Groups, Sections, and Territories Guide

Groups, Sections, and Territories

Published October 29,2015.

Welcome to the guide where I explain how to view a base, not just as a whole, but by Groups, Sections, and Territories. It allows flexible view of the base, and break down of areas where it needs to focus on coverage, trap placement and most importantly, concepts within the G.S.T. When it comes to a good base, even without walls, and sections, the interaction and coverage of the defenses, buildings, and traps should already be able to protect itself. When I see people making bases, they just look at the whole thing and then determine if it's good or not. But the thing with base designing is the fact that a base is created with multiple sections, although let's say 3/4 sections might not work, that 1/4th section might be the best coverage, and wall usage that can easily brought to the next new base. With this guide, it basically focuses on breaking down a base, and looking at it by chunks.

This guide may seem like "WOW, it'll take probably 30 minutes to see even a single base!", well not really, I'm just explaining this groupings into more text/images, but once you know what to look for, it'll just take you about 5 seconds to group, section all defenses within the base. Afterwards you can easily zoom in and see where area needs more work. Although this guide uses a TH8 for examples, it still applies for TH9 bases, but just an extra step where there are more to the base, and has Queen Territories.

When it comes to base design, it's the interaction between defenses, coverage, and traps which makes it work properly, and due to majority of attacks being wall skipping troops they do play a factor but after the minimum requirement of wall section have been completely, it's mostly dependent on the defense.

For example if you look at this image, without even seeing the walls, junk buildings, or defenses, you can easily determine that a frontward attack from the cannon with loons will not have good result due to the fact that the wizard towers are away from the air defense and are double stacked. It's the placement of the defense which matter.

Defining Groups, Sections, and Territories

Back to the guide, Groups, Sections, and Territories, although these terms are similar this is very different when it comes to defenses. Think of it as this (gang terms), groups are the three or four buddies that hang out and protect each other, sections are the streets of which they are in charge of, while territories are they are the gang that controls the East side of the city. This plays a role when it comes to building a base.

Some key points I'll explain later on:

In Groups, it's the relation between 2-5 defenses, so spring traps are important.
In Sections, it's the relation between 2+ groups, so double giant bomb between is important.
In Territories, it's the relation between sections in the whole map, so determining the ratio/how big the sections can be is important.

Groups

When it comes to groups, it all depends on the viewer to see which part of which group, for example a tesla that's separated by a wall and a trap, has 3 square tiles away from another building would not really be consider part of that group due to the fact that tesla's range is a lot smaller and can't cover the defense on the other side. Groups are about coverage within a pack, so it's immediate response. So your buddy that's next door to your can protect you more than a buddy that's living across the street behind the fence.

Sections

When it comes to sections, it's about how the groups interact with each other. Usually walls play a big role in determining the sections, and sometimes can be abit confusing with territories as they may overlap. Sections are like two groups that help each other out but can't cover everything. Almost like how Air Defenses can cover their whole North side, and provide an adequate protection to the west/east side.

Territories

When it comes to territories, these are alot more distinct to how the base is. For example in a circular base, ADs are usually evenly distributed on the North, South, East and West side of the base, so there are four territories.

Circular bases have almost equal amount of groups, and defenses in each territory;

if the base is like a Boomerang shaped, it'll be split into three parts (top, middle, and bottom) for example, the top and bottom might have only one air defense, while the middle has two air defenses;

Triangular base could be divided into two territories, north and south, but the north side takes up alot more area and could house two sections and contain three air defenses, while the south has a bigger 'section/territory' Triangular usually encompasses Southern Teasers or other "up down" types of bases

Territories in TH9 other than just "defense heavy kill zones" then includes a "queen territory" later on

There needs to be a balance of defense within territories in order for there to be a good base. If for example the ratio is 50-30-20 when it comes to how many defenses are located per territory, then a kill squad can easily hit the 50% at full power, and a back end hog can easily kill the 30% and the remaining 20% has no threat.

Throne of God: Example For Groups, Sections, and Territories

Here is an example using GarlicAK's Throne of God: An Anti-3 Star TH8 War Base. Note, this was the first version of which he released, so it might differ from what he currently has. I have done some explaining of the 3 G.S.T. to his base when it was published, it's different compared to what is below but it explains almost the same thing, so you can check it out within his thread.

Link:http://forum.supercell.net/showthread.php/655455-Throne-of-God-An-Anti-3-Star-War-Base

Groups

Groups are determined by their proximity to each and their coverage area. Usually Groups are small, about 2-4 defenses at most. There are some overlap which this image doesn't show (which I admit), but generally you can see how the 'coverage' is when it comes to the base.

For example you can see that the mortar, archer tower, wizard tower, and cannon on the top right is connected to each other, forming groups. The cannon at the top is NOT part of their group is because a) there is a wall/trap separating them, and b) mortar is not mutually able to support that cannon.

Sections

Because TH8s are smaller than TH9s, there aren't as many sections compared to TH9s. You can see that there are about 4 'sections of which is shown. You can see that almost each section has smaller groups.

Sections are influenced alot by spacing and by the walls between the defenses. It also depends on it's 'relation' with other groups.

Territories

If you look at the base itself, you can see that the base is like a rectangle shaped, where it's split within the middle. Therefore the territories for this base is on the left, and on the right. The grey area is solo defenses that aren't really covering any of the two sides (which isn't a good thing when it comes to base building).

To explain alittle more on how the territories are, I've overlapped the radius of the defense buildings;wiz, can, archt, tesla only since they are the most important, while things like mortar (which is useless), and air defense (which is in it's own category). As you can seem the most 'concentrated area is the top right side, while the bottom left side also has it. There is a 'moat' area where there is alot of buildings that aren't covering it (TH,AD,CC,AS) which separates the two territories. Territories are influenced by the ratio of defenses within a giving coverage area in the WHOLE map.

So why is it important?

It's important because you need to understand there is a balance for every base, all shapes and sizes. If you are going to make a 'circular' base for example, you aren't going to have a section with majority of the Air Defense concentrated on one side. Like I've said in the beginning, a good covered defense should already be able to cover itself within a given area, and have a balance with other areas.

Breaking Down the Base with G.S.T.

After I've shown the G.S.T. to Garlic, the creator of Throne of God, he improved his base really well afterwards, and changed up his base. I'll show below the bad example (before) and the changes which are better (after).

Looking at Groups, Sections and Territories

When it comes to groups, there are 2-5 defenses per cluster, and what is important is that there needs to be traps between the group. There needs to be traps within a group separating them equally. These are your bands together, and having for example three cannons with no air defense cover is no good, but having a cannon/wizard/archT with no traps between them is no good either. Also just because there are traps between them, doesn't equal it's well placed (example 1 below).

Bad Example 1: Springs between 3

This is a common problem when it comes to base designing is the fact that people put two traps between one defense. The problem with this set up is that it relies too much on the mortar being within that area, the moment the mortar is destroyed, the left side and the right side defenses will not be protected by the traps. Traps need to be evenly distributed between the defenses.

Bad Example 2: Linked Defenses without springs

Now if you look at this example, you can see the fact that there are 8 defenses within that cluster that link together which have NO protection. Although the top mortar and cannon is 'protected' the remaining of these defenses are all in line with each other and can be gobbled up by hogs. There needs to be a MAXIMUM of 3 defenses which then are separated by springs. Usually a 2-spring-2 ratio is the best.

For more information on how to set up spring traps, I highly recommend you read one of my old guide , in section 2000:
http://forum.supercell.net/showthread.php/577223-Base-Break-Down-Guide-to-the-3-Star-Meta-TH9-War-Bases-Creation-and-Dissection

Bad Example 3: Wrong Placement of Double Giant Bomb

If you look a the "Territory" you can see that there is a huge 'moat' between the bottom side, and the 'pathing' for most of the important defense are located above and to the sides. The double giant bomb within this base (marked in red) is set at a weird location at the south, which does not really allow better flow of defense coverage. What the double giant bomb does is it separates the two sections/territories from each other.

Check out Base Break Down for more information

Base Break Down

The good double giant bomb placements will have them parallel/covering the weight evenly between all sections. There will be a threat of the hogs going into the giant bomb no matter which sections they select. This is the reason why placing your DGB at the correct location is important, or else you will allow the place that's heavily weighted to be trampled by hogs.

Good Example

Here is the base after the suggestions and improvement. It might not be the best Anti-3 Star TH8 Base there is, or it might be the best at the current time of release, but the thing is that if you look at each and every part by chunks/clusters, you can see that it's well developed compared to before.

Repeat of the Intro:
In Groups, it's the relation between 2-5 defenses, so spring traps are important.
In Sections, it's the relation between 2+ groups, so double giant bomb between is important.
In Territories, it's the relation between sections in the whole map, so determining the ratio/how big the sections can be is important.

As you can see, the huge 8 defense wide section has been broken down with spring traps as well as double giant bomb to separate the territories/sections. Although I would prefer there to be a spring trap somehow between the white arrow. But these improvement has way better since the double giant bomb is at a location where hogs can't pre-trigger.

From TH9 Onwards

From Town Hall 9 and on wards there is more things you have to remember:

Queen's Territory. Queen kill is part of Town Hall 9. Accept it, and recognize there is and minimize the amount of defense structure the enemy will be able to take once they aim for the Queen Kill

Kill Areas: The amount of 'territories' for which are considered dps are located. Some base might have 3, some bases might have 2.

Illustration of Territory

This is NOT a base, but it illustrates a (sorta) good territory, section, and groups for which an actual base can develop on. Even without walls, you can see the relationship of which defense can interact. (I missed up the dgb with the AD being there, forgive me :P).

There is a dedicated Queen area, a "Main Kill" area where most of the fire power is located (double tesla/wizardT), and a secondary kill area. The power was just another concept I was thinking about having two ADs located there in order to bait, but not part of this guide.

So remembering to balance out the territories, putting spring traps between groups, double giant bomb between sections, and knowing the types of Territories is important.

Football Player's Base

Although this Football Player's base might not look so good, let's just ignore that and purely just see it based on Territory.

In this example, you can see the fact there are 4 'territories' to this base. The Queen has her own territory, and the three other Kill Zones. But as you can see, the double giant bomb is place within one of the kill zones, while the two right side territories barely have any traps. The Double Red circle would be the area where DGB is needed since the fact that 2/3 his remaining defenses are located at the Right half of his base.

I'll dissect and expand this base later on, in another page.

Thanks for reading, and hopefully you develop this insight for base analyzing. There are more complex interaction between Groups, Sections, and Territory and these can be follow the newly developed concepts for example the Queen Island, and Spring traps between inner and outer defense.

Base Builder's Eyes - How to Analyze a War Base

CURRENTLY UNDER DEVELOPMENT
This guide is a main but a subpart of the "Base Builder's Eye" guide, so click on the link to continue reading.