To stand a chance in battle, you must upgrade your base defenses and the troops you send into fights. Upgrades are limited by your town hall’s level. For example, to unlock goblin units, you need level 4 barracks. To upgrade your barracks to level 4, your town hall must be at least level 2. Increasing your town hall level also increases how many of each type of building can be added to your base.
Training troops requires elixir. Constructing and upgrading buildings costs gold or elixir (and dark elixir later). To harvest the gold and elixir that fuel everything, you must build additional mines and collectors after completing the tutorial, then drills to collect dark elixir.
Buildings
Three categories of buildings are vital to your base: army, defensive, and resources. Decorations are just that: decorative. They don’t assist in the defense of your base in any way.
Army buildings produce your offensive units and spells. Defensive buildings protect your base from incoming attacks. Resources are the buildings that collect and store gold and elixir.
Workers
There are two more resources to consider when it comes to buildings: time and worker units. The speed at which worker units complete their tasks is the primary limiting factor when it comes to expanding and upgrading your base.
At the conclusion of the tutorial, you have two workers. When you can pay attention to the game, keep them busy with short tasks, such as clearing obstacles. When you know you’ll be unable to check it for longer stretches of time, assign them to projects they can complete while you’re away. You can add three additional workers to your base, but they aren’t cheap.
Base Layout
The layout of your buildings is an important aspect of the defense of your base and a hotly debated topic by players. Because space behind walls is typically limited, leave low-value targets (the army camp, barracks, spell factory, and laboratory) undefended. Arrange defensive buildings around high-value targets, such as the town hall and resource storage, and put them behind your walls.
Keep in mind that there isn’t one perfect arrangement that will stop every incoming assault. Since you’re free to move buildings at any time (except when they’re mid-upgrade), make adjustments after each incursion.
Troops & Spells
Although it will be a while before you can muster them all, there are more than 20 different troops and nearly a dozen spells available in Clash of Clans. There are melee and ranged units, units that use magic, hero units, and even flying units.
Your troops train at barracks and dark barracks, then gather at army camps. The troops in army camps will not defend your base, but units sent by clan mates that settle into clan castles will. Troops housed in guard posts (found in builder bases) will also help on defense.
Spells are produced at the spell factory and the dark spell factory. You start out with the Lightning Spell but then need to upgrade the spell factory to unlock additional spells.
Upgrades at the Laboratory
The laboratory becomes available when your town hall reaches level 3. Spending elixir at the laboratory increases the levels of your troops and spells. Researching these upgrades requires hours or days. With only one laboratory available for building, it’s important to minimize its idle time.
Battle Basics
Planning ahead is the most important part of battle. Once the action starts, you have very little control over the actions taken by your troops or defensive buildings. All you can do to protect your base is arrange your defensive buildings and garrison your clan castle before an attack takes place.
When you’re acting as the aggressor, you have a bit more control during the battle. You are in complete control of activating and placing spells. While you can’t control troops after they’re placed, you choose where individual troops begin their advance through the base you’re targeting.
Single-Player Campaign
Before you jump into battle against human opponents, check out the single-player missions that pit you against goblin bases. The potential rewards, mainly resources and achievements, are nice, but the real value in these battles is gaining an understanding of how your troops choose targets during an assault. There is some information available on the Train Troops screen, but you’ll learn much more from observing your army in action.
Versus Battle
Initiating a fight from the builder base starts a versus battle where you and your opponent attack each other’s builder base simultaneously. You must earn more stars than your opponent to win a versus battle. Destruction percentage is used as a tiebreaker if you both earn the same amount of stars.