So to clarify there's not a huge amount of need for a large number of offence troops as most go unused, however you feel the strategy has a huge flaw in that doesn't allow for enough offence? Ignoring this contradiction for now, assuming you're playing solo in an area where there is a large number of hostile opponents, how would you divide your villages (including troop counts), and importantly how would you expand? We can then make a comparison.
This is futile in debating the merits of this particular guide I do not need to propose what I would necessarily do, just point out flaws in it, it's way too much effort, dependent on numerous unstated things oh and did I mention too much effort. If I were to say this I might as well write a guide, something I don't wish to do (except for certain areas of the game which require short, technical/mechanic based information).
As for the contradiction, I didn't say there's a problem with it not allowing for offense, I argued that the offense itself is poor. There's a subtle difference.
To address your points:
1) Nukes can not be made with more HC, else they become entirely incapable as nukes even if they are built faster.
2) Even with villages placed right next to each other there's not always going to be the opportunity to send the Spears all the way over the village range. HC on the other hand will practically always be able to manage this. Therefore there's some room for HC loss in nukes whilst not losing on on the 1:4 stack ratio.
3) Building LC in villages means those villages lose versatility, this is unacceptable in a hostile area.
4) You have passed over the use of Catapults several times. Whilst nobling attacks need to be targeted on small areas, the Catapults can be spread to massive effect. Once the opponent knows that the "fakes" have the power to totally cripple their villages suddenly defence needs to be spread out further, making the actual targets much weaker to the stack breaking attacks.
5) The poor offence is only weak in terms of build time for the nukes, not in terms of attack power unless the HC are not sent with them.[/COLOR]
1) They may on their own become weaker, but for the purposes of what you are arguing they are used for (defending as well as attacking) they are better than the current.
This guide works on 10 village clusters, 6 O villages with 1250 hc each, upping it to 1500 and dropping the axe by the 1500 mark means it builds faster and it's not much weaker plus if you want to maintain the same amount of hc from O villages you have a nuke free now. :O
As it builds faster, you should have more complete ones at any one time. Plus more HC to defend with, win-win?
2) Hmm I had forgotten about this, I'll admit that.
3) No it is not "unacceptable" in any shape or form, please explain how.
4) Because the catapult strategy is not unique to this guide, and can be used with any other strategy may be the reason I ignore it. I don't consider it a reason to choose to use HC over LC at all. The main point of this (or so I thought when I first read it many years ago) was that HC are versatile and useful in both offense and defense, not that you can use catapults to combat noble shortage/morale problems or whatever else.
5) So it is poor... :icon_rolleyes:
Edit: If you are truly in a hostile situation and really under threat, you want the quickest troops possible. You won't care about their power or whatever, you need something of use asap not something that will be more useful if you give it another 3 days. Whether you are using HC offense or LC offense, you don't want to be waiting on the barracks to complete..