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Well, first of all you won't reach anywhere near level 40 if you play through SoU and then HoTU. The highest finishes I've had in the past are level 14 from SoU and then level 28 from HoTU, but this still gives you plenty of levels to make an amazing character.
As for the holy warrior - I'd personally go with the fighter/cleric option. You only need a few fighter levels to give you martial weapons, as well as the bonus feats which you can spend on combat abilities which you otherwise might be hard pushed to fit in with a pure cleric (weapon focus/power attack/cleave etc).
The cleric has some truly great buffs, as well as some powerful offensive spells. The Paladin can also buff up, but to a far lower degree, and is much more pure melee oriented. If you want to melee with your cleric, spells like divine favour and divine power, combined with bless/aid/battle tide actually gives you equal APR as a pure classed warrior, as well as superior attack and damage bonuses (in fact, due to a bug with divine favour, the extra attack is at full BAB. COmbine this with haste and you get 3 attacks ar your full BAB)! Then add offensive spells like call lightning (domain dependant)/hammer of the gods/chain lightning (domain dependant)/flame strike/blade barrier/earthquake/fire storm/slay living/destruction and of course the uber spells storm of vengeance and implosion.
This strong melee presence combined with an amazing array of buffing and offensive spells combined with the ability to summon powerful creatures makes for a stronger character than the melee based paladin/fighter.
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