Should "how do I attack this base?" questions be considered off-topic?

Question

Certain types of games, such as Clash of Clans, seem to attract quite a few questions asking how to attack a specific player's base. These questions are usually titled "How do I attack this base?" (or something very similar), and consist of a screenshot of the base in question, followed by a description of the resources available to carry out the attack.

Should these sorts of questions be considered off-topic?

(Note: I have conflicting opinions myself on this, so I will post both as separate answers as community wikis to be voted on, please also feel free to expand upon either of them)

Answer 1

Yes, this type of question should be considered off-topic.

Clash of Clans evolves over time, and it makes its money doing so. Any question that targets a specific kind of base is going to be quickly outdated as base layouts and strategies change. Hell in my 6 month hiatus, there's been enough information to where I'd no longer be comfortable answering CoC questions just yet.

I believe that more generalized questions should remain on-topic. For example:

• "How do I best deal with Clan Castle troops?"
• "How do I most effectively farm gold?"
• "What type of attacks should I prepare for when creating a TH8 base layout?"

These kind of questions allows us to provide specific information that applies to a lot of people.

• "How should I attack this specific base?"

This kind of question applies only to the original poster. What limited people others may be able to get would be solely focused on how high of quality the answer may be. Everything in the answer will be based off of that one specific base being attacked, using a specific level of troops and troop capacity.

• "How should I be best prepared attacking TH8 bases in War?"

This question may abstract from the specific details enough to be useful to others who come across the question. If we focus on overall strategies to consider to best prepare someone for attacking a TH8, then there's a lot of information that can help people help themselves.

It's not enough to tell someone "That's a base designed to defeat hogs, those troops are dangerous, so do X, Y, and Z." Sure it may help one person out, but they also might fudge it up and lose anyways. Boom, another useless question that benefits literally nobody.

However we could say "TH8 provides access to these new troops once you upgrade your barracks..... there are base design considerations that could either weaken a base to certain troops or strengthen the defenses to counter specific strategies". That would provide enough useful information for anybody to learn from.

Answer 2

Yes, this type of question should be considered off-topic.

These questions are far too specific to that particular player to be of general use to a wider audience.

Players change their base layouts on a regular basis as they progress through these sorts of games, so shortly after the question is posted it may become completely meaningless because that player's base has changed.

Not only that, but the available combat resources will vary widely from player to player, so while any advice given may be transiently applicable to the author, it may be completely wrong for someone else facing a similar setup.

They may also attract opinionated answers - each individual player will likely have their own theory on how any particular base should be attacked, and for each question there could be a huge number of viable strategies.

As such, they should be considered off-topic.

Answer 3

No, this type of question should remain on-topic.

Rather than decreeing that these questions should be considered off-topic, instead we should create a canonical high-level "What should I consider when deciding how to attack enemy bases?" question for that game and close the base-specific questions as duplicates of the new canonical question. The old base-specific questions can then serve as pointers to the canonical question, and may reduce the number of these questions that get asked in the first place.

This would need to be done for each individual game where there are similar questions floating around, or once a few of them have been asked if no canonical question already exists.