My third account now has been upgraded to TH4 and I’m already working on both the Laboratory and Clan Castle while this is being composed. I prioritized the Clan Castle above all else because of the amount of Elixir it cost but also with the thought that I’m either going to use a Baby Dragon and higher level Balloon for the Clan Castle troops or x3 Hog Riders. The idea here is that at TH4, once I upgrade my Barracks to level 6, I can use a predominantly Balloon spam attack. However, TH4 receives its first Air Defense which can infuriate the Balloon attack. So what I hope to try is using higher level Hog Riders to quickly take down the Air Defense then spam Balloons to finish off a base.
I did end up rushing my 3rd account just because the timer on my shield had run out. So I upgraded what I could thinking that the leftovers were either going to take too long or that I could get better access to resources at the next Town Hall level. My main goal here is to get more Elixir and increase my storage so that I can not only dominate in these lower levels but clean up the area for gems since I cannot make purchases on this account without some changes. I did mention that the original intent was to use this account as a F2P style account and I really think it might be better this way. Either way, starting from this point, I do see that I really need to start pushing for a 3rd Builder especially as the time it takes to finish upgrades keeps increasing.
My 4th account will receive a little more leeway since I have another full day before the shield runs out. Because of that, I intend to spend a little more time upgrading things. Maybe I might make this account the “patient” account where I “upgrade everything” as a strategy before progressing. We’ll see.
The real issue about my 3rd account is that now I feel obligated to play the Builder Base. Le sigh. I’ve seen a variety of people on reddit that for the eventual update to the Builder Base that Supercell should just delete it and give us a proportional amount of gems back + the 6th Builder as compensation for our sanity. I can’t agree anymore just because it’s such a wretched game. The defenses are too strong, the AI sucks and it’s beyond frustrating especially the unfair matchmaking. There’s nothing appealing about the Builder Base as a game outside of getting the eventual 6th Builder. Even the Gem Mine is worthless because it gives so little. On my secondary account, I don’t even bother upgrading it anymore because of how troop levels have become far more important.
From all this the real question becomes how many more accounts will I want to create. Four already feels like a bit much. I think overtime it shouldn’t be a huge issue just because of how long it takes to upgrade things and how most battles are short. The longest aspects of the game are searching for an appropriate base to attack and waiting for the counterattack in Versus battles. The main thought process in creating an account at this moment is that it’s still early in the season and that I’m looking to Tier 4 rewards for Clans Games. You really need at least 5 accounts to get that many rewards. And considering how many months it’ll take just to get all these bases into a reasonable operating condition, I might as well start now.
On the other hand, there is the problem of burn out which I’m starting to feel just from two accounts. It’s not terribly horrible at this moment but I can see myself getting into bad habits just like with Lost Ark, World of Warcraft, etc. Four accounts seem pretty manageable especially since my main two are high enough level where my only concern for the day during the peak season time is to get my two attacks in along with a Versus battle. But with something like my main account, for instance, I’m primarily just waiting around for things to finish. And in a lot of cases, I won’t see the results of my upgrades for almost two weeks.
Then there’s the thought of repeating the whole Builder Base process from scratch three more times. My secondary account finally has decent enough troops to feel comfortable. But going through the Builder Base battles over and over again with the terrible AI, unfair matchmaking and frustrating narrow event loop, it basically makes me think I’m better off with just 5 Builders (if I can manage from a F2P perspective).
That said I did manage to recover another email account so it wouldn’t be difficult to get another started really quick and then shortly thereafter have that account join my main clan. Perhaps, the staggered account effect won’t be so bad since I can have another account that I play when my other accounts are in different stages. I mean Tier 4 rewards and the long term hope of gaining access to Clan Wars are nice goals down the road. Maybe the only difficult aspect I will have to deal with is how I won’t be able to do the season pass for every account. That part is going to hurt badly. I mean I might not have access to all the transmogs but progression in the later stages of the game is going to slow to a snails pace without the Books and Runes.