Kill the King

[Jazzman]

i think there was a topic earlier about assassins not working, well they worked big time for me last night. VI campaign as Irish and doing quite well, it was basically down to me and the Saxons about even strength (but they have Huscarles, ouch) we had been allied through whole game but they attacked my shipping and then were sending thier king with large army to our borders. unfortunate for them, their border prov of Hwicce had no border fort so i slipped by 5-star assassin in and he successfully slit him up a treat, yeeha. he had no heirs of age and the entire south of england goes into rebellion. much easier now to pick em off one by one or bribe some, til they faction reappear that is. btw, had a some massive faction reappearances with Northumb and Picts, after many years and they come back with like 4 stacks and a bunch of mounted nobles and stuff, gotta deal with that too.

[Dhepee]

They are great for stirring up trouble with your enemies. Wait for the king to die, then kill his heir the turn that the heir takes power. The next king will be almost worthless.
Tip for using an assasin: Say you drop one into a province that has no border fort, and kill the king. The next turn his heir who was also in that province becomes king and you try to kill him, your assasin's chances are severely diminished and he will probably die. Take him out of the province for a turn, and then send him back in, his chances go back up.

[Suppiluliumas]

Last night I ran an experiment with my five star assassin. I somehow stumbled across the turkish sultan who oddly enough, had only one star. My success chance was listed at 66%, so out of curiosity, I decided to do a small statistical analysis. I saved the game, and began attempting to assasinate him repeatedly. Strangely, I had 11 failures and no successes. There were no towers of any kind in the province, he did not move to another province in any instance, and I was sure to give my assassin his orders after the save/load point just in case the computer resolves such attempts at that point. I am at a loss for explanations. The only possiblility I can think of is that there may have been one or more high valor enemy spies or assassins in the province as well. Any thoughts?

[Sir Kuma of The Org]

Quote[/b] (Jazzman @ Oct. 30 2003,12:48)]i think there was a topic earlier about assassins not working, well they worked big time for me last night... so i slipped by 5-star assassin in and he successfully slit him up a treat, yeeha.
Are you really saying that they have some use http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif

[Sir Kuma of The Org]

Quote[/b] (Suppiluliumas @ Oct. 30 2003,16:55)]Last night I ran an experiment with my five star assassin. I somehow stumbled across the turkish sultan who oddly enough, had only one star. My success chance was listed at 66%, so out of curiosity, I decided to do a small statistical analysis. I saved the game, and began attempting to assasinate him repeatedly. Strangely, I had 11 failures and no successes.
Oh never mind http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

[Papewaio]

Maybe the random number has already been generated for the assassination by the point you have saved... try a few other different actions then see if it effects the outcome... depends if some sort of seed is being used or other items.

[Papewaio]

Welcome back my Lord Kuma. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[Suppiluliumas]

I did that, as I mentioned in my post. The only reason I can come up with is an enemy agent.

[King John II]

If I have understood you ran the game on so that your 11 attempts were made in different years and with different events of one kind or another intervening.

If so that does seem odd.

The common factors seem to be the particular target, the particular assassin and the province. But it is difficult to think of some factor which would distort the odds based on those - other than your own idea of unseen elements reducing an assassin's chance in that province.

Did you try taking the assassin out and moving him back in again? Dhepee's tip suggests that is something which might have an effect.

[Dhepee]

Two things:

1) Assasins seem to get "recognized" if they are in a province for more than one turn. Regardless of the assasin's rating I have always had more luck dropping the assasin on his target from at least one province away, so that he has to sneak into the province and then kill the target, as opposed to just hanging out in the province for a few turns and then dropping him on the target. If you have at least a 3 star and your target is in a province without a border fort you don't need to "shotgun" as many assasins into that province.
I think that there is something hardcoded- because I can't find it in any of the files that I can open I say it is hardcoded- that creates a recognition that your assasin is up to no good if he is in a province for a turn or more and then if he tries to kill somebody, especially if he has already killed somebody he is much more likely to get killed in the process. Assasins seem to be designed for quick over the border attacks as opposed to spying for a few turns and then attacking.

2) Replaying events over and over again from a save file isn't a good way to test outcomes, in my experience. Again I am going after the hardcode (the universal target if you can't find the answer anywhere else), but I think that it models events and attributes or possible events and attributes a few turns in advance based on some kind of accounting system as opposed to thinking things out turn by turn. I say this this because this scenario has happened to me every time I play off an old save game. I discovered it when I lived in an apartment subject to frequent power flickers, the power would flip off for a few seconds a couple of times a day. I would have to reboot my machine, wade through the disk check and restart the game from the last save game, wherein events would unfold in exactly the same way for at least a good handful of turns. Eventually I got a power back-up for my computer but I was intrigued and tested it out. This is what would happen in a hypothetical game.
Hypothetically:
I am the English. I control all of what was France. I have at least one ship in all seas that border land and my trade income is very high. The year is 1200 and I save. In the year 1206 the Italians attack me in 3 specific seas and come across my border into Toulouse. We were allies and had never fought one another. So I quit and load from the last save game. In the same year, 1206, not only do the Italians attack me, but they attack me in the exact same places. There are two ways to avoid it after you reload, immediately attack the Italians, or don't just move troops away from borders, but disband them, and disband or move ships out of all seas that border Italian territory, also get them out of all seas with Italian ships in them. Also, for all "agent missions" that I sent out in 1200-1206 the outcome is always the same if I send them on the same mission.
What this leads me to believe is that the each turn the AI for each faction takes whatever it knows about your faction, i.e. where ships are, where troops are, how developed a province is, etc. and feeds when it finds certain attributes over a span of time in a faction it decides to attack that faction based on the attacking faction's behavior.
So the AI for the Italians has watched the English grow over a period of years and it decides that 1206 is the year to attack, unless something drastic happens. You can't just disband one or two ships and a couple of peasent units, at some point the AI decides that you are a threat and it will attack you, you have to really scale back in such a way that usually you would have been better off just fighting it out when the time came. The AI may even start building up units towards attacking you, well ahead of the attack and this may set the attack date (at a certain point the cost of maintaining units is so high that it has to attack) unless you make huge cutbacks and don't seem worth attacking. The AI also seems to remember how powerful you were, say that in 1201 I really cut back, destroy or move far far away most of my units and then by 1210 I have rebuilt and moved most or all of my units back to their original place, boom the Italians attack me. I have no idea how long this "memory" of my power lasts.
"Agent missions" are a bit trickier since in large part they have to do with monarch influence and training levels for the agents. You can't really change the influence of your king between 1200 and 1206, nor can you build a rookery and train a bunch of new assasins. In fact there is nothing you really can do to modify the outcome of an agent mission since it is also dependant on the target's ratings (influence, acumen, etc), what units are around a target (killing a leader with 2 units of peasants around him is a lot easier than killing one surrounded by 4 army stacks), and what the target's V&V's are. Therefore you are pretty much stuck with things as they are, unless you move an assasin out of the target's province and then from the new provinece drop him onto the target(wait one turn so that he is actually in that province) and your outcome might be different but again the Sultan might have a V&V that allows him to evade an assasin's blade (I think it is "nervous" but I am not sure) or he may have a huge army or the Turkish Sultan might be a default hard to assasinate as a contrapositive to the fact that "assasins" by name were from his region of the world.
This is all anectdotal and not gospel. I believe the real experts on AI behavior are Wes and LOS.

It does however send a strong strategic message. The AI is watching you. Try to concentrate your military development in a few provinces and don't let agents from other factions pass through them. Once an agent has been in your province for one turn, he or she can see into your stacks and see how teched up you are. On that note, don't let any agents in period, because they might see an especially prosperous province that is nearby to their faction's lands and the AI might decide to take it. Like I said before, the AI seems to have a pretty decent accounting system for keeping track of what it knows about each faction, and depending on how a faction's behavior is set it makes its decisions accordingly.

[King John II]

Interesting stuff, Dhepee.

In my first half dozen campaigns I have followed a similar strategic pattern based upon early ships to achieve trade income and good communications.

Which, up to now, means that I am going to be attacked by the Italians at a certain point. Because, I believe, they are programmed to be jealous of naval power in the Mediterranean.

I intend to try to counter this next time round by keeping my ships in the southern Mediterranean areas for a period; to see whether not having ships in the same seas influences this effect.

I am not sure whether your insights make me think this idea is likely to work or not. But those insights are certainly consistent with some of the A1 behaviour I have seen so far.

[Dhepee]

Quote[/b] (King John II @ Oct. 31 2003,11:00)]Interesting stuff, Dhepee.

In my first half dozen campaigns I have followed a similar strategic pattern based upon early ships to achieve trade income and good communications.

Which, up to now, means that I am going to be attacked by the Italians at a certain point. Because, I believe, they are programmed to be jealous of naval power in the Mediterranean.

I intend to try to counter this next time round by keeping my ships in the southern Mediterranean areas for a period; to see whether not having ships in the same seas influences this effect.

I am not sure whether your insights make me think this idea is likely to work or not. But those insights are certainly consistent with some of the A1 behaviour I have seen so far.
I believe that the Italians are a Naval_expansionist power which explains why they attack factions that have a string of ships that run through through seas that border the Italian provinces. The one thing that you have to watch out for is if Italian ships that are also in the Southern Med. they might start the war anyway.

It seems like the accounting system takes a lot of things into consideration, so for instance if an Italian agent, this includes a princess, is in your lands they can tell how teched up they are, that being a reflection of how much money you have (i.e. if you have a fortress in every province and its only 1200 you are very wealthy) and take that into account when deciding to attack you that plus a string of your ships overlapping with a string of Italian ships even if none of your ships are in Italian waters, might be enough to set the Italian AI on the road towards a war with you.

The AI fears a large power and a large power is harder to disguise, more provinces equal more borders, equals more chances to see what you are up to. I have tried a campaign as the English wherein I control all of the British Isles, the Channel Coast provinces, and Scandanavia. It's easy to keep agents out of those provinces, it's a small enough kingdom to no arouse suspicion, and quietly build up my power. If you wait until the Spanish are heavily involved in a war with the Turks then you don't have to worry about them, and then I take out the Italians in a series of quick battles at the same time peppering the royal family with assasins.

[ShaiHulud]

Contrary to common sense, I find that low odds assassination attempts are more successful, even against monarchs and heirs.

Conversely, 96% odds against a princess or a priest seems to be about 50-50.

I've also noted the same repeating occurence with failures. Re-loading simply gives the same result over and over. The result seems to be fore-ordained.

[RZST]

hmm i have a diff experience with assasins and reloading.

for the 1st turn, i try to assasinate an emissary, it works.
then i reload and try it again, it fails.
reload, again, fail.
reload, again, fail.

my only solution was to reload, then cancel the assasination then next turn assasinate, it worked http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Razor1952]

Most successful assasination?

I'm Russians high period(to take out the GH with little time to prepare)--succeeded but the Danes were able to get under me and build a huge trading fleet and took close to 60% of the map, my only hope was assasination --- finaly succeeded to turn them all to rebels... the Almohads returned immediately with 22 provinces(yes 22&#33http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif along with the Poles/Hungarians/Spanish. Still I was second best navy(before all the danish ships disappeared) and able to use this to subdue the rest... another great tussle. Wesmed of course mod.

One tip Syria is very useful for assasins

[Brutal DLX]

Perhaps the suggestion of enemy spies being in that province shouldn't be discarded. Since bishops work to counteract inquisitions, spies might severely reduce the chance of successful assasinations, so the success percentage you are shown when drag and dropping might just be your raw chance of killing (king vs assassin), before factoring im other enemy strategic units, thus that percentage could be deceiving.

[magnatz]

I've never been able to kill a king by assassination, but yesterday my 8-stars Grand Inquisitor barbecued the King of Spain for good http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif