New Defenses: After upgrading to Town Hall 8, you can buy some new defensive buildings (Archer Tower, Wizard Tower, Mortar, Tesla, Air Defense,). Don’t leave them at level 1, keep upgrading them to at least level 5 as they will increase the overall strength of your base in. Defenses are the focus of Town Hall Level 8 though, with a large amount of building and troop upgrades, as well as additional defensive buildings. This upgrade also gives you access to another Dark Elixir Drill and Dark Barracks, so that you can begin to start producing more Dark Elixir Troops.
I have designed a new base for my TH8! It can serve as either a farming layout, or a TH protected layout. Whichever you prefer.Above is the farming layout, and the town hall is clear off to the left, so you can't see it. But while my town hall was out, I lost very little loot from larger level attacks.
Best Town Hall 8 Defense
Above is my current town hall protected layout. As you can see, it is the same as my farming layout, but with the town hall in the middle, my dark elixer storage on the top left, and the builder on the bottom right. I have found this to be very effective, and nobody attacks me unless there is 250-300k of loot available for them. It's just too big. I also haven't been 3-starred in over 2 weeks. The closest was about 70%, and they only got 3/4 of my loot.
Above is how I laid it out. During the design process, I stuck my town hall in the middle, then laid out the mortar, air defense, and wizard towers around the town hall in the orange circle. They are in order too, to make for maximum coverage. After laying down those 9 buildings, I placed my cannons and archer towers down in the best pentagons I could muster! I tucked everything in close, placed my storages in seperate wall enclosures, and made some booby traps for giants, and healers. This is the strongest base I have made to date. Unfortunately, no one attacks me, unless they are out for blood. So this base only gets attacked by the strongest of the strong. Imagine maxed troops, and high level spells. Yes, when they attack, the ultra high level players usually get about 50%, and thus win the battle. So I lose frequently, but it is worth it, because they only attack about once per day to once every other day. Strong base=less defenses. It's nice!