View Full Version : Hashishin -- has anyone found any point in these guys?
Jan HI I can kind of understand. They're overpriced, but they're versatile. And however much they cost, they're a sight to fear.
Hashisin, on the other hand, seem to be a complete waste of money -- a joke on the battlefield, in fact.
Their armor is lousy. They carry no shield. Their defense is weak, for a high level unit. Their arrows do piddling damage, particularly against armored opponents. Their charge bonus is a meager 2, so their high attack value is made irrelevant (since you're not going to stay in melee long with them anyways). They're 725 florins. They're way up on an otherwise useless branch of the tech tree, for islamic factions (IIRC, 2nd and third sword buildings give you nothing... and the fortress doesn't give you much either).
And worst of all, they have a whopping unit size of...... 12!!
Are these guys the worst units in the game or what? For 725 florins, you'd expect a unit to stand up to an urban militia rush. Even if you increased their unit size to 60, I'm not sure they' be worth it -- they go down ridiculously fast to a band of plain vanilla archers.
I had 2 hashishin units get their ass kicked by urban militia. How sad.
Rosacrux
10-09-2002, 14:35
About the cost: It must be the stuff those guys carry with them. I mean, they must be the single most useful unit they Islamic factions have, because they pump up the morale of every friendly unit, by giving away free shit.
Imagine how lonely and not-so-brave your units would feel without some gooood Afghani. And who provides the shit? Yes, the Hashishins.
Gotta respect them guys. They're awesome. Yup http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif
Major Robert Dump
10-09-2002, 15:20
U need trees and rain and fog. tnen they work
their main purpose is super ambushes caus they can hide well even in the open , i myself was dissapointed with them so i edited them away in the text files but i overpowered thenm a bit and they can beat hundreds of royal knights so i better go scale them down a bit...
although their main achievment is that they can fight at all, they are called hashishins remember.
de la Valette
10-09-2002, 15:39
I really liked the battelfield ninja in STW and thought the Hashisin would be similar, but they are rubbish!
I think it would have been better to put them in their historical context whereby you could pay a large sum of money to have them take out kings and heirs. May have made it too easy to take out factions though.
Quote Originally posted by Rosacrux:
About the cost: It must be the stuff those guys carry with them. I mean, they must be the single most useful unit they Islamic factions have, because they pump up the morale of every friendly unit, by giving away free shit.
Imagine how lonely and not-so-brave your units would feel without some gooood Afghani. And who provides the shit? Yes, the Hashishins.
Gotta respect them guys. They're awesome. Yup http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif[/QUOTE]
LOL hey I want these guys in my army too, esp. considering the other thread on cav charge : how better to stand firm (sort of, let's say relaxed) in the face of a ton of muscles and iron charging at you?
besides, on unit number of 12, it's pretty impressive : I've never seen so many dealers at the same time, so they must churn out a lot of the stuff http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
Well, their high morale means that thay will fight to death (however quickly that might occur), so I sometimes used them to hold off the flanking force while I deal with the main body of enemy's army. You can also try to position them somewhere away from your army, and use them to charge the back of the enemy after they engage. But I agree, the cost is too high for their efectiveness. They add a bit of flavor to the game, but that's all. Battlefield ninjas were way more effective.
chunkynut
10-09-2002, 16:16
I cause a muslim rebelion in one of the med islands and what came out 2 hashishins and 14 balistas .. lol!!!
against sicilian army of 2 peasants and some urban milita, archers and at least one cav unit!! didn't stand a chance but the buggers retreated to the keep!!! why???
then next turn renforcements arrive and the scillains wipe out the rebels only to have the exact units come again next time!!!
My almo preists must have been f*&ked on somthing to come up with that plan and my spies well .... i just dont know how they managed to cause that much discontent!!
To some of the points in this thread....
1. Hiding doesn't seem to help them at all. Sure, the enemeies take a morale penalty for getting hit by a hiding enemy in the flank or rear, but their charge bonus is so low that they rarely kill any hard-to-kill units. And once they get into a melee, with low defense, no shield, and little armor.... well, they drop like flies...
2. I agree their morale is great, and given their speed and missile attack, they might make for a good diversionary force to prevent flank attacks. But morale doesn't do a whole lot when your unit is annihilated in 15 seconds. And peasants, honestly, make better diversionary forces at the flanks -- for 50 florins, they're a heck of a lot more cost effective too.
DarknScaly
10-09-2002, 20:55
they have their uses but rarely so
use em in groups of 2 units and get em behind the main army. Just 2 units are enough in Sp to wipe out all the ai artillery or take down the general ai unit if its hovering behind the lines.
Used in conjunction with a unit of fast horse behind the lines they can take out most any other single unit.
Need micromanaging though - so a bit cumbersome.
Gringoleader
10-09-2002, 21:27
I tend to swing them wide around the flanks of the enemy and have them either pepper the rear of the enemy units with arrows or act as a net to catch retreating units and muller them before they can rally or escape.
Also they are great to hold a province with, stick them in a forest or something in a corner of the map well hidden, stick the time acceleration on and go make a cup of tea while you wait for the clock to run out.
Got a couple from a stack i bribed once, so i thought what the hell and used them the next time i did a bridge assault.
It was a dual bridge so i snuck them over the unguarded one and sent them round behid the enemy. When i attacked the main bridge i also sent a cav force to the other bridge which drew several units. The Hashishin were quite useful for harrassing these units as they marched along the river bank, and generally caused a distraction of their own while my main force attacked, they killed quite a lot between bow & sword, but, even though i didnt send them into suicidal melees, they really took a hammering! At the end there were only 7 left out of 24. I should probably sack them, but i just havent got the heart to, i think they're still sitting in the same province, chilling out & waiting for an attack.
Their defense is really what lets them down IMO, could probably do with being boosted. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
Forgot to add:
their production time is 2!!!!
If there's any unit in the game that's begging for a SERIOUS upgrade, these guys are it....
Another thing is that, since they have a "whopping" unit size, they'll go up in valuor in no time, meaning that you can create an effective high valour unit from 4-5 units, which will only.....cost you.......hm....... No, that's not the way to use them. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/tongue.gif
But they can quench down peasant rebellion pretty effectively. Only, those rebellions probably wouldn't have happened if I had 100 men in a garrison instead of 24.........
Ok, I rest my case. I still like them because of the flavour they give to the game. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
[This message has been edited by hrvojej (edited 10-09-2002).]
theBlind
10-10-2002, 02:17
It should be said that several of them have some MAJOR impact on morale. I once had a rebellion of some 4 artillery and maybe 12 or even more of those. So I send in (as Byzantine) a Army of Steppe Cavalry under a Steppe Cav 3* General. Maybe 200-240 of them. Against a meager 200 or so Rebels. Expected the Rebels to run big time. Was very very very shocked when MY men began to run http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/frown.gif
Just to add.
theBlind
Hrvo: tongue in cheek or not, that's actually an interesting idea.
Do you know how exactly the valor system works? Is it simply kills divided by units?
I'm pretty sure that it takes more kills to gain valor at higher levels, but it'd be nice to know exactly how it works.
Potentially, if you could upgrade a hashinin by two or three levels by taking on peasant revolters, they might actually be decent units (though the low armor would still hurt badly). Especially since sar infantry, at 100 men/unit, generally fill up my army very quickly
Well, I know that each individual soldier has it's valour, and that the unit valour is an average of all soldier's valours. In other words, hashishin will go up in valour quickly since most of the men in a unit will go up in valour, unlike a 100 man units where only those who do the killing do, while the rest of the unit drags the average down. This is basically the same effect that the unit retraining has. I am pretty sure that going up in valour for individual men has to do with number of kills that individual managed to pull of, and also it matters whom did they kill (i.e. royals are worth more than peasants; some other things I picked up on forums: routers/prisoners are something like a fourth of value you would get for killing the same type of the troop; kings are worth around 50 men). So yes, you can get a high valour hashishin very quickly. And I guess, if it's the armour/defense that's bothering you, build them in the province where you have a master armourer, and they can be a nice addition to fill up those 940 men stacks.
[This message has been edited by hrvojej (edited 10-10-2002).]
Quote
Also they are great to hold a province with, stick them in a forest or something in a corner of the map well hidden, stick the time acceleration on and go make a cup of tea while you wait for the clock to run out.
[/QUOTE]
roflmao, 'slight' problem with game mechanics here I'd guess http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif
"Sir, we've scoured the width and breadth of this province, but havent seen a single enemy soldier anywhere."
"Then it must be a trap! Retreat!!!!!"
Well, i tested out some custom battles yesterday to see if the hash could get some valor upgrades from mass peasants, using sar inf to hold while I hit with hash in the rear.
Didn't work out as I planned however. Every time I flanked a peasant force, I'd lose 2-3 hash. With their meager charge bonus, they simply weren't killing enough to break the unit. After four or 5 units of peasants, I had like 2 hash left. Sure, they had 4 valor, but if I lost 58 urban militia in 5 peasant rushes, they'd probably have 4 valor as well.
Also tried using ranged attacks to level them against peasants. But no go, they're missiles are simply too weak and too few. I'd end up killing like 2 peasants before the sar infantry broke the unit.
Seriously, if these guys are going to be viable, at their cost, production time, tech branch, and ESPECIALLY unit size, they need additional hitpoints, a la generals, and a boost in stats to, say, 7/7/7 A/D/C.
Modified my hash's to good effect...
Projectile changed to grenade.
Attack increased to 8.
Def increased to 5.
Armor increased to 4.
Charge increased to 8.
They're still really vulnerable to missiles -- one shot from an arbalest unit will finisht them -- but now at least they have a reasonable chance to survive against weaker units. The naptha grenades are also VERY nice. With only 12 men, hash's simply can't hurt anyone with a bow. With naptha bottles they're much more fun -- running in and out with their high speed, raining death and fear with their grenades, and charging into the rear of weakened elite units as a coup de grace (breaking the unit and the entire army in the process).
They still lose to pretty much every decent offensive unit if they attack head on, but now at least they have some use. They'd BETTER, for all the time and money you have to invest to get them. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/redface.gif
NinjaKilla
10-11-2002, 04:59
BTW My experience of Han Hvy Inf is that they're utter bollox aswell.
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Clan Kenchikuka (http://www.totalwar.org/kenchikuka)
ToranagaSama
10-18-2002, 11:25
Quote Originally posted by de la Valette:
I think it would have been better to put them in their historical context whereby you could pay a large sum of money to have them take out kings and heirs. May have made it too easy to take out factions though. [/QUOTE]
This is a GREAT idea! But how to keep the AI from abusing this? Would be great for C-MP!!
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