Supercell revealed in a question-and-answer session that 80% of all attacks made in Clash of Clans are Town Hall Snipes. This was hard for me to believe.

Although Supercell has been *ahem* less-than-truthful at times about game statistics, this is worth examination.

1. Town Hall Snipes accumulate very fast.

Reality check: could the 80% statistic be real?

I think so. Town Hall snipes are very fast, especially with the Barbarian King or Archer Queen. It takes only a few seconds to destroy an exposed Town Hall. Sniping a TH has no downside:

• Get a free League Bonus,
• Some trophies,
• Some XP, and
• Inflate your “Humiliator” statistic.

Most players will opportunistically hit exposed Town Halls, even if they are not doing a dedicated sniping session. A single player doing a few hours dedicated sniping sessions can take out dozens of bases, leading to the next issue:

2. The game is too lopsided with TH snipes.

If the 80% statistic is true, then Town Hall snipes is a serious gameplay problem. A huge percentage of bases stay out of rotation because of 12-hour shields. Dedicated snipers can single-handedly remove dozens of bases per play session. Supercell needs to get more bases into rotation.

3. The update attempts to fix the problem.

Supercell changed some gameplay to stop TH sniping. To review some new rules:

1. Adding Storage to the Town Hall. The TH now contains equal Elixir and Gold as your Elixir and Gold storages. The TH also contains 15% of your DE.
2. Shields granted by % destruction.
3. League Bonus grated by % destruction.

In doing so, Supercell did some overkill. As in, seriously ridiculous overkill. Any one of the three major changes would have greatly reduced the TH snipe.

Making the TH store Gold, Elixir, and DE: This rule, by itself, would vastly reduce Town Hall snipes. Farmers would be compelled to move their Town Halls inside to protect loot. Players would have the choice of occasionally making the tradeoff of losing some loot vs. getting a 12-hour shield.

Shield for % destruction:  This rule, by itself, would also have eliminated TH snipes. However, it would have left the TH an utterly worthless building.

League Bonus for % destruction:  This rule, by itself, may have somewhat reduced TH snipes. TH snipers would only receive trophies and virtually no League Bonus loot. For example, a TH snipe in Masters III gives 500 DE bonus. This is very profitable for the sniper Farmer. Remove the bonus, and the Farmer has no incentive to snipe.

It seems totally unnecessary to implement all three changes in the same update package. Just implementing the first change would have significantly solved the problem, and would have changed gameplay enough to be interesting.

4. TH snipes and the CoC economy.

The 80% statistic has huge implications to the CoC economy. Most TH9 and TH10 sniper Farmers are in the Gold and Crystal region. Assume the average League Bonus is 30,000 Gold and Elixir. A TH sniper could easily make 1M Gold and Elixir in a session just from League Bonuses. Now make a simple calculation:  if 80% of all attacks are TH snipes, a huge amount of League Bonuses are being injected into the economy.

Removing the TH snipe will remove this huge amount from the CoC economy. Supercell is slightly adjusting the League Bonuses to compensate, but it’s pennies to the dollars.