Im always able to keep my 5 builders active @ th9.
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I got five builders and don't regret it one bit, think about it. 1 and 2/3 as much building power. It is fairly cheap, considering it is my favourite game and pretty much the only game I play 85% of the time. Games like COD cost more than 20$, and COD doesn't even have half the game time of clash of clans, partly because it gets boring after playing a remake of a game for 5 years but that's drifting off the point.
You can knock off months of staying behind on game time, and still have fun. I found it too easy to use all 3 builders, as really your only going to get one free around every other day or even more, while five can make sure you always have a target to reach. It's not hard to keep all builders occupied at th8, try to make builders free up on different days so you don't get bombarded.