Smokey zooka

Smokey Zooka is bar none the most powerful basic attack strategy in the game. Zookas do, by far, the most damage per second of any troop type in the game. However, they are also a very fragile troop to defenses that do splash damage. It is not a coincidence that the defenses that do splash damage have the longest ranges in the game making it very difficult to find a path through an enemy base that is not protected from pure zooka attacks. For this reason we use smoke tactics to get the zookas to the HQ safely so that they can destroy it.

### Controlling Zookas

Zookas could be twice as powerful as they are and be useless as a single troop type if it was not possible to get keep them under the smoke. Fortunately, it is just barely possible to do this. That said, it takes precise control and knowledge of a few tricks to effectively control zookas.

#### Gathering your Troops

The first thing that you have to do with your zookas is get them into a group that is small enough to fit under one smoke. If you have played warriors or watched many warrior attacks this will be a familiar concept. However, the technique is somewhat different. In both cases you will use a defensive building as a place to gather. The primary difference is where you flare and smoke. With warriors you flare and smoke around the building. If you did this with zookas the smoke would not cover the zookas, they would simply destroy the building and scatter. For zookas you flare and smoke right next to the defense. Your flare must be directly in the middle of the smoke or you will not get all of your zookas in one smoke. The flare also has to be close enough to the defense that the zookas do not need to move in order to attack the defense. If this is not the case the zookas that our of of range will leave the smoke looking for something to attack.

#### The Zooka Walk

The first thing to note about the zooka walk is that they are slow.  Unlike warriors you cannot throw multiple smokes in advance.  One of the most common beginner mistakes with smokey zooka is attempting to throw smoke to cover a sizeways landing all at once.  It is generally only ok to throw one smoke in advance of where the zookas are even with maxed out smoke.  Second, like warriors, when you send zookas through obstructions you need to make sure that they do not split into three lines.  So look out for buildings that are offset and try as much as possible to travel vertically.

### Basic Attack

To smokey zooka you use smoke to get them to the HQ. Once there you put a flare on the HQ and shock your critters on the splash damage defenses in range of you. The smoky zooka attack has 4 components, the landing, the march, the setup, and the shocking.

#### The Landing

The landing is all about preparing your troops to fit inside a single smoke. The first goal of your landing should be to get all of the zookas together. The way that we do this is to throw a flare to the bottom right or bottom left corner of the landing area. The we deploy the zooka filled landing craft one at a time, trying to time it so that the first zooka from the second lander is getting of its lander right as the first zooka from the first lander passes. It is important to flare as far back and to the side in the landing area as possible. You want to force the zooka up against the back edge of the boundary because this forces them into a tighter formation. Similarly, if you are able to bend the zookas around the corner of landing area you can get the even tighter.

#### Going to the HQ

The March begins when you throw a flare. It is best to avoid buildings and trees when possible on the march as these will often times split your zookas into more than one line. It is fairly easy to hide the zookas under the smoke when they are in two lines, but when they get split into 3 lines you will normally lose some. With zookas you will need the smoke a little closer together than you do with warriors. Zookas are both slower and less durable than warriors. They are vastly more likely to get killed from being out of the smoke for even a second.

#### Positioning for Attack

In this stage you are roughly where you want to be, but since you cannot allow the zookas out of the smoke on the march often times you are not in quite the right spot. With warriors if you were smoking to the HQ and the last smoke did not quite get there you would just leave a little gap and no big deal. If you try this with zookas then half of them just died. So, here you normally place one more smoke and put a flare on the HQ.

#### Shocking

Normally you only need 10 seconds to kill the HQ with a full complement of zookas, so that is what we aim to give by shocking the defenses in range. Pick the things to shock that do splash damage and are in range. Often times rocket launchers are far away from the other things you want to shock and still in range. In these cases the thing to do is throw critters in between your zookas and the rocket launchers. If you can throw the critters where you are going to shock so that only the rocket launchers will damage them.

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