Trophies



Trophies are the basis upon which status is earned. You gain or lose trophies by either winning or losing Multiplayer Battles. Trophies can also be won or lost when your village is raided. If your defense wins, you gain trophies; if your attacker wins, you lose trophies. There are three reasons for collecting or controlling your trophy count:
 * 1) To gain rank on the various leader boards: My League, Top Players (Global and local) and Top Clans. You are also ranked against your own clan members.
 * 2) To control which relative trophy level players you can attack.
 * 3) To control which relative level trophy can attack you.

The Leaderboard
The leaderboard is determined by the number of trophies a player or clan has, which are won in multiplayer battles. On each leaderboard, the top 200 players will be listed. Additionally, if you hold less than 200 trophies, you may view your individual rank in Top Players with two players in front of your rank and two behind it. Clan ranks may be viewed in the same format under Top Clans. To see how the collective clan trophy count is calculated, see Clan Ranking.

Matching
When choosing a village to raid, you will be matched with people who have about the same number of trophies as you. (NOTE: the exact number or mechanics of this matching are unknown. However, you may currently attack/be attacked by players with a trophy difference as much as ~230 lower or higher than your own as of April 2013)

You can only attack people with a similar amount of trophies, this prevents lower leveled people from being constantly destroyed and makes the game more interesting. However, some people like to drop their trophy levels to be able to farm villages. This is one of the many strategies people use in multiplayer battles. There is much debate on whether this is fair or not.

Top Clan Rewards


Players compete to have the most trophies and to bring their clan to the top of the leader board to receive Gems. At the end of every two weeks, the top 3 clans receive Gem rewards divided equally amongst the top 10 players of those clan.

The rewards are thus: Despite the perception of many lower level and lower trophy count players, the reward system does not actually significantly benefit the top players in any way. In fact, as reported by Jorge Yao himself, the gems received are "not even noticable" in comparison to the number he spends on a daily basis. More info can be found here:
 * First place clan: 20,000 Gems (2,000 Gems to each top 10 player).
 * Second place clan: 10,000 Gems (1000 Gems to each top 10 player).
 * Third place clan: 6,000 Gems (600 Gems to each top 10 player).

Leagues
As of April 17, 2013, you may now join a Trophy Leagues. See picture to right for required trophy amount for each league. These are each further divided into 3rd, 2nd, and 1st divisions. Click here for more information.

Trivia

 * Trophies are sometimes referred to as 'cups'.
 * Some higher level players 'drop cups' in order to find matches with weaker defenses and gain resources, this is called farming.They do this as upgrades get very expensive in the higher levels.
 * Clans and players like to challenge each other to trophy contests for a bit of "in house" rivalry.
 * You can also get gems from winning a certain number of trophies through the Sweet Victory achievement; for 1250 trophies you receive 450 gems.
 * If you have 0 trophies you can't lose any more trophies from losing attacks, either on you, or by you. This is how trophies are added into the game as when you win a battle you are guaranteed to gain at least 1 trophy.