War is great, but make it even more fun.

The CC donations, replays, 2 attacks, and loot are all great. Please consider new, fun additions that don't overly complicate things. Here are some ideas:

War should have some other things, without adding alot of time and complexity. For instance, I would not add a third attack. But I'd add Spying and Skirmishing. Not all players in a war would get the opportunity to do these. A random 20% of the clan could deploy spies, and another random 10-20% could deploy skirmishers. A spy is dropped anywhere in the base, moves maybe 1-2 squares randomly and can discover bombs. Spying is currently done by trying to join the enemy clan. That's fun, but tactical spying would be more fun, so you'd Close each clan when war starts. Spying as I suggest would involve deciding which base to spy and a guess about where the bomb(s) are. When there are no bombs there, you still learn something.

Skirmishing would allow maybe 10-20% of random clan members to deploy a small army, perhaps 5-10% of capacity, to do some damage to a selected enemy base. Time limit might be real short, for instance 20 seconds, to prevent a high level dragon from pounding much of a low level base. A smart clan would decide which base poses a problem that could be hit by all the clan members to significantly weaken it. Chat would be lively on what spying had occured, what troops to bring, where to hit, and what order of players to skirmish. A less coordinated clan would not talk this through, and players might just weaken their intended target.

Do you want wars to get REAL exciting!?!?! Add "Reenforcements". A clan could have a few opportunities to Reenforce a war attack. For a 5-member war, 1 opportunity. For 10, 2, etc. While watching a live battle, a player could tap a Reenforce button to allow him to drop any/all of his currently built troops to help his teammate's battle. BUT that act reduces his slots for his own war attack by the same slot-count he dropped. You can imagine the chat that follows when several people were watching and felt the attack would achieve 3, but one watcher felt it was only going to 2, and that player decides to reenforce. THen later that player has trouble getting his 3. All sorts of things could go right or wrong; if the result barely scores 3 then that Reenforcement decision was spot on. If it produces overkill or fails to get 3, that player dropped too many/too few. What a sweat situation!

One of the coolest aspects of any wargame is Terrain and Weather. Weather conditions could change, slightly altering which troops work best. I'd do 3 random Weather factors: day/night, rain/dry, and wind strength/direction. Terrain such as hills, swamps, forests could be randomly dealt to each base, and suddenly all these standard base designs go out the window--each player must design around his particular terrain. Terrain and Weather deserve more discussion, and I'll work up a proposal later. The main reason I mention them here is because they'd add alot of interesting chats during war, as players try to figure out how best to deal with Terrain and Weather. With them, every attack becomes an even more unique experience, whether it's warring or farming.

These ideas just take well known aspects of war games and try to boil down a simple but interesting approach for CoC.

A previous post ("Make War Relevant") is pretty important. That person suggested war performance be part of the leaderboards. I'd give long winning streaks some major recognition and prizes, whether a prize is loot, special decorations, or maybe a special single-use troop such as a "Dragon King" or "Hog King" and the like for use in the next war. A clan should strive for 10 straight wins or whatever streak makes sense statistically, and strive for a high win/loss ratio. After every loss, the most skilled 1 in 50 clans should have a good shot at the prize winning streak. Individual war record recognition would be great too, and chances of that should be delayed a long time when a player ever leaves in the middle of a war. Record a clan's long term win/loss record and display that in a separate leader board. I'd do two new clan leader boards: "all time" record and "last 50 wars".

Regards,
-VFR