When to Upgrade your Town Hall

Your town hall is awesome, the bigger it gets, the more fun the game gets.  But when should you upgrade it?  Here is a couple of things you want to consider before upgrading.  Read this next picture, which is a screen shot from clashofclans.wikia.com:

The way this works, is this... if you are town hall 7 and you attack someone who is town hall 7, you get 100% of the loot.  If you attack someone who is town hall 8, you also get 100% of the available loot.  If you attack someone who is town hall 6 you get 90% of the loot, town hall 5 you get 50%, etc.  

Each town hall upgrade is a relatively longer time than most of the upgrades for your buildings.  Before you upgrade you want to be sure that all your defensive buildings are upgraded.  Remember, when you upgrade your town hall, really big enemies will be able to get more loot out of you.  Don't let them get away easy.  Upgrade your defense before your town hall.  This means you need your cannons upgraded, your archers towers, mortars, air defense, etc, etc.

It's a good idea to upgrade all other buildings too before upgrading your town hall, but it is imperative to upgrade defensive buildings.  My personal upgrade strategy is to upgrade everything except walls and  a couple other buildings.  I will start my town hall upgrade, and start enough upgrades to keep all my builders busy except one.  The unoccupied builder I will use to finalize the last few walls.  Then the other builders will finish their upgrades right before the town hall is done.  Even if I don't finish my walls before the town hall is done, that's okay, because my defense is ready to destroy the enemy!