Dude, i used halbs myself quite alot back in my noob days.
Everytime I used Russia I boomed, got the curch inf training speed upgrade+the 2 cards for lowering the training time for inf and massed nothing but halbs+ strelets + some HC and falcs/culvs.
I used halbs as ports quite often aswell and halbs were the unit I used most in my stats on agecomm.
LOL
I used to do a port FF with 3 organs by shipment, cassa shipments+ massed halbs...omg.
This was till I got to a better lvl and noticed that my halbs were VERY expensive and that they just got hit n run to death by any ranged unit.
I found out that they simply SUCKED for their cost and that they are just useless vs anything but melee cav and buildings but no one uses melee cav so what do u need them for?
Do u really wanna pay that much for a sieging only unit that dies to most other units?
U cud aswell use ruyters as dutch, cos even they are better than halbs.
And they have 2x vs canons + they have range.
Halbs are just an ineffectif unit.
Yes u can come and say they were cheap for dutch but u cud aswell mass canons+ skirms+ ruyters and be WAY more succesful.
RG hlabs might be useful in nr (i never play nr so i dont really know) cos there u got enuff time and res to upgrade them to guard status (1000W/G wtf).
Its just terrible if u see goons hit and run ur expensive halbs to death. halbs just cant catch goons.
And as dutch pikes ARE better than halbs unless u let them fight each other 1v1 cos pikes are fast so they can cath ranged cav unless halbs.
And u r wrong if u say that u dont use ur gold cos it wud be much better used if u made canons instead.(or skirms/ruyters)