The first post here is a very good guide. Well done on it.
I would say it works best at 500 - 2000 trophies. At the sub 500 mark you have the maxed out TH10 famers who are expert at farming you. I've tried it. I got all the way down to 25 trophies. And it was a nightmare. The 500+ range is so so much better. I would never recommend this at the <500 mark. In saying that I'd not recommend anyone to try <500 anymore as it's so clogged up with huge maxed out bases.
Also I think you should have at most 2 each of the gold and elixir storages. Past that, it's very hard to make a smell enough vault to defend. And you can make it to TH10 with Max of 4 million of each resource. TH10 costs 4 million gold if I am right. And once you've maxed out everything that costs < 4 million gold, you'll have a very good base indeed. So if you want a good vault base, hold off on the 3rd gold and elixir storage.
Vault bases in my opinion are more resource defending and less about trophy defending, but till 2k they work well.
Strengths
Defence is based on a high humber of defensive buildings to breach all at once. Even at lower levels of building, the sheer number is overwhelming for all but the largest or highly upgraded forces.
Core is well protected, hard to breach.
Weaknesses
There is a choice
- Protect the core only and almost most guarantee yourself a 1* loss but you lose no storage resources
- Do as I have done and try to protect your generators a little. Still can be beaten as a 1* loss but is very tough to do so.
- Non generator/storage buildings are lost every raid, you can't protect them. Smart players try to use these to get the 50%
- If the core is breached expect heavy losses. But this is very rare at the 500-2000 trophies level. Rare enough to make this method of defence viable.
Now look at my vault base.
http://i.imgur.com/DawRhZO.jpg
Yes it's a non maxed TH10. But that's my point. At 1k - 1.5k trophies it does very well vs most attacking forces. But after you've looked at my base I can use it to show some pointers of how to make a good vault base.
- See the core. I feel that's the most number of storages you can defend adequately. Any more and you're stretching your defences too much and might run out of walls to defend it properly.
- You need either air defence or mortars in your core. I chose mortars as I very rarely get hit by dragons. But if you get more air raids on you, you might want to switch. Just see what works for you.
- A wall around your cure is a must
- Outside that, layout your defences. So you have as much core coverage as possible. I've tried numerous other ways (trying to cover the generators and not the core, and other ways too), and they were not as successful.
- Keep the defences evenly spaced out around your core and try to have all types of each side (mortar/AD, air attack and aoe attack) just so there is not one obvious weak side to your base.
- Put a wall around your defence line.
- Walls separating your defence line (ie compartmentalising them) might not be a good idea. This leads to the ring of defences. That is good as giants and the like once they get to your defence line will walk arounds it killing all of that and not go for your core. Sure that leaves you vulnerable to a mass giants then mass goblins while the defences are giant occupied. But once you upgrade the defences high, that ceases to be a thread at the 500-2k trophy level. For me at my defence level it's taking the enemy very large armies to pierce my defence line and even larger to pierce my core, and in the past 2 weeks I've had 2 core breaches. And I've been raided multiple times a day.
- Outside your defence wall, you have a few options. Have more layers of walls, with the 1 gap between them of cause for more core defence. This helps a lot vs core defence. But that way, all of your generators are unprotected and a 50% loss is inevitable. And the attackers know this and go for it. If you are resource farming, it's not such a bad way to go. If you don't care for the 50% - 60% losses. The other way is to do something to what I have done, and protect most of your generators within more walls. It gives your generators that little but of protection. And because the generators are slightly compartmentalised it's tougher for the attacker to get to them all, thus harder for them to get the 50% win.
- the other leftover buildings like army camps and unit builders etc etc? They are just unprotectable in a vault base. There is not enough walls or defensive structures in the game to protect them all. Just spread them evenly around your base so the attacher has to split up the forces to get them all.
- Hidden teslas are not really hidden. As it's obvious where they are. Some attackers will use 1-2 units to expose one of them, but I've never seen anyone do that for multiple sides of the base. So they do their job well even if their positions are known.
And that's it really. Sure your generators might cop a lot of damage but your core will be protected and will rarely get breached. Thus you won't lose any resources. Only not have full generators to claim if raided. And it's probably the only viable (and very fun in my opinion) way to play the game if you want to go high TH before you've maxed out everything first like I have.
The first post here is a very good guide. Well done on it.