Rush or Max: which gets you there sooner?

The question and the three roads

A village at Town Hall N can send the Town Hall up as soon as the game lets it, or finish the hall first. Strategic rush (I write Rush) does what the game demands before the next Town Hall, fills waiting builders with the most useful steps, and stands on the new hall. Max builds every building, hero, troop, spell, siege machine and pet of the hall first, and the Town Hall last.

Max has a second reading: finish the builders' and heroes' work, send the Town Hall up, and let the laboratory carry on beside it. I call that builders first. So there are three roads, each simulated until the next hall is completely built: Rush then Max, builders first then Max, and Max as the app plans it. The Plan tab's "Plan up to" setting is the Rush's last hall, here always the next one.

The villages stand at Town Hall 11 to 15, each at the start of the hall (everything of the hall before it maxed) and half-way through it. For half-way I finished random buildings, heroes and troops, 4 villages per hall, until 51% of the hall's builder work and research was done. No strategy chose them. All have five builders who sleep from 23:00 to 07:00.

How soon the next Town Hall stands

The rush's day is the game's demands plus the Town Hall's own length. As the game files and the app's data have it, the plots your current hall has opened and you have not placed yet must be placed and the Hero Hall raised first (at higher halls a few specific upgrades too), then the Town Hall itself. The Town Hall's own 6 to 9 days are game data; the 1 to 7 days before it come from the planner. At Town Hall 14 it starts on day 1 and takes 8 days. Max's day is long because it waits for the laboratory too: its Town Hall starts on the day the last research of the hall ends (day 186.5 at Town Hall 14).

Half-way through the hall the rush hardly changes, while Max's day roughly halves. At Town Hall 15 the rush is 145 days sooner than Max instead of 282.5.

What the rush leaves behind

On the day the rush's Town Hall stands, 82% to 93% of the old hall's builder work is still to do in the villages at the start of the hall, and 68% to 85% in the half-way ones. Max has done almost as little by then. What differs is what each chose. Town Hall 14, start of the hall, by area:

In all, the rush leaves 482 of 519 builder-days (93%) across 119 buildings and heroes, against 474 for Max. It built army buildings, which its weights favour, and left every defence, resource building, trap and hero level of the old hall.

The cost is how long they stay undone. After the rush the planner carries on with Max on the new hall. Max's weights rank heroes, troops and army buildings above defences, resource buildings and traps, and the new hall has fresh levels of those to do first. That is my reading of why the old hall's leftovers wait; I did not test it.

So after a rush at Town Hall 14 the old defences are finished 110 days later than under Max, and the traps 131 days later. The heroes are not delayed. That is the real price: a base that stands on the new hall with the old hall's defences for a few more months. I did not measure what that does to your attacks or to what an opponent sees.

The whole road is not longer

Across all 25 villages the rush road finishes 13.5 to 76.3 days before Max's, 23.0 on average, and the laboratory ends last on all three roads in every one of them. The builders-first road finishes within 4 days of the rush road in 24 of the 25. The exception, a half-way Town Hall 12 village, was 20 days behind; I did not trace why. The rush does not do less work: all three roads hold the same list of steps and the same builder-hours in all 25 villages. The difference is idle time, and it falls on the laboratory, which takes about twice as long as the builders' work divided over five builders.

Builders first is not a button in ClashClock. Max, as the app plans it, puts the Town Hall last, after the laboratory ("walls and the Town Hall last" is the line under the Max button). I made this road in the simulation by running Max until the builders and heroes were done, then Strategic rush for the Town Hall, then Max again. In the app that means switching strategy at that point, which I did not test.

Under Max the lab finishes the old hall's research and then stands still while the Town Hall goes up and the buildings that unlock the new levels are raised: 14 to 23 days, at least the Town Hall upgrade plus the Laboratory's own upgrade (10 to 18 days together). The other four builders have nothing to do during the Town Hall upgrade. A rush or a builders-first player never stops the lab for more than 0.3 days. That is nearly all of the whole-road gap above: the lab's longest stop under Max is 14.0, 18.0, 14.5, 23.0 and 18.0 days for the five villages, and the rush road is shorter by 14.0, 17.5, 14.5, 24.5 and 18.0. The planner assumes research continues while the Laboratory building is being upgraded; How ClashClock works says which of its rules are copied from the game and which are assumptions.

That the lab sets the pace also means a sixth builder moves little. At Town Hall 14 with six builders, builders first stands 17.5 days sooner (95.0 days instead of 112.5), but the day everything of Town Hall 15 is built moves by one day under Max (484.0 to 483.0) and not at all under a rush (459.5). The post on how long each Town Hall takes to max reaches the same conclusion from the game data alone.

What this means for your village

• At Town Halls 11 to 15 a rush gets you onto the next Town Hall in 9 to 16 days if the gold is there, not about 100 to 300, and in this model the road to being fully built on that hall is not longer for it.
• If you mean to max the hall first, the planner's numbers favour not waiting for the laboratory with the Town Hall: send it up when the builders and heroes are done, with the lab still running. In the five villages at the start of a hall that was worth 14 to 23 days. The Max button does not do this by itself.
• The real cost of a rush is when the old defences, traps and resource buildings are finished: about 110 to 131 days later at Town Hall 14. Heroes were not delayed.
• Builders are not the limit on any of these roads, the laboratory is. Keeping it busy moved the finish date by 14 to 24.5 days; at Town Hall 14 a sixth builder moved it by one day.

Method and limits

These are 25 simulated villages, not yours. They compare the planner's three roads; they do not say which one your account should take.

• Villages: a Town Hall just reached with everything of the hall before it maxed, or the same with 51% of the hall's work done in random buildings, heroes and troops. Five builders, sleep 23:00 to 07:00, start on Monday 12 October 2026 at 07:00. No helpers, Gold Pass, potions, events or farming. Walls take no time.
• Resources never stop a start. The Town Hall upgrade costs a great deal and the rush needs it sooner than Max does, so the real date can be later, for the rush more than for Max.
• Each road is one continuous run: a later part starts from the village the earlier part leaves on the day it ends. All three end with nothing left to upgrade and match to the builder-hour.
• Town Hall 16 to 17 is left out. Its merges consume buildings (Archer Towers and Cannons among them), and the Max road holds 21 steps for a ninth Archer Tower that the rush road never builds, so the roads are no longer the same work. I did not simulate 17 to 18.
• The planner is greedy: each time a builder frees up it picks the best-looking step and never goes back (see How ClashClock works). Builders first is one hand-built order of this planner, so these are results for this planner, not for the best possible plan, and a better order may exist.
• Without a Lab Assistant, potions or the Gold Pass research boost the lab is the longest road; with them its lead shrinks. "Left behind" is upgrade time still to be worked, not how strong the base is.
• Offline hours barely matter here. At Town Hall 14 the rush road finished 24.2 to 24.5 days before Max's with always awake, 8 hours of sleep, sleep plus a job, and four check-ins a day.