Halfling rogue, homes vs. banks

[spliffst4r]

Hi,
I was planning on getting no banks for the next war, instead I want to get:
29 homes
6.5 farms
15 guilds
15 towers
20 thieves den
10 forts
4.5 libs

I'm running pretty high tpa and wpa so I feel like homes will help my BE, also in war I send many specs on dragon so with homes I can repopulate faster and get good money with peasants.

How would you calculate if this build is better than the same one but with 10% banks ?

[Persain]

I have no clue on your science so i wont comment on the need for more or less libraries (hoping u have about 600+ bpa). The only change i'd make is guilds and towers down to 10% each, up forts to 20%. I'd start war with a stockpile of runes. Worse comes to worse you get them all LS'ed and you need steal from a mystic.

If you think your goning to need more towers than 10% you can always rebuild acres during war or you can do something like a full prop run followed by some LLing and add the LL'ed acres to your towers.

[spliffst4r]

I have 555 bpa atm. And thank you for your advice I will drop my guild and tower count, you think 10 more in fort would be better than 10 banks? I'm already at 80 dpa with 10% forts.

[Persain]

Depends on the war target and the exact situation at hand. A t/m's build is going to vary a lot depending on the targets your against, however having 20% forts means your a bit safer than if you try to start with more econ. Remember your your kd's banky person whose hopefully safe from ops & hits during most of war, its better to start safe and burn gold during war rebuilding than it is to get chained at wars start. If you dont want to rebuild you have the option to send more at a dragon, maybe attack/grow and just not build forts (if you can do it safely) or even just release into peasants or sold aid (dont recommend releasing though).


For an extreme example of this in action a few ages ago i ran an elf merchant i'd "start" war with 1 peasent/acre, 4 tpa & CS & WT, 7 wpa, 5 leet/acre and as much dpa as i could muster on a build of 35% homes, 5% farms, 5% towers, 20% forts, 30% WT, 5% guilds. I'd 100 % rely on my kd & theives for runes/gold (typically geting to a negative TB if we didnt find war). Then when "war" started i'd burn all my runes (via aid or steal) on LLing use the incoming land to build banks and then start hitting for land as soon as i had targets available. One war i managed to grow enough and build enough banks that i had an income of over 400k and even with draft all the way up & pat cast could spit out 350k gc a tick in aid on 3500 acres....Not a strategy i recommend but its the concept of a good t/m....

edit
and for what its worth the halfers in my kd run something like
15 homes
10 farms
15 guilds
10 towers
20 thieves den
20 forts
10 banks
But the also serve a slightly different function than how you describe yourself and they waste stealth by kidnapping to replace loss pop due to dragon killing if they need to.

[Petrified]

you basically don't need guilds as halfer in war. I'd do 6% or so. No more than 10% towers as Persain said. High homes/libs is very good combined with 8-10 raw tpa, but you have to be UB to run that. That build won't end well if they start hitting you with orcs/UDs. If you can't be UB then you should look at hospitals and GS.

[Shifty11]

I wouldn't go bank-less.

Just because you don't NEES homes for people to have a place to live, doesn't mean you shouldn't use them. Same with banks, just because you will generate income without them, doesnt mean you shouldn't use them.

[Talmar]

First thing you need to remember: You are a THIEF!! You can steal Gold, Runes, Food! If you are active, then you can run with a 5% towers & farms, and steal what you need. Always go with homes, and forget the banks. I used to run a super-thief prov eons ago, and I had no banks, no farms, no towers. I stole anything I needed. I also was running 50% homes, and a raw TPA around 15. First thing I did at the start of a war was to go in and steal all the other sides runes, to take out their mages. Worked well, but with a strat like that, you had to be super-active. I just came back to the game, and I am seeing a lot of house-less build strats. That's a bad thing. Homes are needed to keep your BE up and also to increase your troop size. Having all those buildings with a BE of 50 is worthless. Just my two cents from a really old player.

[Pak]

I had no banks, no farms, no towers. I stole anything I needed

If you are in a decent KD and fairly orginized it dont recommend this. Your Stealth is precious and it should NOT be wasted for just feeding yourself in war. Your KD probably want you to use your stealth else where.

[madi]

a good rogue rarely uses stealth to steal resources.. there stealth is 2 valuable in war to be using on stealing for self purposes.. (stealing resources is a relativity easy op) but yes running homes is a must, i think 50% is overkill can still have good be and put build into more important things..

[peteyb22]

The only thing you should steal during war is runes. (Gold on a very rare basis for dragon emergencies.)

Sending 1 op and getting enough runes for 20 or so magic ops is worth it.

As for your build, I'd lower towers (cuz of what I just said) to about 5%. I'd build some banks too. I'd go something like this:

20 Homes
10 Farms
10 Banks
15 Forts
10 Guilds
05 Towers
20 Dens
10 Libs

If you don't have the science to run that many libraries then put that 10 somewhere else. You should have much more than 80 dpa.

[Talmar]

I didn't say that I went resource hunting DURING a war. You grab all you need the day before. If you have good targets, you can usually get all you need in 1 op. I still see no reason to run banks on a thief.