A philosophical guide toward reaching the Master League

Hi, trying to share some of my thoughts on cups pushing. I've been doing it from day 1 of my CoC career. Hit a brick wall with my th7 combo at around 1800. Got ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and gemmed th10. I had mostly pink walls and level 2 wiz towards.

Since then I've been attacked 5-10 a day by th9s and sometimes th8s. They all had very good troops and basically did what they wanted with my base. I couldn't save up any troops. Or for any towers for that matter. Since troops cost elixirs, gold requires raiding other people, but troops requires elixirs. I didn't have elixirs because they got raided. Some of them just emptied out the collectors and left. Some of them lightning zapped my DE and left.

So I decided to push for cups. Went as high as crystal 2. There were less and less th9s and less farmers trying to rob me. I gemmed a few troops, and I started raiding. I farms all my defensive towers and my walls. Gemmed elixirs to make troops (mostly break even on elixirs, maybe -5%) but never gemmed any gold.

But then I went up and down in crystal. For about 6 weeks. I won a lot but I lost a lot. I want to write down some of my thoughts on what not to do. Since I went down the wrong path quite a few times and were very slow to realize them

I'm M2-3 now. Highest being 2840 or something. So I could share a bit on what did work for me.

this is cool, but is more of a timeline than a guide.

That was the prologue.

Chapter 1 coming soon.

Chapter 1: Spells and Heroe:

Always bring your heroes and all your spells. This might be obvious too you, and was theoretically understood by me, but rarely followed by me. I might follow it for 10 wins, then I forget, get in a hurry, and try my luck with 2-3 spells, maybe even not bring my heroes.

When I bring spells and heroes at full capacity i win 95% of my battles. When I don't its like 40-70%. For an Asian male like myself, 95%=A, 40-60%=F.

If u want to push up the trophy count, and be the next Jorge Yao. You have to get As, straight A's. 95% is a solid A. 80% is barely ok. I bet Jorge Yao gets A+'s all the time.

Sorry had to cringe at gemming elixir :(

edited10chars

Chapter 3: the Rage spell

The Rage spell is easily the most useful of all spells. Your win-loss ratio is more impacted by how u use the rage spell than anything else. It's also the hardest to execute correctly. The difference between proper execution and newbie usage is also the biggest gap.

An Civil War general, widely hailed as a brilliant war strategist, summed up his strategy with one sentence: "get there first, with more troops"

Why get there with more troops? because u can shooter down buildings, and the towers, who shoot at u and reduce ur troops. It's also important to take down towers more quickly. Because they shoot at yr troops and reduce yr strength.

Rage spell is perfect at 'get there fast and with enough troops'. When using rage spell, u should think:
1. What objective do I want for this mission: is it shooting down that wizard tower? Or blow a hole in that wall.
2. How many troops do I need? Is like 2 giants 10 archers or 2 balloons?
3. am I low on troops or time?

If you answered yes to 3, you Need a rage spell!!!

Demo 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYhGe...ature=youtu.be

If you are town hall 10 and town hall 8's are destroying your base, I would not suggest trophy pushing until you farm your base a bit. A few months farming will make a huge difference when you push. At the very least you wouldn't have to gem elixir any more. :p

On a side note, I don't know if your quote from Forrest realistically depicts the type of strategy involved with this game. If the battles we fight in the game were troop against troop I could see that strategy being used. However, since the battles are mainly one person attacking another person's base, having the most troops doesn't really help. I might spam 220-240 barbs on a base and lose horribly.

Good read, i like it. Don't worry about peeps giving their opinions as there is always another way. Carry on here.

I was hoping for something else when someone brings words in like philosophy. :(

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Originally Posted by Durham2886

Good read, i like it. Don't worry about peeps giving their opinions as there is always another way. Carry on here.

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If you were referring to me, I honestly was not intending to be rude or offensive in any way, shape, or form. I was just offering a piece of advice that I have found helpful.

In regards to the Civil War General, I was just happy that someone else still cared about US History other than me :p

Always bring all of your spells and heroes?
Do you just gem constantly or wait hours between raids?
You can easily win with one spell up to masters and sometimes beyond.
Heroes are not that important... they are important but not worth waiting for.

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Originally Posted by ragnus

This is a th9 hoping to convince you to stay in silver 2, so he can raid yr base. Get to crystal and u see less and less of him.

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I'm actually in gold 1-2 atm:p. I haven't been in silver two for quite a while lol. My only intention was to offer you some advice I had found to be helpful. (This was most likely your intention as well, otherwise you wouldn't have made a post called "guide toward reaching master league"). Sorry if I came across as rude or offensive, as that was in no way my intent.

Chapter 3: The healing spell

Healing spell is far far better than the healer. Here's why:

Healers are unrealistic in real wallfare. It's like bringing along a mechanic to fix your tanks while it's charging on the battle field.

Healers are vulnerable to air defenses and air bombs. These defenses get rapidly more numerous at th10 in the crystal leagues. They just get kill up here.

Healers are also unpredictable. Their AI is: healing the nearest troop that is less than 100% hp, which can be anybody. If you try to model it with differential equations, that's at least a 600-variable system, whose initial conditions go through random chaos of the combat.

The result being where u deploy the healer will hardly predict what it will be doing 30-60 seconds later. That's a very bad quality with any combat troops.

Healers are inheritantly ridiculous because they only heal group troops, and cannot heal each other. So u rely on group troops to do damaging. And the pure AD units are left undistracted.
It makes your army vulnerable to both air and ground defense.

The punchLine is that Healer also cost 14 housing space each.

Healing spell: no housing space, cost marginally more than healers, very predictable. Will work when and were u want. Have a wide radius so it's not a tiny spot.

Switch to Healing spells today!!

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Originally Posted by joshfc96

I'm actually in gold 1-2 atm:p. I haven't been in silver two for quite a while lol. My only intention was to offer you some advice I had found to be helpful. (This was most likely your intention as well, otherwise you wouldn't have made a post called "guide toward reaching master league"). Sorry if I came across as rude or offensive, as that was in no way my intent.

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I just have a reflexive disdain (or maybe fear) of th9's. Sorry.

But that's ignorant. I will educate myself.

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Originally Posted by CashClash22

Always bring all of your spells and heroes?
Do you just gem constantly or wait hours between raids?
You can easily win with one spell up to masters and sometimes beyond.
Heroes are not that important... they are important but not worth waiting for.

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You bring all your spells and use as needed to accomplish your goal. And you want to keep your heroes alive. That's why you don't use 5 spells if you don't need to.

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Originally Posted by ragnus

Chapter 3: The healing spell

Healing spell is far far better than the healer. Here's why:

Healers are unrealistic in real wallfare. It's like bringing along a mechanic to fix your tanks while it's charging on the battle field.

Healers are vulnerable to air defenses and air bombs. These defenses get rapidly more numerous at th10 in the crystal leagues. They just get kill up here.

Healers are also unpredictable. Their AI is: healing the nearest troop that is less than 100% hp, which can be anybody. If you try to model it with differential equations, that's at least a 600-variable system, whose initial conditions go through random chaos of the combat.

The result being where u deploy the healer will hardly predict what it will be doing 30-60 seconds later. That's a very bad quality with any combat troops.

Healers are inheritantly ridiculous because they only heal group troops, and cannot heal each other. So u rely on group troops to do damaging. And the pure AD units are left undistracted.
It makes your army vulnerable to both air and ground defense.

The punchLine is that Healer also cost 14 housing space each.

Healing spell: no housing space, cost marginally more than healers, very predictable. Will work when and were u want. Have a wide radius so it's not a tiny spot.

Switch to Healing spells today!!

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I agree with you but I think healers are useable as a way to control healing spell usage up until Th9. At Th9 using them takes allot more skill but they can still be part of a good composition.


However, verses a Th10 with multi-target infernos they are utterly useless and not worth the time to train. That unpredictability reaches an unacceptable level for me, and I was already shying away from her at Th9.

I was trying out a Valkyrie/Wizard/Healer composition earlier this week. I had 4 of them along to cover a random air mine explosion. However, they still were all over the place. Healing a random unit who'd wandered off, more often then a unit that was in the thick of things.

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Originally Posted by joshfc96

If you are town hall 10 and town hall 8's are destroying your base, I would not suggest trophy pushing until you farm your base a bit. A few months farming will make a huge difference when you push. At the very least you wouldn't have to gem elixir any more. :p

On a side note, I don't know if your quote from Forrest realistically depicts the type of strategy involved with this game. If the battles we fight in the game were troop against troop I could see that strategy being used. However, since the battles are mainly one person attacking another person's base, having the most troops doesn't really help. I might spam 220-240 barbs on a base and lose horribly.

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March from Atlanta was the scorched earth strategy that was basically marching army vs defensive infrastructure (railroads, bridges, ammunition, mules and food). It decisively won the war for the North. Basically that's what you're trying to do in CoC: shoot down that wiz tower/mortar/xbow so you can take the TH, or 50%. You want to get there "first" before the wiz towers gets off enough shots to kill your troops, which translates into less firepower, and snowballs into other wiz towers staying alive longer, and a decrease in the rate of attrition by the enemy, and snowballs back to you with more dead soldiers. "Getting there first with more men left" was understood by Sherman and much earlier military generals, and modeled mathematically with Lanchester's Laws.

So where is the philosophy? Are you writing a "Guide to War" here? Much of your strategy is basic knowledge and used to good effect by relatively new players. You describe playing the game how it should be played, if being sensible. An alternate strategy is to overwhelm with power. Lay your strategy to one side, and plough through a base with dragons and witches.

War relies on two opposing forces having movement and change. CoC isn't war, it is a siege, and therefore cannot be handled in the way you are trying to describe. The art, if there is one, is to predict the defensive mindset of your opponent and either outwit or avoid.

A true philosophy would be simply organised by understanding when an opponent has a greater likelihood of winning and to Next gracefully, with charm and good humour.

Chapter 5: Defining objectives

There are two 4 ways to win cups:
1. destroy 50% for 1 star
2. destroy the TH for 1 star
3. destroy both and get 2-stars
4. destroy everything for 3-stars.

Most people shoot for 2-stars. They deploy heroes early in the game, and invest a lot of spells at shooting the core defense. The result is a lot of expenses, not enough focus on resource buildings, and more importantly, more unpredictability.

Shooting for the TH, if they are in the center of the base, is a lot of random factors such as where your troops can go. Theoretically you can model it in your head. But most people don't. You might think you can, and on a good day maybe you do. But if you attack a lot, realistically you just deploy your troops around the edge and hope that they go the right way.

In order to raise up in cups, you need consistent wins. Even if you get some 2-stars (and at lower leagues 3-stars), a strategy that works 95% of the time is at least 3 times better than a strategy that works 80% of times. This is more true the higher you go since the game pairs you with more lower-cup players when you're high up.

Shooting for the 50% is more predictable. Assuming, for simplicity, that that buildings are uniformed placed in a circle. You only have got destroy the buildings on the outer 25% of the ring. Those buildings tend to be low hp that can't shoot. They are either completely exposed that you can take out with archers/minions, or behind 1 layer of wall that you can take out with wiz/archers. Since they operate near where you deployment. You can much better control their performance.

The outter rim has much less fire-concentration, if you're worried about IT buildings. To get 50% you need to get 31 buildings, that could be from: 5 builder huts. 14 collectors, 6 barracks, 4 camps, 1 spell factory, 1 research lab. Those are normally not very well-protected buildings.

Its also more cost effective. Taking out 50% with 1 spell, and heroes at 80% health gets you cups a lot quicker than 4 spells, 2 dead heroes for 2-stars. And you win with much more consistency. And you get to focus more on storages for raids.

I didn't come up with this idea. And alot of y'all know this already. I got this from a Youtube video of a guy who had TH9 balloons in champs league. And a thread on "Balloonian farming in the Masters League" best advice ever.

Chapter 6: troops.

There are a handful of strategies that work well with different ranges. They are probably better than the one you are using. All of those strategies have a couple things in common:
1. They all rely on 1-3 main troops. With filler troops to lure and kill CC troops, and wallbreakers. This is 3 troops can mostly cover most utilities in an army. The less troop switching u do during combat, the more time u have to think about where to deploy them.
2. They mostly rely on either all ground and all-air troops. So they are only vulnerable to one type of defense.

Learn one strategy really well, watch the YouTube videos. Know exactly what kind of bases your strategy can defeat. Know what level 5 wiz towers look like. And skip a base if it runs with the towers that you cannot defeat.

A general rule of thumb is: use the highest level troops you have to maximize your power. If you have level 5 archers and giants, but only level 2 hogs, the strategy with archers and giants will probably work better (or more efficiently). It's also ok to chose cheaper troops to save resources. But don't mix some hogs with a balloon strategy.

I've worked successfully with BARCH, giants+barch, hogs, balloonian, even cheaper versions of GoWiWiz. And they've worked well up to M2. I will talk about those strategies in more details.

You also say that going for 50% is the best strategy... not true...
And back to your claim that you should always have full spells and regenerated heroes:
I can raid 4 times in the 2 hours that you wait for a full load.
EVEN if lose one of these raids badly (unlikely before Master II) I will STILL gain more net trophies than you in those few hours.
So OK, you can play it safe, but you're gonna go up painfully slow in trophies.

Chapter 7: battle formations and troops deployment.

First a couple basic combat principle of warfare:
1. You should not be out-flanked by your enemy, and be attacked from 2 or more sides.
2. When u have gathered enough momentum, accelerate and concentrate your forces to attack at a single weak point for maximum depth

What the first one mean for CoC battles: in the opening: you should not put all ur giants in one point and have it being hit by 3 different towers. After you choose to attack one side, count how many towers are in range, and deploy at least that many columns of troops so that each column is only getting hit on by one tower. This is great for conserving your forces.

The outpost, or outter ring of a base, typically have far less fire power than the core. So you are going for width at firsts and just deploy enough troops.

The second point is about gathering momentum: deploy more troops, specifically DPS or ranged troops like archers, wizards minions. You also want to re-enforce your tanks.

After you have destroyed some of the outpost, and have gathered enough momentum: archers arrived and is shooting on the second layer, for example, it's time for a blitz attack. You can do this with a rage spell, or just piling on troops to a single point somewhere inside.

The key is looking at the red circle when you drop an archer. Is the red circle somewhere close to the target your aiming for, or is it off to to the side? It to the side, it means you have to adjust the deployment point, or it means you haven't destroyed enough buildings in step one.

The target here can be the TH, or a storage, or some arbitrary point somewhere inside the base like a wiz tower. You are doing a single mission: surgical strike to take out a target. And you will want to have at least 2 or 3 or 4 missions. For every mission: obtain width first (step 1) then go for depth (step 2).

How big should be each mission? That's a trade off between width and depth. You can have a single mission to take out the at TH, and you will have an advantage in the momentum, but you sacrifice in width, since you cannot have a frontline that's too long, making ur troops too dispersed. It's like taking a bite too big.

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Originally Posted by ragnus

I often use 1-2 spells, and keep my heroes alive when going for 1-star. When I go for 2-stars, I use at least twice as many spells and my heroes end up dead and more hurt.

You want to avoid losses. You can go for 2-star, but statistics show you have a lot higher failure rate than going for 1-stars. This mostly applies when you are at edge of your personal best and try to get more trophies, not when you are below your best range. I can sleep-walk most bases in C3 for two-stars.

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What statistics?
And were not talking about crystal III, this is a guide for masters isn't it?!!
I avoid losses but attack whenever my army is ready to have max efficiency. I gain more cups this way.
If you can't get a 50% at masters without spells and heroes than you aren't searching hard enough...

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Originally Posted by CashClash22

What statistics?
And were not talking about crystal III, this is a guide for masters isn't it?!!
I avoid losses but attack whenever my army is ready to have max efficiency. I gain more cups this way.
If you can't get a 50% at masters without spells and heroes than you aren't searching hard enough...

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My personal history. If your win percentages are different, then I don't really want to convince you.

Do you win 100% of your attacks in crystal league? If not, try going for 1-star, see if you can half the loss rate maybe going from 80% win to 90% win.

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Originally Posted by ragnus

This is a th9 hoping to convince you to stay in silver 2, so he can raid yr base. Get to crystal and u see less and less of him.

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WOW
this was so rude and a terrible guess.
IGN: Josh
Clan: Fatal Fifty
Town Hall Level: 9
Exp Level: 108
Since you are a gemmed out TH10 with lvl 2 wizard towers, he is probably right about you being taken out by TH8s. He is level 108, if you think he is silver 2 and wants to raid your base, you are completely wrong. And trust me, if he is a lvl 108, it is so much easier for him to wreck most of the people at most trophy levels than you. And he can probably get to crystal and masters with a lot more ease. He was offering valid suggestion and perhaps constructive criticism that you can't take. He was telling you to farm your premmie TH10 so you can improve and you underestimate him greatly and think he is being malicious. And your advice as a premmie TH10 is hardly effective or helpful to many players

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ragnus

My personal history. If your win percentages are different, then I don't really want to convince you.

Do you win 100% of your attacks in crystal league? If not, try going for 1-star, see if you can half the loss rate maybe going from 80% win to 90% win.

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Also, your village is a soon to be TH8 with a record of 1612, so I'm not sure if you are right about experience here haha.

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Originally Posted by Benson822175

WOW
this was so rude and a terrible guess.
IGN: Josh
Clan: Fatal Fifty
Town Hall Level: 9
Exp Level: 108
Since you are a gemmed out TH10 with lvl 2 wizard towers, he is probably right about you being taken out by TH8s. He is level 108, if you think he is silver 2 and wants to raid your base, you are completely wrong. And trust me, if he is a lvl 108, it is so much easier for him to wreck most of the people at most trophy levels than you. And he can probably get to crystal and masters with a lot more ease. He was offering valid suggestion and perhaps constructive criticism that you can't take. He was telling you to farm your premmie TH10 so you can improve and you underestimate him greatly and think he is being malicious. And your advice as a premmie TH10 is hardly effective or helpful to many players

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My advice wasn't geared toward premmies. It was geared toward anyone who want to attack better.

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Originally Posted by joshfc96

If you were referring to me, I honestly was not intending to be rude or offensive in any way, shape, or form. I was just offering a piece of advice that I have found helpful.

In regards to the Civil War General, I was just happy that someone else still cared about US History other than me :p

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Imagine if the generals in the civil war were ranked like the #1 player etc... I think Lee would be #1 with Sherman pushing hard as #2... Hopefully they don't gem resources!

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Originally Posted by Benson822175

WOW
this was so rude and a terrible guess.
IGN: Josh
Clan: Fatal Fifty
Town Hall Level: 9
Exp Level: 108
Since you are a gemmed out TH10 with lvl 2 wizard towers, he is probably right about you being taken out by TH8s. He is level 108, if you think he is silver 2 and wants to raid your base, you are completely wrong. And trust me, if he is a lvl 108, it is so much easier for him to wreck most of the people at most trophy levels than you. And he can probably get to crystal and masters with a lot more ease. He was offering valid suggestion and perhaps constructive criticism that you can't take. He was telling you to farm your premmie TH10 so you can improve and you underestimate him greatly and think he is being malicious. And your advice as a premmie TH10 is hardly effective or helpful to many players

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Pretty much exactly what i was thinking

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Originally Posted by ragnus

Chapter 7: battle formations and troops deployment.

First a couple basic combat principle of warfare:
1. You should not be out-flanked by your enemy, and be attacked from 2 or more sides.
2. When u have gathered enough momentum, accelerate and concentrate your forces to attack at a single weak point for maximum depth

What the first one mean for CoC battles: in the opening: you should not put all ur giants in one point and have it being hit by 3 different towers. After you choose to attack one side, count how many towers are in range, and deploy at least that many columns of troops so that each column is only getting hit on by one tower. This is great for conserving your forces.

The outpost, or outter ring of a base, typically have far less fire power than the core. So you are going for width at firsts and just deploy enough troops.

The second point is about gathering momentum: deploy more troops, specifically DPS or ranged troops like archers, wizards minions. You also want to re-enforce your tanks.

After you have destroyed some of the outpost, and have gathered enough momentum: archers arrived and is shooting on the second layer, for example, it's time for a blitz attack. You can do this with a rage spell, or just piling on troops to a single point somewhere inside.

The key is looking at the red circle when you drop an archer. Is the red circle somewhere close to the target your aiming for, or is it off to to the side? It to the side, it means you have to adjust the deployment point, or it means you haven't destroyed enough buildings in step one.

The target here can be the TH, or a storage, or some arbitrary point somewhere inside the base like a wiz tower. You are doing a single mission: surgical strike to take out a target. And you will want to have at least 2 or 3 or 4 missions. For every mission: obtain width first (step 1) then go for depth (step 2).

How big should be each mission? That's a trade off between width and depth. You can have a single mission to take out the at TH, and you will have an advantage in the momentum, but you sacrifice in width, since you cannot have a frontline that's too long, making ur troops too dispersed. It's like taking a bite too big.

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Why are you trying to use actual war strategies in this game??? If it was an army vs army battle mode then this would make some sense but the game type is more like that of a siege...

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Originally Posted by Fros

Why are you trying to use actual war strategies in this game??? If it was an army vs army battle mode then this would make some sense but the game type is more like that of a siege...

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siege strategy is a subset of war strategies.

a lot of war strategy is running around in the enemy territory, knocking down their garrisons, capture their food/ammo storages, and sometimes capturing the capital.

A lot of it apply in CoC.

If this is a guide to master league, why even wait for troops when you can snipe your way up?

I have read most of what ragnus wrote and I must say there is a lot of bul$h!t in this thread.

50% a base is often the easiest way that's true the rest isn't worth the time you took to write/read

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Originally Posted by ragnus

Hi, trying to share some of my thoughts on cups pushing. I've been doing it from day 1 of my CoC career. Hit a brick wall with my th7 combo at around 1800. Got ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and gemmed th10. I had mostly pink walls and level 2 wiz towards.

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Sums it up, really.

A huge waste of time.

Ragnus is just trying to make a fun post with a bit of advice in it.


P.S. I could of used the 50% advice when I got hung up trying for 2 stars.

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Originally Posted by Met

If this is a guide to master league, why even wait for troops when you can snipe your way up?

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More like a guide to master league when u consistently attack something within 5 nexts

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Originally Posted by StanHC

Sums it up, really.

A huge waste of time.

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Actually it doesn't sum it up.

Space reserved for future important information.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ragnus

More like a guide to master league when u consistently attack something within 5 nexts

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Sniping is faster, actually. Till 2400, after that just use ballons and minion. No offense, but the way you're comparing this game to war is kinda king Abit to far?

Lol.. Sorry OP but i cant help but remember your previous thread after reading this thread..

http://forum.supercell.net/showthrea...iculously-good

It seems to me u have a pretty different approach and mindset to playing this game. Anyways congrats on making to M2 but i think some of your logics might not be applicable for many players.

Cheers~

Rage spell demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYhGeh_7-m8&feature=youtu.be

your village is a soon to be TH8 with a record of 1612, so I'm not sure if you are right about experience or strategy here haha.

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Originally Posted by Benson822175

your village is a soon to be TH8 with a record of 1612, so I'm not sure if you are right about experience or strategy here haha.

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my main account is TH10.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ragnus

siege strategy is a subset of war strategies.

a lot of war strategy is running around in the enemy territory, knocking down their garrisons, capture their food/ammo storages, and sometimes capturing the capital.

A lot of it apply in CoC.

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Not all... You can't cut off the players resources & force them to surrender due to lack of supplies so that rules out running around enemy territory. Knocking down their garrisons? Go ahead, destroy the army camps and barracks that will give you % points nothing else. Capture their food/ammo... Please tell me, where is the food and ammo in this game that you can steal? Capturing their capital? You can only destroy not capture. This is absolutely absurd.

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Originally Posted by KitKat44

Sorry had to cringe at gemming elixir :(

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Me too, cold chills down my spine...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ragnus

my main account is TH10.

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Clan and IGN? I'd be curious to see

clan: 5150 Hold
IGN: jjjjj