Base building

Introduction
The integral part of Clash of Clans is building and designing good bases. Even if you have maxed out defences for a TH6, you will not win a defence if you have a weak base design. In this guide, Preston and PRO will give advices and tips for base designing.

Clan Castle
The clan castle is the most important defence, and should be in the middle. If possible, make it hard to lure (TH6), difficult to lure (TH7-8), or impossible to lure (TH9-10). Do take note that it is possible to make a TH8 base that is impossible to lure, designed and used by preston. If the clan castle is filled with 20 level 4 archers (TH7 average), it can dish out 500+ damage per second, much higher than any other defense towers. We personally recommend archers to be filled as they are cheap, fast to train and are used by everybody. Supposing the enemy is using barbarians, and he did not lure out your clan castle troops. After the barbarians accidentally trigger it, they want to break through a wall to fight them. As archers (and wizards, if your clan donates them as default) has ranged attacks, they can kill them quickly (among with other towers).

Funneling
I will elaborate a bit more on funnelling as I feel that it is very important to a successful defence. I used to believe that closed walls are better to slow down the enemy but after I witnessed the power of funnelling, my mindset changed.

Funnelling is a common use of trap usage as it increases the efficiency of traps like Spring traps, Giant bombs and Bombs. It is certainly easier to kill a horde of giants if a spring trap tosses away half of them, and your other towers does the job. If you have a giant bomb, it can kill tier one troops easily, giving the defenses a chance to concentrate on the others. If the giant bomb kills giants, it allows your splash defences to finish them off easily. I have personally encountered people who failed to destroy my base properly as the giants are cleared using troop funnelling. Most people (~TH6-8) uses giant healer and without the giants, it is basically impossible to get three stars. After the giants are cleared, the defences can focus on clearing other troops.

Funneling require a deliberate hole inside the base itself, and within the hole is a trap which damages the horde of troops easily. Don’t spread them out randomly, that just wastes money. You wouldn’t want one archer on a spring trap, or 4 bombs on a barbarian. Do take note that golems, P.E.K.K.A.s and Heros are not affected by spring traps.

How it works (AI)
The giants AI is programmed to attack the next defence, and if there are no walls (or a gap in the wall in this case) it will simply walk through the gap, into the spiring traps. Funnelling creates holes for the giants to walk through into the traps, and it also does not goes into the core (by breaking through the wall), exposing your storages, etc. Do take note that by doing funnellong, you are luring the giants around the core like a merry-go-round. Do not place spring traps that lures it into the core.

Examples of funnelling
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The giants will follow the red arrow, and the spring traps will clear most of them. Do take note that giants can pass through gaps such as the one in between the 2 cannons.



In this case, the giants will follow the red arrow, and there will be a giant bomb to kill them at the mortar's blind spot. There will be skeleton traps to ambush the giants, and a seeking air mine to kill any healers. Note that the funnelling (gaps in the wall) leads to the wizard tower instead of the air defence (inside the core).

Walls
After funnelling, the second most important is walls, and walls placement. There are some bases that due to poor wall placement, you attack, and you get three stars easily. Of course, there are others, that looks 'impossible' and you skipped it. Here are some common mistakes of walls:
 * 1) Square bases; Rectangular bases too, and due to their T-junctions, they are weak and easily destroyed.
 * 2) Single wall, and there is nothing inside; this base is the easiest to destory! You probrably have seen lots of them when you are in Bonze I. 50 barbarians and they are gone.
 * 3) (Stacked) Double walls; do take note that after one of the updates a long time ago, splash damage was introduced to the wall breakers. This renders double walls useless as the wall breakers can destroy them easily. It wastes your walls too
 * 4) Walls that are not symmetrical; there are only 2 types of wall placements that works the best, and they are symmetrical bases, and spiral bases. Other designs don't work well, and as for the symmetrical, it is up to you on a 2 point symmetry or 4 point. Even the common 'bat' design is symmetrical.
 * 5) T-junctions: The most common mistake! Wall breakers target them, making them prone to giants. Heres and example.

As you can see, the wall breakers will target the junction in between the wizard tower and the cannon. So what we do is this



It messes up the wall-breakers AI quite a bit, and makes your base less 'square' or rectangular too. If you want to include funnelling, you can always add some space, like this:



The red line is where the giants (and normal troops) will go, and the yellow is the continued path ot the normal troops. Let me also add this point in. There are 2 places for you to place you collectors, its all up to you. The first place is obviously inside the walls, making it more protected. But supposing that the enemy uses goblins, its A.I. will make the goblins break through the wall, opening a path to the core.

The second option is to place it outside, and put your barracks inside the walls. The goblins will not break through it, and your defences can kill them quickly and safely as the wall is still closed. I personally recommend using 1 or 2 bombs to kill goblins, as spring traps does not affect them (if they are running).

Also, do take note that placing walls diagonally (I mentioned that in one of the funnelling pictures) will allow the troops to walk through.

Core
Your core contains the most important buildings. Do take note that a core is not needed for TH6 and below, as the number of walls are insufficient. The clan castle should be at the centre, and most cores are 1x1, 2x2, or 3x3 of buildings that are 3x3 tiles wide. 4x4 is too big unless you are a TH10. I generally prefer 3x3, although my TH7 base uses a 2x2 layout. The clan castle should be in the middle, and your most important buildings are there. It is preferred that you put your air defences, mortars (TH7-8) and dark storage inside the core. Centralize your clan castle, not your dark storage. A common mistake is vaulting, which is storing all the storages inside the core. DO NOT do this as once the attacker gets inside, all your resources are gone. For TH9s and TH10s, it is recommended to put your inferno towers and X-Bows inside (it is quite obvious and common sense).

Outer walls
^Currently under maintenance^

Outside the walls
^Currently under maintenance^

The Anti-X base design guide
This guide is mainly for the TH8s and above. If you are TH7 and below, this is not necessary. So after compiling the guide, we decided to add in some base design guides, as some people have claimed on YouTube to be making anti-hogs, etc. I have tried some out, and they did not work. Also, there isn't any anti-everything base, even though assassin is trying to make one. Let me repeat, there are NO BASES that are anti everything. And TH7s and below shouldn't be worried about being raided by lava hounds, or make an anti-dragon base. Let's start off with the anti-barch base, which isn't very common

Anti-Barch base
Currently, there are more clashers doing barch raids as they are cheap, effective (gives a star against the right bases), and to balance this, Supercell introduced the fourth mortar in the Halloween update. I can see that most people placed their fourth mortar inside the core, which is effective against hordes of giants but ineffective against barchers. To make an anti-barch base, you need to move your splash defences, which are your mortars and wizard towers a bit more outside, to kill them quickly. Currently PRO uses an anti-barch base.