There's some dispute over the better strategy on when someone reaches the 900 million land should they continue buying lands and buidling forges or start converting forges into subs. One way to measure the better strategy is by ally plunder bonus. Here's a graph showing the gains in ally plunder bonus by number of hits. The baseline plunder bonus is chosen as 3 mil but could be altered without changing the result. The graph shows that after the first land purchase the the sub-strategy has the plunder bonus advantage and it only accelerates as time goes on. The obvious downside to this is you get fewer troops which negatively affects you in war, but as pure earning and upgrading strategy, buying subs appears clearly superior.
Another alternative is to build guilds too. Currently from what I know, the building that adds e most ally plunder isn't lvl 3 sub but is a lvl 4 guild. Try balancing it out in your own way, as it works great for me.
I am a pure spy. I recomended upgrading to level three after or before the 60m land then buying land till the 900m and get lv4 after that. I haven't even upgraded all of my guilds to lv3 but that seems like a smart idea since you get the same amount of troops as building another lv3 and the same attack as well. Upgrading to lv3 you get three times the spies and two times the attack.
I'd buy the land first, as a fully upgraded T3 is 1.33bil. Buy the land for 900mil and put a lv3 guild in
Actually the reason why you build land always first is because as you stat up, the number of safe sources of gold diminish, If your in a big clan or you have a way to. Make 3 bill (cost of last land) with out much trouble your fine. Otherwise as 250k atk etc etc your alway in a major bracket, getting hit. Plus the amount of gold you make per hour has dropped. Not because you couldn't get more, it's because you can't hit anyone safely. Math is correct for subs first, but it is the wrong strategy.
Wrong strategy if, as you say, you're not in a clan and you don't hit inactives. How many people does that describe? Not too many.
It matters for base plunder minus ally bonus. Guilds are a good example in that 6 lvl2 guilds steal more than 1 lvl3 guild despite sharing equal stats...
DON'T FORGET YOUR ALLIES BONUS!! yes that me yelling You have no idea how many players I see want to raise their stat quickly selling all allies to upgrade. Once you bought your 1.5 land you should be focusing on land completion anyway. unless you have a private farm, you'll find yourselves having a hard time find target. most of those players up there will have def potions stacked up so it is better to stay at the lower bracket to maximize your earning SAFELY so I say no sub until land completed
The whole point of the graph was the ally bonus so we're assuming everyone maxes it but as someone already mentioned, it does put you in a higher bracket sooner. I think most players would prefer to see their stats go up sooner but for those who attack purely off their battle list, there could be drawbacks.
I think fool is right. It is much easier to gain more money from a larger ally plunder bonus with the addition of a lvl 3 sub before 900mil. Before 900mil land I invested in 2 lvl 3 sub pens (took ALOT of patience) and now I make 900mil easy. I plan on upgrading the lvl 3 guild next instead of buying 900mil land or saving for another lvl 3 sub because guilds increase plunder bonus significantly more than the sub pens
Being put in a higher bracket is a HUGE drawback but if your clan has many rival clans it is a great idea to improve stats and plunder through sub pens and find an easy farm to drain regularly.
How does this sound for a strategy? I'm just theorizing since i'm still too small... What if you build up to a total number of buildings that you're comfortable at and stats that's high but not too high. When you reach that level you only go for buying the remaining lands but not put a building there. In this way you would stay low enough that you can find enough batles and easy gold. You can work on buying allies to max plunder, build up on pots (and banking them), you can also convert the existing buildings to ones with higher max plunders while keeping you stats where you can still find plenty if battles. Finally when you have enough money you built up/banked then buy the rest if the buildings.