Clash of Clans Update - What could have been...

This week Clash of Clans has been releasing "Sneak Peeks" for an update that will likely be released next week.  I have a lot of different views on these.

• Sneak Peek #1 - General balancing - a laundry list of new levels, cost and power adjustments, and changes in how defenses will interact with attacking troops.  A couple of interesting changes include PEKKAs not taking 2x damage from teslas and no more extra damage to Hogs from giant bombs.  Not sure I like all of this but maybe it will get a few of the hangers on for TH9 will get it in gear and hit the button for TH10
• Sneak Peek #2 - Army Training Revamp & Quick Train - I see this as a largely cosmetic change, but I like the ability to train to full armies and the "saved armies" feature.
• Sneak Peek #3 - Bomb tower - I hope everyone enjoys high HP troops.  You're gonna need them.
• Sneak Peek #4 - Friendly Wars...sigh...

10/7/2016 - This is the day that that 99% of the people I know in Clash have been waiting for for months, maybe years.  We now have the ability to war with our friends, against our friends and even little 5 on 5 squad wars.  

At least some of you do.  I do not.  

I want to start this by saying at least 90% of the blame for me being in the situation is my own fault. I was in a clan family that was started when myself and 3 of my best friends, in and out of Clash, started a podcast in June of last year.  We (amicably) left a group of clans we were with a few months prior and took out on our own, using Kent Farmhouse as our base of operations.  During this time I was moving from Philadelphia to the San Fransico Bay area, by myself, with my wife and 3 children staying in Philly for a full 5 months before joining me in California.  From March to the beginning of June my schedule was:

1. Work
2. Eat
3. Clash
4. Sleep (maybe)

Super fun.  I remember hours and hours of chat, some more appropriate than others, with Natalia, Ranc1dm3at, Halligan, Fawkes, and many others.  I would chat way longer than I should, greeting the European players in our clan just before going to sleep.  It really made moving without family a lot easier.  Maybe too easy.

To call me an introvert is a gross understatement.  I do not make friends easily.  I have two close friends, one was made in 1988.  The other was made in 2008.  OK, you can count my wife, so three.

With all my Clash friends, I could easy avoid making IRL friends.  Again, my fault. 

The Clash Files, our podcast launched in late June, and due to a lot of factors (thanks Scotty827) we were popular fast.  That popularity coupled with the recruitment machine that comes with a podcast; led to the CFF, a family of clans that grew to KFarmhouse 2.0, Noble Hero, and others.  With that growth, rules needed to be put in place.  One of those was we were going to be Fairplay, no 3rd party software allowed.  I was behind that, completely.  100% support.  

A year went by.  I advanced to TH11 and maxed my defense.  After hearing about a thing called botting and rationalizing it my head, I downloaded the software.  Half because I was just interested in how it worked and half because I rationalized the "OK-ness" with it because it would free up time to spend with my family.  Read that sentence, this handheld game was interfering with my time spent with my small children.  But, I did this knowing I was breaking the family rules and my friends' trust.

I downloaded the app and within 10 days I had decided either botting didn't work at TH11 or I wasn't smart enough to figure it out.  I deleted the software and moved on.

Then April 26th happened.  I was banned for 2 weeks.  In a war, in a family clan.  By some stroke of luck, I was given a pass.  I put someone I respected in a horrible position.  They made a bad decision (in hindsight) that benefitted me and I allowed it to happen.  This was selfish. Again - my fault.

Time passed and I found a groove in Noble Hero.  I consider trying to get back into the podcast game (I had "retired" in January due to work) because my life had slowed down and I was achieving a good family/clash balance.  The show had also been on a summer hiatus due to real life goings on for the remaining hosts.

I'm a cheap guy.  I love winning stuff.  I won a $400 Lego Batmobile a couple of years ago and you'd have thought I won the lottery.  I was listening to a couple other podcasts and one of them was giving away a $50 iTunes gift card.  Part of it was posting why you like the show.  I made what I thought was a funny tweet ribbing a couple of shows.  I say I thought it was funny, but in retrospect, it was thoughtless.  It criticized some folks that weren't able to do something I'm sure they wanted to do, because of circumstances that were completely out of their control and painful.  When I told my wife about it, she seriously said, "Maybe you have Aspergers.   How can you not see that that would hurt feelings?"

It did and that, coupled with other stuff I'm not aware of, but definitely including my botting led to my ouster from the CFF.  

I was mad, hurt, and sad.  Here's what I was thinking:

• Why can't they give me another chance?
• This was 6 months ago!
• I helped build this family!
• I'm going to try to burn this place to the ground!

Who thinks like this?  Not a reasonable adult.  Not anyone that is a good friend.

So I took a bad situation and made it 10x worse but vomiting all over Twitter for about 6 hours on a Saturday morning.  You cannot go back and enjoy it because I deleted all my twitter posts, but trust me, I looked like a vindic(k)tive crazy person.

So that's it.  Why I can't enjoy Friendly Wars with years-long friends.  I have to get over it.  I have to hope that I can somehow find a path back.  For the final time I want to apologize to Rancid, Halligan, Fawkes, Jezza, Vodka Soda, Omega, bones, Gobslayer (you finally got your arranged wars!) Slim, Ubiquitus, Loblaw, Woody, Insom, Suz, Saruk0, DRJam, chuck, Farmer Ben, Blu, The Future, riv, heisler, wucka, turtle, and countless others.  I'm sorry and I hope to play with you again someday.

How to fix Clash of Clans

I hear lots of conversations about Clash of Clans given a unique situation I am in:  I belong to a 5 clan family of clans that further has three more clans that are family by marriage if not by blood. There is a ton of (fairly) well thought out chat because 15-20 of the 200+ member are either podcast hosts or frequent guests of podcasts.  Couple that with the fact that after about 6pm all I have to do right now is run, eat, or Clash.  It should be noted that if there was no update to the game for the next year, I would still contently play.  Here are my suggestions on how to “fix” perceived problems in Clash of Clans:

Allow Clans to set up planned war matchups

Completely ruled out right?  Yeah, so was changing your name.  Looks like completely ruled out doesn't mean what I thought.  The main argument on why this can’t happen is the obvious issue with clans colluding to “game the system” and dump loot and experience to develop a “Super Clan”.  Fixing this is easy, make it only about glory.  Here is how I see this working:

• Clans decide they want to fight.  We now all have this nifty clan tag so just put a field on the War Button push screen where you opt people in where it can be entered.  Plan at time to push the button and, when pushed, the system will look for planned matchups for 5 minutes before looking for a random.  
• No XP is earned (earnt?) for planned wars.  
• Either no or very little loot is earned for a planned war.  Max I would entertain would be reimbursement of army costs for the winner.  That way you get incentive to win.

You’re welcome Supercell.  Just send me a hat OK?

Fix the AI

I don’t mean a massive change to all troops.  Hogs, Giants, Balloons, Hounds, Golems, and Goblins are fine.  It’s the troops, and especially heroes, that don’t have a favorite target that make players want to throw their device in the nearest landfill.  Two small changes will fix this in my opinion:

• Troops with no preference on target should attack the target that gets them closer to the Town Hall.  I’m absolutely OK with troops attacking the closest structure, but if there are two targets the same distance from the troop, they should attack the one that get them closer to the Town Hall.  Troops should gravitate toward the strategic objective.
• This one is even more important and I would argue should supersede the above.  Troops should attack the defense that is killing them before one that is not if the distance is the same.  I could argue nothing is more frustrating than a dragon that chooses to take out an elixir storage rather than the Air Defense that is wrecking it. 

There are other issues that I hear about, such as using heroes in Clan Wars even if they are upgrading but I’m fine leaving that the way it is.  I do not think there is a loot problem.  I don’t care about modding, as I don’t think it is nearly as prevalent as reported.  I also think some of the clans that complain the loudest probably have modders they aren’t aware of or look the other way on. 

 

Leave a comment if you agree or especially if you disagree.

Millionaire Raid

Loot was so good over the holiday weekend. 

Clash of Clans Base Update

My farming base:

• This is the hybrid version of the Ringus10.  It is pretty good at protecting loot.  A solid attack will take 2 or three storages.  I change my multiplayer base often.

• My war base is the SuckerHole 2.0
• Shout out to mike in COC University - who as you can see didn't one star me.

Farming the rcooperkaty way...

Farming is the forsaking of trophies in favor of loot.  You might farm for gold, Elixir or Dark Elixir.  The strategy for each would be different.  Typically I farm for Elixir or Dark Elixir and the gold takes care of itself.

Preparing to Farm

You really only need a few things to begin farming:

1. Enough Elixir to support your first few raids.  This is in case you make a couple of bad decisions right off the bat.  I'd say for TH6 and below you can get away with starting at 50K Elixir if you farm the way I describe.  If you are higher than that I would bank at least 150K. 
2. Full camps
3. Stick your Town Hall as far from your main camp as you can get it.  
4. Have enough gold to be able to be picky.  This will vary depending on what TH you are.  It costs me 750G to hit next.  I usually have at least 50K banked.

Getting It On

OK - WE DON'T CARE ABOUT TROPHIES!  Pick a range you want to farm.  Right now I farm from 1700-2200 trophies with great success.  I also know 1000-1200 and 1200-1700 is decent.  Sub 300 can work if you are patient.  The higher you go the more Dark Elixir you are going to find.  Whatever the range is you want to battle up to the top end, for me that is 1700.  Now you are ready to farm. 

My approach farms with Goblins or mostly Goblins when heading down in trophies.  Then I use Archers and Barbarians or farm back up.

My armies are:

• Farming Down - 20 Archers, 10 Wall Breakers, and 160 Goblins for a cost of 52,000E per raid.  My lower limit on Elixir in order to attack a base is 62,400E, which is 120% of the cost.  That way I know I can cover without hitting any storages.  I want a Clan Castle full of Archers.
• Farming Up - 50 Archers, 50 Barbarians, 100 Goblins for a cost of 32,500E per raid.  My lower limit on Elixir in order to attack a base is 39,000E, which is 120% of the cost.  I want a Clan Castle full of Wall Breakers.

When farming I'm looking for heavy hitters.  What is that?  Lots of loot stored in collectors.  The storages are going to look empty and the collectors will look like the images below. 

If I'm climbing back up to get to the top of my range I am a little less concerned with the loot as long as I am covering the cost of the army.  When you find your target just aim your troops at the collectors and go.  If you choose a base with a Barbarian King or Archer Queen drop some troops by them and then use your archers or Clan Castle to take them out.  The same goes for the enemy's Clan Castle.  Try to draw them out and eliminate them before dropping your Goblins.  I always keep at least some archers so that if I find a good score with the Town Hall on the outside I can take it out and not drop trophies, but when in doubt get the loot.

11 Days of BARCHing and BAMing

I've got 11 days until my current crop of upgrades is done.  This will mark the end of defensively upgrading my town hall 9.  After that I'm going to work on upgrading walls and heros until I jump to TH10.  While I wait for my upgrades I'm going to exclusively BARCH and BAM. So far it's going great and I am going to post progress over the next few days. 

Clash of Clans Update

It's been a while since I've updated on Clash of Clans.  Since my last update I've left the Wrecking Crew due to drama and joined Bad Rabbits.  Currently we are in the Spring 2014 Trophy Push and ranked 284 in the world.  Go us!