I have been a TH7 for a bit less than two month now, I'm nearly maxed out and ready to go to TH8 soon. Here is a review of my TH7 experience for the upcoming TH7s.
1. About upgrade
1.1 Gold:
I brought all the new toys first, then worked on upgrading them to the same level as what I have maxed at TH6. Then went in rough order of, splash>archer>cannon and air defense>tesla. I avoided having multiple splash upgrading at the same time, or having archer tower and air defense upgrading at the same time. I tried to spread out my workers so that I always have at least 1 builder finishing a job per day for me to dump some gold into the walls.
1.2 Elixir:
Lab first, army camp second, barrack third. I found the lab to be the bottleneck for TH7, my lab has been working none stop since I got to TH7, but there are still a few research stuff left to do, and I didn't work very hard on farming for gold, but I'm almost done with get all level 7 walls, so lab first. Having the few extra space to bring more troops is very important, many times it's the last layer of wall that makes a huge difference, so army camp second. I had no real need to upgrade the barrack since I typically farm with tier 1 and tier 2 troops, but dragon is just too cool to miss. :D
2. About gold farming and army compo
2.1 Giant + Healer (12 giants + 2 healers)
The first combo I used was giant + healer. For those of you don't know, giant+healer typically consist of 10-16 giants with 1-2 healers, and fill the rest of the space with some barb/archer/goblin/wall breakers. You typically send in a few barb to clear out outside traps, then send me a bunch of giants to destroy a exposed air defense, then send in your healers following the giants, you also send in wall breakers to help giant go through walls as needed. When giant clear out the defense in one area, you drop archers, goblins to clean up the resources.
I liked this combo a lot because when used successfully, it also typically 2 or 3 stars the village on top of the resource.
But there are a few short comings of this strategy:
- It takes a while to train, (2 healer is 30 minutes)
- Both giants and healers takes up larger space in the camp. This makes your army consist of fewer number of troops, and is prone to mistakes. You could fail against well place spring traps, air defenses, hero in the base, or powerful CC troops. And because you have fewer troops, if you make a mistake, half of your camp is already gone, you can't go again. Then I switched to the next army camp
2.2 Barb + Archer + Goblin,
In this setup, I typically carried 50 Barbs, 80 Archers, 50 goblins, 10 wall breakers. I very rarely use them all. The key for this setup is to look for village with resourceful mines that's outside of the walls, or in one layer of wall. You can spot them by looking at the graphic of the mine and the storage, the tombs, the empty league badge, the trees; you can also test it out by putting a archer beside a unprotected mine and see how much resource it takes per shot. If it's 1000+, you are in luck. Once you find one of those, you send in one wave of barb to draw defense fire, then a wave of archer following the barb to increase DPS, and as soon the mortar hits land, you send in a few goblins to take out the mines. You will find a lot bases with 200K+ resource sitting unprotected in 1100-1300 range, so beside getting the resource, you should also aim to get 50% of the base to maintain your trophy level. If hitting the mines/collectors didn't get you enough, pick of unprotected buildings by archers, and look for builder hut, barrack, spell factory to hit because they have low hitpoints.
I used this setup for the longest time, they are very cheap and fast to train, you will max out elixer very quickly without farming for them... They act well against fat fingers, if you accidentally dropped some troop at a bad location, it's ok, because you still have tons more. It works very well against hero, CC troops, you draw them out, away from the defenses, then send me a batch of barb and archer to take them out. It also works very well against traps, as you can set the trap off by a few barbs.
The only down side is it gets repetitive after a while coz there aren't much strategy involved. It's basically hitting next, find a bank, get the money and go.
2.3 Sub 200
So I heard about this sub 200 mysterious, where some of the big boys play, where TH8 max their skull walls there, so I decided to take a dive and see it myself.
And for those of you who are unfamiliar with sub 200, it's basically dropping your trophy below 200 and raid unprotected bases with a few goblins, you don't get much per raid, but you can do it constantly and yield a high return.
I didn't like my sub200 experience. I went across 200 to 0 trophies, I would mostly find bases with a couple thousands, or maybe 10K, 20K resource, with occasional 50K+ bases, and very rarely 100K+. It was a lot of effort to be constantly raiding. And the second you leave the app, you starts gaining trophy, and within 5, 10 minutes, you will be back above 200. But going back to 1200 from 200 was painful, you won't find any good resource until you get above 800. So it's a lot of hitting exposed town halls, or I'm so bored I'm gonna 100% you poor TH5 with half of my army just because I can...
3. About D.E farming
This is a good guide on DE farming you should read.
Beside the guide, I tried a few different strategies you might consider. The first is a adapted version of 2.2 gold farming army.
3.1 Barb(30)+Archer(70)+Goblin(30)+Giants(6)+Wall breaker(10)+dragon(1)
The attack goes something like, find side that's closet to D.E storage to attack, send in a few archers to clear out unprotected buildings, send in barb to remove trap and draw defense attention, drop more archers to increase DPS, drop giants and more barb to draw all defense fire, drop wall breaker to go in once first mortor hits, draw more waves of barb and archer to push in, and wall breakers to in between morter hits, drop dragon if air defense in range is down, drop goblin once compartment to DE storage is open.
This comb almost always work if the storage is behind 1 or 2 layers of walls, but 50% chance if it's behind 3 layers of walls. The reason for giants and dragon is because many base that hold 1K plus D.E are TH9/10 with powerful high level defenses, and sometimes deadly xbows. They eliminate your level 4 tier 1 troop so fast,, as fast as you can drop them sometimes. Giant can survive better, and allow your archer and barb to do work to take down outer defense. With this setup, you have a couple potentials to get the D.E, your archer who can shot across walls, your goblins who can target resource, or the dragon with tons damage and hit point. So depending on the level of defense and layout, you have a chance of hitting the D.E. with one or more type of troops. The training time also isn't too bad.
A adapted version of this is to use 4-6 wiz in replacement of archers, they produce great DPS and increase your chance of success.
Also, it's helpful to bring some lightning spells. If there is a great amount of D.E, taking out the splash damage in between greatly improve your chance of success.
The con side of this strategy is the complication. You are carrying a variety of troops, it's very prone to fat finger, mistakes. Trying to get to the core is dangerous business, at the same time, very rewarding one.
3.2 Barbarian (100) and Archer (100)
This is what I'm currently using. I use barb and archer to climb trophy to 1500+. You will find D.E collector with a good amount in there, or D.E storage behind only one layer of walls. Your goal is to, one take down the town hall, two, brute force 1 layer of wall for the D.E storage, or the wall. The large number of barb and archer is great for dealing with CC troops and heros.
3.3 Revenge
Go through your defense log and look for attack that has level 5 troop or plus, or archer queen. These are the people who typically possess more D.E, study their layout, cook up a army that's dedicated for them. :). Ask on forum, ask your clan mate on the attack, these prepared attack are deadly..
If you don't have high level attacks on you, climb trophy is one way to gain their attention, or drop below 200 is another way.
4. Base
I feel TH7 is the starting point where you can put together a decent defense. Definitely try coming up one by yourself, if you don't have enough time or experience, Pokeball from JunLiang is really great.
5. Clan
I also feel TH7 is the entry point to many of the good clans out there. Most of them typically have a level 4 archer, th7 plus requirement. The game is a lot better with a nice group of people, not just for the donations, but to chat about random stuff, game related or not, show off your achievement, share for strategies, plot revenges. You will end up meeting great people, and have more fun than just farming for walls.
That's all I can think of for now,, welcome feedback/suggestion :)
BTW, I'm sure there are tons of grammar issues here, I apologize first. Grammar police please go easy on me. :P
