The definitive analysis.
At last, a clear answer: ?It depends.?
tl;dr: ?Max out army size and save up enough books and hammers to upgrade your favorite troops instantly. When this happens, upgrade your town hall. Rinse and repeat.?
For those who go beyond the (too long; didn?t read), there are a few things to consider about upgrading your town hall. Firstly, it?s not something you can go back on, so the decision is important. Secondly, it?s the only way to unlock many parts of the game. Third, it changes looting dynamics. Fourth, it changes trophy pushing dynamics. Fifth, it changes war matching dynamics. And, lastly, it depends on which town hall level upgrade you are talking about.
Let?s get into it.
(i) You can unlock new troops, heroes, and upgrades.
https://www.newsweek.com/clash-clans-town-hall-12-electro-dragon-leak-new-troop-levels-reveal-964486
- Each TH level has new barracks levels, unlocking gameplay aspects.
- Army size, troop & hero levels, new units increase attack power potential.
(ii) Dynamics of acquiring loot from raiding are shifted.
You get less loot from picking on littler bases. Stay little if you want to pick on them.
- Matching tries to put you against the same TH level mostly, sometimes +1/-1 a level, occasionally +2/-2, very rarely +3/-3. Thus, average TH you face goes up 1 level along with you.
- Higher level bases have more loot available to be raided, but also stronger defenses protecting that loot. Note that when you upgrade, your base becomes a ?higher level base? with more available to lose. If your defenses are weak for that TH level, you can expect to lose more to being raided by stronger enemies.
- Easier to achieve higher star bonuses with higher level troops.
- Easier to win more war loot and achieve higher Clan War League rank the higher level your attacks are.
This kind of loot is not uncommon for a TH13 to stumble across. But, is your army ready to get it all?
- When you first upgrade, you will have reduced looting capacity until you have upgraded your troops and camps.
- After the initial upgrade period, you will have permanently increased looting capacity.
- If you save up books, hammers, and league points, you can instantly skip past the upgrade period and move directly into higher tier looting.
Have a hammer of fighting ready, and another ready after that. Edrag + Balloon = Max Level Combo
(iii) Dynamics of trophy pushing are shifted.
- Trophy pushing as TH9 or TH10 may provide some interesting gaming advantages for being matched against rushed enemy bases.
- The lower TH level you are, the less appealing of a target you are to higher level bases. It may be easy to avoid getting attacked altogether by rising far above the median trophy range for your town hall level.
If you want to win defenses, you?ll need capped towers. I hope you are very patient.
- Ultimately, in order to compete for trophies in any meaningful way, you will need maxed out everything, from troops to heroes to walls.
- There is very little in-game benefit to pushing trophies, as the star bonus is easily offset by queen collector sniping.
(iv) Dynamics of war utility and weighting are shifted.
- War matching is done first by matching TH levels, then defense totals.
- The top defenders in the clan matter most.
- As long as your offense is capped out, you can 3-star two bases at your level regardless of how rushed your defenses are.
If you are strategic, you can have the defense weight of a TH10 but the attacks of a TH11!
- War League does not consider TH level when matching, giving an advantage to clans with higher average TH level.
(v) Not all town hall upgrades are equal.
- Each town hall upgrade is unique. Here?s what?s key at each level:
- TH1 through TH5: Did you really start reading a guide before you got past these? Impressive. Just keep leveling up everything. No strategy required.
- TH6: 2nd spell slot, heal spell. Game changing!
- TH7: Dragon, rage, King, and the 4th army camp unlocked. Huge boost!
- TH8: Defense arrangement finally starts to matter. You *can* defend a maxed attack!
- TH9: Defenses get a huge boost; much more skill required for 3-star. Archer queen introduced. Long wait to finish queen and walls after defenses are capped.
- TH10: Unlocks siege machine slot in clan castle. Inferno towers add huge amount of defensive war weight.
- TH11: Eagle Artillery adds enormous amount of defensive war weight. Electro dragon and Grand warden unlocked.
- TH12: Giga tesla adds almost as much weight as all the other towers combined. Can build siege machines
- TH13: The TH upgrade itself adds very little war weight. Scattershot adds a lot. Max level troops available! Grand champion!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
So, all that is to say, when you are deciding whether or not to upgrade your town hall, it really depends on what your priorities are, and which ones you are willing to sacrifice for the others, as well as some factors specific to your clan. We will examine the following possible priorities:
A) I would like to unlock everything without crippling myself.
B) I would like to max my base as soon as possible.
C) I would like to be as useful as possible in war? (within ethical bounds?)
D) I would like to satisfy a completionist compulsion.
E) I would like to push trophies as soon as possible.
F) I would like to push trophies as high as possible with a low base handicap.
Jumping right in,
A) I would like to unlock everything without crippling myself.
How can you cripple yourself? Basically, if you level up your town hall so far and so fast that your troops are not strong enough to raid the bases that are available for you to raid.
To avoid this, simply make sure that you always have leveled up your army size and all of the troops in at least one kind of attack before you move on. If you want to go really fast, just level up dragon/balloon/rage/heal, or even faster, miner/heal all the way through TH13. You will always be able to farm.
Max level edrag/loon only takes a few months from starting an account this way, actually.
Alternatively, you can simply level up goblins and your archer queen. As long as you are willing to drop trophies to snipe collectors, there is no such thing as being too weak to farm. This is actually among the fastest ways to farm even if you have max level everything.
B) I would like to max my base as soon as possible.
The main limiting factor in maxing out your base is going to be time, but you can shave a little to a lot of time off by making sure you always have enough resources to keep your builders busy. You can also reduce the amount of time you need to spend building with hammers and builder potions.
Thus, since you cannot really speed up your builders, long-run F2P way to max your base out is to guarantee that you collect resources and War League points as fast as possible.
If you want more hammers, level up your attacks to compete at higher leagues!
As it happens, this means that you should rush for maximum attack power as quickly as possible. Not only will it enable you to collect more loot from each normal attack, but it will give you access to higher level war opponents, who pay out more war loot, and also an advantage in Clan War League, which will allow you to accrue more league points to purchase more hammers to level up faster.
It is important to make sure you have stored up magic items to boost you rapidly past the initial upgrade phase of each town hall level to prevent a drop-off in looting ability or war mirror smashing capability.
C) I would like win wars (within ethical bounds?)
Some players don?t like the idea of engineering their base specifically to be more powerful in war. First of all, one of the ways of engineering a base to be useful in war is to max out everything before you level it up. So, if you don?t want an advantage, you can?t do that.
Secondly, the game will match you against people who have similar defense weights, meaning it will match you against other engineers a lot of the time. It?s not against the rules and you?ll face more interesting match ups.
Third, this is literally a game where some people pay money for an advantage over other people. I am telling you how to use skill and foresight to compete even as a free-to-play peasant, like me!
I like to win. I win a lot. I know a guy ? I think he does a terrific job ? I win more than him. I know how to win. (If you don?t get the reference, please understand I?m not simply bragging.)
To rush your base for war, you need to recognize first that attacks are more important than defenses, unless you are at the top of your clan?s lineup already. If you are at the top, you need to focus on maxing our your defenses the slow and patient way, or else you?ll end up getting a lot of enemy teams scoring perfect 100%?s against your clan.
If you are not at the top of your defensive lineup, then your clan will benefit from you rushing for stronger attacks as soon as possible. Therefore, you will make sure your army camps, clan castle, spell factories, and laboratory are capped out, plus all the troops and spells for your favorite kind of attack. Once you have that done, you can push your town hall further. Don?t wait for heroes, walls, defense buildings, or anything else!
Yes, I used #10 to 3-star their #2. That?s what I?m talking about rushing *for* war.
When you do upgrade your town hall, don?t build or upgrade the inferno tower, eagle artillery, or scattershots. Focus on the traps and the basic towers instead, and your opponents will continue to be rushed like you until you are ready to move up.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Separately, another strategy is to be valuable in war by having capped defense towers for your TH level. This makes it challenging for all but the most skilled at your level to defeat you, forcing the enemy team to use a higher level attacker against you. This is particularly relevant for TH9, TH10, and TH11.
This strategy is extremely effective in war, but does require a lot of patience, especially at TH11. There are other ways to be effective in war that do not require the same kind of patience. Also, you won?t be as useful in war league.
It sure is satisfying, though.
If you opt for this strategy, it makes the most sense strategically to stop and max out towers either at TH10 before you build your infernos or at TH11 before you build the eagle artillery.
D) I would like to satisfy a completionist compulsion.
You are going to just have to listen to your own heart on this one. Again, you can complete everything much faster if you max out your attacks faster, so you can win bigger rewards. Otherwise, it?s pretty much just a waiting game.
?Rushed? doesn?t have to be so? uh? hideously uneven? Did I have any system at all?
Perhaps you could set different goals like, no tower can be less than a third of the TH level before you advance. It gets fun, later, if you choose specifically which towers to upgrade. You can have an intentional spread of tower levels for artistic purposes, as well as strategic value of stronger defense points. Walls, too, can be upgraded in sets to achieve different color possibilities and strategic control of movement.
There are ways to harness compulsiveness into strategically useful purposes.
E) I would like to push trophies as soon as possible.
Once again, the main factor here is how well you are going to be able to defeat the opponents you attack. However, it is also the case that having a very high level, with moderately rushed towers, will automatically rise more on defense than a low level base with capped towers.
So, if you want to push trophies, once again you will be focusing on your army size, and waiting to max out all the troops and spells in your favorite attack. As soon as those are finished, you will want to advance as quickly as possible, and to upgrade your inferno towers and other big ticket defenses first, as they add the most toughness and scariness per minute spent upgrading. No point waiting around, however. They can catch up when you?re at TH13.
My most leveled-up account automatically rises to Titan league, even if I?m not attacking. Not really an achievement, right? For a real achievement, you?ll need maxed everything, which I am too poor to buy.
F) I would like to push trophies as high as possible with a low base handicap.
In this case, you should not upgrade your town hall until you have reached whatever trophy level it was that you wanted to reach while still at your TH level. This is completely personal. It can get to be a very time-consuming project without much payoff, and slow down your overall rate of maxing out your account. TH10 is a good one for that, if you have access to a lot of siege machines from clan mates. In fact, this really sounds like a project for a mini account rather than a main.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
So, going back to the original question of when you should upgrade your base, the answer is a very firm: ?It depends.? There are many different priorities that different players have in this game, and when is best will depend a lot on that.
However, for the most part, the most practical answer is just ?max out army size and save up enough books and hammers to upgrade your favorite troops instantly. When this happens, upgrade your town hall. Rinse and repeat.?
If that doesn?t speak to you, then listen to your heart. It will tell you when it?s time, whether that?s when the last wall is capped out, or before the dark barracks is even finished upgrading.
Want to share this with your clan? Here?s a short URL anyone can type:
shorturl.at/cCGNV
If you like this article and would like to read more of my Clash of Clans analysis and strategy, follow Mr. Way?s School of Clash!
