Here is the overview of the build: This build is originally created by Emeth who had the stats of 300/300/150/150, but he was able to defeat everyone in battle because of his insanely high battle statistic. Hansel decided to take it to the next level, adding a forge and 23 lvl 3 guilds (no lvl 4 at the time). The stats were 7200/4800/124,200/124,200, and he was the first spy build to make it onto the leaderboard (I think, not sure). Currently, the strongest spy is DCHansen who has one subterranean factory and the rest of his buildings are guilds (although he hasn't fully upgraded all of his guilds, he's #9 on the LB!). The benefits of this build is that the high spy defense makes your kingdom virtually impenetrable by spies. Added to your spy bonus, no one will dare to even scout you. The problem is that your attack and defense is extremely low. To overcome this, you must buy an extremely large amount of allies to make it impenetrable. The benefits of this are that your attack and defense are virtually the same, even though you lose troops. Also, people tend to underestimate you, netting a LOT of wins. If you want a good example of people who have been successful with this build, look at DCHansen and GodSIN, the only two spies on LBs ATM (I think).
Since the build is all guilds and one T2-3, I still don't understand why emeth gets credit. He didn't use it to LC, there was no ally cap, he just sold all his buildings and abused the reward system until dev action kicked in and besides emeth resetting, caused ally bonus to factor in rewards(good,large etc). Hansel here is the Forge/guilds set up, which can stay too weak to lose money from attacks and steal / hit a farm for wins. As stated above, unless you have a 'lot' of ally bonuses, I suggest you quest out and stay too weak after hitting the OSF if you have no clan farms. With quest mastery out, use this time to master the first 36-40 quests for crystals and a small source of nobility and gold. Past that QM goes slow. For steals, hit the largest reward payout possible and steal til 3/4 or 1/2 spies depending on activity. If you can't find someone to spy, there are a few posted in the forums or you can search the ally list by price range for a good selection of targets. Got off-topic slightly maybe but good stuff
It was emeth's principle to use extremely large ally bonuses while keeping actual attack/def. stats low. And while you were gone, Hansel made it to the LBs as a 7200/4800/124,200/124,200, so he did, in fact, use ally bonus.
If you have less than 20% troops, you're too weak to attack. Keep questing outta troops and you're virtually invincible.
Doesn't seem like anyone emphasized this yet, so... Don't think of it as a spy build, think of it as a mixed build. That's what it is. It lacks the largest benefit of being a pure spy, which is that you are not at any risk of ever being hurt by anyone. For this build to work, you *must* have allies, because the whole point of this build is actually to make money as an attacker. The reason this build makes sense is that other than the period in time starting when T3 plunder was increased (maybe what, two months ago, 3 tops) and ending when L4 guilds came out, the guild has always provided the most plunder of any building. That's by far the number one benefit of this build, by a mile, is that it has the highest income from attacking, and plunder from attacking is the best moneymaker in the game (other than working the ally market on the tens-of-billions-of-dollars scale or higher, which will make you even more). The main drawback is that considering how high your total stats are, including spy, which is what determines who you can or can't attack and who can or can't attack you, the actual atk power is really bad. For getting to land completion, the one-forge build is the best way to get from land 10 to lc. But you need to have an OSF available all the time, or be able to find targets you can actually beat.