We TH8 players, especially in our early TH8 days, are getting absolutely smashed by TH9-10 and their lvl6 troops and jump spells and stuff.
We can't win on defense in a fair fight.
So, lets build TH8 base which is basically a huge trap, but it's nature is hard to guess until it is too late. What it should do is entice the player to attack from expected direction, then quickly split his army in parts and redirect them to their specific killzones, giving attacker no means to fix the situation.
The goal is to make a base that should (#1) allow the early TH8 to stay positive on trophy count in the range 2000-2200, while (#2) keeping one of the resources very well protected (2/3 gold, or 2/3 elixir, or DE storage, but not pump).
Current status: Goal #1 reached. Very first breed of test bases allows TH8 with TH7 guns to go up in trophies in Crystal 3 from defense only. As for the Goal #2 (resource protection), not much success yet.
We should concentrate on creating effective anti-BARCH, as anti-Giant is pretty much complete.
To achieve the goal the base must be able to withstand strong TH9-TH10 attacks with heroes and spells, and not be 3-starred no matter what.
Most will say it’s impossible. I thought so too.
I don’t know any base suitable for early TH8 that will not get 3-starred repeatedly at that range, yet alone keep positive balance.
I started with Pingfao Tesla Theme Park and lose 7 fights in a row, many of them being 3-star losses.
I switched to Trapception, (arguably) one of the best conventional designs for TH8
Here my results with at ~1800:
http://forum.supercell.net/showthrea...=1#post1089370
I'm getting much better results from my experimental bases in Crystal - climbing up in trophies and wasn't 3-starred for the last 19 attacks.
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First, let me explain my point of view on perfectly symmetrical bases.
Common thought is that symmetrical bases are good, because no side of your base is weaker than the other.
While this is true, I can put it the other way around: all sides of your base are equally weak. Attacker will face 1/4 of your traps and 1/4 of your defenses, because you spread them equally.
Why not design asymmetrical base and force attacker to misread where the weak side is?
You can spend hours disguising the trap nature of your base, while the attacker will have only 30 seconds to guess it.
If luring idea will fail, we can build mirrored base with centralized traps that work both ways (not as effective though)
The new base should have some of the following features:
- to be as asymmetrical as possible, to achieve at least 50% probability of all attacks happening at one particular spot;
- or be designed with centralized trap core that works both ways;
- or be mirrored with 1 side slightly more tempting (upgrading defenses, gold, DE) and all traps set on that side with empty spots on the other.
- protect town hall and 1 type of resources: DE, or 2/3 Gold, or 2/3 Elixir, using others as a bait and/or damage tank.
- base is meant to be partially destroyed, willingly sacrificing some of defenses/storages for baiting and funneling, but have means taken to keep damage roughly between 40% and 49% (e.g. keeping builder huts in the core)
- to be designed to use all traps on every attack effectively and in rapid succession
- funnels/killzone must be protected from at least 2 pairs of wall breakers or immune to them
- to be designed to handle some of the most common armies: separate troops from one another and guide them to specific killzones, rendering them as ineffective and as vulnerable as possible for every unit type:
- 6 spring traps for giants with disposable defenses to group up and guide them
- cavities in the walls mixed with carefully spaced high HP buildings to perfectly funnel archers and barbs for mortars and wizard towers
- dual giant bombs for hogs and/or triple GB for lvl6 giants
- something against balloons
- something against dragons
- have no open outside pockets. Open pockets make people suspicious of traps. We should let the attacker to make an opening where we want him to do it, or put funnel opening in such a way that is not obvious, like hiding the opening behind an elixir storage or AT. Or having the opening at unconventional spot or corner (partially hidden by buildings) so it will not be spotted likely (thanks lim81)
- disguise traps/killzones by breaking symmetry where it is not hurting efficiency and random buildings/spaces
- have a kind of psychedelic touch to it's design to make it harder to guess the trap nature of a base within 30 seconds, like:
- mix of different level walls in no particular order, like wooden walls next to skull walls next to stone walls
- odd wall curvature for no reason and random pieces of walls here and there. Maybe this base is in process of redesign?
- random buildings placed here and there in a way which make no sense at all
- a lot of empty spaces and odd asymmetrical building placement
- abusing decorations to make it look even more ugly
- have general n00b feel to it
Trap base have some major downsides though:
- it makes bad night time base, you will always lose second attack because your traps are disarmed
- re-arm costs may be up to 50-100k gold per attack
- it makes a very weak base, if attacked from the “wrong” side
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THE BAG OF TRICKS:
It is fairly easy to build a base which protects from one type of army. It’s very difficult to include multiple anti-x setups in one base and make them work together.
BARCH/BAG:
I think the main protection against BARCH is not the traps, but carefully designed funneling, although small bombs can come handy too.
A wizard tower placed in a way to target both archers and barbarians crowded in a single spot at once, while staying out of reach, produced amazing results against BARCH and BAG.
BARCH likes to attack from the side with exposed mortar, or closest to the town hall, or closest to the storages.
Below are two (flawed, the wiz tower is a hair short on range and will not shoot at archers) examples of anti-barch
BAM:
Anti-Barch plus smart placement of air boms.
The base should have no unprotected buildings to prevent easy 50% 1-star
Giant/Healer:
This one is fairly easy. Giants+Healer army tend to attack on AD that is closest to the outer wall, which makes them predictable.
Let them have it, group them up, and lead them through 6 consecutive spring traps to the killzone with intact AD to kill healer. We should rely more on the building placement than on walls for this, as walls make traps too obvious, and jump spell is often used with giants too.
Spring traps can kill up to 18 giants if they are perfectly grouped together. If anything is left after that, 3xGiant bombs will 1-shot lvl5 giants, leaving lvl6 giants with 245hp. We need a few cannons/AT in the killzone to finish them off.
Archers left with no meat shield should be easy to kill, if anti-BARCH is included in the set.
I think envelope-type base with some of the defenses protected by walls (like isles) and the others unprotected could be effective. Giants will ignore the walled defenses and walk to the closest unprotected gun, even if it across the map. In a labyrinth-type bases giants often refuse to walk past certain number of turns, but I found out that they really don’t mind having a long walk if it’s a straight line. This need more testing though.
This is proven to work for giants coming from the bottom or the top, maybe we can use even less wall for shielding
This should work too
GoWiPe: This is not the same as giants.
Although Golem can be easily lured inside, spring traps won’t help, and the slow golem walking speed matched with wizards destroying everything in seconds won’t help either.
Also, golem left alone will be unable to quickly kill luring defenses and advance deeper.
Remaining pekkas still make a good meat shield.
Still haven’t figured out the solution.
Hogs:
2 giant bombs is enough to roast lvl4 bacon, for lvl5 bacon we need 3 bombs.
Balloons+Minions
We need to kill balloons, they do the tanking for minions.For this we need 3 Air Bombs detonating at once to 1-shot a pack of lvl5 Balloons, we need 4 to kill lvl6.
Placing them by the Wiz tower adds some damage too, but increases probability of heal spell being already up. Once Ballons are killed, minions shouldn't last long.
Mass Dragon:
I guess there is nothing we can do besides placing 1-2 ADs in the center and hoping for the best.
I will update this post with new information.
I will post the design when I’ll have something that’s finished and tested.
I’ll test your design or particular tricks, keep them posted!
If you know something that makes AI act funny/strange, post it here, it may be useful
Originally Posted by rhymquimghyf
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