEMBER: This guide is for medium TH level players (TH5-TH7).

Which tower kills what troops?

Traps
Traps are good when used correctly and when placed strategically. Otherwise, they are useless. Most traps, if you put in a wide open space, enemy troops might run right over it, but by the time the bomb explodes, they'll be somewhere else. However, if you put traps in spaces crowded with buildings, troops will run over them and go to some other tower not too far away. Bombs could do a good amount of damage if you put them in these crowded spaces. Open spaces are not the bombs best place to be. Spring traps work the same way. They are not good in open spaces, unless a whole line of troops run exactly over where you put the spring trap. For best effects, put them in nice crowded areas where troops will gather up so you can get your full 15 housing space killed. I will go over each trap specifically now.

Bomb
Good old fashioned bombs. Again, not that good in open space. Put them in smart places that your opponent won't expect bombs. For example if you have a tiny space in between to towers because one was 3×3 and another was 4×4, put a bomb there. It's an enclosed space so when enemy troop destroy one tower and go to the next tower, boom the bomb blows up and does maximum damage.

Spring Trap
Good old fashioned spring traps. Not good in open space unless a whole line of troops goes over it. For spring traps, I suggest using a funnel. A funnel is basically a gap in your walls. The gap will contain a spring trap. So when your enemy deploys troops, they will go through the gap; it's in their AI. So they will walk and walk all the way over the the gap in the wall while all of your defenses just shoot at the enemy troops. Then when their troops do arrive at the gap, 15 of their housing space will be... going over the rainbow. So yeah, funneling is very effective especially when you have a spring trap added into the funnel.

Air Bomb
Air bombs are best placed next to defensive towers that cannot shoot at air units. Placing them next to mortars will probably be the most effective place for an air bomb. Also, don't use funneling with an air bomb.

Giant Bomb
The giant bomb is basically a bomb, but on super steroids. I mean SUPER steroids. A bomb does 12 damage at level 1. A giant bomb does 175 damage at level 1. Yup, they're really good, especially against giants. They do splash damage so they can do a ton of damage to hordes of giants as well. Except... It's your choice. Gold vs. protection of your city
 * 1) Rearming them takes 10-20 thousand gold each and every time.
 * 2) Giant bombs can be easily activated by some really cheap troop like a goblin. Then it would go to complete waste.

Air Mine
The air mine is like an air bomb on steriods, the same way a giant bomb is a bomb on steroids. The mine can almost kill a dragon. It does something like 1500 damage. Again, I would put this trap next to a tower that cannot shoot at any air units. I would also put it near my storages and town hall.

This concludes the trap part of the defensive guide.