Clash of clans - Getting started

Clash of Clans is a free to play, strategy game for iphone, ipad and now android. As you build your village and join a clan you accumulate resources which can be used to upgrade and progress your own little eutopia.  However along the way you can raid against other villages to steal resoucres from "the goblins" or against other players villages.  Everything in clash of clans revolves around time, from building a new defensive building, to upgrading your troops to make them better at raiding villages.

Time is key! Although clash of clash is "free to play", you can also earn and buy gem's to speed up your progress.  If you wanted to spend a bucket of cash you could upgrade your village by just buying a tonnes of gems, however if your patient and willing to put the time into it, you can also see your village grow and develop.  This for many is part of enjoyment of clash of clans, and also what makes it so addictive.

Using Gem's. Upon starting and doing the tutorial you'll receive around 500 gems.  These gems are very precious and I would suggest saving them for later.  Each building takes anywhere from 10 minutes to make, up to days and even weeks to max out certain buildings. Its very tempting to use gems early on to finish off that upgrade but I would try to resist and save these for later.  The best thing to use gems for:

Builders:  You'll purchase your 1st extra builder in the tutorial [although strangely you wont use it] and then after this you can purchase 3 more to get a total of five.  You should get extra builders whenever you have the gems, and this is the one upgrade i'd actually recommend buying to improve your clash of clans experience.  It will immensely speed up the time it takes to progress your village, and mean you dont have loads of time with resources just sitting there.

Upgrade your town hall. Your town hall as it upgrades gives you all the options you need to expand.  For each level of your town hall the cap of how many buildings you can actually build raises as well as how much your buildings, walls and troops can be upgraded. As your townhall advances it will also introduce new buildings into the mix and with it new strategies for attack and defense.  At the early stages you'll want to upgrade your townhall whenever possible, however once you reach townhall 5 i would recommend slowing down and taking the time to fully upgrade the rest of your base and walls before you move on.  This is because the higher your townhall, and resources are upgraded, the higher level of attackers you will attract.  Plus it means that later on when you move up a townhall level you can upgrade one or two of your previously upgraded buildings, whilst simitaneouesly building up all the new stuff your new townhall level brings with it.  Trust me, you'll be pleased you did when you reach the higher levelsand its costs half a million gold just to uprade 1 piece of wall.

Splash Damage will help in defense

Prioritise defensive buildings. Without a good defense you will see your village crushed every day and the resources youve built up stolen.  Spread out your defensive buildings and create overlapping fields of fire.  Upgrade your defenses when you have the resources available.  Early on splash damage is your biggest asset, as most early game strategies involves "hoard" troops like barbarians, goblins and archers.  Mortars, and later the wizard tower will make short work of bunched up troops. 

Several compartments will spread resources

Walls, and compartments.  At the beginning many people will try to build a wall all around their village.  At early levels its actually quite hard to fit everything in, which is actually a good thing.  If you only have a single wall all around your base, once raiders break through the outer layer they have access to all your buildings.  If you have say 4 compartments that some of your buildings are spread between, and some are outside of these then if order to get too all your buildings, they would have to break through all 4 compartments.  The time it takes to break through will increase the amount of damage your defenses do to the attackers, and make it more likely that you protect your resources.

My personal recommendation, is too have all your mines and pumps outside the walls, with your storages and defenses inside the walls, spread into as many compartments as you can with the amount of walls you have.  Although a little resource will be easy to get from your mines and pumps, these will affectively "tank" for your defenses and means raiders have to get past them before they can get to what your really protecting.

Having the Townhall outside your walls helps when farming

Farming Vs Trophy Hunting  There are two styles of base you should decide between.  Farming, which prioritises protection of resources, or trophy hunting, which will priortise protecting your trophy count.  I'll go into more details elsewhere, but my recommendation is farming.  This will allow you to build up your defenses, upgrade your walls, build up your townhall level and improve your troops.  Farming bases typically have the townhall outside the walls.  This hopefully tempts people to attack the townhall for the easy trophies it will give them.  In turn this gives you a shield that will protect your base and resources.

Look for weak bases with easy to reach resources

Attacking.  Look for bases that are weak in defense, and have easy to reach resources.  Dont be afraid to keep on looking through bases and search for bases that are favourable to attack.  If there are buildings far from their walls then use archers to pick them off.  Use giants or barbarians to take damage while archers and goblins get too the resources.  Dont over commit, if your initial attacks dont go well, drop out and suck up the lose.  Its much better to lose 4 giants and 20 archers, then lose all your troops. That way you can build up your troops again and raid when it is favourable and you can actually get a good haul.

Be patient my young padawan.  Don't expect to get anywhere far any time soon.  Ive been playing now for around 6 months, and im still townhall 8.  Every level gets longer to upgrade.  That said enjoy it while you can.  at townhall 8 you'll miss how easy it was to farm at townhall 7 and at townhall 7 you'll miss how quick it was to upgrade your archers at townhall 6.

HAPPY CLASHING