Halfer attacker personality

[gwalchmai]

Any thoughts?
I am leaning towards sage but not sure I can accumulate enough sci to make it worthwhile.
Merchant seems like a safe bet too.
Playing in a ghetto that doesnt war much.
I like the combination of a sci bonus and a pop bonus but I've been away for a while and am interested in people's thoughts.
Thanks

[Uhm hoi]

The no hospitals hurts a lot and specialist offense is easy to NS. Imo, there are 3 choices as an attacking halfling to counter the weaknesses: merchant, tactician and cleric, in that order of what I'd deem viable. Merchant to have the resources available to retrain whatever you lose, tactician for clear sight which would add a bit more protection to the offensive specialists and cleric to directly make up for the no hospitals bit.

I favor merchant, since it's also easier for a halfling to be awesome kidnapping and then quickly togging with those extra peasants. Makes it easier to grow into newly conquered land and if you do war, it's somewhat of a counter to people fireballing you.

[Nightmare_]

The no hospitals hurts a lot and specialist offense is easy to NS. Imo, there are 3 choices as an attacking halfling to counter the weaknesses: merchant, tactician and cleric, in that order of what I'd deem viable. Merchant to have the resources available to retrain whatever you lose, tactician for clear sight which would add a bit more protection to the offensive specialists and cleric to directly make up for the no hospitals bit.

I favor merchant, since it's also easier for a halfling to be awesome kidnapping and then quickly togging with those extra peasants. Makes it easier to grow into newly conquered land and if you do war, it's somewhat of a counter to people fireballing you.

Half/merch: plague :(

[gwalchmai]

Thanks for the responses.

[noobium]

Merch if you aren't warring very much.
In war, pick Rogue anyway, get fed thieves, or use thieves oow to steal ****.
If you had a kd strat of Halfling then Cleric works, but you don't do anything that other attackers don't do better. You steal a little better and you get a slight wpa bonus from Fury, but the strong attackers stomp you into the ground.

Sage isn't particularly good in ghettoland. It's harder to acquire the science to make Sage good (and more importantly keep it), and because you don't war much you don't get as much from the books. Better to pick Merch and be a funding asset to your ghetto kingdom - ghettos often have problems with making money, so if you can pool the cash to fund drakes pre-war you should save your ghetto lots of trouble when they do war.

[pathetic sheep]

Halfling units are all cheap. Let them die. Sage should be fine. If you had ToG you would end up spending a lot on books. Out of war you can avoid undead and save mana for blessings.

It helps to have an orc friend send you soldiers.

[Ethan]

Sage + pop bonus is a nice synergy. As per my power rankings, I disagree with noobium's point about halfer not doing anything better than other attackers - you do *attacking* better than other attackers, which is often rather the point. IMO, halfer is beefiest attacker, and can totally play an "orc style" hulk smash strat. Warrior for OME (in war) is a serious contender in some cases, but you don't war as much so meh. Cleric fixes the one big hole, but also a bit meh if not warring - you shouldn't be taking lots of hits all at once anyway, so just retrain. Thus sage would be my pick. (Also I love science.)

[noobium]

Plenty of people have tried to playing Halfling attacker with similar stats, and they invariably fail against better or even mid-tier kingdoms. Orcsmash and Undeadsmash are based on having space-efficient offense and more importantly attacking bonuses, trying to do the same thing with Halfers (hospitals or no) will get crushed by the races that are good for that, and gets crushed by the econ-focused races just like orcs and undeads usually do.

Is it something so horrible that no one should play it? I dunno, I think it can do okay, but they really should be playing to their advantages, that being that their elites can defend, natural TPA being way better, and the ability to feed Halfers (which implies the ability to retain decent defense). Going all specs is a really really bad idea. If I were facing a Halfer core, massacre is so much fun times for negating all of those things, and setting them up to be ns meat.

[Danzig]

Halfer rogue for attacker is the way i would go in a nonwarring kingdom. Its better than merchant for getting gold and of course sage got nerfed. If you go sage you dont get most of your science through wars like most people write. You get your science by learning those with better science. You get more science outof war than in war. In fact war even if winning minium time will give you less science especially mid to late age than just pumping and learning.

[pathetic sheep]

... Orcsmash and Undeadsmash are based on having space-efficient offense and more importantly attacking bonuses, trying to do the same thing with Halfers (hospitals or no) will get crushed by the races that are good for that, and gets crushed by the econ-focused races just like orcs and undeads usually do.

Is it something so horrible that no one should play it? I dunno, I think it can do okay, but they really should be playing to their advantages, that being that their elites can defend, natural TPA being way better, and the ability to feed Halfers (which implies the ability to retain decent defense). Going all specs is a really really bad idea. If I were facing a Halfer core, massacre is so much fun times for negating all of those things, and setting them up to be ns meat.

Going all spec or mostly spec really is not a bad idea. 5/0 at 4.0 networth is quite competitive. Space is important but 10% extra population gives you space. Orc and undead provinces still have thieves, wizards, defense specs, and peasants. Orcs with equal or less than 10 elites per acre are quite common and probably a majority. 10 ogres on horses really is about the same as 13.3 brutes on horses.

Plenty of people have tried to playing Halfling attacker with similar stats, and they invariably fail against better or even mid-tier kingdoms...

Not relevant. Halfling did not have 5/0 offensive specs. The more relevant experience would be when undead had 5/0 specs. It really did not matter how many ghouls you had. The 5/0 skeletons were quite competitive. The exception was undead provinces turtling or with high TPA/WPA.

[noobium]

Yes, it is a bad idea when you realize that halfers with <0.5tpa can be nightstriked quite easily, and that massacre is much good times against a race with poor defense and no hospitals.
The same strategies were effective for shredding Undead, when they couldn't train elites outright. Still are actually, even with full-elite offense. With good enough core tpa the massacre part can be skipped even, but I'm assuming a competent Halfer would make thievery a priority.

Actually, in prior ages Halfer had better attacker stats, since their elite nw was much lower. The result was the same for most kingdoms... the few who make Halfer attacker work were growth kingdoms that could benefit from turtling or cows. The typical warring kingdom wanted to stay away from Halfers because they weren't worth the vulnerability, and because Rogue was nowhere near as good as it is now. That's ancient by now though...

I shouldn't say "invariably" because there were high-tier kingdoms that used halfer... but they were playing with turtles or cows.

For what it's worth, Human used to have the same population bonus and army, and a much better spellbook/supporting bonuses for core provs. If not for the almightiness of ToG, they sucked hard the moment any non-Human kingdom caught up to them, but they were so good at growing early that the top tier loved them. Humans in ghettoland were far less impressive and usually easy to stomp, especially when it was a few humans that didn't know their real strengths and tried to play like orcs.

For Halfling attackers that have additional penalties and no natural ToG, it's tough to make them really competitive; moreso if they are picking the personality that makes Halfer do something worthwhile. One of the benefits of Halfer/Rogue is that, unlike the other viable and worthwhile Rogues, Halflings can actually hope to play a (subpar) attacker, which is useful in some spots... like oop.

[smercjd]

The no hospitals hurts a lot and specialist offense is easy to NS. Imo, there are 3 choices as an attacking halfling to counter the weaknesses: merchant, tactician and cleric, in that order of what I'd deem viable. Merchant to have the resources available to retrain whatever you lose, tactician for clear sight which would add a bit more protection to the offensive specialists and cleric to directly make up for the no hospitals bit.

I favor merchant, since it's also easier for a halfling to be awesome kidnapping and then quickly togging with those extra peasants. Makes it easier to grow into newly conquered land and if you do war, it's somewhat of a counter to people fireballing you.

NS'ing halflings even if they're an attacker is a bit harder than usual

I'd say a halfling attacker is best going cleric. You get your hospitals and everything else you can use buildings to make up for

[StratOcastle]

I'd go cleric myself, but not because I think it's best, just my style. I'd also consider mystic for a few toys. I put war heroes in my Virtual Kingdom for the synergy, but could easily switch those with clerics. I've also considered mixing them. It makes PF a more viable cast and thus securing loss ratios that all clerics relish.

The cleric deal comes down to how you play. I've got a lot of clerical experience with controlling acres(chortles). Since I ran a 50/50 faery sage last age I'd feel completely comfortable with a halfer. And yes I was fighting the orcs and undead offense machines that could multi tap etc. I mean, who the hell else would I be attacking? The other faery attackers? LoL

[Uhm hoi]

After 1 war, I can say I'm extremely pleased with how halfling tactician turned out.

My offense was on par with the orcs in my kingdom. At the start of the war, I suicided my province to bait the other kingdom into chaining me while our t/m's were setting themselves up to become unbreakable. With the land I was able to get, I didnt have to release any elites I sent out and this turned out to be a very robust province after chains with much higher remaining defense than average, even without the hospitals. The combination with orcs free draft is great, made em bounce a few times and added the offense to hit certain targets a few times. With how little buildings a halfling tacticians needs to function, I was able to get more wpa than the average attacker before war and I ended up a fireballing, NSing, inteltaking attack machine throughout the whole war.

I thought halfling attacker would've been less strong in the longer wars due to the lack of hospitals, but with how well they handle and recover from chains and the stronger soldiers and cheap thieves, it wasnt a problem at all in a 5 day war.

[noobium]

Halfling is garbage at attacking unless you play against terrible opponents.