Killing Indi Commanders

[Starbelly Geek]

Poking around, the wiki entry for Lord of Night had that material added by "Lch" a while back, but endorsements of using that pretender as an assassin date back to the Dom2 board here. There are a number of references to how great the LoN is as an assassin in Dom3 threads going back to 2007.

It, um, does look like GP liked the LoN for use as an assassin. I guess he's not wrong: the Lord of Night is probably the toughest assassin out there in the game. That's kind of like being the tallest blade of grass, though...

[Soyweiser]

Lch just copied the other wiki. The strategy wiki.

[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 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.

[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.