Originally Posted by
Haselthehoff
I wanted to reserve comment on the shield update until I saw the Village Guard and how it would counteract the loss of shields from losing a TH. Now that I have seen it, I have concerns about the ability to farm in COC going forward. This will be a long post. I do not want to just state some simple thing, but would rather walk through it, feel free to skip if you just want to rant. This is aimed at the moderators and SC anyway.
Farming bases (TH on outside) allowed users to raid with cheap armies to try to gather resources; this is the whole premise of farming: raiding economically to maximize resources. The objective is to try to gain ground faster than other players (i.e. upgrade at a faster rate than other players and faster than SC could add new things for you to upgrade or obtain, or you risked falling behind).
From a farmer's standpoint in the old system, one would log in and raid with a cheap, quick to make, (and let's face it, probably ineffective for getting deep into a base consistently) army to try to gather loot. A couple TH snipes would help increase the haul or at least offset the costs of Nexting. Ideally the full raid would not require many spells or too much damage to heroes. The farmer would log off and hope to get a shield before someone would come and raid him/her for a substantial loss.
The new system prevents this style of play for a few reasons. From the offensive standpoint, there will no longer be additional loot from the occasional TH snipe and so each raiding session (from time army is built until it is significantly depleted and requires rebuilding) will most likely be limited to one raid (you raid, then wait to rebuild an army). This means that the one raid will be all that you make before your base is exposed (unless you stay on non-stop, which is hard for many casual gamers, and SC has limited even this tactic). You must now maximize loot in that raid, which means using a more expensive army, and you are now incentivized to do this because you can raid during a shield, but raiding too much during that will significantly reduce the shield.
From a defensive standpoint, more people will be packing serious armies to smash your base, so you are much more at risk to lose. Additionally, these raids will also trigger traps, X-bows, and Infernos (if you have them), meaning that it will cost you significantly more as well. The cost to you for each raid you launch just went up a lot:
price of stronger army + higher risk of getting raided for big loss + cost of re-arming
This means we will all be looking for the same big scores, just when there will be fewer of them. The reason there will be fewer is two-fold:
1) Folks can raid while on shield meaning more raiders but no additional bases and most will dump as much loot into their walls as they can (until they get prohibitively expensive) prior to exposing themselves, removing loot from the system and making the bases harder (read: you need a more expensive army to get them)
2) With no TH sniping and the increase in traps, X-Bows, and Infernos being triggered, there will be a significant reduction of loot in the system
I'll use myself as a real-world example and then apply it to a TH9. As context, I view the game as changing significantly between TH9 and TH10 because of Infernos. When you have Infernos, you are not attacked very often (other than snipes) because the cost of going against a TH10 with Infernos is so much more expensive than one without (most farming armies can't overcome them consistently).
I raid with giants, healers, goblins, archers, wallbreakers, my AQ, BK, heal spells, rages, and a poison. I don't BARCH and I only GO-Wipe or Lavaloonion in war because they are so expensive and you can't always find a base that has enough loot to warrant an army that expensive. I can take down just about any non-Inferno base with my giant/healer/archers (barring the occasional screw-up) and some poorly laid out bases with Infernos. This army costs me about $180k elixir plus whatever I use in spells, which I try to avoid. I also try not to put my heroes down unless I absolutely have to because it takes so long for them to recharge.
On average, I will break a shield, snipe 1-4 THs (I'm in Master 3), sometimes as many as 10 or more depending on luck and time of day, and collect 300k/300k/1.5k for those, and then find a 250k/250k/500+ base that I will unleash my full army on (lately I have pulled 300k+/300k+/1.5k+ but I am being conservative). I will then sign-off with a take of 550k/550k/2k for that session. More often than not, I will get sniped, though occasionally someone will try to Go-Wipe me and get some loot (but this doesn't happen often because I'm near max, only walls and heroes aren't, and it's not profitable to hit me when there are other targets. My army take 26 minutes to build and then I can do it again (life schedule permitting). I will do those four to six times during a work day (I work 14 hour days) and it will absorb about 30-45 minutes of my day (I raid on the train going to work, with my breakfast, at lunch, on the can, maybe during a waste of time call that someone has stupidly put together, and again on my train home). At that point, I can raid to my heart's (wife and infant daughter permitting) content, allowing for some gym time. All told, I make about 3mm/3mm/5k-10k a day (I usually get one really nice DE score), not counting collectors and am probably fairly typical amongst farmers and I can raid more if I am pushing to get stuff upgraded (I have been on a tear recently because it is slow at work, I have had time off, loot has been good in the system, and I have been trying to finish my heroes at of fear of this update, so I have been pulling closer to 6mm/6mm/30k a day).
Under the new system, I will probably have my shield expire in the morning. I will raid and hopefully get a 300k/300k/1k+ base to smash. I will then get raided and, since I have to carry a lot of loot for the remaining expensive upgrades, will have 350k/350k/3k exposed. My base is strong but let's assume the attacker is smart and in his 30%, gets 80k/80k/1k (one gold storage plus some more, one elixir storage plus some more, and a few shots at my DE). This is not unreasonable as any decent GoWipe should be able to do this. My haul is now down to 220k/220k/some small amount, plus I have to pay to re-arm my traps, bows, infernos. I now have a 12 hour shield, and to maximize on it, I can only raid three times (Raid 1: 12 hours to 9 hours; Raid 2: 9 hours to 5 hours, wait 4 hours and 59 minutes, then Raid 3: Shield is zero). I get 5 hours of not being looted for 3 raids (I have taken some liberty with the army development time, if anything this could be less). Let's say each raid I do 300k/300k/1k, I have made 1.1mm/1.1mm/3k and am about to get hit again for a new shield, dropping me to 1mm/1mm/2k. Add in the more expense army and the costs to re-arm, and it is slowing down my earnings (I can do this twice in a day so I will have 2mm/2mm/4k, vs. 3mm/3mm/5k).
Now, I am a TH10, and it is hard to really take all of my stuff. A TH9 is even worse off because where it is exceptionally hard to steal everything from a TH10 (even with a max army), I (a TH10) can blow out almost all TH9s with my little giant/healer/archer combination (and if I can do it, anyone can). This will all be exasperated by the fact that more of us will be hunting bigger scores, no TH sniping bonuses will reduce loot in the system, armies will be more expensive and base re-arming costs will add up (expensive armies and base re-arming costs are like throwing the loot in the system down a black hole, no one can spend it for upgrades, so no one benefits).
This change means it will take us much more time (Read: not necessarily time invested in playing each day, but in actual days over time). This is not a problem for gemmers, they just gem and time is no object. For everyone else, it will get harder to catch up with them and, if SC keeps rolling out updates, it will be harder not to fall behind on the update grid.
Now the Village Guard could have helped with this, except it is entirely useless for Champs 1 and everyone below since 15 minutes is not enough time to raise an army that could smash a base. It is a money grab, same as buying a shield. I view it as largely useless unless you are really high up (Titan), but if you are up there, you are not going for loot anyway. Maybe this will push people to head up there but I am skeptical because the new bonuses will have to massive to justify the additional risk and army cost.
Of course, this can all be offset if the loot bonuses and trophy draws are significantly altered and increased, but barring that, this update will cause farmers to need more time to upgrade and it will be harder to outpace the upgrade cycle. At that point, folks could become frustrated and leave (before any of you say "Yay, more loot" those dead bases will get demolished more often by stronger armies and it will become harder to find them unless there is a max exodus, in which case, the game dies). If they leave en-mass, COC will deteriorate.
