Assassin

[vfb]

Unless you are sieging them. Then they turn all the lights on, and your assassins can't hide anymore. Or something.

[Mysterio]

Originally Posted by vfb

Unless you are sieging them. Then they turn all the lights on, and your assassins can't hide anymore. Or something.

What do you mean? If I'm sieging a fort, I'm not allowed to make assassination attempts in that same province?

[Dimaz]

Which makes assasins 90% less useful, since without siege they will patrol your assasin the next turn after your assasination attempt and get some of his gear if he has any.
Really, the only general case when assasins seem cost-effective to me is to reduce enemy commander count before siege attempt. Which they can't do, unfortunately.

[thejeff]

Assassins are good when used in bulk. Sure, one assassination and they patrol and catch him, having lost one commander. So do a dozen assassinations on that first turn.

Or target blood hunt provinces (unless he's patrolling for unrest) or forts without large armies in them.
Or better still armies about to attack. You kill a couple of commanders, all their troops stay behind. They attack at half strength and get wiped out.

[Dimaz]

Yes, sometimes it's useful, but you have to prepare for it for many turns (it's not easy to suddenly get 10 good assasins) and usually works only 1 time (sometimes it's enough, though). So - as I said - the only *generally useful* way to utilize them seems to be during sieges. And it's impossible.

[Torin]

I think assasins are useful if they have items that summon creatures.

*The talisman that enables the raise skeleton
*the skull face (raise skeletons)
*bottle of water
*bag of air
*pocket knight
*the headless halfling
*soul contract (probably the best one)
*the soul cage (or wathever the name is the artifact of the ghost mages)
*the wolf head (the artifact with free combat wolves)
*the artifact armor of the wolves
*the wraith crown (too expensive)

maybe im missing one

[Gandalf Parker]

I think assassins are very useful. For some nations they arent much more expensive than scouts so why use scouts?

I like to keep assassins on my borders. Some nations have commanders that lead large armies. You can often chop an invading army in half. If you use a couple, and immediately have a scout or something attack, you can often rout his units before he can purchase a local commander to save any.

And even if all you do is force him to get nervous, buy more pd, set a patrolling army in his back provinces, any of those can be a game factor. Some people are so locked into their strategies that just pushing them to do new things can throw them totally off their game. The more that people say that assassins, PD, stealth, seduction are useless; the handier I find them to be just for the shake-em-up factor.

I agree on the "summoning equip" thing.
I also like additional attacks such as dancing trident or stone dove or spirit helm.

[thejeff]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

I think assassins are very useful. For some nations they arent much more expensive than scouts so why use scouts?

Because you can buy indy scouts, but assassins take up castle slots where you can recruit mages instead?

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

I like to keep assassins on my borders. Some nations have commanders that lead large armies. You can often chop an invading army in half. If you use a couple, and immediately have a scout or something attack, you can often rout his units before he can purchase a local commander to save any.

If, of course, he hasn't bought at least 1PD.
Splitting armies is useful even if you can't take the province with scouts. If he's got magical or undead troops and his PD commanders don't have the appropriate leadership a scout or slightly stronger attack might get them to vanish if you've assassinated their leaders.

[Torin]

theres often times when you cant afford to buy mages on all of your forts.
If this happen to me i usually buy scouts. I wouldnt spend any money on assasins unless i plan to equip them.
But if i get the 60 gold one i probably would buy a few. (and kit them)

[Maerlande]

The H1 assassins of Abysia rock. Self blessing and great stealth preachers. I like them.