I have been using my own method of farming but suffered serious loss of troops. With this guide, simply add 1 ballista to the wave reduced my loss greatly. Also, i used the conquered and release method. So to greatly reduced my loss, here was what I sent - 1worker, 1000warriors, 1scouts, 1pike, 1sword, 25k-30k archers, 1cav, 1phracts, and 1 ballista.

Here are my results:

lvl10 forest: 14 honors, 12 courages, 2 lions, 3 wisdom, 1 freedom, 1 justice, and 1 national (all within 10 hours period - about 400 hits) -- 8.5% drop rates ~~ I did this yesterday

lvl10 flat: 3 roses, 2 wisdom (2 hours period - about 40 hits) - 12.5% droprates ~~ 2 weeks ago

lvl10 hill: 3 lions (2 hours period - about 40 hits) - 7.5% droprates ~~ today

To sum it up the guide works and it totally reduced my troop loss to about 400-1000 archers per hit unlike before 3-5k archers. As far as I can tell hitting low lvl valleys yield little to medals so no point in wasting your time on that.

Thank you OP for the tips on using ballista. You rock