Assasin's underpowered?!

[PrestigeX]

I was wondering if anyone else on this site feels that assasins are underpowered..
I sometimes like to built them as a 'side thing' going on , to try and just kill people,, but i always get missions from the 'council' to kill certain people - and the probability is always liek 6 percent for that stut..
Assasins regularly die on the mission...
same i noticed wit merchants - its all good until some other country's merchant comes along and just acquires the resource.

I think they it up and, assasins and merchants should work better -cuz they really aren't even worth building - better to spend that money on troops and take new cities/castles

[cassu]

agree with you on that, spys have too annoyingly low probability to get int. how hard can it really be?

[Rhyfelwyr]

I think that assasins should deal better with agents such as Merchants, Priests etc, but should have a tougher time than they do killing royalty, especially the Pope.

Just because a Priest is more pious doesn't mean he should be any harder to kill. Often a Cardinal with say, 8 Piety, can be extrememly difficult to assasinate. But as soon as he is promoted to being the Pope my assasins can have a 2/3 chance of killing him.

It should be far more dependant on target type rather than target ability.

[barvaz]

Just because a Priest is more pious doesn't mean he should be any harder to kill. Often a Cardinal with say, 8 Piety, can be extrememly difficult to assasinate. But as soon as he is promoted to being the Pope my assasins can have a 2/3 chance of killing him.

Well, you could argue that once a Priest gets more piety he becomes more important and climbs up the church's "command ladder". I mean, you can imagine how the Pope would be much harder to get to and kill than a local priest spending the night in a inn somewhere.

Same with merchants, a wealthy and influential merchant probably has more guards and better personal security devices.

- barvaz

[barvaz]

I was wondering if anyone else on this site feels that assasins are underpowered..

I disagree.

Assassins can be very powerful tools if used properly in the right situation. You can't expect constantly winning campaigns using assassins but you are able to even the odds by killing the right person in the right time.

I just got my assassin(s) win me the war against the English. Playing as Scotland, after ~20 turns of duking it out with the English scum over the British Isles, the Pope suddenly decided that he doesn't like this war anymore and threatened I get excommunicated if I don't stop hostilities.

Well, I had two last English towns to conquer, I was already besieging Nottingham (where their King was) but I would not be able to take out London. So, one skilled assassin taking out their last faction heir and my army finishing of the King in Nottingham did the trick and sent the English scattered crying to the Pope who wouldn't care anymore.

I think that in order to make assassins be really useful, you need to train them to high levels. Then they become unstoppable and even if they fail, they don't get cough or lose skill.

- barva

[Zim]

Assassins get a bonus against targets in your territory (or a malus against those outside your territory, if you look at it another way). I never really used them until noticing how effective they were in hotseat games (used against me. ) but I've played with them a bit since then.

It's best to train them up against heretics, rebel captains, etc. in your own territory for a while first. They should go up in skill fairly quickly. After they get a few points, agents become especially easy to kill, even in enemy territory. Once they get really high in skill, even generals and enemy family members are easy to take out. Just remember that heirs and kings get a bonus to personal security, and a failed assassination can give any family members security increasing traits, although I think if you get that line of traits high enough, it decreases public order.

It takes some practice but assassination can be very useful if you're willing to spend some time with them.

[ReiseReise]

You can't just hire some hack from the local tavern "ooohhhh yeah, i's killed lotsh of royalsh befo, jusht give me, give me shome gold, oh shilvah, thatalh wahk, wutevah, hill be dead, dead ash a doornail by the morning" Meanwhile your "assasin" is passed out in an alley with his face in a pile of horse manure until 3pm the next day.

You must also remember - if it works for you, it works for the AI. I can' even imagine the "Assassins ovrpowerd" posts if every assassin had 90% chance of killing a royal. YOUR royals would be dying left and right at the hands of AI assassins.

Assasination is not easy. If it were, every real life war would be preceded by the mysterious deaths of dozens of political and military leaders of any country involved. This is obviously not the case, even with the modern convenience of any idiot being able to off somebody from 200 yards away with a rifle. In the time period of the game, you had to get within arms reach of your target!

[barvaz]

You can't just hire some hack from the local tavern "ooohhhh yeah, i's killed lotsh of royalsh befo, jusht give me, give me shome gold, oh shilvah, thatalh wahk, wutevah, hill be dead, dead ash a doornail by the morning" Meanwhile your "assasin" is passed out in an alley with his face in a pile of horse manure until 3pm the next day.

In the time period of the game, you had to get within arms reach of your target!

Arms reach? Didn't you see that assassination with the rock falling from a bridge? So creative, I love that one!


But sometimes those assassination movies make chuckle - I can't imagine the king of England walking alone in the streets of Nottingham and then just saved by a passing girl's scream...or that one time he was saved by a stray mouse...

- barvaz

[Mek Simmur al Ragaski]

Well, i can see why trying to kill a faction leader might be 5%, as he would be walking around with a regiment of guards at his back, you can never be too careful you know...

About training them up, i always aim for Non-influential diplomats, disgusting Princesses, rebel captians and heritics.... If your playing a country in Italy, you should get flocks of these, so just butcher them all and your assassins will level fairly quickly...

Also as Barvaz said, Priests who have high piety would have more self security, as rival cardinals would try to assassinate to become the successor of the pope. They would have lots of guards, opposed to a scummy merchant sleeping in a gutter, who is drunk and choking on his own vomit

[uanime5]

Assasination is not easy. If it were, every real life war would be preceded by the mysterious deaths of dozens of political and military leaders of any country involved.

This happened very often for Saladin (several people in Egypt who opposed him and Nuradin's son, who also opposed him, all died very suddenly).

In the time period of the game, you had to get within arms reach of your target!

Or just use a small crossbow, or poison.

[ReiseReise]

This happened very often for Saladin (several people in Egypt who opposed him and Nuradin's son, who also opposed him, all died very suddenly).

That was an internal power struggle with people who were naturally in close quarters to their target. Assassination is much easier among family/governement members than for total outsiders.

Or just use a small crossbow, or poison.

A small crossbow cannot kill at 1/10th the range of a modern rifle, like I said.

Poisoning someone requires close contact, more probable for someone with a close relationship to the target rather than a foreigner.

I'm not saying it is impossible to assassinate someone, just that it is much more difficult than it would seem for an agent of a foreign government to do so.

[barvaz]

That was an internal power struggle with people who were naturally in close quarters to their target. Assassination is much easier among family/governement members than for total outsiders.

A small crossbow cannot kill at 1/10th the range of a modern rifle, like I said.

Poisoning someone requires close contact, more probable for someone with a close relationship to the target rather than a foreigner.

I'm not saying it is impossible to assassinate someone, just that it is much more difficult than it would seem for an agent of a foreign government to do so.

I agree with Reise. It probably wasn't nearly as easy as it may sound.

Especially for a foreign agent who must overcome so many obstacles before even getting to any close enough range to the target. He would have to deal with getting to the location, avoiding city guards, fooling the local population, gathering intelligence, getting to the target and dealing with the personal guard and then having a one shot at the target without sniper rifles or bomb hidden in cell phones.

Not to mention that there was no internet to learn how to build a bomb or mix a potion and how find the safest route to the location. The agent needed to be very skilled and knowledgeable. Deadly poison is not something you could easily come by, even then.

Death by family members and trusted people were far more common, me thinks. And rulers long since learned to take various precautions like letting someone else taste their food or changing their daily routines, for example.

- barvaz

[Eikon the Magistrate]

The thing I dont understand about Assasins is:

My first assasination or inquisition of the campiagn will 90% of the time work even if the chance is under 20% of success. Also, I have noticed that on the assasination missions, it will suceed often enough with the 1st or 2nd agent even though the success rate is 5% with brand new agent. At the same time a 60%+ chance will often enough,fail on a regular assasination attempt.

[CynicalP]

One thing I missed is not being able to use assasins to kill off your own troops. It was a great way to train up your assasin force are get rid of any of your questionable generals.

After watching many failed attempt videos I have given up on assasins as not being worth the price paid for such limited success rates. Not when I can successfully kill off an offending agent by surrounding him with my troops then occupying the same space as the agent. You can't beat the 100% rate with money would have normally spent to garrison your settlement. Since I tend to use my agents defensively rather than offensively I really don't miss them that much.