Felkaroth's Forbidden Fortress - A TH8 Design

http://www.walterwick.com/feature_pi...castle_650.jpg

Tired of cheap shields but can't find the right hybrid design? Are you wondering if there is even a way to protect your Townhall AND your resources? Wonder no more, for I present to you my Forbidden Fortress layout, a Townhall 8 hybrid base!

While Pingfao's Tesla Theme Park, Juliang's Pokeball, and other famous rotational farming base designs are among the strongest possible TH8 layouts, they never satisfied my tastes when converted into hybrid formats. With influence from these well known designs, I took it upon myself to build this hybrid base, which I believe will more than adequately protect your Townhall as well as your segmented resources. While protecting the Townhall always means sacrificing some amount of protection for your resource storages, this base minimizes that disadvantage by separating the resources widely in the event that an attacker does manage to breach your defenses. For your consideration, I give you...

FELKAROTH'S FORBIDDEN FORTRESS

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...ps1a08ea3e.jpg

Design Goals:

1. Protected Townhall

Townhall is placed directly in the center of the central compartment, forcing an attacker to commit an entire army to even get close to destroying it.

2. Optimal Splash Defense Coverage

Created two triangular formations for Wizard Towers and Mortars. Spaced out to avoid losing multiple defenses to lightning spells.

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...ps86635416.jpg

3. Semi-Centralized Clan Castle

Clan Castle positioned in such a way as to make luring of defensive CC troops difficult, and impossible to do without coming in range of outer defenses.

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...ps0e39ec38.jpg

4. Optimal Air Defense Coverage

Positioned Air Defenses in a triangular formation to allow for full coverage of valuable compartments.

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...ps81306e47.jpg

5. Forced Spawn

Non-essential buildings and resource collectors positioned outside to force attackers to deploy troops a distance from essential compartments.

6. Giant Funnels

Giants deployed to either of the side resource compartments will be directed into a funnel containing multiple spring traps.

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...pse1dcb3a5.jpg

7. Optimal Point Defense Coverage

Remaining defensive structures positioned in two overlapping pentagrams with Cannons evenly distributed between Archer Towers.

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...ps1535c99a.jpg

8. Protected Resource Storages

Resource Storages separated into 3 well protected compartments forcing attackers to choose one compartment to focus on, and minimizing resources lost to successful breaches of a single compartment.

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...psd6be317f.jpg

looks good:cool:

Thanks Ryan :cool:

http://www.iruntheinternet.com/lulzd...3643498000.gif

Looks nice in theory, but the proof is in the pudding, i.e. how has it performed so far?

And what on earth is the purpose of such a design, at such a low trophy level?

I will be posting evidence soon about the effectiveness of the design, and am merely waiting to finish some of my defenses before I push this design to higher trophy levels. Thanks for pointing those things out, hastur.

The building placements are good. The storage segmentation is good. The splash coverage is good (although they aren't in equilateral triangles, more like isosceles :P). Point defences are well positioned and the CC is semi-centralised.

The only thing letting you down are the junctions. They aren't staggered on the outer layer, nor the inner layers. You also have a few X-Junctions. These can be real weaknesses against wallbreakers. It seems to be the curse of symmetrical designs, that's why I often prefer rotating designs.

I don't know how feasible it is to fix these problems without a rather major redesign. It is a nice layout though, and it is certainly one to be proud of.

Richard

Your wiz' are upgrading and your gold stores are in your mortars blind spot lol GL

Looks very nice, the only idea for improvement I have would be to leave one square of space between the bombs and the springs, to keep fast-than-giant troops from triggering the springs even when the last bomb takes them out. So I'd take that bomb and put it in front of the other two.

I think this base is awesome! Nice job :)

Its too easy to get to your TH from the top

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Originally Posted by maynards35

The building placements are good. The storage segmentation is good. The splash coverage is good (although they aren't in equilateral triangles, more like isosceles :P). Point defences are well positioned and the CC is semi-centralised.

The only thing letting you down are the junctions. They aren't staggered on the outer layer, nor the inner layers. You also have a few X-Junctions. These can be real weaknesses against wallbreakers. It seems to be the curse of symmetrical designs, that's why I often prefer rotating designs.

I don't know how feasible it is to fix these problems without a rather major redesign. It is a nice layout though, and it is certainly one to be proud of.

Richard

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You are certainly correct to point out the pronounced lack of staggered junctions and the few x-junctions in my design. Regrettably, any symmetrical "hybrid" design striving to protect all essential buildings will suffer these flaws because there are simply not enough walls.

That said, you were also right to bring up rotating designs. Like Pingfao's Tesla Theme Park, many rotating designs are very strong defensively. However, in such asymmetrical designs, there is always a spot where the point defenses aren't as effective as they could be in my opinion. That's why I prefer symmetrical designs... an attacker against my base design will have to face the same amount of point defenses no matter where they attack, since the Cannons and Archer Towers are evenly distributed throughout the base.

Thank you so much for your educated and skillful review of my design, Richard. ;)

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Originally Posted by DEfarmer

Its too easy to get to your TH from the top

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It's a hybrid not a trophy layout.


Looks good OP, keep us posted.

all those triangles work if none of your defenses are upgrading. I'm 80% done with my th9 and I'm ALWAYS upgrading at least 2 def units at a time. So yeah, no triangles, just open sided defenses.

Looks like a nice hybrid design =)

However:
- CC is lurable from the left army camp.
- Maybe a hint for improvements and central-symmetry/"rotating" core design: starting with the TH + 4 tesla spots in spiral.
- How many people send giants where the funnels are? I'd expect people to attack with giants from the bottom or the top instead.
- Your teslas are on the periphery - how does your base fare against pekkas?

Looks very nice! Good job ;)

excellent base. i will test its results soon since i have a town hall 8 myself.

I would agree with the poster that said most attacks would come from the top or bottom.

I would change the placement of your air mines. Bring them into the center of what you want to protect. Where they are a minion probe would detonate them. Minions are usually deployed in a spread. I place the air mines where they will gather after their deployment.

edit: overall nice design!! Let us know how it works.

Looks good!

Your AD's in the south are a bit exposed. A single wave of wall breakers between archer and cannon opens up both compartments.

Better to move AD's inside the core and move the core wall out.

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Originally Posted by Sithis

http://www.iruntheinternet.com/lulzd...3643498000.gif

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lol nice one dude

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gentimouton

Looks like a nice hybrid design =)

However:
- CC is lurable from the left army camp.
- Maybe a hint for improvements and central-symmetry/"rotating" core design: starting with the TH + 4 tesla spots in spiral.
- How many people send giants where the funnels are? I'd expect people to attack with giants from the bottom or the top instead.
- Your teslas are on the periphery - how does your base fare against pekkas?

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Thank you! To address your points...

As I stated in my original design description, the CC troops can only be lured out with difficulty, by sending troops in range of the point defenses. Attacking the left side army camps will cause CC troops to be deployed, but will also mean that an attacker will be targeted by at least 3 point defenses, and possibly a mortar and 2 wizard towers. This means that they would have to send quite a few troops to survive long enough to lure the CC troops out.

As for the giant funnels, they do work quite nicely.

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...ps776af041.jpg



http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...ps97633d02.jpg

Attacks from the top or bottom of the base are rare thus far, and none have been successful in penetrating more than 1 resource compartment. Attacks from the top have been hampered by the fact that there are 7 defensive towers between giants and the core, it takes a minimum of 6 "PERFECTLY" deployed wallbreakers to even breach the core and up to 6 more to open up any of the resource compartments, and once enemy troops reach the core, they are funneled into the Townhall where the remaining splash defenses would wipe out tier 1 troops with ease. Attacks from the bottom likewise face the majority of the point defenses and have difficulty penetrating beyond 1 resource compartment. Bottom up attacks also suffer from a severe forced spawn due to the barbarian king, builder huts, and barracks that makes proper troop placement difficult at best.

As for your comment about the tesla placement, they can be moved to any of the open locations in the design, as the village owner sees fit. I placed them on the periphery where they have proven quite adept at taking out enemy wallbreakers. As for PEKKAs, I have not been attacked by GoWiPe or any other popular PEKKA armies, so I don't have any test results yet to report regarding this design's survivability against PEKKAs. Stay tuned as I will post about that once I encounter it! :p

Lookin' good! :D Might try it once I decide to trophy push a little! :)

I like this quite a bit - very hard to balance things with the Town Hall inside the core compartment. There is just about no way to balance this while keeping the triangle AD-MO-WT arrangement, a central clan castle and hard offset T-Junctions, so I give you kudos on getting as close to this as humanely possible. I'm a bit uncomfortable with the flank compartments having gold along the first layer, but at least you have three storages spread and the truth is base building is all about compromises and this is the one you made to get all the other features you wanted in.

I would attack from the South West, spread from about 7-8 o'clock in a screen with the knowledge that the funnels are ready to play "I believe I can fly..." (I don't need to see the trap spoilers to know that; I'd try and spam a smattering of barbarians in the area to trigger them, but they'd probably be eaten by the point defenses).

My goal would just be to get two of the gold storages as there would really be no hope at the moment with my early town hall 8 army (still mostly 4 star troops) of getting any further than the dark elixir storage under any circumstances.

Realistically, I'd only attack if there was a lot of gold or if I wanted a good show. Otherwise....."next".

I showed the design to my wife who's account just got up to TH8 with the idea that she might use the design.

Very nice work.

I like it but I feel the Seeking Air Mines are too exposed. You don't want 1-2 minions wasting 1200 Dark Elixer.

The funnel's overkill and with more hog rider users, it's super redundant to have that many in 1 spot....

Other than that, the base is decent.

@SS: Minions don't proc Seeking Air Mines.

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Originally Posted by RegaliaRemix

The funnel's overkill and with more hog rider users, it's super redundant to have that many in 1 spot....

Other than that, the base is decent.

@SS: Minions don't proc Seeking Air Mines.

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Cool, shows what I get for never using them...what about healers? They are rarely worth 600DE to kill.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tohibii

I like this quite a bit - very hard to balance things with the Town Hall inside the core compartment. There is just about no way to balance this while keeping the triangle AD-MO-WT arrangement, a central clan castle and hard offset T-Junctions, so I give you kudos on getting as close to this as humanely possible. I'm a bit uncomfortable with the flank compartments having gold along the first layer, but at least you have three storages spread and the truth is base building is all about compromises and this is the one you made to get all the other features you wanted in.

I would attack from the South West, spread from about 7-8 o'clock in a screen with the knowledge that the funnels are ready to play "I believe I can fly..." (I don't need to see the trap spoilers to know that; I'd try and spam a smattering of barbarians in the area to trigger them, but they'd probably be eaten by the point defenses).

My goal would just be to get two of the gold storages as there would really be no hope at the moment with my early town hall 8 army (still mostly 4 star troops) of getting any further than the dark elixir storage under any circumstances.

Realistically, I'd only attack if there was a lot of gold or if I wanted a good show. Otherwise....."next".

I showed the design to my wife who's account just got up to TH8 with the idea that she might use the design.

Very nice work.

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Thank you for your review and compliments! Due to the tesla watching over the entrance of the funnels, most tier 1 troops sent in to trigger the waiting traps will get no further than the bombs, leaving the giant launchers intact! :p

You are absolutely right to point out that I had to make a compromise in the form of less protection for the resource storages. Nevertheless, I have still yet to lose more than 1 resource compartment in all the attacks my base has suffered since I created this design, and I am hopeful that this strong design and my good fortune will continue! Haha.

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Originally Posted by SSofJetlife

I like it but I feel the Seeking Air Mines are too exposed. You don't want 1-2 minions wasting 1200 Dark Elixer.

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LOL. Minions won't trigger them. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RegaliaRemix

The funnel's overkill and with more hog rider users, it's super redundant to have that many in 1 spot....

Other than that, the base is decent.

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I have yet to be attacked by the new and improved hog riders. Will have to get back to you on that if it ever happens haha.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SSofJetlife

Cool, shows what I get for never using them...what about healers? They are rarely worth 600DE to kill.

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For armies relying entirely on 1-2 healers to keep the giants and/or other troops alive, a seeking air mine can be incredibly crippling. Seeing as I often have 20k+ dark elixir, I don't mind losing 600 of it to keep an enemy from reaching the dark elixir storage itself.

Just wanted to share a brief update on my design. I was attacked by multiple level 1 PEKKAs with healing spells and healers recently, and like every attack before it, this attacker only managed to breach ONE resource compartment. After breaking into the right resource compartment where my hidden tesla and point defenses took out 2 PEKKAs, the attacker's remaining PEKKAs were distracted by buildings outside the walls and were eventually all downed by my point defenses and Clan Castle dragon.

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...ps34083a0a.png

Now I know these were only level 1 PEKKAs with level 3 healers, but I was glad to see my design hold up so well against them. I will be sure to share more updates as I test my design in higher trophy ranges.

i've tried your base design
and it seems like top right is not working very well

here is the recent attacks, you can see it inside.
enemy still can breach to DE storage with easy troops. ( No CC troops in the castle helping ).

but from bottom left, its working great.


https://app.box.com/s/qtr6s2gwg90v5mtnb7tp

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Felkaroth

You are certainly correct to point out the pronounced lack of staggered junctions and the few x-junctions in my design. Regrettably, any symmetrical "hybrid" design striving to protect all essential buildings will suffer these flaws because there are simply not enough walls.

That said, you were also right to bring up rotating designs. Like Pingfao's Tesla Theme Park, many rotating designs are very strong defensively. However, in such asymmetrical designs, there is always a spot where the point defenses aren't as effective as they could be in my opinion. That's why I prefer symmetrical designs... an attacker against my base design will have to face the same amount of point defenses no matter where they attack, since the Cannons and Archer Towers are evenly distributed throughout the base.

Thank you so much for your educated and skillful review of my design, Richard. ;)

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Imo its ok to have a weaker side. First most people naturally attack from the right and bottom because of space, they are right handed and the bottom is where their eyes go first. Also people will usually attack the side closest to the de. By knowing this u can exploit it in your base design. Also, the BK can serve as a major deterrent from attacking your weaker side.

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Originally Posted by 2fingaz2727

Imo its ok to have a weaker side. First most people naturally attack from the right and bottom because of space, they are right handed and the bottom is where their eyes go first. Also people will usually attack the side closest to the de. By knowing this u can exploit it in your base design. Also, the BK can serve as a major deterrent from attacking your weaker side.

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Brilliant comment. I honestly never thought of the reason why people might naturally attack a certain side. While I am very happy with my current base design, I may alter it in the future to make a more effective "lure" to one side that appears weaker.

Thanks for input :cool:

Hey Felkaroth, I decided to sport your forbidden fortress! While I quite like creating fort layouts, I like this one better than my own from both functionality and aesthetic perspectives.

I'm transitioning from two storages to three, though I'm not sure that I'll upgrade the third elixir storage and will probably use the space to inset the south tesla further into the defenses.

On that note, the one main alteration I made was to move the flank mounted T-coils into the central core by exposing the elixir storages a bit more (though one is replaced with the DE drill). This also caused the side giant funnels to alter in shape a bit, though they're still the same basically (I'm one week away from having two level 5 coils despite my other defenses being pedestrian as it fits in with my upgrade strategy of having free workers each day).

I also have four extra wall links with these changes (mostly from the funnels), so I'll have to figure something out on what to do with them. I'd like to figure out a way to harden the top and close the pathway between the air defense and the core, but it seems that all efforts there create more problems than they solve.

Still, it's 98% Forbidden Fortress, so you've got at least one convert!

Onion. (Balloons/Miniona) :rolleyes:

Glad you found my design helpful, Tohibii! I hope it serves you well! I'll have to look at your modification, it might be very worth testing! Thanks again for your feedback. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dev

i've tried your base design
and it seems like top right is not working very well

here is the recent attacks, you can see it inside.
enemy still can breach to DE storage with easy troops. ( No CC troops in the castle helping ).

but from bottom left, its working great.


https://app.box.com/s/qtr6s2gwg90v5mtnb7tp

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After examining the photos you shared, Dev, I would make the following modifications to the design:

Since you converted it to a farming layout with the townhall to the south, I would close off the north part of the central compartment to limit access to your DE storage. This can be easily done since the now centralized CC (clan castle) takes up less space than the townhall. Also, it is ESSENTIAL to this design that you have your CC filled with the best troops you have access to, as the CC is the HIGHEST DPS (damage-per-second) defensive building. And lastly, I would relocate the southern tesla to the walled 2x2 space on the north side of the base to help with the breaches you experienced in the top right side.

Hope this helps!

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Originally Posted by Sithis

http://www.iruntheinternet.com/lulzd...3643498000.gif

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nuff said :cool:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Felkaroth

Glad you found my design helpful, Tohibii! I hope it serves you well! I'll have to look at your modification, it might be very worth testing! Thanks again for your feedback. ;)

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I need to get the defenses up to give it a proper whirl as, both before and after going Felkaroth's Forbidden Fortress (FFF), I've been getting hit by a lot of archer-heavy town hall 9 farming armies that I'm not really ready for. My cannons and mortars haven't been one-shoting them, so it's a mixed bag (again, that's with all designs).

I'm currently in Gold I league doing hybrid farming-hunting where I go for the storages by default, so some of the people coming after me are fairly roughneck. I was just hit with 31 lvl. 5 wizards, who dropped a good bit of wreck on me (I think 85%), but didn't get the 3 star by merit of half the wizards going on a merry-go round tour of the mines and elixir pumps. Realistically, I don't think any design is going to stop that with the middling state of my weapons.

One interesting thing is that it seems people attack from all directions with the FFF whereas before there were specific courses they'd come in on.

I also bought a little more breathing room for the flank mounted wizard towers with two of the extra wall links so that archers will have to get in real close to shoot them. I've still got some extra walls and the potential to siphon out more here and there, so I'd expect another mild tinker or two.

Anyway, you can check my slight tweaks @
clan: Pork Pirates
ID:Tohibii

I don't think it's necessarily "better", but I'm a big fan of the Teslas and couldn't bring myself to leave the poor things out there on the first line of defense laying ineffectual voltage into the first wave of healthy giants - better results are to be had by letting them whip the archers once the giants have expired.

I suppose I should post a picture so you can see the trap arrangement, though I'll have to figure out how to do it from the Pad.

Thanks for the design! In addition to the functionality, it looks really nice.

Its looks perfect.. But there's not enough staggered junctions.

Not bad...

I understand that making hybrids is not easy, and certain compromises must be made, however I think that compromising on junctions is not acceptable. I personally think this could become a truly great base with a few tweaks here and there to iron out those incorrect junctions.

Keep up the good work, and keep fiddling around with those junctions!

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Originally Posted by AirmanRaider

Not bad...

I understand that making hybrids is not easy, and certain compromises must be made, however I think that compromising on junctions is not acceptable. I personally think this could become a truly great base with a few tweaks here and there to iron out those incorrect junctions.

Keep up the good work, and keep fiddling around with those junctions!

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Thank you for the encouragement! I am continuing to test and tweak the design, and I look forward to posting a final phase of the design with improved junctioning when my village reaches the peak of TH8 progress with maxed walls/defenses. :cool:

Ok, I tweaked some things in the Felkorath Forbidden Fortress design.....but....the pic is looking a bit small, having been compressed to 192KB by the forum.

Maybe I'll have to host it somewhere else to get a better pic up.

Anyway, it's a bit less of a hybrid, being closer to farming with the TH more exposed. My main concern with protecting the town hall is just that I'd like to have genuine attacks "come at me, bro" and don't want the free shield (it greatly detracts from my game experience as I'm building up my defense to see it in action rather than as a theoretical excercise).

There's a few things I'm not entirely happy with, such as exposed wizard towers on the flanks and the Teslas being away from where the majority of the attacks start, but this is about as good as I could do when taking the junctions into account.

Edit to add: Oh, there's no specific place for the third tesla as one of them is always being upgraded, but the southern elixir storage could be moved to the left flank, kicking the DE drill out from behind the walls and then opening a slot up next to the WT for the tesla. I might test it starting tonight as I'm going to need to have a worker hit some quick build stuff for a few days.

There's no such thing as a perfect base, but this is EPIC GREAT job dude *throws nickel*

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tohibii

Ok, I tweaked some things in the Felkorath Forbidden Fortress design.....but....the pic is looking a bit small, having been compressed to 192KB by the forum.

Maybe I'll have to host it somewhere else to get a better pic up.

Anyway, it's a bit less of a hybrid, being closer to farming with the TH more exposed. My main concern with protecting the town hall is just that I'd like to have genuine attacks "come at me, bro" and don't want the free shield (it greatly detracts from my game experience as I'm building up my defense to see it in action rather than as a theoretical excercise).

There's a few things I'm not entirely happy with, such as exposed wizard towers on the flanks and the Teslas being away from where the majority of the attacks start, but this is about as good as I could do when taking the junctions into account.

Edit to add: Oh, there's no specific place for the third tesla as one of them is always being upgraded, but the southern elixir storage could be moved to the left flank, kicking the DE drill out from behind the walls and then opening a slot up next to the WT for the tesla. I might test it starting tonight as I'm going to need to have a worker hit some quick build stuff for a few days.

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A very nice modification of my design! While I'm too obsessed with symmetry to position my townhall where you located it, I like the movement of the teslas to the core. I am definitely interested to hear more about how effective this modified layout will be for you!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ComplaintsBox

There's no such thing as a perfect base, but this is EPIC GREAT job dude *throws nickel*

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Thank you! :p

Yay finally a good base i can use foe when trophy pushing.

Great Job ! Im going to use this ASAP to do a great trophy push:)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Felkaroth

A very nice modification of my design! While I'm too obsessed with symmetry to position my townhall where you located it, I like the movement of the teslas to the core. I am definitely interested to hear more about how effective this modified layout will be for you!

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Felkaroth,

Thanks and I know what you mean about the symmetry; it took a bit of mental adjustment to get to where I could accept the off center Town Hall. The Walls are at least 100% symmetrical and I rejected some alterations that looked effective but messy.

One problem with my alteration is that I have the protected Testy-Coils up towards the north of the base while the majority of the attacks are coming from the south. Don't know, but I might have to figure something out there as they'd do better stopping people from getting into the core rather than zipping them once there.

The results have been mixed, but I'm still early in my TH8 advancement and I haven't prioritized the short term advancement of the weapons (I've been trying to balance slow and quick build items and to put surplus gold into the walls on the days I upgrade the quick/cheap items). Overall, the defense performs rather well, but it's not like I haven't lost some gold or been blown up rather nicely at times by TH9 farming armies. There was a good string of six solid defenses in a row before getting wasted while I slept last night.

I've been upgrading two splash weapons for the majority of the time I settled on this design and the most destructive attacks have taken out one or two more with Lightning spells, so I'd like to see some more testing before saying anything definitive.

I'll post some screenshots of the defense logs.

Thanks again for sharing the design.

outstanding...

How has the base held up, and do you have a th7 version

please reupload the pics please :D

can't see the base. I need to upgrade to plus for additional bandwidth. Will you send a link or something else because it sounds like an awesome base!

Pls post the while pic. I cant see the design

I can't see the base pictures in the post. Please fix that.

Pictures not appearing for me.... could you please send them to me via the forums?

Rofl.. best thread ever, in any forum. Any where.

Point of thread, show images of design.

Every pic, failed up load.. should've went to better site to upload, so didn't have bandwidth issues op lol

cant see pics.. why?

In case you guys haven't realized, the thread is dead. The pictures won't be fixed any time soon so quit complaining and let the thread die peacefully.

How do u post images on a thread,?

Where can i find the whole picture of this base?

If my troops get in there, both your storages are doomed.