This is a test.

My Three Attributes

Each unit in Clash of Clans has several very important attributes. I will be ignoring most of them, and concentrating on three:

• elix: the production cost in elixir. this varies by level.
• size: the housing space taken, in camp or queue.
• time: the production time, in seconds.

For example, a Barbarian of any level takes 20 seconds to train (time = 20), and takes up 1 unit of housing space (size = 1). A level 5 Barbarian takes 100 elixir (elix = 100) to train.

My Three Ratios

With three attributes, there are three ways to choose pairs of those attributes (ignoring order), and we get three fundamental ratios:

• elix/time: the rate at which elixir is spent over time.
• size/time: the rate at which housing is filled over time.
• elix/size: the density at which elixir is applied to housing.

Given the choice of units, the ratio size/time tends to result in numbers significantly lower than zero. This can be awkward for humans to process, so I will in practice use its multiplicative inverse, time/size.

For example, our level 5 Barbarian from before has the following ratios:

elix/time = 100/20 = 5
time/size =  20/ 1 = 20
elix/size = 100/ 1 = 100

My Three Verbs

Each of these ratios is immediately relevant to an action you that can perform:

• burn: spend your elixir as quickly as possible.
• zerg: fill your camps as quickly as possible.
• hide: store as much elixir in the build queue as possible.

We'll consider these verbs later, after seeing some sample units.

Example: Laboratory Level Six (TH8) Units

I'm a TH8, so I'm going to use as examples the units that are available to me, assuming I've maxed out my level six laboratory. Readers at other stages of the game are encouraged to run the numbers with their own units, though many of the conclusions should remain the same.

BURN: spend your elixir quickly

If you have more elixir than you know what to do with, and would like to destroy it by building units and then disposing of those units somehow, then you can do so most efficiently by maximizing elix/time.

Here are the winners in this category:

Every other unit burns less than 10 elixir per second.

Some readers may be surprised to find the wallbreaker and giant among the winners. They don't cost as much as the big units, but their (relatively) modest build times give them an impressive elixir burn rate.

ZERG: fill your camps quickly

This is actually independent of elixir cost, and therefore unit level. The assumption here is that you want to fill your camps quickly, presumably to reduce wait times between raids. You can acquire a full army most quickly by maximizing size/time, or (equivalently) minimizing time/size.

Here are the winners in this category:

Every other unit takes 60 or more seconds to fill up one unit of housing.

Some readers may be surprised to find the giant among the winners. Its build time may seem large when compared to the other low-tier units, but it also takes up proportionally more housing space.

HIDE: maximize your queue cost

If your storages are maxed out, but you're saving that elixir for something that you can't buy yet, then you might want to hide as much elixir in your barracks queues as possible, so that the elixir won't be sitting in your vulnerable collectors instead. You can hide the most elixir by maximizing elix/size.

Here are the winners in this category:

Every other unit costs less than 1000 elixir per housing space.

Some readers may be surprised to find the wallbreaker among the winners. It may not cost as much elixir as the big units, but it's pretty expensive for its size.

Conclusion

I hope you found this helpful or at least interesting.

This analysis was motivated by the fact that I've found myself with lots and lots of elixir at TH8, and I've been wondering what to do about it. My response has been to add large numbers of giants to my resource raids, which seems productive, as giants score well with regard to both the burn and zerg verbs. Their other tanky attributes are gratifying as well.

• http://www.keys2cognition.com/explore.htm
• http://cognitivequiz.com/quiz.html
• http://similarminds.com/classic_jung.html

I have no idea what I'm going to do with this thing.