Farming 101

(This was taken from the layout designer site)

Farming: Before the Battle Begins


by: neggs (Bamboozled)


2013-02-01 23:23:52



Im going to take you through my beginning stages of battle. Though this may sound un-exciting, Ive found that its the most crucial part of farming effectively so I thought it was a good introductory Clash of Clans guide.


1. Troop Selection and Creation


As already stated, this guide is about farming. Being that were farming we want to do so efficiently, which means low elixir cost for high resource gain. So that being said, this setup has worked extremely well for me (and Ive tried a few).


(Out of 220 maximum troops)

Barbarians x120

Archers x 40

Goblins x40

Wall Breakers x8-20 (really a variable here)


These totals are very much ballpark because I just queue up my Barracks and whatever troops I end up receiving is what I run with. The Wall Breakers are a costly bunch but you cant put too much of a price on a quick entry which would have cost 30 Barbarians and 30 seconds of time to make. It is worthy to note that I pretty much only create more Wall Breakers when I get down below 8 or so. So lets say I have 8Wall Breakers after a battle, Ill reset my Barracks and put 3 Wall Breakers in the front of the queue and the rest Barbarians, and the next Barracks would have 3 Wall Breakers in the front and the rest Archers, so on, so forth. Essentially, one Barracks is for Archer, one is for Goblins and two are for Barbarians. Youre looking around 50k in elixir per battle but it could be more like 30k, due to lessoned Wall Breakers usage.


2. Spell Creation


As far as spells go, since were going for an all out zerg here (mindlessly tossing mass numbers of troops at an enemy), we will get the most benefit from the Rage Spell. So if weve got 80 lil buggers in one place and they are all doing 30% more damage (low level Rage Spell), that damage output is gonna be a damn bit better than what lightning can do. Not to mention Lightning Spell doesnt scale with more troops, Rage does. So the more you increase your army, the more beneficial a well placed Rage Spell will do.


Im obviously not implying were going to use a Rage Spell in every battle but sometimes you come across a really nice setup and that extra bonus to damage will give you substantially more than 40k in resources (price of Rage Spell).


3. Clan Castle


Also, dont forget to check your Clan Castle to see what youre working with. If you have BarbariansandArchers, its not a big deal but if you have Giants or a Dragon, it will change how and where you deploy your troops. Just be aware of what youre working with.


4. Finding a Victim


Finding a victim is often far more challenging than taking their resources. Ive blown over 70k gold trying to find a good victim at times before realizing that during that time of day, at my cup level, I have to go for a low resource victim because the majority of big resource victims have already been ransacked. So theres obviously randomness to the selection process, which can be an infuriating thing.


Furthermore you cant just find any base with high resources and expect the above troop formula to work. There are certain base types that stop this setup dead in its tracks. Since choosing the base you will attack is as important as finding the resources you want, lets go into the pitfalls of this troop deployment:


Separated Storages: We want to have our Barbarians and Archers open a path for our Goblins to come in and steal all the resources but in bases with separated storages the Goblins little death run will get stalled by Walls. The life expectancy of Goblins is so low anyway, we dont have time to have them eating throughWalls to get another storage container.


Barbed Bases: What I mean here is bases with a centralized core that create barbs every few wall units that are around 3-5 wall units in length. They do this to stop Wall Breakers because they get mixed up on the barbs rather than going straight into the area you want them to break. Useless Wall Breakers are not a waste of time but they are a waste of resources as well.


Close Crossbows vs Wall Breakers: Whenever you find a base that you want to ransack and the wall segment that needs breaking is near a Crossbow, you may want to rethink its selection. Crossbows generally target on the closest attacker and if your Wall Breaker runs past all of your other guys to break the wall (as it usually does), the Crossbow will kill him in a few hits. Since youre committed youll keep sending Wall Breakers in to your death and eventually youll want to kick a baby panda in the face.


Level 6 Wizard Towers and Crossbows: They one shot max level Archers and Goblins in packs. Yea… that kind of negates my strategy entirely. Crossbows arent as dangerous as one might think but they will accumulate high loses. The good thing is when youre farming at the 1000 – 1500 cup range, there wont be all that many Crossbows or Double Crossbows to deal with.


5. Prep Work


So lets say youve found a victim that looks like a pushover, now we start the real work. Lets look at the resources your victim has. If you are a high level player and you see 200k gold / 200k elixir up for grabs, its most likely in their storage units. If you see 250k gold / 300k elixir, its gonna be an easy fight. You see the game currently only allows 200k resources (of each) to be stolen, per attack from storages. If the person has more than that, the bulk of their resources are most likely coming from their pumps and Gold Mines. Ive seen as much as 950k resources (combined) up for the taking of a single victim. 200k of each resource in storages, the rest in pumps and mines (can someone say Rage Spell).


Now lets quickly zoom out. This is such an easy step to do and I often forget it due to the lust of obtaining tons of resources. Zooming out lets you see things like is their Town Hall over in the corner so that three of my Archers can pick up easy cups while i go for their resources? It can show you how easy it will be to get your 50% star (if you care) with single Archers around the perimeter of the base. It will let you see if Heroes are around and how easy it will be to lure them out into the open. It basically allows you to plot your educated path before you begin.


Probing is kind of like opening a christmas present and you should always do it before a battle. Send a single barb or Archer to an isolated Gold Mine or pump and watch their resources. If their resources go down 100 or 200, the bulk of their resources probably arent stored in the pumps or mines. If they go down 500-1000, it is so on!


If you know the bulk of their resources are in pumps and mines then the map just got a great deal easier! The thing is, people dont defend their pumps or mines so its usually on the outskirts of their base. That makes things much easier for us. At this point your Goblins are crucial if the mines or pumps are on the inside of the base and you can basically just jab their pumps and mines until you get the resources and then surrender before expending the rest of your troops.


Let the battle begin!


Attacking a base is out of the scope of this particular guide but Ill write a guide for that soon enough. The goal here was to figure out what to look for before an attack (which I find to be far more crucial than the actual battle).


As a rule of thumb if i see anything with 500k+ resources, no matter what the base layout, I attack. Its just too good to pass up. Being that I dont see that as often as Id like, I prefer to methodically figure out what the most efficient approach is and thats knowing the limitation of your troops and the usage of the resources available to you.


Once you get rolling you should be able to do 300-600k an hour of a given both resource as a higher levelplayer and so long as you push that back into strengthening your offense youll gaining even more soon enough.

Farming at a Master Level (from the cocstrategy pages)