This post was inspired by an article I found which I will post below.

I go through cycles with this game, often going from playing it constantly to not playing it at all, even for months at a time. I recently played this loads over the christmas break, mostly because of the boost bonus gave me a chance to level up some stuff, and maybe try and get that hero unit guy without spending a gem, 10000 dark elixir was proving quite hard to get with one level 2 drill...

I have been trying to progress as far as I can without buying gems, not because I can't afford them nor do I think the game should be free, it's worth paying for something you enjoy doing. I just thought the game encourages you to spend gems too easily and feel like to progress at any sort of decent speed you have to spend a lot of money. So I took it as a challenge to try and not buy gems and progress as far as I could.

Currently I'm not playing for days at a time while stuff upgrades and feel like i'm about to hit a wall in terms of how far I can progress without buying gems. Im pretty happy that during the boost period I managed to get a Hero unit with just a level 2 dark elixir drill and by raiding without spending any Gems!

This is my base currently:



I'm currently working towards getting all my walls are level 7, Canons level 10, Archers level 10, Mortars 6, Teslas 4 and Wizards 5; all of which are a very slow work in progress and with most of them the highest level you can achieve at town hall level 8. When I have reached this I will stop upgrading and probably play occasionally just to battle and win trophies (getting resources had always been priority number 1), or at least until they bring out upgrades past level 11 for Gold and Elixir! Which is long overdue considering most defense units often get more upgrades each new update but gold and elixir is limited, meaning to progress you have to pay!

That leads me onto the article I found about former world number 1 Clasher Jorge Yao...



He was the first player to break the 4000 trophy mark and held the number one spot for 6 months from January 2013.

In the interview he reveals that he was spending $250 a week to stay on top and 3 months into his number 1 position had spend over $3000, I always thought the top players were constantly given Gems as rewards for being top players/clans but it seems that it isn't enough to remain on top.

The article also states that Supercell reportedly earn a staggering $2.4million per day!

Read more about what happened to George Yao and why he quit Clash of Clans here:

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/games/jorge-yao-was-master-of-his-virtual-domain-in-clash-of-clans-20131223-2zu6k.html#ixzz2qQHlnYdN