Upon what rule do assassins increase in rank?

[Vlad Tzepes]

Hi,

I wonder: did anybody figured out upon what rule do assassins increase in rank? I mean - of course it's by killing a lot and obviously it's not only the numbers, but also the quality of a kill that counts, but what is the algorithm of growth?
I suppose that, for the first star, all you need is a couple of successful murders. But how many to get the seventh star? By the way, did anybody managed to train an assassin above the seventh star? Right now, playing with the Sicilians, I am the happy owner of 2 six-star villains. For the last 6-7 turns, I've used them to eliminate loads of 0 stars French generals, abandoned in an isolated province with no port. They didn't miss once, but they didn't grow either. I will indeed persevere, blood-handed, feigning surprise when they will finally evolve, but it would be helpful to know how long it will take.

And, this being my first post here, I feel like saying thank you to all the community. I've been following the threads here for some time now. The quality and number of posts have proved the TW series it's a great game. It's fun surfing and reading around. I've also learned a lot about the game from The Guild. I have been a Shogun fan, then a Mongol Invasion fan. Now it's the VI that makes my day and I'm waiting for RTW. MTW still surprises me, after so many months of play. My first Civil War happened 6 months after I bought the game (figured I knew everything by then). A couple of months ago, one besieged garrison surrendered to my Crusade, something I never imagined could even happen. And I've seen it with my own eyes happening to a good friend (I know It's been some debate here on this matter): when the Italian king died with no heirs, all the kingless provinces turned to his faction, because one Italian princess married into his faction. MTW is still full of surprises.

Tzepes
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[Dîn-Heru]

First of all welcome http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

I think the assassins grow by doubling the number of kills needed for the next rank.

ie 1st rank one kill
2nd rank two kills
3rd rank four kills
4th eight kills
5th 16 kills
6th 32 kills
7th 64 kills
8th 128 kills
9th 256 kills

I also belive that the targets rank counts. A three star general would count as two or three kills.

[Balamir]

Hello Tzepes http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

Im not sure about assasins either but I dont think that rule counts din heru since recently I discovered that I had a 5 star assasin and Im sure the guy didnt kill 16 victims nor were the ranks of the victims were high, though I have nothing to prove it. Still, I do enjoy assassins being mysterious. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

cheers

[Brother Derfel]

Quote[/b] (Balamir @ June 16 2003,16:30)]Hello Tzepes http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

Im not sure about assasins either but I dont think that rule counts din heru since recently I discovered that I had a 5 star assasin and Im sure the guy didnt kill 16 victims nor were the ranks of the victims were high, though I have nothing to prove it. Still, I do enjoy assassins being mysterious. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

cheers
That 5 star assasin was probably a Hero, was it Guy of Gisbon by any chance?

I think din might be right. I have certainly noticed that my assasins don;t gain rank 3 till they have killed 4 times. I can't realy comment on anything higher as my assassins tend to die before they get much higher.

And I agre that the rank of the target counts. i managed to take an assasin from 0 to 3 when i swamped a 5 star king with about 9 assassins. 1 survived and gained the ranks, the rest died.

[insolent1]

Assassins can jump from 0 valour to 3 if the victim was decent ie pope, prince, good general, high valour inquisitor etc. I even had one assassin who went from 0 to 3 & then 3 to 5 by killing 2 high valour GI's. I've been playing the Interregnum mod by Grell, its great for assassins as u can't build border forts till u have reached castle level so your assassins can wander a bit

[Hakonarson]

Does it work like this for Inquisitors too??

I've got a couple of 5 star guys who burn almost anyone of low rank on a whime (typically 80%+ chance) but they dont' seem to be getting any higher rank now.

[frogbeastegg]

The rank and status of the target do affect the growth of the assassin. Killing a king, prince, pope or good general will boost rank by 3 or so ranks from valour 0. They still give more 'points' than emisaries even if the assassin doesn't go up in rank after the job.

This also applies to inquisitors.

Broken agents? A fix? - I found that my agents were totally useless from day 1 as they never succeeded in a mission. The other day I reintalled MTW+VI and my agents are now functioning properly. They still frequently fail but occasionally one will be successful. I think a file must have been corrupted or something. I have seen several other people complaining of a similar problem so I thought I'd post my 'fix'.

OT- Is there a spell checker on this forum? My spelling is not to hot and I think posting badly spelt posts is a bit rude, as well as making it hard for others to read.

[monkian]

Balamir

Maybe that assassin intercepted enemy assassins, would that count towards his kill total ?

[frogbeastegg]

monkian thanks for jogging my memory intercepting ememy agents also increases rank, although it is usually quite slow as enemy agents don't give many 'points'.

[monkian]

Thats cool. My main province- Wessex logs nealy 5 failed assassination atempts per turn so it doesn't take long to build up the experience- especially as my assassins get +2 valour when they are built : )

[Vlad Tzepes]

Wow So many replies... Kind of cool...

On the other hand... did anybody notice what a liar the AI can be when suggesting the chances for a successful kill? I once had 50-50 chances to eliminate an heirless king. The assassin I sent was hanged bla-bla... so I reloaded (I desperately needed to eliminate that faction). It didn't work. Just for fun, I kept reloading and it kept not working for another 6 or 7 reloads. Finally I got bored... But trying 7 times, having 1 in 2 chances and missing every time... this is fishy. (It reminds me an exam I flunked while vainly trying to hit the right answer from two possible options, but then it was only 3 questions - hehe).

Inquisitors: the best one was a 5 star (anyway, he started with 3). He was pretty good, frying even a king or two, but never managed to really terrorize the Pope (and boy doesn't he deserve it every time&#33http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

Frogbeastegg: good point - I myself use the Word speller, as my native language is not English (of course this does not sort out the bulkiness of the phrases... sorry.) http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif Tzepes

[frogbeastegg]

How about this vlad-I had a 98% chance of killing an enemy emissary and the attempt failed http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif
Your english is great, I had you down as a native. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif Thanks for the suggestion.

[RisingSun]

Know where a REALLY fun place to stick asassins is? Moldavia. Damn, you should SEE the sheer volume of emissaries/priests/alims/Hungarian royalty going through there. I sometimes LOSE MY ASASSINS with all the guys there. It's THAT hard to see them all recently discovered this great litle secret when I played my first campaign as the Italians. It's the friggin promised land

[Leofwine]

Quote[/b] (Vlad Tzepes @ June 17 2003,08:10)]On the other hand... did anybody notice what a liar the AI can be when suggesting the chances for a successful kill? I once had 50-50 chances to eliminate an heirless king. The assassin I sent was hanged bla-bla... so I reloaded (I desperately needed to eliminate that faction). It didn't work.
I've encountered this too, I suspect that the game decides at the beginning of the year how all such possible actions will pan out, the odds are accurate, but it has already thrown the dice as it were.

Probably to stop people like us cheating like that http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Oaty]

Quote[/b] ] I once had 50-50 chances to eliminate an heirless king. The assassin I sent was hanged bla-bla... so I reloaded (I desperately needed to eliminate that faction). It didn't work. Just for fun, I kept reloading and it kept not working for another 6 or 7 reloads. Finally I got bored... But trying 7 times, having 1 in 2 chances and missing every time

The reason this happened Im almost sure but I'm not a programmer so I can't verify it. From experience as soon as you assign a kill the results are already calculated so when you save the game whatever that calculation has decided has in a sense already happened. My experience is this from expert difficuty. Everytime the A.I. got about a level 3-4 ninja, you were about to have 1 less heir and out of the multiple times on expert difficulty the A.I. got 100 percent to kill or maybe bad luck on my part or maybe expert difficulty is really cheesy difficulty lol. but anyways on expert dif the A.I always does an assassination on an heir right before autosave or maybe even 10 times the bad luck for me (and my dog just died my wifes leaving me and the cars broke down 100 times the badluck for me k just kidding about that part lol) so this way when u go to load autosave you have no chance to save your heir. Don't you think thats a little bit harsh that the A.I. with a level 3 or 4 ninja gets 100 percent chance on an heir. like I said expert difficulty not cheesey difficulty lol. I cant prove what level the ninja was but the few times I knew they were rampaging through my territories and by there success on my units figure the ninja was about a 4 most of the times. I played the 1530 and 1550 campaigns where you only start with a few territories so within 2 years you can only do so much to raise armies and expand the territories and get upgrades, let alone getting counter spies to fend this off in this amount of time. I knew it was always lord Imagwa unless it was a 1580 campaign.

Now to answer frogbeasters statement

Quote[/b] ]monkian thanks for jogging my memory intercepting ememy agents also increases rank, although it is usually quite slow as enemy agents don't give many 'points'.

The one time I did get a counterspy to the territroy the turn my heir was assassinated and the next turn I had a ninja go from 0-2 from detecting that level 4 or so ninja bastard that killed my heir.

[Papewaio]

I think you may find that the kill value of a target is also a doubling ie 4 star general is worth two 3 star generals, four 2 star generals etc.

[frogbeastegg]

Perhaps I should have been clearer. Most enemy agents are low rankers and therefore don't give much of a boost. The occasional high ranker does crop up and they can give loads of points. Sorry for any confusion.