Stronger than humans

>Why haven't hobgoblins conquered your world yet?
they can't reproduce

It's cause their gods suck ass and they have no idea how to into civ/agriculture. They need to raid for all their food. If you think they'll try to set up some kind of feudalism, they'll probably lose to human armies with heroes and supply lines. Even if they did secure a position as ruling class, their dickass goblinoid underlings would fuckup any country they ruled to the point of mass starvation and rebellion against these manlets.
Even Rome had farmers, man.

Isn’t the whole point of Hobgoblins that they’re dangerous because they’re intelligent enough to be organized and use effective tactics
Pretty sure they would at least understand farming or use slaves to do it at least

They're doing pretty well in my world, have their own nation instead of living on the fringes of human ones like in most settings. They've previously been kept from conquering other major nations because of such nations' magical superiority, but now that the mages and most other humans have wiped each other out in an apocalyptic war they might make a grab at it.

Because they take shit seriously. Even a totalitarian human empire will overlook some of their top brass indulging in fantasy opium habits, museum thefts and the occasional rape dungeon.

Hobgoblins are serious serious war war war. Sure, they'll let you stay as a lord as long as you kill all the non-Maglubiyet worshippers and give them what they want, but they're still going to crack down on you for wasting food or wasting resources that can be going to the legion's war effort. They're uptight all the way up from the bottom to the top, and you're never going to reach the top of a hobgoblin horde unless you're just as uptight as they are.

So the upright people in high places will already be fighting against hobgoblins, and the corrupt will either flee or work to defeat the hobgoblins, because they know they're not going to have their orgies and rape dungeons with a hobgoblin in charge.

tl;dr they're too draconic for most good people and too uptight for most bad people.

In my setting, hobgoblin is a blanket term for creatures contracted by the goblin princes, so it's like asking why people who owe banks money haven't conquered the world.

Because humans are eternally set as the youngest, most up and coming, and most populous race that control most of the world, and only a race similar to humans like elves are allowed to dominate be cause they are pretty and relatable..

They're not as populous as humans, and they're intrinsically tied to goblinkind, so they're very shitty with bad ideas.

Some are still bound to the elvish houses they were made for.

Orginization is a pain. Hobs are actually good leadership... but they aren't as strong as bugbears. Goblins have a higher reproduction rate, and selection preassures mean they usually have clever leaders. While all three races are bound together, ment to work in harmony, getting them together under a hobgoblin is a raging pain. Honestly that is why the general stratagy is to get a dragon or demon to be "leader." The hobs still have general command, but have a power to call back to for athority.

>Pretty sure they would at least understand farming or use slaves to do it at least
I like the idea of hobgoblins not giving a fuck about anything that's not fighting, using goblins as a borderline subhuman slave cast to do everything that's not fighting but still needed to keep a society running. Imagine a hobgoblin officer owning an estate with hobgoblins running the land, doing the accounting et cetera.