Today was a victory of sorts when it came to Boom Beach for my main account. I upgraded the last of what I consider an offensive building, which was my Gunboat. Although a single energy point won’t make a huge difference in most cases, I have situations where I was short by one. Nonetheless, I am ready to push forward in going defensive now.
Most Boom Beach players on Reddit will tell you that the best strategy is to focus on offensive buildings. Early on, this is a great strategy because you don’t want to have a high level with a low level HQ and only defensive buildings. Some people end up getting trapped because they get invaded too much, cannot gain more resources and have a high number of Victory Points.
In my case, I did a slightly hybrid approach as I slowly made my way to where I am. Ever since the advent of Imitation Game, I use my Fridays to focus on the costliest offensive structure. For the past few months that has been strictly Landing Craft, Armory and Gunboat. In between those moments, I would use the two Doctor T days on the weekend to work on major offensive buildings like Boom Cannons and Rocket Launches while the other two days during the week would get cheaper buildings such as Machine Guns or normal Cannons. I’ll mix up Hammerman and War Factory days with reclaiming resource bases and easier NPC bases since I generally do not want to waste good bases without a boost.
In this manner, I have been able to balance my defense with my offense. I mostly made sure that by Friday, I would have a supplementary amount of resources to go for the really expensive upgrades. Generally, I’ve found clearing Imitation Game at around stage 6 plus a 5-6 PC/NPC base clear, you’ll have most of the resources for your upgrades if you’ve managed to save enough throughout the week.
This strategy has kept me doing quite well for some time. I’ve never had the need to purchase a second Builder and don’t feel like subscription service of the instant troop reload is worth it. I have seen the instant troop subscription service be interesting in that you can experiment with new load outs much easier, but I’m on the fence about that. If that service was lowered to $2, it might be worth it. But at this stage, it’s a luxury to me.
Looking forward on my main account, I see that the only real big ticket item remaining is the Shock Launcher when it comes to resources. The rest are cheap/reasonable compared to things like the Weapons Factory, Landing Craft and Gunboat. Because I really don’t have to save as much during the week in aiming at a Landing Craft on my main account, I can push my defenses a lot more in general without worrying about being cheap. Instead, I’ll probably start focusing on the major offensive structures like Boom Cannons and Rocket Launchers. It shouldn’t really take that much longer to max those buildings out.
My secondary account is fairing well too. I just started construction on a Gunboat 20 and already have 2 Landing Craft at 21. Although I probably won’t be playing other troop combos beyond Grank-Med (grenadier-tank-medic), I will continue to push those Landing Craft to 21 since I might eventually switch down the line to a CHZM or CRZM combo. At least for now, I have the max configuration for what I normally do.
I think one thing that I’m very eager to get into is pushing Hammerman. I managed to do a stage 5 last week on my main account due to having 3 prototype weapons. I feel in a few weeks once more of my big defensive structures are upgraded, I’ll be able to do a stage 5 consistently.
Also, I’ve nearly completed revealing the entire map on my main account. The main benefit is getting the achievement for the diamonds along with being able to fully utilize all the tribes on the map. Once I upgrade each of the tribes, I’ll be able to go more casually on my main account as I’ll probably just use the Destroy feature to remove NPC bases quickly.
On my alt account, unfortunately I cannot really take advantage of tribes just yet. My plan will parallel what I did on my main account, which implies that my Radar will be one of the later offensive buildings planned for upgrading. Knowing that though, it’s going to take sometime. But I know it’ll be worth it down the line.
Another really cool thing about my main account though is that almost all my troops are upgraded (except Warriors). That means, I’ll have tons of flexibility when it comes to troop compositions. I think one of the combinations I’m looking forward to the most is Scank (Scorcher Tank). I have yet to use Scorchers in any capacity but I’m hoping to give it a chance soon. As of now, I’ve been running a 20% RR statue on top of my MP which is reasonably high. I’m at the point on my main account where the 20% RR is a nice thing but not a deal breaker. I might end up going towards another red defensive statue which can make Scorchers quite beefy. Either that or run another GBE statue.
And as I figure out other troop combination plays, I’ll continue to run Grank-Med for my alt account. At HQ 21, I found that the grind to the next major level mostly is pushing your troop levels higher and finishing upgrading the last of your offensive pieces. Obviously, once you hit HQ 22, there’s just a little more to go, but the worst is over. By that point, you ought to have most of your troops upgraded to near max and your landing craft and gunboat near maxed out too.
At any rate, I’m very eager to see how my base really develops over the next few months. I do know that a lot of high end players just end up getting bored as a result of not having anything to upgrade. But in many ways, I’m looking forward to that as I will be at the point in the game where I can focus on other things.