Originally Posted by
Voice
The art of milking in short
So the art of milking, in short, is nothing more and nothing less than repetitively and continuously sniping collectors (and also TH's that are out, but less so), usually in lower leagues (gold silver bronze), in the most efficient way possible. Though there is no general consensus on it yet, many believe this is the best way to farm post-update, in the sense that this tactic has the best ROI, both time and elixir wise.
A typical day of a milker
Typically a milker will open up COC, see that he got a ton of trophies dropped on him (and maybe see that he or she him-/herself just got thoroughly milked) and will find him-/herself at around gold league. Now the milker checks if he has his AQ available (this is important, because milking with AQ is the most efficient way) and if he has his goblin's, archer's, wallbreakers and giant's ready (could also have some barb's in there). Now the milker starts nexting and looking for (a) bases with easily accessible/attackable collectors/mines and (b) bases with TH out and storages that have something in them (look at the DE storage, if it's empty, it's probably not worth attacking the TH), or both of course.
These collectors you find are usually barely full. Pre-update you would skip these in search of better loot (which, post update, isn't out there). Milking entails that you now should attack these collectors. Since these collectors aren't worth a ton (but 20 of these are, and that's exactly the point of milking), you have to be smart about it and you should not send an army out there. Moderation is the key here.
In general, I look for isolated unguarded collectors first and pick these off with archers. After that I pick off lightly guarded collectors with 5 or so goblins each. After that there is usually a slightly better guarded duo or trio of collectors stuck together that I snipe with my AQ (don't let her take a hit!) and after that I quit. The more heavily guarded collectors (behind walls and guarded by wiz tower or mortars) are usually not worth it, unless thy are filled to the brim of course. This is where your Giants and wall breakers come in. Just perform a tactical strike on these if the collectors are showing they are worth it. Collectors in the centre are almost never worth the effort (because you need a full army for that, but because all the non-centre collectors have been milked continuously, a full army strike on these bases is in general never worth it). Once in a while a good base (with all filled collectors) will come by, which one can try to take on with a full on GiBarch army. Otherwise, just milk.
At the end of a good milking session, the milker will be at around silver 3/bronze 1. He/she will quit for an hour or so and when he/she logs on again, he/she will be at around gold league again, due to the trophy dropping by other people/milkers. Rinse and repeat.
Example of being milked
Now I don't know how to show you my defence log from last night (I'm a noob, I know), but since this is the internet people are probably prone to take my word for it.;) Last night I got attacked 15 times, 12 of these were trophy droppers and 3 of these were milkers, who also happened to drop trophies, because that's a side effect of milking. All 3 of these either used barch and AQ and/or goblins and AQ. This trio of milker's looted me for around 200k elixir and 200k gold (and some DE) all together (so around 70k lix/70k gold per milker). Their strikes must have cost them no more than 10k elixir per strike and the strikes itself lasted for less than 30 seconds each. This ROI shows the power of milking (relative power, because pre-update farm tactics were more profitable).
Is milking new?
One could say milking is just barching collectors/mines, so why should it be regarded as a new tactic? Well, the fact of the matter is, is that milking is a side effect of the changed shield mechanics since the update. Bases (dead and active alike) aren't able to get a shield that often anymore. This means that collectors are open for snipes during their 'fill-time'. It used to be so that collectors filled up behind a 12 or 16 hour shield and once the shield expired (and the collectors hadn't been emtied, either because the base was 'dead' or because the owner of the active base did not have the time to do it) the base would get full on wrecked for all the loot goodies. This is now no longer how it works. People (i.e. milkers) are continuously and prematurely attacking these exposed collectors and these exposed collectors never get the time to fill up. Because of the new shield mechanics there just are a lot more collectors available for sniping/milking.
Conclusion
That's about all there is to say about milking.
Two things should be adresssed here though, in short. The first is that milking doesn't do the global economy of COC any good. In general, no league bonuses are acquired during milking except when TH-sniping is involved (which isn’t often the case anymore). Even then, the league bonuses in lower leagues are negligible. Milking therefore, isn't a whole lot better for the economy than zero sum wrecking bases with GoWiPe in high leagues. It is more profitable for the milker though (better ROI).
Second, I have suggested that milking in part is responsible for the fact that people are experiencing a decline in availability of dead bases (though this suggestion has not been generally accepted). What people tend to mean by 'dead bases' are bases that have all (half) full unharvested collectors. As I have described in this post, post update many bases (including dead ones) aren't 'allowed' anymore to fill up their collectors. They continuously get sniped/milked in between by milkers. I believe that this in part is the cause of many people's complaints about the lack of availability of dead bases. I think these dead bases are in front of people's noses, but people just aren't recognizing them as such.
My two cents
