Five base-building mistakes that keep costing you runs

Base-building strategy looks forgiving until a raid rolls through your defences. After a lot of lost bases in Ironvale Bastion and its cousins, here are the mistakes I see most often.

One: building outward too fast. A sprawling base with thin walls is worse than a small, dense one. Grow when you can defend what you have, not before.

Two: ignoring terrain. Walls on open ground do nothing; walls that force enemies through a narrow pass do everything. Let the map fight for you.

Three: no resource buffer. If you spend to zero every cycle, you can't react to a bad wave. Keep a cushion.

Four: stacking identical defences. Variety covers more threat types. And five: never rebuilding. The strongest layout you had in hour one is usually wrong by hour five, so don't be afraid to tear it down.