[Elusory]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Rs6lccG0Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Rs6lccG0Q

Welcome to my attempt of winning the "Writers Award - Have your say for a chance to win a Hearthstone Beta Key!" contest! Today, I'll be bringing you guys a special game in my eyes called Clash of Clans. For a start, this game isn't played on PCs or consoles, but on the very device you use everyday. That's right, it's on your smartphone!

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Introduction

Initially, this game was only released for i OS (have to separate, if not Team OS's icon will appear). Only recently, it became available for almost all of smartphone users to play. It got released in the Android Market. Well, you may ask, what kind of game is it? The trailer doesn't really capture the total beauty of the game-play. Have you ever played those games where it takes a few minutes, hours, or even days as you progress further into the game, to construct a building, train up your army, or research an upgrade? This is the kind of games Clash of Clash exactly is! Now you may ask yourself, why would I want to play this type of games? It would require too much dedication. Here's a list of pros and cons for you to consider:

Pros:

• Game is updated regularly, with events throughout the year (Currently, it's for Halloween)
• Don't need to play the game 24/7 to progress
• Very neat design for game-play
• Comical graphics for the kids
• Ability to customise your own base (Put stuff wherever you want!)
• Ability to send troops wherever you want (Put stuff wherever you want again!)
• League system with MMR shown to you! (No more complains about bonus pool and shit)
• Can progress all the way without paying a single cent
• Easy to make a clan and be together with your friends
• Facebook synchronisation to find friends who are playing the game, and to check their progress
• Lots of achievements for the achievers

Cons:

• Ability to "pay to win"
• Will require more dedication to progress at later stages of game-play
• No private messaging function
• Game-play might feel very repetitive for some

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The Game-play



Above is a picture of my own base. I've been playing this game since 10 February, on the first day of Chinese New Year. That means I've played this game for 8 months already. However, I did spent real money buying builders so more buildings could be upgraded at once. So, this would not be the base you would be seeing 8 months from now if you start now!

You would be asking now, hey, there's so many words I don't understand. What? Level 100? What do builders do? What's that building over there? What kind of resources do you use? Fret not, I will explain the basic fundamentals of this game!

Leveling

In this game, level means nothing at all. You gain experience by completing / upgrading a building (buildings with green bars above them and the time left for the upgrade), or finishing an upgrade in your Laboratory (black building you see at the top of screen, researching a "Healing Spell", with 5 days and 23 hours to go). You also gain experience by successfully destroying the Town Hall of your opponent that you're attacking.

What really matters in this game is the level of your Town Hall (black building you see near the bottom of the screen, beside the Gold Storage and the Elixir Storage, surrounded by a different "material" of wall). When you start the game, your Town Hall will be at Level 1. As you complete the tutorial, they will help you progress to the next Town Hall level, and then from there you are on your own. Town Hall level dictates how many of what buildings are you able to have, what buildings are unlocked, and your loot bonuses / penalty when attacking others. There are 10 Town Hall levels currently, I am at Town Hall Level 9.

What's more important for levelling in this game are the levels of your buildings. They are the only form of defence for your base because you aren't able to use troops to defend in this game. What you would be defending is primarily your Town Hall (if you're looking to climb up the leagues), and then your storages (resources are important to build or research things).

Resources

The game only has 2 (later on 3) forms of resources. This makes it much easier to manage and plan what you want to build. There 3 forms of resources are Gold, Elixir, and Dark Elixir.

Gold is used to construct or upgrade defence buildings. This includes Cannons, Archer Towers, Mortars, Wizard Towers, Air Defences and many more! Take a look at the picture again and see if you can match the names to the buildings. It is also used to upgrade your walls and any Elixir storing buildings, like your Elixir Collectors, and Elixir Storages.

Elixir is used to construct or upgrade offence buildings. This includes Army Camps, Barracks, Laboratory, and the training of your troops. It is also used to research upgrades for your units in the Laboratory. Likewise, it is also used to upgrade any Gold and Dark Elixir storing buildings, like your Gold Mines, Gold Storages, Dark Elixir Drills, and Dark Elixir Storage.

Dark Elixir is unlocked only at Town Hall Level 7, where only the storage can be built. At Town Hall Level 8, one Dark Elixir Drill is unlocked and you can start earning passive income for Dark Elixir. Dark Elixir is used to train another set of troops independent of what is found in the Barracks. It is used to train more powerful units in the Dark Barracks. It is also used to build / upgrade your Hero, the Barbarian King or the Archer Queen.

*Gems are the pay-to-win resource in the game. It enables you to speed up anything that's available in the game. This means if you're willling to pay tens of thousands of dollars, you are able to reach end game status in an instant! Gems allow you to buy builders as well, which is purchasing time in my eyes. The more builders you have, the more you can upgrade at one time, the faster you reach the end of the game. The longer you play, the more worth the builders become. You can get gems via completing achievements also, or by removing obstacles (the trunks, shrubs, trees you see around my base).

There are two ways of getting resources. The first way is the income of your mines and collectors. As seen in the picture, there are "chat bubbles" with the Gold or Elixir logo. By tapping those structures, you will gain your income. Initially, just relying on passive income will be enough as buildings do not cost that much to upgrade. As you progress further in the game, you will need an extra source of income to sustain the cost of your upgrading. That brings us to the second way of income, which is by attacking others.



Here is a picture of what attacking an enemy base would look like. At the top left hand corner, you are able to see his available loot found both in his storages or mines. I'll talk about the Trophy System later. The bottom row shows the troops that are available for deployment. If you do not like the base that the matchmaking system has given you, you can simply press the "Next" button. You can only attack a base who's owner is offline. You can't be attacked if you're online.

For this picture, as you can see, there's about 250,000 Gold that I can loot from this guy. That's not all his resources, the resources that I can loot are calculated based on a certain percentage of what's in the storage and what's in the mines. 250,000 can easily translate to waiting for about a day or more if your passive income is upgraded to the maximum level. At that stage of the game, your buildings would already require a few million Gold to upgrade. Hence, once you reach the later stages of the game, you would need to rely on active income.

Trophy system A.K.A MMR A.K.A Blizzard sucks at matchmaking A.K.A no



The above picture basically shows you at what MMR do you get placed into what league, and what division of the league. Leagues provide loot bonuses if you win an opponent.



I'm currently farming (deliberately dropping trophies, to get an easier base for looting), so right now I am at Gold II. The loot bonus for being in Gold II is shown at the right side. Apart from loot, you also win trophies from your opponent, or lose if you fail to meet certain criterias. Well, what criterias are they? Trophies are earned depending on how many stars you from your attack. 1 star would mean getting 1/3 of the trophies the person has to offer, 2 stars giving 2/3, and 3 stars rewarding you with the full trophy count. Here's how you get stars:

• 1 star for destroying at least 50% of the opponent's structures
• 1 star for destroying the Town Hall of the opponent
• 1 star for destroying 100% of the opponent's structures

Hence, all buildings are still important if you're aiming for trophies, not just your defences and Town Hall. You must ensure that your other vulnerable buildings are covered by the attack radius of your defences. If you are attacked and you suffer damage, a shield with a certain duration will be given to you to prevent anyone from attacking you, unless you break the shield by initiating an attack against someone.

Shields



Like mentioned before, the only way you can lose your shield is if you choose to attack people. What do shields do? Increase the HP of your buildings? Absolutely no! Shields prevent ANYONE from attacking you during the duration that you have the shield on. That's to prevent all your resources from being looted away at one go if your defences are not arranged properly. You can use the shield duration to figure out what is wrong with your defences, fix it, and then break it to attack others again. Or, you can simply wait out the duration of your shield to earn the resources lost with your passive income. Here are the "methods" of how you gain a shield:

• 12 Hour Shield - Town Hall is destroyed
• 12 Hour Shield - At least 40% of base is destroyed
• 16 Hour Shield - At least 90% of base is destroyed

Note that the shields aren't stackable! This means that if 40% of your base is destroyed and your Town Hall is destroyed, you only get 12 hours, not 24 hours. Hence, if you're looking to farm, you can simply put your Town Hall outside where people can just have free reign over it. This will constantly give you shield, to prevent real attackers who want to loot your resources from attacking you.

Structures


Above is a picture of my friend's destroyed base. Inactive... herp derp.

What happens when my structures are destroyed? Do I need to spend resource and time to rebuild them? Not at all! Thankfully for this game, they've asked Blizzard to sponsor an invisible Medivac (that somehow can heal Mechanical) for every base there is in the game. When your structures are destroyed, the Medivac will heal your buildings when you log in. You would only need to wait for a few seconds before all your buildings are functional again. Even when your Gold Mines and Elixir Collectors are destroyed, they will still continue to earn passive income during the time you are offline.

Troops


List of troops available in the Barracks

Troops come in various shapes and sizes, and different forms of attack. Some do splash damage, some are able to fly over or hop over walls, some are just real hard to kill, some can heal, some can summon more troops. Some target defences only, some target resources only, some just bashes up whatever they see first. Mix them up and experiment, and slowly you'll find the most effective combination for attacking others!

During the attack, all troops are A.I. controlled. You would have to play enough to understand your troops dumbness!

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The Review

Hopefully I didn't miss out anything important about the game-play! That was the gist of it, the rest are for you to explore and experience!

Because of my asian background and the inclination to play games that involve "rinse-and-repeat" and "farming", this is the perfect game for me. I do enjoy constant farming, and the occasional trophy climb when my clan decides to climb trophies together as a clan. The highest I got was 2400+, reaching Crystal I. If you're looking for a game that you can play whenever you are bored, with no regression and only progression, this is the game for you! Hop onto the game, collect some money, upgrade some stuff, maybe spend a little bit more time attacking someone, and continue to do your stuff. Nothing to do when you wanna float all your Terran buildings away and be BM about it? Get into the game and help your town progress while making your SC2 opponent mad!

If you do not see the point in slowly progressing and reaching the end of the game where everything is fully upgraded (would probably take a year), then I would suggest that you spend your time on other things instead of forcing yourself to play the game. The experience will be very dull. The opportunity cost incurred from playing this game would be pretty huge if you do not like to spend pockets of time playing the same game.

The skill level for this game is pretty high, because it's really hard to attack others when you progress further into the game. You would need a clear strategy of what units you want to use, and from which direction to you want to hit the base. It's a fun game to compete with your friends, as to who can hit a higher trophy level.

Game-play: 9/10
Graphics: 8/10
Replayability: 10/10
Storyline: 0/10
Competitive value: 10/10
Strategy: 9/10

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I think this brings me to the end of my review / introduction for the game. I'll end off this section with some F.A.Qs, and will probably add more if you guys ask questions!

F.A.Q.

Q: Is this game free to play?
A: Yes! You do not need to pay at all, it is entirely possible to level finish your structures without spending real money at all. The purpose of real money is only to speed up the process.

Q: Is this game going to take up lots of time?
A; Depends on how much you want to commit to this game. If you're gonna go serious about it, then perhaps maybe 5 minutes every time your troops are trained finished, or whenever you are free. If you're gonna be casual about it, you can just relax and slowly rely on passive income to upgrade your buildings

Q: How long has this game been around?
A: 2 August 2012

Q: If I were to buy gems, what is the best thing to spend on?
A: I would only recommend buying builders, because the longer your builders are around, the more they have done, and that means your money just becomes more and more worth it.

Q: How do I install this?
A: App store for Apple phones, or Android Market for Android phones. I'm not too sure for Windows phone though...

Q: I see a push notification that I've been attacked! Are all my buildings gone?
A: Don't worry, as mentioned before, your buildings will slowly recover HP to the maximum. They will become functional in a few seconds.

Q: This game is just a copy of Backyard Monsters / Kingdom Clash / (insert game here)! Why should I play this?
A: To each their own. I liked the simplicity of the resource, and the interface. Also, most of my friends and more importantly my brother is playing this game, so I'm sticking to this game. I'm only writing this review to give a balanced perspective of this game, not to convince you to play this game!

More to come...

Useful links
Official Website: http://www.supercell.net/games/view/clash-of-clans
Wiki: http://clashofclans.wikia.com/wiki/Clash_of_Clans_Wiki
Base Layout Guide: http://clashofclansbuilder.com/
Decent YouTuber making videos of the game: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxNMYToYIBPYV829BJcmUQg