Halfling Rogue T/M

[Saber64]

Since we're nearing the end of the age and i've noticed my Halfling Rogue province has been quite lacking, i was wondering how i could best improve for next age. Mostly on the economy and WPA front. It's been a very long time since i played and i need to update my old strats even more.

This is how my province looks now:

Acres: 1700
Draft: 70%
Honor: Baron
BE: 83.1%
rWPA: 2.13 (to low, needed more alot more pumping)
rTPA: 7.00
rDPA: 79.91

Build strat:
10% Homes
6.5% Farms
10% Banks
20% Forts
10% Guilds
8.5% Towers
20% Thieves Dens
15% Libraries

Science bonuses:
16.2% Alchemy
15.1% Tools
9.6% Housing
106.9% Food
102.4% Thieving
21.9% Channeling

Army:
Deff specs: 1,275 (0.75 specs per acre to kill dragons)
Elites: 21,791 (12.82 per acre)
Thieves: 11.900 (7.00 per acre

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So in short my questions are:

1. What should my goal gains be for all science groups?
2. What should my goal rWPA and rTPA be for a Halfling Rogue
3. What should my build strategy be to get the above mentioned rWPA, rTPA and atleast 75 rDPA?
4. Should i change my draft higher, lower or keep it this way?
5. If i plan to not attack at all or do a minimal attack at the most, would it be better to focus on deff specs instead of elites like i did now?

Please also explain your answers and show calculations on why your changes would be better!
Thanks for your help!

[Jono]

1.) More Homes... Homes = BE + People ... I would take this to 20%
3.) Less Forts... Personally I think 20% is overkill. with a 5/5 leet, which you are spot on in your build of 1 dspa for drakes and all leets from there leaves you amply defended. I think your mistake here is thinking you need to be like a fae and be a completely unbreakable wall. You best defense here is that offense you get from your elite. People avoid you because you can and will easily retal. Your army home already provides plenty more defense then a comparable sized attacker so your defense is only going to be below your faes, but above your attackers. Army home you should likely only be breakable by heavy attackers (or suiciders) in which case the extra forts wouldnt save you anyway.
4.) More Guilds - I have been running 20% most the age and just dropped it to 15 because I managed to prop enough wizzards last war that I can run lower. 10% here is really too low, aim for closer to 3 wpa. you need to be a tough cast or you are going to get fireballed to death.
5.) More Dens - these are your bread and butter 25% should be the minimum, most importantly they save you thieves which keeps you relevant.
6.) I dont even play with libs, your sciences are impressive however I am not convinced having 15% in there is worth it. I know some of the other halfers in my KD have some, but I dont think any are running at 15%. I prioritize Dens over libs, out of war you could maybe drop some dens for schools to cheapen up your sci costs a little. but based on the above you need to free up at least 20% land permanently (for Homes + Guilds) and this would be a good place to start.

Here is what I am running:
Homes 20%
Farms -7%
Banks - 10%
Forts - 13%
Guilds - 15%
Towers - 7%
Dens - 28%

I try to minimize resource creating buildings as you should be able to supplement with thievery (Best example of this is farms, I have pretty crap food sci and run just enough farms as not to lose 10000 bushels an hour, everyone and the brother is sitting on 200K or more of food and one or two ops a week keeps me well fed. That science and land is better used to do dangerous things!).

For your Questions
1.) I dont really have a goal, as much science as I can afford, for groups I prioritize Theivery, Tools, Housing... these are the halfer core IMO. Keeping your BE as high as feasible is important as it affects your Dens/Forts effect and the difference between 95% reduced thief losses and 65% reduced losses can be dramatic. Like you I have nothing in war sci, I have attacked but its not enough to make it a worthwhile investment. when the big three are sufficiently high I put some into channeling, and sometimes Alchemy (but as said before I prefer to just steal gold) and minimal amounts into food to keep my shortage in a manageable region.
2.) 3rWPA and 8+TPA... though I am just north of 9 TPA. Now someone may say that this is too many thieves but I will tell you all day it isnt. As a halfer you dont need much more than 6 really to have decent success on most provs. but if you are opping attackers you need to delete your prov and go fae. Halfers should be opping Faes/Elfs/Any halfer crazy enough to not have 8 tpa. Accordinly you need a relatively high TPA. 90% of the time the first order of business is to AW elfs (or whoever the mystics are), and your lower TPA presents 2 issues. First AW effect is based on number sent, so if you dont have enough thieves to max out the wizzard kills you are leave effect on the table (You get through you just wont kill as many). Secondly you can guarantee that they are going to run high WT's to help protect, and this means you will fail and you will fail often. In a full run its not crazy to lose 1+ TPA so starting at 7 puts you at 6 in a hurry and that gets to be an issue IMO. I keep my Targeted TPA at 9 then whatever I have left goes in Elites up to 70% draft ( I target 68 - 70%) Granted you wont reach 75 DPA with a 9 tpa... but I still think thats way too much defense anyway unless you plan on being more hybrid a/t. (in which case you need to change your build up quite a bit, drop thieves downt to 5 or 6 raw)
3. Covered above
4. I think your draft is easily sufficient, but you need to drop some of them leets.
5. Dont build any more dspecs then you need to, 1 per acre for drakes are a decent idea but other than that and you are hurting your self 2x (less total defense, and less available offense as a random deterrent.)

In short - more thieves, dont let stealth sit at 100 out of war STEAL RESOURCES!!! Pump Wizzies (Prop Elfs in war and watch how fast your WPA jumps) and hope to hell they dont nerf Halfer next age (which they likely will).

[wildred03]

They should make it so night strike kills important troops, not usually just defense specs.

[Bishop]

Thats not how NS works.

[octobrev]

Drop the homes and switch to a faery. You don't have a spellbook.

[Petrified]

Your build should entirely depend on whether you are UB or not.

[citadela01]

going into war my province looks something like

110 dpa
40+ tpa
10+ wpa

similar build to op only less forts/towers/banks to include hosps and have maxed dens. Based on enemy layout I might shift some dpa into tpa and vice versa.

From there on it rly depends if I am ub or not, if I get hit down I'll typically start attacking and heavy ll's to stay afloat and will rotate my build into attacking one.

If I make it into safe zone ill start slowly growing thru ll's and botomfeeding and will skyrocket my economy and tpa via training and props, often to a point I have 10+ raw tpa and can prop enemy rogues. Once I reach that point its one way street for them and they will never manage to retrain tpa enough to provide a threat.

How much wpa to run is a difficult question imo. The way my KD wars I know I will allways have ppl I can fb/ll/nado so I run high wpa. If you cant expect the same I'd go with basic wpa and would dabble more with attacking or start with extreme tpa numbers right from the start.
Its very frustrating when you have high enough wpa to stop your KD mates from MV'ing your prov and low enough for enemy to be able to fb/MS you easily.

@Jono
I am pretty sure dens are capped at 25% for rogues so your overbuilding them does nothing rly other than uses land. There is no way to compensate for lower BE if that is what you are trying with 28% dens.

[Persain]

going into war my province looks something like
110 dpa
40+ tpa
10+ wpa
similar build to op only less forts/towers/banks to include hosps and have maxed den

My kd is similar to yours citadela01....slight build tweaks from the op main difference is lower Libraries, better overall science and honor.

[wildred03]

I mean, Night Strike might kill too little elites. It kills maybe 10-20 elites each time. The other guy can maybe train 50 or more per tick.

This war I'm in where we have more T/M's than the other kingdom, they have multiple Orc provinces with something like 10000 elites for attacking and 88 defensive specs.

I'm wondering how do you beat clerics

[idiocy]

Go superthief instead of T/M. Rogue is at it's best when it can AW Elves and Faeries reliably, and suffer minimal losses. The population, science, and building space spent on magic can be better spent on elites and extra thieves.

Halfling sucks since they got nerfed, but all of the races suck so it's a matter of preference for which suckiness you want to use. Faery is better.

Also note that thievery success is based on networth, not acres, so TPA is not a very useful measurement. You can test this yourself if you know how to get your halfling fat during war. 8-10 raw tpa is pretty good for a starting point, the more honor they get the more raw tpa they can afford.

Your crime science and overall science seems somewhat low. Way too much in alchemy and a little too much in tools. Housing and Crime are by far the most important, and should have at least 3x as much investment as tools, probably 4x. Even for a superthief your channeling science is low, but it is especially low is planning to play a mage role as well.

[Jono]

going into war my province looks something like


@Jono
I am pretty sure dens are capped at 25% for rogues so your overbuilding them does nothing rly other than uses land. There is no way to compensate for lower BE if that is what you are trying with 28% dens.

Ahh Hell you are correct... I just realized my math didnt account for the fact that I was getting double dens as a rogue so I was figuring max at 50%. Thanks.. you just found me 3% ;-)

Nub mistake of the month!http://forums.utopia-game.com/#


I agree that the only real way to play Halfer is as a superthief. Idiocy I am not sure how you feel they were nerfed, if anything they got buffed this age pretty substantially (if played as a super thief any way) with the Fae nerf and the 5/5 leet. I wouldnt plan on being a mage but rather having decent enough wpa to make it not a guaranteed cast. If you get hit a couple times you end up with enough WPA to Land lust some. I am also completely agreed with less alchemy sci, dont make money... steal it. If you are running Forts and max dens though I think you are undervaluing the importance of tools sci. Increasing your BE does big things for total defense and total den effectiveness (since at 50% effective dens you are not truly maxed unless you at 100% BE). I am not saying housing sci is more important but I believe your 3/4 to 1 ratio is too high.

In war I think NS is crap (unless you arent rogue, and if you are halfer and not rogue, please stop now). Propaganda is FAR superiors to NS you will get better conversion than NS kills and way more honor to boot. Prop on a Fae/Elf is usually very lucrative and if you are NS'ing attackers you are probably being wasted as a halfer.

[Saber64]

@Jono

Thanks for the input
However, i do have some questions though. By comparing your strat and mine i get the following difference at my current size.
1352 extra population, meaning 927 more troops, if i would keep the same distribution as now... i would 1.5k less defence due to the loss of forts. However my mTPA would grow from 33.3 mTPA to 36.6 mTPA, so thats a 10% increase. Combined with your suggestion of increasing my TPA by 2. My defence would drop another 30k. While my mTPA would be 47.1 mTPA. Which would be an increase of about lets say 45% in TPA.

However, as it is now... my province can already be broken by heavy attackers of the same size. Mostly undead or orc. Most provinces dont get scared because someone has high offence, especially not a halfer with high offence cause i need to send alot of defence with it to be successful on attacks. Allowing me to be creamed by smaller provinces.

I wanted my WPA higher this age, but due to RL problems (internet got screwed up) i was only able to login for about 30 seconds in an entire week. I want to aim for 4 WPA to do more FB and stuff like that and help my KD out with doing MV's.

On the science side... i would need about 1,7 times the amount of books i have now to gain the same effect in science, so in my opinion thats worth it. My current ratio is based on graphs i made to compare gain per book per acre and the optima where around what i have now (except for channeling ofcourse... still need to pump that)



@citedela01 & @Persain

Could you show me more about your build strategy, science and army compilation? To compare and see what change would help my province to improve?


@idiocy

At what NWA would you call a halfer fat? I have the highest NWA of my KD as is.
At my current science level i have 700 BPA with my crime being triple the amount of my alchemy. As mentioned before, my current goals look like being optimum amounts when used with libraries. What BPA per category of science would you go for?

[idiocy]

@jono: I played Halfer last age (and am not playing this age). 5-points of offense on their elite isn't that good given that they took a hit to defensive nw efficiency and a gains penalty, meaning that they're not significantly better as attackers than last age. The poor nw-efficiency on their elites also nerfs their thievery, because thief ops are based on thieves per networth rather than acres as is assumed.

@saber64: I'm defining "fat" as a halfling that gains land or loses nw during war. It often happened during war that I would go from 200ish nw/a to 120, due to being able to make lots of safe landgrabs and losing elites heavily during those attacks. I noticed that when I retrained thieves during war, 5 tpa was getting through a lot more than the 8-9 tpa I started with, and other factors were roughly the same in all of these cases except possibly the presence of clear sight. The best pre-war approach is to get as pumped as possible, but I'm just saying that tpa is not as relevant as thieves per nw due to how screwy the game mechanics are.

@science: Tools science is good, but housing gives indirect BE bonuses, and a much better income bonus, making it a higher priority. The exact ratio depends on when in the age among other things... 4:1 housing:tools works well in the early age, 2:1 or even 1:1 works by mid-late age. It is vital to have a strong economic base in the early age, when gold stockpiles are harder to find, and it is important to emphasize science that improves your success rate most by mid-age in order to steal reliably from Faeries and Humans, which would prioritize housing for the extra tpa. It also depends on what level the kingdom is playing at, and the kingdom goals, as tools is a lot more valuable for warring kingdoms than it is for growth kingdoms.
Overall, 1000-1200bpa is an okay mark to reach for late-age for a non-sage.
On librarires - they're useful for some things, but they rely on high overall science, and especially an emphasis on sciences like gains or channeling that have no direct equivalent building type. Something like 1% for every 120bpa as non-sage is usually enough, except for mage provinces.

[mastakizzor]

as a reply to the OP, your build and intention as a T/M and not a superthief is quite understandable... so you may go for 4rwpa, no prob.. but your library allocation is too much.. many maths have been done on science & library and me personally took and use this formula, only at 500BPA = 5% Lib, every 100BPA increase after this point add another 1% to Library.. so there is no point running any library when you're below 500BPA, and according to this formula, you should have 7% Library for 700BPA.. convert the rest into Homes.. and then only your build looks perfect.. at least for me.. =D