Clan Wars: Are CoC Engineered Bases Over?

For years now players in Clash of Clans have been attempting to strategically update their troops and base in order to gain an advantage in clan wars. First was the .5 system, in which players would upgrade all offensive troops and buildings before defensive units, putting their gold into walls. Effectively they would become a base with Town Hall 9 offense and Town Hall 8 defenses, and usually matched against a low TH9 in wars. An effective way to push wars in your clan’s favor, even at the slight loss of defense during normal raids.

But like anything, players then began to experimenting with taking that theory to the extreme. How about pushing on to Town Hall 10 offense before doing those Town Hall 9 defenses? Better yet, how about a Town Hall with no walls or defenses, and only focusing on upgrading war troops and heroes? Thus, came the engineered bases. A staple of the game for quite a while now, entire clans have been built around engineering or having defenseless bases in hope to game the war matchmaking algorithm.

The issue that arose was when clans would get matched up with dramatically different defensive or offensive strengths. Typically, these wars were over from the initial match, and the top-level war community took notice. Running on almost two years now, there have been calls to either phase out engineered bases, or simply allow them to war each other and let balanced clans face off.

SuperCell was never going to force a player out of the engineering method, and dictate exactly which way they had to play and upgrade. However, behind the scenes they have implemented changes to the war base weight system that helps address the issue and encourage more balanced bases.

The war base weight system is quite complicated and we could easily spend two or three articles just on that. For now we will focus on the high level idea behind the system and what has changed. The war matching system, calculates each base (in the war) on the level of defenses completed, troops researched and hero levels. Every single item and level has an associated weight, with some weighing far more (i.e. splash damage) and some adding very little weight to your base (i.e. air sweepers and defenses).

In general the game tries to match and overall clan’s weight with another clan in a similar range. Individual bases are not linked to their opposing number. For instance, if you are #4 on the war map for your team, the matching system is not aiming to find your even opposite. Instead the collective clan weight should be close. When mismatches appear at the top, they are likely off-set in the middle or at the bottom of the map.

The New Penalty System

SuperCell is now calculating the difference between your war base’s weight and the town hall weight for a base required to obtain your highest troop, hero or spell. If that difference is more than 10,000 points off in either direction they will add in an additional penalty (the exact figure which has not been revealed). So for instance if you have a Town Hall 11 with Town Hall 9 defenses, but a max Grand Warden, you will be given the weight of a typical TH11. If the difference between your expected weight and actual weight is too far off, you will receive a penalty and be in an even worse space.

Thus basically eliminates any advantage of a defenseless base or ones with very low defenses. Any even if they are still able to jump across and take out other bases low on the opponent’s war map, they are making the overall matchup harder for their team (likely at the top of the map). The developers themselves have confirmed this in a recent Q&A session on the Clash of Clans forums.

So what should you do? Time to start migrating back to balanced bases, and making sure your clan mates are doing the same. Focus on upgrading point defenses first to avoid additional weight penalties – air sweeper, air defense, tesla, archer tower and cannon. The days of beating an opponent in war just because someone has an unfair offensive advantage are coming to an end. Time to work on those war attacks.

Builder Base – Archer Tower Gear Up

The last update delivered a minor adjustment to the Home Base from our friend the Master Builder. One archer tower can now be geared up to have the toggle feature between longer distance or faster attack. In order to unlock this feature you need an Archer Tower level 6 in the Builder Base and an Archer Tower level 10 in the Home Village. Keep in mind though this will occupy your Master Builder for two days and cost $4,000,000 gold.