What's the highest level any of you have got against the Dr. when he pops up?
One stupid thing I see people do is put defences directly next to each other. If they do that, you can fire your ship's cannon at the edge of each (where they join) and it damages both. I can often take out two defensive units at once doing that. It also works if there's a normal building next to a turret/tower, because you take out the defensive item and get extra gunboat points to use however you want.

I get the feeling there's a little bit of a deadzone in the attack and defence balance.I've been playing this a little bit too, tbh no one really attacks me, once a week or something someone tries.
People tend to raid my resource bases more.
I get the feeling there's a little bit of a deadzone in the attack and defence balance.
You can set up a fair amount of protection but you're not at a point where you can upgrade the boats and troops enough to attack a similar level. And because you only win the prize if you get to the HQ you tend to know straight away if you have any chance of getting further than a couple of buildings in to an attack before you'll get wiped out. If your HQ is level 7 and you have 4 boats of troops you don't really have enough welly to attack an island at a similar level.
I'm struggling to get enough stones to do the bigger upgrades at the moment. I managed to scrape enough to get a quarry going but it's slow progress. The AI islands only have a couple of hundred and the other player islands with big reserves are too well defended to beat and steal so it's a bit of a long haul to get up to 5000+ for an HQ upgrade and subsequent quarry upgrade as well.

Yeah I have 5 boats at level 8 and on the next HQ upgrade it'll be 6 boats and I'll just need to get the new one upgraded. I currently attack x3 boats of heavy's and x2 boats of zookas; does the job most of the time.
I can't see myself playing this for as long as CoC. There's a fun element missing.
Also the fact that you can lose so many resources from one raid despite maxxing out your vault is more than just a little annoying... it can be rage inducing!
I've got the same setup but tend to use 2 boats of heavies and 3 of zookas
If the CoC updates have been anything to go by, they seem happy to try and rebalance things after a little while with the updates. I guess some of it looks good on paper when they make it but once they look at the stats of what people have they can shift the damage and health of various components.I can't see myself playing this for as long as CoC. There's a fun element missing.
Also the fact that you can lose so many resources from one raid despite maxxing out your vault is more than just a little annoying... it can be rage inducing!
See, I'm the opposite and actually deleted CoC - Fed up of winning battles on CoC and still losing all of my units, and the loss of resources is even worse on CoC. BB definitely is better for my play style, I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
If the CoC updates have been anything to go by, they seem happy to try and rebalance things after a little while with the updates. I guess some of it looks good on paper when they make it but once they look at the stats of what people have they can shift the damage and health of various components.