All upgrades are fairly priced.Â
My best advice is to get all offensive statues (plus one RR MP) and become a smokey warrior player. Get your troops to a good level and during a full boosted session, even if you have a catastrophic or two, you should be able to make the resources before the three hour boost is up. Things to prepare: get warriors/medkit/shock/smoke leveled, obtain at least one of each Magma MP, a gunboat MP, two Magma Guardians (Health and/or Damage); and a RR MP +35% or higher; and let your map fill up to include at least 6-8 manageable mercenary bases that yield at least 80k of each resource without the RR boost.Â
My experience: HQ16 = 2.5 hours (without RR), Gunboat 16 = 1.25 hours, Armory 14 = 1.5 hours, and Sculptor 6 = .33 hours.Â
For reference: I'm a level 39 sitting at 409 VP, lvl 12 warriors, and all lvl 14 LCs. My average opponent is between 45-46 with a widened range of 42-50, all with at least one Ice MP plus a guardian to boot. All battles take less than a minute to complete with only 3-8 casualties on a full offensive boost.Â
On Active Shields: It is a terrible idea that enables passive players even more so than the game allows now. Besides, putting someone on a shield won't get them off my map, and I won't be able to attack them either, so what'll be the point of actually attacking anymore?
My advice to you is to boost your Resource Reward Masterpiece (and Guardians if you have them), along with all your offense statues, and conduct a raiding session. If you do not have RR statues then make one, or simply make sure you're gonna have enough loot in your map to raid; Dr. Terror will help you, especially Volcano.
Specialise in one army composition; the most common are Hooka, Tmed and SW. SW was explained by Duke, but Hooka is something you've definitely tried in your low-leveled days, and as such you'll be much more experienced in doing that. Tmed is the king of no-losses raiding; however losses are painful to bear.
Tmed clears the map faster due to the fact that you won't usually need to spend time retraining Tanks, which means you can attack the next base right after you beat the last one. SW wins the individual battles very quickly but you might find yourself needing up to 18 minutes (at your level) to retrain them.
I grew from HQ15 to HQ20 a Tmed player, and with up to 3 RR statues at one time (now it's 2), as such I only take up to an hour to conduct major upgrades such as HQ or Sculptor, all with few or no losses. Tip: It's not the end of the world if you lose 1 Tank in Tmed, there'll be another 7; you can live with that provided you level them up high enough.
Even if you use Hooka or SW, as Duke pointed out, you can get the resources before the 3 hour mark where your boost ends, and most likely the 4 hour mark where the game will allow you to be attacked while online.
Well see.. tbh.. i have a master piece building health and damage output for defenses.. along with i have a guardian statue that increases building health.. but for some reason.. if i boost them.. raiders still win.. im like HUUUUUUUUG!
There is absolutely no point in defensive statues until you are at HQ 20 with your GB and all 8 LC's at max level. At that point you can switch back to an Ice statue or 2 if you choose. Personally, I have all offensive statues as a lvl 47 at 520 vp.
I am at XP 47, HQ 20, VP 460-490. I use HZM (22 Heavy level 19, 29 Zookas level 18, 4 Medics level 4, Barrage 15, Artillery 20, TH 33+10, TD 25, GBE 39+16+15, RR 50+20+19, PCS 67). I boost at least GBE and RR MPs for any attack except when I am waiting for an upgrade to finish and for a really major upgrade, like WL 4, 5, LC 20 I go full boost. When attacking player bases the losses are minimal even with just GBE MP boost and with full boost many player bases can be taken without any losses. NPCs are lossless or nearly lossless and can be easily taken down even if some of the troops are missing. That means that 15-20 attacks can be done almost non-stop by attacking difficult players (with some losses), then NPCs, Terror, and easy players with no or almost no losses. Typical attack time for the things like LC 20 is less than an hour and a half.
I shoot major defenses first (SB, DC, BC and if any GBE is still left, then RLs, which could cut from the side once the troops advance into the base) and then deploy all troops from the weakest corner, LB 1 and even 2 (without significant BD) can be ignored with sufficient TH so that Zookas can withstand the hit. SG and DA are gifts for HZM becase they do not add anything to defense from the brute force attack that HZM do.
The players on my map are level 49-50 on average and usually with at least BH MP. I 've seen bases with up to 60% BH and they did not cause any troubles.Â
I am waiting for my Scorcher to finish upgrading to level 8 and I am thrilled to try them at full boost.
Switched to 7 Scorchers level 8 + 9 Zookas level 18 + critters level 1 and boost at least TH, RR, and GBE MPs for any decent upgrade so that to have total TH 76, TD 25, and RR 139. Both Scorchers and Zookas seem to benefit most from TH rather than from TD. So far, the highest base on my map was level 54 with 31 BH + about 25 BD. I did not lose any scorchers. Level 52 bases with over 50% total BH, BD MP, and SB 2 or above cause some problems if I don't boost at all. I might lose a scorcher or two.
Scorchers 8 are very easy to get by the time you hit XP 47. Just use the diamonds that your base generates to speed them up starting from the time when you unlock them and you will have them in about 3 weeks instead of a month.
I don't think changing the prices to upgrade the base is a good idea. I mean sometimes it's pretty easy to get resources, but I do agree with the home base raids. I mean I have ice statues of 15% and up and still blow up almost everytime somone attacks. But, all I have to say is just try your best. I still have to upgrade to level 16, and I cleared almost my whole map once. Was missing about 1000 wood, 2500 stone, and 500 iron. Didn't have enough diamonds to fininsh it off so I waited for some chests to come. I turned my I-pad off and got destroyed right when I came on :(
(Couldn't stand a chance. Guy had 12 level 4 tanks, and 3 level 2 medincs.)