In a sudden act of severe timewasting, I took it upon me to calculate what Clash of Clan would actually cost a player who would completely gem his way from zero to max. After a little over three hours of intense copy-pasting, I birthed the table below, applying to the latest update of CoC. (League-update)
I used the gem calculator on the CoC-wiki to calculate the time-gem ratio and resource-gem ratio.
An important note on the actual cost! The calculator on the wiki appears to use the lowest gem purchase to calculate the 1 gem = x money. In this table I obviously used the maximum of 14.000 gems for $99.99. Buying more gems at the same time lowers the cost per gem. If one (insane) individual would actually do this, let's assume he would have the sense to keep buying the 14.000 gem-packs. This comes down to the following: 1 gem is worth $0.007 and €0.006
Because I'm a nice guy, I calculated the dollar price as well (I'm from Europe). Below the table, I'll comment on the results, since contrary to my expectations, this was more interesting than the original goal of just knowing the sum total of upgrading CoC.
The table is divided by catagory. Days are rounded of by 1 decimal, the actual costs are rounded of wholly. This means that it's not 100% accurate, but 99% instead. Give me a break will you? Excel file can be downloaded here for those that want to tinker with the data themselves or correct mistakes (which there probably are).
Legend:
#: Number of buildings
Days: Total build time of all buildings
Res: Total resource costs of all buildings
GT: Gem cost for build time
GR: Gem cost for resources
TG: Total gem cost
Numbers with * are Dark Elixer
Type/name # Days Res GT GR GT $ € Defensive Build. Cannon 5 79,4 31.856.250 13.945 9.829 23.774 166 143 Archer Tower 6 160,4 62.208.000 25.440 19.256 44.696 313 268 Mortar 3 59,5 18.480.000 9.759 15.687 110 94 Wizard Tower 4 122 50.160.000 19.104 15.710 34.814 244 209 Air Defence 4 132,8 42.570.000 19.796 13.352 33.148 232 199 Hidden Tesla 4 104 59.000.000 31.444 18.400 49.844 349 299 Walls 250 1.205.300.000 371.757 371.757 2602 2231 X-bow 2 62 34.000.000 8.466 10.734 19.200 134 115 Total 720,1 1.503.574.250 127.954 464.966 592.920 $4.150 € 3.558 Resource Gold Mine 6 65,4 2.175.300 12.258 913 13.171 92 79 Elixer Pump 6 65,4 2.175.300 12.258 913 13.171 92 79 Dark Drill 2 48 48.000.000 7.556 14.800 22.356 156 134 Gold Storage 4 17,6 15.790.000 4.392 4.877 9.269 65 56 Elixer storage 4 17,6 15.790.000 4.392 4.877 9.269 65 56 Dark Elixer Storage 1 21 12.600.000 3.408 4.027 7.435 52 45 Builders hut 4 3.750 26 23 Total 235 96.530.600 44.264 30.407 78.421 $549 € 471 Army buildings Army camp 4 38 13.451.000 6.692 4.254 10.946 77 66 Barracks 4 57,4 18.154.800 10.100 5.841 15.941 112 96 Dark Barracks 2 42 18.500.000 6.270 5.933 12.203 85 73 Laboratory 1 12,7 5.055.000 2.231 1.681 3.912 27 23 Spell Factory 1 12 3.000.000 2.026 1.133 3.159 22 19 Barbarian King altar 1 10.000* 600 600 4 4 Archer Queen altar 1 40.000* 14.000 14.000 98 84 Total 162,1 58.210.800 27.319 33.442 14.600 $425 € 365 Other Buildings Town Hall 1 31,1 8.130.000 4.684 2.607 7.291 51 44 Clan Castle 1 10,3 9.740.000 1.715 3.264 4.979 35 30 Total 41,4 17.870.000 6.399 5.871 12.270 € 74 Army Units Barbarian King 112,5 2.352.500* 30.715 66.737 97.452 682 585 Archer Queen 112,5 3.380.000* 30.715 95.805 126.520 886 759 Barbarian 19,2 6.700.000 2.961 2.120 5.081 36 30 Archer 22,5 10.800.000 3.648 3.547 7.195 50 43 Goblin 10,5 3.300.000 1.776 1.213 2.989 21 18 Giant 21 9.350.000 3.272 3.160 6.432 45 39 Wall Breaker 11 3.350.000 1.902 1.227 3.129 22 19 Balloon 21 10.450.000 3.272 3.453 6.725 47 40 Wizard 11 4.450.000 1.776 1.520 3.296 23 20 Healer 8 3.250.000 1.259 1.200 2.459 17 15 Dragon 17 5.000.000 2.370 1.667 4.037 28 24 P.E.K.K.A. 22 9.000.000 2.986 3.066 6.052 42 36 Minion 28 100.000* 3.999 3.000 6.999 49 42 Hog Rider 44 140.000* 5.972 4.067 10.039 70 60 Valkyrie 36 180.000* 4.849 5.133 9.982 70 60 Golem 36 210.000* 4.849 6.267 11.116 78 67 Lighting Spell 10 3.700.000 1.779 1.320 3.099 22 19 Healing Spell 11 4.500.000 1.902 1.533 3.435 24 21 Rage Spell 17 6.150.000 2.642 1.973 4.615 32 28 Jump Spell 5 4.000.000 753 1.400 2.153 15 13 Total 575,2 90.362.500 113.397 209.408 322.805 $2.260 € 1.937 Sum total 1733,8 1.766.548.150 319.333 744.094 1.021.016 $7.384 € 6.403
Some (obvious) conclusions
- Walls and heroes disproportionally make maxing out harder/impossible without gems. For people with some semblance of a life and no money, wall level 8 are probably the max.
- Walls are the only reason goldfarming is more important then elixer farming. Without the high costs for lasts two levels of walls we would spend more elixer in total.
- If you would divide the total amount of resources by the average loot (say 125.000) You would have to attack over 14.000 times to max the current update. With an average waiting time of 25 minute, you would spend a total 245 days waiting on your troops to finish.
Overall we can conclude that this shows that certain parts of this game are only for paying players, which, in regards to the freemium principle, shouldn't be held against SuperCell. After all, if your going to spend money on content, you want to feel/be unique right?
Finally, it's my opinion that IF your going to spend money, spend it on builders hut (obviously), pumps/mindes and army upgrades, in that order. Another good use is barrack gemming, for fast farming.
Would love to hear other insights/comments.
Edit 09-05:
Grammar fixes and recaluculated the gem-time. As it turned out, you have to spend more gems-per hour for longer building times, it's not a fixed formula. See the post by Dahimi for explanation. Table should be correct now.
Originally Posted by Garcks
number talks. the bad news is, when I do research in real world for work, most time I count on my instinct. 
