Welcome. Glad you are enjoying Stonehearth!
- Yes, your shepherd will be able to raise all the animals no problem.
- Your soldiers patrol fields and stockpiles. You can use the Patrol Points mod which will let you set up custom patrol points.
- You can find custom builds and put them into your template folder (in the Stonehearth > saved-objects > stonehearth > building_templates folder. You can find some online or here on discourse (I recommend looking up some Michael Handy builds here )
- The issue that some people have is that the Hearthlings now eat 2 times a day, which when you are playing on hardmode and you need to put more hearthlings as soldiers who don’t do anything (apart from giving their lives to save their town) other than patrol and eat twice a day.