aNewDomain — The freemium gaming hit Clash of Clans is dominating mobile devices everywhere. If you’re among the addicted, check out my Clash of Clans tips belows. These six Clash of Clans tips are guaranteed to help your base dominate.
1. Get Free Gems
The first and most-important rule of Clash is Clans is that you don’t have to pay for gems. Yes, Supercell wants you pay for gems — just enter your credit card info and boost your game right along — but there’s another way.
It’s time to achieve greatly, hack and slash obstacles and expand your village. Free gems come most quickly from gaining achievements. Rake them in as you accomplish specifc tasks.
Next up, destroy those obstacles. Free gems will volunteer to be part of your team. You’ll get just a few, but all those obstacles can really add up. After all, one grain of rice can tip the scales of war. Lastly, embrace your inner explorer. When you expand your village you not only reach higher levels in the games, but free gems begin to pile up.
Easy, right? You should probably get started.
2. Revenge is sweet
Genghis Khan professed the benefits of revenge after the Tartars raided his village. Any self-respecting barbarian knows: Take revenge! And take it now. Clash of Clans is full of ransacks and looting, and you don’t want to be a permanent victim. If you survived the onslaught, summon your troops and mount an attack, post-haste.
You’ll find yourself satisfied, first of all, which is the whole point of gaming. But if you sack the enemy village well, you’ll find resources and prestige. Yes, your coffers were just emptied, but you have a chance to refill them.
3. Grab all that elixir
Economy is everything in real time strategy. Games like Age of Empires III and Total War taught me that, and despite the mobile platform of Clash of Clans, it is a very real RTS. You will not succeed without a strong military, and in this world that means elixir. A huge amount of elixir. I stockpile the stuff so that I can unleash hordes of barbarians whenever I choose. I enjoy decimating my enemies, and the elixir allows for such a pleasure.
Take note, though: If you get raided, go for gold. Clash of Clans balances these two resources, gold and elixir, and you can’t fuel your horde of freaks and monsters without some gold. While I’m on the subject, you should also upgrade your mines or elixir makers. This will increase the unit’s storage size and the rate at which the resource is gathered.
4. Troop Specialization
After you get your barracks upgraded beyond level one the strategy for taking down a village gets real. Say you have a level 4 barracks and the best troops you have are giants. Optimize your soldiers by treating your giants like tanks. Use them to take out the heaviest of an enemy’s defenses, and remember to support them with melee troops because those giants have a lot of hit power — you don’t want to waste them on small fish.
Use your archers to circumvent walls by deploying them at the beginning of a battle, taking down defenses that are protected by walls. Then you can bring in the melee soldiers. Use goblins as spies. And, once you’ve made a breach in the enemy defenses, send the soldiers in to take resources and finish the battle quickly.
Oh, and if you do have dragons, use them to support infantry in the traditional method. Or you use them like panzers and concentrate their attack on a particular spot. Make sure you utilize your troops, rather than just attack with everything all at once.
5. Defenses are the first to go
When attacking an enemy, make sure you go all Von Clausewitz and aim for the enemy’s point of strength first. The sooner you take down his defenses, the easier it’ll be to take down the rest of the village. Assemble your soldiers near the enemy defenses and, after you take those down, march in and destroy the rest of the village with ease. Don’t worry about taking casualties. You’ll lose even more soldiers if you delay in attacking a village with defenses still active.
Now, when deploying defenses, you should line them up in a way where every possible point of attack is covered. They should ideally overlap with one another so that enemies will be hit from multiple sides when attacking.
Check to see if any side of your village is open to attack. If so, a crafty strategist will likely spam his barbarians, rush that part of the map, and take you down. I would know, too. I do it all the time. If one side is vulnerable, it usually means the Town Hall is a short blitz away. I always advise taking down your opponent’s defenses quickly, but Town Hall is a great place to spam goblins that’ll otherwise take your resources.
6. Attack with concentrated effort
The Art of War says that, in battle, you should always concentrate your men in a single attack, rather than divide them across multiple ones. That’s true in Clash of Clans, too, and I don’t care if you’re sieging. The bottom line is that trying to surround an enemy’s castle like it’s a village will only result in disaster. The best way to cripple an enemy is to concentrate your soldiers and burst through a single section of his defenses.
Take the cannons and towers out one at a time, concentrating your men and attacking relentlessly. Don’t try to take down everything at once because you’ll spread your forces as thin as butter on toast. And, if you decide to attack from multiple sides — which works when done correctly — make sure they are concentrated attacks. Otherwise they won’t succeed.
Feel free to add more tips below. And remember, you can download Clash of Clans for Android on Google Play or Apple iOS for free.
For aNewDomain, I’m Puching Zhang signing off.
All screenshots: Puching Zhang courtesy of Google Play and Supercell
