Clash Of Clans

This happens to be the latest game that I have been playing. It is both a strategy and role playing game. It is played from my iPhone. So I can keep track of it during my breaks.

The player owns a village. The role is to protect it, develop it and plunder the neighbours for resources.  The neighbours happen to be other players.

Resources

There are 3 different resources here:

1. Gold
2. Elixir
3. Gems.

All of them have different roles and not interchangeable. The exception is the gems where it can be bought with real money. In the beginning of the game, the player is given a few hundred gems. These are useful to speed things up. After they have been used up they are gone unless the player is willing to pay for it. The other way is to clear obstructions where there could be gems under them.

Gold can be used for building most structures and to upgrade them. There are 2 ways to get them: build gold mines and plunder neighbours. It can be stored in gold storage. The Town Hall, which is the headquarters of the village can store up to 1,000 pieces of gold.

The catch here is there is a limit of gold one can accumulate. Once the storage is full, you cannot get more even if you continue to collect from mines or plunder your neighbours. You will have to upgrade the storage capacity or buy more storage units. To do that, you need to use a builder and spend elixir for it.

Elixir is used in training new soldiers, research, upgrade and build certain buildings. Like gold, it can be mined from the ground with extractors or plunder from neighbours. The additional source is the grave of invaders.  When you were attacked, you will inevitably killed some of the enemy’s soldiers. The points that they die on will be marked with grave stones. A single tap on one of them will transfer their elixir into the storage. As gold, the accumulation of elixir is limited by the available storage capacity. In order to store more, you will have to upgrade the storage capacity or buy more storage units. To do that, you need to use a builder and spend gold for it.

One renewable resource is builders. You will be given 2, you are willing to use real money to buy more.  Every act of buying new structures or upgrading requires a builder to execute it and it takes time, from seconds to days. Therefore the player must plan all upgrades and new purchases very carefully.

Town Hall

This is the most important building in this game. Whoever loses his/her Town Hall loses the battle. The amount and type of buildings and weapons available to the player is depended the level of the Town Hall. This means one must upgrade the Town Hall periodically in order to have all the advanced features available. The challenge here is it costs a lot of gold and can take days to complete the upgrade. During this period, one builder is tied up.

Barracks

There are to train soldiers. At the most basic level, it can only trains barbarians. Barbarians are cheap and fast to train. They are good for storming and overwhelming the enemy’s defences. The problem is, once they are released, they will only attack the nearest enemy structures.

Once it is upgraded to higher levels, different soldiers are available. The next stage is archers. They can attack at a distance but less destructive power than the barbarians. Their main strength is their ability to attack structures that are protected by walls.

Next stage, giants. They are more destructive and can sustain more attacks. They have a clear preference to attack weapons. This is good because I like to take out my target’s defensive weapons first so that I can plunder them at leisure. They are good at attracting fire from the enemy. The only drawback is they are very slow. By the time they reach the enemy’s weapons, they would have received quite a number of shots.

There are more but I only reach the next stage, which is wall breakers. These are suicide bombers who bring bombs to the enemy’s wall to blow it up with themselves along. They are good for breaking a hole at the enemy’s fortification but so far I find little use for them. I will explain more later.

Laboratory

This is for improving the ability of the soldiers. It costs a lot of elixir but the good point is, it does not need builders.

Defensive weapons.

When a village is under attack, none of the soldiers can help. You have to depend on walls and weapons. There are a lot of weapons available at different levels of Town Hall but I will only describe the ones I have with me. They are:

1. Cannons
2. Archery towers.
3. Mortar
4. Air Defence

Cannons are the most basic. They can shoot one at a time and only ground targets. Through upgrades, they can have higher resistance and greater fire power. Archery towers work the same way except they can also shoot at air targets.

Mortar is limited to ground targets but it can damage multiple units at the same time through a system called “area splash”.  This is the weapon of mass destruction.

Meanwhile Air Defence is basically an surface to air rockets firing system.

Walls are a crucial part of my defence system. They are both limited and upgradable. I use them carefully to create the best defence to my weapons, Town Hall and storages. When I decide on which village to plunder, I based my decision on how they use their walls because I hate breaking through them.

Attacks

There are 2 modes for attacks, Single Player and Multi Player. The former is just villages in the programme. They are boring and do not have much to plunder. I go for the latter, which consists of villages built by other players. I look for their weakness and will only attack those with lousy defence which I list down as below:

1. No walls.
2. Walls not enclosed.
3. Enclosed walls with unoccupied space.
4. Walls enclosing buildings other than weapons.

Case 1 and 2 are basically the same. Having walls with gaps is as good as having none. So, I basically launch my attacks nearest to their main weapons like Mortar and plunder them.

Case 3 is quite special. The game allows the attacker to launch attacks at any area that are not occupied by the defender. Some players surround a huge area with their walls which include some unoccupied areas. This means I can launch my attacks from inside the enclosure. So, their walls don’t matter to me.

As for Case 4, one needs to understand that not everything needs to be enclosed with walls. In my case, I put my Town Hall, storages and weapons behind walls. The others are expendables because even if they are destroyed, they will be restored by the time I switch on the game.

Some players put their Town Hall and storages behind walls but left their weapons unprotected. So, what I will do is to attack their weapons first. Once the weapons are destroyed, I can take my time to jack through the walls and plunder.

The Seed Foundation

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to Deep Earth 17, base of the Seed Foundation. For your information, we are currently at more than 150 metres below sea level. I trust our recruitment agents have explained to you the objective of this foundation and the hopes we have on you in our preparation for the survival of the human race.

 

For those of you who have read the science fiction series called “Foundation” by Isaac Asimov, this is the equivalent of the Second Foundation and I am the “Hari Sheldon”. The Greed Foundation is the “First Foundation”. You are recruited for your ability and character because we need you for our mission here. Altogether, we have about 7,000 people in this foundation scattered throughout 24 secret bases throughout the planet. Apart from this, we also have more than 3 million people working for us without knowing it because they were employed through cover institutions that we set up. So, this is quite a big organisation although not as big as the other one.

 

You may also have noticed that we are very secretive here and may wonder why. Here is a simple explanation. Suppose we operate in the open and make the location of our bases known. When nothing happens, we are just the subject of party jokes which is not a problem. However, when something bad really happens, everyone will want to break in. Even governments will want to nationalise them. At that time, all our efforts will go to waste. Therefore it is imperative for the existence of this foundation to remain a secret.

 

Here is something about this base. This is one of 24 bases set up throughout the earth. Each of them was designed to operate independently from the rest. This is to ensure the future of humanity in the event some bases were destroyed in the worldwide catastrophe. As long as one of these bases can survive, there is hope for the future of humanity. You will be given a complete tour of this base later.

 

What will happen if there is really a worldwide disaster? We can deduce the following as something we can be fairly sure of:

1. Destruction to most infrastructures of civilisation. Water, electricity, communication, transportation of necessities and others will be gone.
2. As a result, governments and commerce will collapse. Money will be worthless.
3. Even if most people do not die from the event, they will starve to death due to the above factors. This is more prominent for those who live in cities.

 

The above phenomena can be called “the collapse of civilisation”. One of our functions is to prepare for the restoration of human civilisation. Some of you are recruited for your expertise in this area. You will be linked to our worldwide network for your work in this area.

 

However, there are also many unknowns. After all, we don’t know what kind of global disaster we will face. The worst case scenario is a nuclear war. If it happens, most people on the surface will die and the environment at the surface will be rendered inhabitable. So, the Seed Foundation’s people will have to hold up in this base for some time. How long? I have specified that all the bases must be designed to operate for not less than 100 years when sealed off from the rest of the world. You will not starve or choke for this long.

 

Of course, there will be the problem of the next generation. In the event which the only humans are those in our bases are us, we will have the added responsibility to procreate. The natural way will not be feasible. We will have to rely on genetic engineering for that. This is also why we have genetic experts among us. Your job is to work out the best way to create babies if we really have to stay here for a long time. This is also why there are teachers and caregivers among you. We need real professionals to teach our babies.

 

The better scenario is a mega earthquake or tsunami which will cause a global destruction but the surface itself is breathable. When that happens, we will just go out and restore the civilisation but we will not do it directly. We will restore the Greed Foundation and use it as a front for the restoration works. I want to stress here that our works here can only be effective if the rest of the world knows nothing about us.

 

There can also be in-between scenario. For example, a meteor can strike the earth causing a thick layer of dust covering the sky, preventing sunlight to reach the ground. When that happens, all the plants will die. When the plants die, the production of oxygen will be disrupted. All animals will die of either starvation or suffocation. We have scientists working on a way to remove the dusts in the sky.

 

The other scenario is a global plague. We will only be able to go out with suits on. What we need will be the right vaccine. Medical experts, you are here for this reason.

 

There are many other speculated scenarios which you can read at your pleasure.

 

Now, here are the employment benefits and sacrifices. As long as the world operates as usual, you can have anything money can buy, whether it is for your work or personal pleasure as long as the thing you want will not cause harm. However, if disaster really happens, we have to limit ourselves with what we have. The management of the base will be responsible for the allocation of the resources.

 

Your job is based on your expertise. You are selected not only for your expertise but also for your altruistic tendency like your care for humanity.

 

The drawback is, you will not get any glory from the outside world. They will not know of our existence. As mentioned earlier, even if we go out to restore the civilisation after a disaster, we will not do it in the name of “Seed Foundation”. We will find the remnants of the Greed Foundation and support their works to restore it. If they are completely destroyed, we will set up a new one. The world will only think of Greed Foundation as the saviour of mankind, although it is the Seed Foundation that is working behind the scenes. This is to ensure that the Seed Foundation can continue in its work as the insurance policy of the human race.

 

That is all for now. We will have a break now for half an hour before we start our guided tour of the base.