Killing Indi Commanders

[Valerius]

I was going to post a comment about using tarts in besieged fortresses as assassins. But this got me thinking about skratti. This may already be on the bug list (and even if it isn't considered a bug, it is an exploit) or already be well known, but a skratti with a black heart can sneak into a province, the next turn change shape into the giant form and issue the assassinate command, using the script change shape + attack/cast spells. After the assassination attempt the skratti will change back into wolf form and still be hidden.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Amorphous

But that was not the comparison I made. The point was that one mage not researching produces exactly as much RP as an assassin not researching. A mage not researching makes you lose the research race exactly the same way an assassin not researching it does.

However bad units you think all assassins are, there is no escaping the fact that a mage sent to the front produce exactly the same amount of RP as an assassin sent behind enemy lines - none.

Yeah, and how much RP does the assassin produce when he returns?

And though I certainly do not deny that assassin spells are generally a lot better than assassins, there is the gem cost. Would you recruit gems for a small amount of gold instead of a commander?

I don't understand this last statement.

The above does not make much sense. If the tradeoff is usually too high, it is implied that it is sometimes not to high. This in turn implies that assassins are occasionally useful. And yet you claim that assassins are not useful.

I always said it was almost always suboptimal.

Please don't try to put words in my mouth.

Is this really supposed to cover all possibilities?

Sometimes.

Especially in light of my earlier mention of optimized expansion parties, it seems a bit on the thin side. Shutting down a few armies for a couple of turns is often enough to win a war.

Which only works if you have an assassin in the province where he currently is. So you need to be lucky, or good at guessing where is going to move. Or have multiple assassins.

And you are describing a very specific situation here. Still in the early expansion phase, having assassins in the field at the right spot, and your assassin can reliably kill an enemy commander. And the enemy player didn't put additional troops on guard commander to save his commanders when an enemy unit breaks through his lines. (Some players do that).

The chances of this all coming together is so low that it just isn't worth trying to use this as a real tactic. Especially, and I'm going to say it again, when you have to use fort turns for it that could also have been used to recruit mages.

Assassins which have a fort turn cost, in the early game this means capital fort turns, so you are not spending time recruiting mages or expansion parties. Ergo, suboptimal.

And yes, if your enemy overreacts it is perhaps smart to invest in one assassin. But it depends on the opponent. But an assassin spell is way more effective here.

A blood 5 summon requiring a blood 4 mage and 66 blood slaves is not the same as an assassin recruitable from day one requiring only a small amount of gold.

I am not that big a user of assassins, but I just cannot agree to that they are never useful.

Yeah, but they have one more cost apart from gold. Fort turns. And early game these are at a premium. And later in the game it is easy to script/guard. So it simply isn't effective.

Also, why does the succubus almost never see play? And was the disease demon spell nerfed in recent CBM versions? Because the assassin spells are that much better than an assassin unit. Target anywhere you can cast is a lot better than having a unit in a specific place that is easily countered by finding it with pd+patrollers.

Assassination is a good mechanic, sadly most assassins as units are not worth it.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Valerius

I was going to post a comment about using tarts in besieged fortresses as assassins. But this got me thinking about skratti. This may already be on the bug list (and even if it isn't considered a bug, it is an exploit) or already be well known, but a skratti with a black heart can sneak into a province, the next turn change shape into the giant form and issue the assassinate command, using the script change shape + attack/cast spells. After the assassination attempt the skratti will change back into wolf form and still be hidden.

I did not know that. Wow... very sneaky.

[Deathblob]

Sounds to me more like a workaround for lack of full battle scripting, rather than an exploit.

I mean, it makes sense that a unit with a stealth form could sneak into someone's house, kill them on the toilet, and change back into the stealth form. All in one month.

[Valerius]

That's a fair point. Thinking it over I can't really see a difference between giving something like an uba a black heart and this method to get around the skratti's three forms. Unlike, say, using non-stealthy commanders in a besieged fort as assassins, which goes against the idea that assassins be stealthy.

[Amorphous]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

Yeah, and how much RP does the assassin produce when he returns?

Why on earth would you make him return? An assassin has only one business in a lab and that is killing people inside it.
I cannot imgagine that I am the only one who frequently buys mage-commanders that will never research, but stay on the front till they die. An assassin is no different, it is simply a commander bought for a reason that is not research.

I don't understand this last statement.

If you buy an assassin and use it instead of an assassinating spell to kill a commander, you just saved yourself some gems. In that sense recruiting assassins can be the equivalent of recruiting gems for gold in a commander spot.

Understand that I am not claiming that assassins are better than such spells - or even as good. When you have them researched they are usually much better than assassins, but they do carry a cost recruitable assassins do not. The point is that in your argument against assassins you continually stress the cost of assassins and brush over the cost associated with other options. Assassin spells generally require a fair amount of research done and some gems (and a suitable mage, of course).

The focus in this thread, for myself and most others it seems, has been assassins as a fairly early game option. Assassinating spells are mostly not on the table at that point and as such not a reasonable comparison.

I always said it was almost always suboptimal.

Please don't try to put words in my mouth.

Please do not accuse me of putting words in your mouth when all I do is use what you actually wrote. Especially not when I support it with a quote. Your exact words - which you can find in your own post and quoted by me above the statement that offends you so - were: "They are not useful."

Perhaps you meant something else with "They" than assassins in general, but the context seems to imply this particular interpretation. Please feel free to elaborate, but whatever you wanted to say, my reply was definitely not an attempt to put words in your mouth and neither would a fair reading suggest it.

I assume this is all because of a misunderstanding - accidental misunderstandings are far more common than deliberate - but please be careful about accusing people of deliberate deceptive argument practices.

I saw a discrepancy in your argument and I still do. The point is that none in this thread has argued for assassins as some sort of general purpose strategy or commanders to buy in case they should be needed some time in the future. What has been argued for is that there are a number of particular situations where assassins
are useful - or possibly so, experiments pending. If your argument is that assassins are only sometimes or rarely useful, there is really no argument. I do not think anyone here disagrees - I certainly do not. However, you do seem to go on from this to claim that because of it, assassins are not useful at all. If you do not, that is fine, but then I would like to know what it is you are arguing.

Which only works if you have an assassin in the province where he currently is. So you need to be lucky, or good at guessing where is going to move. Or have multiple assassins.

And you are describing a very specific situation here. Still in the early expansion phase, having assassins in the field at the right spot, and your assassin can reliably kill an enemy commander. And the enemy player didn't put additional troops on guard commander to save his commanders when an enemy unit breaks through his lines. (Some players do that).

Again, you only recruit assassins when you have a specific use for them in mind. Judging from my own in-game experience and numerous guides and discussions here on the boards, the use of heavily optimized expansion parties is not an uncommon strategy. And it is usually not very hard to figure out in what order someone will take independent provinces. Prime target would be someone using a small number of sacreds shepherded by indy priests. The priests are generally easy to assassinate and a bit harder to replace than non-priest commanders.

The chances of this all coming together is so low that it just isn't worth trying to use this as a real tactic. Especially, and I'm going to say it again, when you have to use fort turns for it that could also have been used to recruit mages.

It is not something you plan on before a game starts, it is an opportunity to seize if it presents itself. Remember that the nations with recruitable assassins frequently start with one as a scout. If they happen to find a prime target, one is already in place. The addition of another may be all you need to wreak serious havoc.

Assassins which have a fort turn cost, in the early game this means capital fort turns, so you are not spending time recruiting mages or expansion parties. Ergo, suboptimal.

Come now, you know as well as I do that players make frequent use of indy commanders for expansion purposes. Assassins are not generally very costly in resources or gold, so recruiting one does not stop you from buying expansion troops in your castle.

And yes, if your enemy overreacts it is perhaps smart to invest in one assassin. But it depends on the opponent. But an assassin spell is way more effective here.

Just to reiterate: assassin spells need to be researched before they can be used.
You can talk all you want about the spells, but before they are researched they cannot kill anything.

Assassination is a good mechanic, sadly most assassins as units are not worth it.

Does that mean that you acknowledge that some assassins are worth it?

[Soyweiser]

Amorphous, first line of my first post explains it it all.

You can try to bait me into saying that sometimes assassins are useful after all, but I clearly already said that. The rest of the time I just tried to explain my reasoning behind it.

I tried to explain that cap fort turns esp in the early game are very useful. So useful that most of the times it is suboptimal to recruit assassins over something that can research. Each assassin you buy is of research turns and site search turns you do not perform. Which is only useful if the assassin removes more of these research turns from the enemy.

I basically said all I can say about it without going into a huge post explaining turn advantages. Which is a bit hard to explain.

The only viable strat I really see for assassins is the one Fantomen mentioned.

[Amorphous]

Fair enough.

If I understand you correctly your stance is that assassins are sometimes (very rarely) useful and the other arguments you presented were about situations when they are not useful. This makes sense and is the sort of thing I was after - it was not at all clear to me before that this is what you meant. I was certainly not trying to bait you into anything.

It also seems to me that it is a possibility that I find assassins slightly more useful than you do because of play-style. Other than as a fun SP strategy (thereby requiring practically no efficiency at all) I do not think that I have ever included assassins in a pre-planned strategy. When I have used them it has been because they were the most efficient tool for a job at hand.

I have occasionally found it useful to build one on maps with a couple of dead-end provinces, when diverting armies to the task would have required quite a few extra turns of those armies producing nothing worthwhile. It does cost you a fort turn, but I like early forts, so with some nations that cost is not prohibitive. The experimenting I have done with them after they fulfilled their function have usually had decent results, meaning that given the right circumstances, recruiting the assassin would have been a good move even without the province capture.

That said, I think I have only done this with nations with particularly good assassins. It would be rather dicey trying province capture with an ordinary human assassin.