Male, I did notice the same thing with the land trick, but do the math and the elf building has the same number of hits as colony from full. I think the devs just lowered the effect of the land trick for the new buildings.
As A Hansel... Grow! If you decide to stay as a guild hansel, it means one thing. You are too cheap to want to expand. The larger you get, the more you earn per hit, the more people you can hit. The same applies for steal. The larger you get, the more you earn per steal, the more people you can steal, safely Ultimately, you decide the way you would like to play, when it comes to building towers or spies. But I am a firm believer of 1 Attack building and rest spies. Why? Simple. If you maintain 0 gold out, warriors will bang wall. Hybrids should be taken care of by your clan warriors as these pesky fella are the only ones other than equal hansels, who can hit you. Basically if you wanna osw or be a tank, go ahead and build those towers. But I warn you, the only way to earn gold after is swiping for nobs or plain hitting Ebs like a mad dog with a huge sore thumb! You also become less effective if you have less spy attacks. And be less useful to your clan in strips etc, unless you have a huge BFA to boast! For EE wars however, I agree that it is beneficial to have at least 1-2m stat spy defense to make it harder for the enemy to pin you. But by now all pro hansels in EE should know how to war effectively, and limit themselves being Pinned. And the many towers are not necessarily the solution. The many towers are solutions to Warriors. But to be effective, the clan needs a balance of high spy hansels and low spy hansels. (EE pro clans should know what I am talking about, either you hit and scout, or assassinate to victory) To summarize, your plunder will improve as you grow, else why would devs crack their brains to give you guilds, sos, volaries and now the icetree?? Grow Well my Fellow Hansels, and bring Fear to your Opponents! RaDz