New-ish halfling player: warrior or shepard viable?

[Ban]

Hi there! I'm not *completely* new to Utopia, but am have not touched the game for long enough that I'm inclined to ask for advise. I'm looking to player a thief type province and like halflings, but I'm also trying to break away from the mold of super thief/rouge personality halfling (which apparently isn't that effective a strat anyway).

So anyway, I've played with the halfling rouge before, and I'm looking to play a different combination with the halfling. The two personalities which catch my eye are warrior and shepherd.

Warrior would be for an A/T. Come on, surely halflings are not ONLY good for super thieves with those $500 elites and the quick feet spell! Since I plan to use my elites to attack AS WELL as defend, warrior would cuts my losses (no hospitals) and reduces attack time (so I can send out those elites and hopes they come back quickly). How viable is a halfling warrior?

Shepherd would be for an "economy" build. I can probably skip on farms altogether using shepherd (I've played 0% farms before quite well as a super thief since food stealing is very efficient in this game) which will increase the number of other buildings I can use. If I'm having trouble finding good attack targets, I can fall back on exploration. Lower building costs also indirectly help me build more of my inexpensive troops - heck, I'll hardly ever need to steal money! How viable is a halfling shepherd?

[Nics]

If I'd played halfling this age, I'd have tried cleric. You could also try playing human, which can make good a good a/t.

[bugulu]

I am playing as Halfling Rogue a/T at the moment but would I have known how our wars played out this age, I would have picked Warrior or Cleric.

Halflings biggest weakness are their troop losses, not having access to hospitals is a major pain in the butt and Warrior/Cleric counters that weakness.
Warriors are the more offensive type with increased losses to the enemies while also reducing your own and with increased attack times and a built in ambush protection.
Clerics will help maintain your army by reducing your losses by half (while also bringing the dead back to life in form of soldiers) and also granting you an extra general for 3% extra OME and ability to fivetap someone.

[E_Boko]

yea halfers cant use hospitals so you would have to go warr but more likely cleric. cleric is very powerful this age and very useful for the war mongers. imo halfers should not be hitting trice everyday anyway so with QF and with a few rax you can make 2 unis every day of war no problem and the cleric will definetly protect your troops.

[Pestermenot]

I agree, scrap warr/shep and go cleric

[Palem]

I'm not sure who told you that Halfer/Rogue isn't an effective strat, but they were lying. Halfer/Rogue (actually, just the rogue part) is incredibly OP lol

[koti00]

Halfer / Merchant or anything else /Merchant.So late in the game try Undead imo. Good luck starting playing again;)

[goodz]

warrior is fine the reduced losses is nice on halfer, but your already pretty quick due to the quick feet spell. you could get attack times near 8 with QF/warrior/20% rax/war

i would recommend as others have said cleric/rogue

rogue is badass

[Ban]

Palem:

I'm not sure who told you that Halfer/Rogue isn't an effective strat, but they were lying. Halfer/Rogue (actually, just the rogue part) is incredibly OP lol

More specifically, I'm aware that some may consider super thiefs not very useful to the kingdom. It's even in the wiki:

Warning

It is worth mentioning that both the supermage and superthief are generally considered to be poor choices. While their respective talents are often ummatched, many players and kingdoms believe that to focus on only one discipline of the three is, for lack of a better word; lazy. While attempting to play all three styles is generally not recommended unless the player is very confident in his or her abilities, simply playing one style is often inefficient. As an example, even as traditionally "pure" a thief race as Gnome has qualities that makes it an worthwhile choice for attacking. Pure attacker is not generally seen as a problem, but it is often possible to dabble in the arcane or the underground while retaining an impressive army.

Then again, it seems that without using the cleric personality, the losses this age for halflings are pretty massive so going A/T isn't really viable as a halfling rouge. So it seems that their are really only two really viable halfling builds this age (which is nearly ending, lol):

1. halfling/cleric for A/T style play
or
2. halfling/rouge for superthief style play.

Am I mistaken?

Thanks for the responses everyone!

[Palar]

Ha/Ro for a/T, Ha/Cl for A/t. The super thief referred to on wiki is pretty much full def and only doing thief ops.

[Bishop]

ha/ro can be a pure thief, but most people will also use it to attack and the suggestions here will be with a mind to attacking.

[Ban]

It seems like ha/ro is strong, but suffers from very heavy losses when attacking. Low attack 6/5 elites and no hospitals doesn't sound too good a combination to me. If only T/M combinations were viable, lol!

Wow... this is harder than I thought. I've almost almost almost settled on making a halfling/cleric, but I can't really bring myself to do it. It's been so long since I've played that I've forgotten how to manage... everything. I was so daunted with the task of managing all the various aspects that I deleted my province within a minute of making it.

Methinks this age will be over by the time the nerve to get going, lol!

[Bishop]

You dont compare a ha/ro with a pure attacker though. They have the advantage of being able to NS their target down so they can easily break - their elite may look weak on offense but you cant ignore their huge thievery bonuses.

[Palem]

The losses are manageable. The low attack numbers are balanced by the pop bonus and science. As a rogue your thief losses are negligible at best. You lose more thieves when you succeed than when you fail (provided you've built up enough TDs). You'll save LOADS of money on not having to retrain so many thieves and that money goes towards retraining your military losses.

It's very doable and very good.

Also, even if you can't come up with a "good" decision before the age ends, I suggest creating a prov and getting yourself used to managing a prov for next age.