Defenseless Base Journal Entry - Day 2ish
Everything finished overnight as expected and the gold mines/elixir collectors were full. So I started the second upgrade on the storages (to level 3), followed by the army camps. The plan for day 2 was to go through things in order of time to complete so I could maximize the clock on the upgrades. The focus again started with resource structures (storages and collectors).
A lot of players don’t really think about this, but time management is actually very important in building games like Clash of Clans (CoC). Software developers specifically write the timers into their games to encourage the purchasing of gems/diamonds/etc. This works well, even with the most accomplished of players, because sometimes it just makes sense to use gems rather than wait for the timer or even to buy building resources because you don’t have the time to raid them or wait for them to be produced in-game.
The early stages of CoC do not require the use of gems *IF* you plan it out well. I threw some times into my first posting in this thread to show how I was running upgrades back to back. Today was no different; I ran my first collector upgrades at 11am, then at 1pm, then at 4pm (oops). Going to level 6 required 6 hours; started the first pair at 6pm, the second pair around midnight (to run overnight), then the third pair in the morning.
Using the overnight hours can be tricky but it’s important to line things up so that longer running upgrades can execute while you are asleep. If I shut down for the night at midnight, I want a 6-8 hour upgrade running so I can pick up with shorter upgrades in the morning.
Of course, this only works in the beginning stages of the game, but it makes sense. Later in the game, when upgrades are typically measured in days, time management means running upgrades in such a way as to have them finish/start during waking hours and slotting upgrades so that your builders finish on different days. This allows you to maximize utilization of your resources. You don’t want to hold on to very much (it will just be raided away) but you dos don’t want to spend hours and hours raiding. If you consciously distribute your upgrades so that builders are finishing up on different days, you’ll be able to very effectively reduce the amount of resources you store and the amount of time you have to invest in the game itself.
And…of course #2…this is all pretty boring stuff to discuss, but it merits writing it into this journaling thread at least once for anyone who reads it and may find it useful. :)
FWIW, I don’t know how much longer I’m going to hold out on running with just two builders. This is just taking WAY too long….
EDIT: Yeah…I caved. I realize for some it’s a badge of honor to have just two builders until you save enough gems up to get them for free, but it’s just too slow. I coughed up the 20 bucks and bought my 3rd and 4th builder. I’ll save up from there to get the 5th builder but I’m just not willing to take a month of Tuesdays to get this base operational simply to say I didn’t spend any $$$ at all.
Defenseless Base Journal Entry - Day 3
Day 3 has been focused on just getting things upgraded. I started the TH4 upgrade last night, so I was down to 3 builders available. (Things are still moving at a much faster pace than before, now that I have 4 builders.) Upgrades today were typically 4 or 6 hours long. Everything but storages was maxed by the time the TH4 upgrade finished and the only reason those weren’t done is that I didn’t realize until too late that there was another level to upgrade. (Oops). The lab will go down tonight or tomorrow, alongside of the CC upgrade. I’ll upgrade over the weekend as well.
As soon as the TH upgrade finished, I put down all of the new items and started upgrades on them. This required a little raiding. TH3 raiding was horrible; best I could find was a base with about 10K/10K and that just isn’t worth nexting for, even at 75 units of gold per next. I decided to postpone all raiding until TH4 (and this was the driver in upgrading to TH4 more quickly as well).
Now, you won't believe I'm going to say this, but I'll say it anyway. You need to trophy push when you first start reading as a TH3 or TH4. I know…it sounds crazy, but it's true. The reason I say this, is because you are so low in the trophies that you're not even in a league and to top all that off, you'll only see ridiculously small offers unless you hit the next button 50, 75, 100 times or more.
If your shield runs out while you are asleep, you may wake up and find that you have enough trophies to join the bronze league. Even then, you will want to continue to raid and trophy push to a higher number of total trophies. Don't worry about gold or elixir, focus on getting as many trophies as you can to get to 500 in all. Once you reach that point, you can again begin to hit next and look for better offers on resources. It should not take very long, maybe 20-25 raids, but believe me - you will be glad you did it. Of course, monitor your elixir usage along the way and use only the troops you need to win each raid.
When I did this, I started out with about 30K elixir; when I finally hit 500 trophies, I had about the same. I just hit the fastest, easiest bases to get the most trophies I could. At that point, I started searching for better offers and quickly filled my storages. Of course, I used barch to do the raids. You'll be surprised - level 1 barch works just fine against most TH3 and TH4 bases.
By the end of the night, I had most things to TH3 max, lab dropped, and both the lab and CC upgrading. I also cleared all of the debris from the game grid, started troop upgrades, and filled my storages. On top of all that, I even watched a movie.
Tomorrow, and the weekend in general, will be limited time investment. I'll just be too busy to play very much. So...I will work on the longest running upgrades I can start.
