Frequently Asked Questions

How many pots do I need to use when attacking a similar sized target so as not to waste pots and how strong am I when at half troops?
To understand how this works you need to understand how the stats system works. Generally when we talk about stats we are talking about bonus to owner stats. These are 2% of your raw stats. You can see your raw stats on your profile page. If you have 1m bonus to owner stats you will see that you have 50m raw stats.
If you look at the potions, they give their stat bonus in raw stats, you can divide these by 50 to work out what the equivalent bonus to owner stats would be. So for example if I look at Holey Wrath I can see it gives 23,000,000 attack bonus. That is the same attack power you would get from about 4.5 lvl3 Cursed Foundry (CF gives 5,178,000 raw attack stats when full troops).
The next thing to realise is that the stats from defence pots are exactly the same as the stats from attack pots. So if your opponent has 11 defence pots and you use 11 attack pots they will cancel each other out.
Finally it is worth understanding how your stats are added up. First take your raw stats. add to that any Pro pack, reset bonuses, equipment, clan bonus and that useless bonus from your banner. Next add your bonus from allies and finally potions. This gives your total strength.
So, to answer the question about how many pots needed: You can take a reasonable guess by looking at their stats, whether they have pro packs/equipment. However you can't see their bonus from allies (unless you go through all their allies and add it up), can't see reset bonus or how many defence pots they have.
If you scout them you get two numbers, % chance of winning with and without items, which will give you a little more info on their strength and maybe a clue about how many defence pots they have.
Personally though I just hit them with full troops and full pots. If you win you are told how many pots they have. In addition the text on the win screen gives some info on how easy or difficult the attack was. From there it is just a process of trial and error to find the optimum number of pots to use.
Something to be aware of: using just enough pots to win might enable the win but you might be using significantly more troops than usual. The optimal point is the number of pots required to win and lose the minimum number of troops.
To answer the second question: How strong am I at half troops? If you look at your raw stats on your profile page, these change when your troop level changes. You can see exactly what power you have left at any troop level. The only time the raw stats will not be in proportion to your troop level will be if you have towers. Towers have no troops, their stats do not change with troop level so even when I have 0 spies I still have 5m spy defence stats from my three towers.
Pro pack bonus, reset bonus, clan bonus, equipment bonus and bonus from allies doesn't change with troop level either
 
Hansel build tips and tricks
A hansel is a build which is all spy with one troop building. They have almost as much spy power as a pure spy and very weak attack/defence. They do however have some advantages over a pure spy.
Having the troop build means that they can only be attacked a certain number of times before going DTW. This means that while they can be stripped like any attack build they can't be stripped as you would a pure spy (hire allies and attacking).
A hansel will be DTW to attacks in the following situations:
Any attacker when Hansel's troops are below 20%
Attack builds attacking a hansel with no gold out
A larger attack build attacking a hansel with less than 20% spies
Any build attacking in the 10 minutes following the Hansel selling their troop building
When warring a hansel will not have much success attacking an attack build unless it has massive bonus from allies or the attack build has no defence pots. However it will probably be able to get through on other hansels and can steal/scout/assassinate any build. For this reason the troops are fairly worthless and while they are over 20% attack builds will be able to hit you easily good reward. This is why during war I keep my troops below 20% rendering me dtw to all attacks. In strip war do NOT use the epic battle to keep your troops down, use them on the enemy. Even if you lose every attack you are still killing some of their troops and making them weaker. So with your troops below 20% you can have gold out and nobody can hit you, this is a huge advantage over being pure spy because it means you can skim steals on people without worrying about being hit or having to bank after every steal.
When you go offline though you will come out of pin. At this stage your troops will go above 20% and you will come out of pin. If you have banked all your gold then only a hansel-buster (less than 2% attack build) and other hansels will be able to attack you. You will lose no gold but they will make easy gold. If you have left gold out then anyone can hit you. This is why when I am in a strip war, or a system war where I think I might get stripped, I strip off my allies and bank all the gold. I don't need the allies because I'm not expecting to make any gold from attacks and they are a liability. When I go to sleep I can bank all my gold, sell the attack building, wait 10 minutes,  attack myself to have that last bit of gold cleared and go to sleep knowing that I can't be hit by anyone (pure spy with no gold out is always DTW attack to all builds).
This only works for me because I have the minimum value in allies that I need to be at max plunder. Also I expect to make a decent amount in steals during the days to offset the 25% loss I will take in banking my ally gold.
If your main account is a hansel then i would not recommend dropping allies to war, if you don't have a main to hire them off then just keep them. As long as you have no gold out the only builds that will be able to hit you are hansel busters.
Using a hansel in an epic battle is almost the exact opposite of using an attack build in an epic battle. All your strength is in your spies. Reward is based on strength of hit not damage done. For this reason it is important to skim not only steals but also scout and assassinations when using a hansel.
It also means that you should not use the minimum pot to succeed on the epic battle when attacking. You might win and get some gold but your reward will be smaller than it would be if you used a larger pot. There is no significant gain to be had from skimming attacks on a hansel. 99% of your plunder comes from you ally plunder bonus which doesn't scale with troop levels. Wolf makes 23.1m in ally bonus and 14k in troop plunder with full troops on haunting. The extra reward that would be gained by hitting with full power troop is also insignificant. Wolf's full troop power is 49,850. I use the 12m pot which adds 39,700,000 to every hit.

What is skimming?
Skimming is attacking 2x and assassinating 3x every 5 minutes. This means you are always attacking from full strength, and therefore making optimal plunder.
 
Skimming in war?
In war you can also skim, you are at your strongest so best chance of winning. However, sometimes you will want to pin (make DTW) a target hitting someone else in the clan, or pin yourself and fight from pin to avoid taking a severe beating. It is all dependant on the situation.
 
Is it good to try keep your troops as full as possible or just go all in ?
in an ideal world you would be full troops all the time and skim on the enemy. However, since they will be trying to do the same thing this isn't always possible. I tend to try and stay full, use my spys to weaken targets before hitting them
 
Fighting from pin
Fighting from pin is what I was describing in the hansel guide earlier, bringing your troops below 20% so that nobody can hit you. The advantage to this is fairly obvious.. nobody can Attack, Steal, Assassinate you. You on the other hand can attack, steal and assassinate other people
However, you will be very weak because your raw stats are reduced to 20% (other stats such as bonus from allies, propack bonus, reset bonus, equipment, banner, spells and pots are unaffected
In system war (won and loss by the amount of gold the clan makes) fighting from pin is a serious disadvantage because with troops at 20% you will be making less plunder than if you were skimming. The flip side is that the enemy can't make any gold because you are DTW
 
Ally question - i have 19b in allies, but all (but possibly 1) are inactive.  I'm at max plunder.  Is it wise to drop inactives and try to pick up actives for growth and better stats?
My general attitude towards allies is a cautious one. Buying them for stats is a very expensive way to build strength. Bonus from ally stats have the advantage of being static, like a tower or equipment, but are much much much more expensive than land and buildings
I also advise caution on ally trade. It is true that you can make a lot of gold this way but in my eyes it is too risky and takes up too much time. this changes once you HLBC but take the following example
If you are trying to trade in allies at the 1b level for each ally you buy at 1b you get 15m profit when they sell
If they don't sell you have a 1b ally that you don't want. To make up for this 1b which is now sitting in a dud ally you need to sell 67 others (15m x 67 = 1.005b)
now it would be fine if you need them for max plunder, but as i have said they aren't an efficient way of gaining stats and if you are already at max plunder then they are just wasted gold
I certainly wouldn't drop them as this will give you a 40% loss, and you would need to do a lot of trade to make that up again
Keep them, they are giving you max plunder and make you that little bit more expensive to strip.
 
How do you know if your stats are too large or too small to hit a target?
You can hit any target roughly 6 times or 1/6th your size. If you are within that range and you get DTW when you try and attack/assassinate/steal then try a scout. If you can scout then they are pinned. You can attack/steal/assassinate anybody you can scout. Only targets you can't scout will be outside your range
 
When upgrading builds, should u upgrade as soon as u have enough gold, or have enough gold for upgrade and still have some available afterwards.
Only risk of upgrading and leaving you with 0 gold is if you have an ally you want to keep which sells, taking you below max plunder, and you don't have enough to buy back.
 
I want to create a spy account.  How should I start - guilds right away?
People will give you different opinions on this but I have done the following (3x) Start off the account as all lvl3 forges (maybe a lvl3 guild or 2 to hit the eb when you get to land 15) until you get to land 25. On the 25th land put a guild. upgrade all your level 3 guilds to level 4. Convert all but one forge to lvl4 guild one by one. convert the final forge to a lvl 3 beast (do this once your plunder from allies becomes more significant that the cost of hitting eb with pots.
as you convert from forge to guild your strength will drop and plunder bonus from allies will increase. By the time you have 23 lvl4 guild and 1 beast you will be making loads of gold from ally bonus and almost no gold from troop plunder.
UPDATED:  Another suggestion is starting with one beast, and then forges until land 19 at which point you go back and convert forges to lvl4 guilds.

Is it good tactics to gang up on targets one at a time using all available troops alongside another or are you better off spreading your troops around?
The ideal situation to be in is have one person on your side pinning each of the active enemy. This is part of the reason why reporting is so important, it lets everyone know who on the other side is active. However, there will probably come a time when one or more people on our side are being pinned. At this stage they need the help of the rest of the clan to get back on top of thier target. If we are 90% on top it might jsut take 2 hits or a couple of assassinations, from each of our active members, to bring down the trouble maker. This can usually be done without losing the current advantage of fighting from strength. If we are 90% on top it might just take 2 hits or a couple of assassinations, from each of our active members, to bring down the trouble maker. This can usually be done without losing the current advantage of fighting from strength. Alternatively, if there are several of their guys that need pinning then it might take a lot more of our troops to get the job done. One option is to crystal, giving you an extra full bar of assassinations and attacks, or we move towards fighting from pin. it really is completely dependent on the situation, how many of us are active, how many of them are active etc. I aim to pin using my spies (this pins not only their troops but also their spies) then keep them down with my troops. While my troops are pinning them my spies can regen. Then I can either use my spies to pin another target causing trouble, or can be used to steal on a strip. a risk with having several people gang up on one target is that it gives them information on who is active, if they are not reporting incoming hits in cc then they may have no idea who on our side is active. one situation in which i would advise ganging up on a target would be where you have a large hansel who is pinning their troops (rendering them dtw to assassinations) A single person can't zero their spies by scouting on their own and it would be a huge waste of spy power for one of our large spy’s to try and do it. So in that situation i would suggest 3-4 of our attack builds, who have fairly worthless spies, gang up on the hansel and scout bomb him.

Vollley transfer of gold
this is the only way really to move gold from one account to another in KaW
the method is as follows: Account A is the donor account who will be giving gold to account B, the receiver
B buys an ally, fairly cheap. Can start at 10k but the first 50m takes forever so i would start at 1m minimum. so... B buys a 1m ally
A then hires it off B. B gets 1m (purchase price) plus 1.5% (profit from having an ally hired away. The ally value increases by 5%.
then B hires from A. A makes 1.5% and the ally price increases by 5%
if both accounts start with 85b and volley from 1m as far as they can they will each make 15b profit by the time b doesn't have enough cash to hire back. the ally will be worth 100b.
so after the volley, where they started with 85b. A will own a 100b ally and B will have  just under 100b cash.
The reason it is called transfer is because A will then drop the ally (getting back 60% of purchase price, 60b.
this allows him to vollley again because he has cash.
you can repeat the process as much as you want. however. In the above example A lost 25b and B made 15b. so this is an expensive pastime.. but the only way.
there is no limit to how high you volley, other than how much cash both accounts have. A vollley from 1-15 trill will transfer enough to HLBC a brand new account. but obviously the donor account loses a huge amount on the drop

Does your post-eb bonus increase if u use pots during attk/assn?  If so, is it worth the cost of pots?
Reward at the end of an eb is a combination of three things
Reward for item phase
Reward for attacks
Reward for assassinations
I believe (although im not entirely sure) that 1. Item phase will almost always be pfrofitable. The only time it would not be is if a very small build does a huge number of very expensive items. For example a 100k CS build doing the Angel of Light and Holy Wrath phase of FoD.This is because the damage done per item is dictated by the size of the build while the reward per item (i believe and certainly true in The Forgotten Ones) = total potential reward for items phase/number of itmes used. In TFO the potential reward is between 600m and 800m depending on other aspects of the eb. A tiny build doing 1 damage per item could lose gold if that item was expensive.2. Reward for attacks, it seems that the reward yopu get for attacks is based on the power of your attack. For example lets say my first hit on haunting has power of 170m raw stats, and i get 17m reward for it, and my last hit has power of 5m raw stats I would get reward of 500k for it. By using pots i could make the power of that last hit back up to 170m and get the extra 16.5m reward. however, to make best use of this you would have to start using small pot after first hit and add more pots as your troops lose power. Personally i can't be bothered with this and i am not convinced that it is profitable. However the effect of having that extra power can bee seen in builds that have spells active... they make big rewards. for a hansel it is niether here nor there. You have to use the pot to hit, you will make little reward gold from your hits as your troops are weak all the time. Hansels make their gold on ally bonus and spy actions which brings us to...3. Reward from spy actions: if you have a couple of guilds/sos this is never going to be big even with pots. I use my spies to speed up the eb, not to make gold. think of them like a hansel's troops. If you are a hansel you will make big reward from spy actions and (as with attack actions) that reward is based on the strength of your spies. Think of it like when you steal...On my first steal with a 5m hansel i can make 33m and from there it drops as my spies drop until the last steal makes 56k. The same will be true of the reward from assassinations. So you can use pots once your spies get low, but like with attacking i don't bother and am not sure it is worth it. the same effect is achieved by skimming. My advice would be don't use pots to hit ebs unless you have to. Do quarter or half unloads when you can. consider using a pot to help you win those last couple of attacks (attack builds) and asssassinations (spy builds) if you are doing a full unload. Becasue better to use pot and win that not use pot and fail.

Ally Trade Tips
Really allies trade is pretty simple. First only buy really active ppl u need to check there epic history also check age of account. When u are looking up allies in your price range always look threw many pages of allies. U will not always find allies for good price devs put in allies first in on your trend of buying. So when u first start will be many overpriced allies that show up. Ally trade takes time like anything u will need to invest time to make good money. But u can't go wrong if u look 15-20 pages and buy active ally with best stats in that range.