Assasins.

[IliaDN]

I remember eliminating the whole faction ( Spanish ) in the MTW using only those guys , but when I tried it RTW I failed and was rather disappointed , so have anyone else tried this , and what is your opinion on those guys in RTW , are they of any use to you?

[a_ver_est]

I has found them useful to kill enemy diplomats ...

[The Stranger]

I remember eliminating the whole faction ( Spanish ) in the MTW using only those guys , but when I tried it RTW I failed and was rather disappointed , so have anyone else tried this , and what is your opinion on those guys in RTW , are they of any use to you?

i know, drools. those times were great. assassinating all factions left with a 8 star assanins. also you can have over 50 members too much to assassinate

[Armoryk]

You have to train them up, and it's hard, much harder than with spies or diplomats. Take out Rebel captains and buildings (temples especially) in badly guarded enemy cities (or even neutral cities if you don't mind risking war)...stuff that you have a good chance with to get their skill up. Pair them up with a spy and send in the spy first, if the spy can't get in, go somewhere else. You'll need the recon for the buildings.

I have an assasin now with 9 "eyes" and a courtesan retinue who takes out a Pontic family member every turn. It makes their stacks in the field a lot easier to take out without their General unit.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I use them every now and then, but usually I only use a bunch when I want the "shifty" sort of attributes or happen to get an uber assassin that can kill ANYONE. I just had one, he happened to kill two faction leaders in a row, the probability for each was 5-8%!

[Es Arkajae]

I mainly use them to kill annoying enemy diplomats and assassins and rebel leaders (so I can then bribe their army if I don't feel like fighting them).

They can come in useful sometimes for taking out eenmy family members but they're too unreliable.

Their best use as the Romans is kick starting the civil war.

[Oaty]

If you want to asassinate a bloodline, kill off the young ones first. When family members are short the A.I. will adopt up to once a turn.

Each family member can have 4 children/adoptees. So the trick is to kill the young ones so they are left with old men who can't adopt because all 4 slots are used up.

[vale]

I use them to kill the senate and start a civil but never did work, anyway I also use them to kill enemy diplomats when they trying to bribe my army

[sapi]

In my spqr (mod) game i am using them to take out the gauls - they currently have 2 family members left, one under siege....i just hope they don't adopt...

[Aetius the Last Roman]

Assasins can be very useful, but often than not they just end up being a waste of time, they take a lot of time to train and they have a high probability of losing if they go on really useful assasination missions.

I think the best use of assasins is in sabotage, where they can tech up and harm the enemy's war effort. Imagine stopping him training his best units!
I did that with the ptomolies and Macedon, and it was pretty good.

[DragonIce84]

The reason they take so long to train is that they lose up to three skill points when they fail, I think they lost all the traits they've gained, but retinue stays. Still, I managed to eliminate the Greeks and Dacians via assasination when they were down to two provinces each.

[Armoryk]

I got tired of besieging the Selucid cities and I'm trying a new assassin-based strategy to toy with his last two cities. I have him boxed in in Cilicia and Mesopotamia and he has no cash reserve and negative income (so say my spies). I'm going to try sabotaging his major structures one by one to see if I can get his revolting peasants to revoltingly revolt and kick his armies out where I can pick him off. Anyone else tried something like this?

[Retos_ON]

I do use assassins often both for killing general as for getting down buildings...what I found it is important where you hire the assassins...some generals have traits that give you a better assassins...may be possible that some cities do as well?? I try to confirm on that but I couldn't follow trough.

(sorry for my english)

[professorspatula]

I use assassins to take out the occasional family member, but often to knock out diplomats & enemy spies (especially the ones with the plague that continously go from each of your settlements passing on death just as the previous city recovers from it). When my empire gets to a certain size, it's too much hassle to control all those agents though. I really wish we didn't have to individually order each assassin and spy and diplomat, it's a needless chore.

Actually, I probably use the assassins to cause distruption to the enemy more than anything. Sabotaging temples and high level troop building facilities can help soften up the enemy before moving in my armies. If I can prevent them building +3 experience Urban Cohorts before my army invades, then that's a good thing.

[Garvanko]

Just use them for a bit of fun when you're out of money and there's nothing to do for a few turns..

[ToranagaSama]

I remember eliminating the whole faction ( Spanish ) in the MTW using only those guys , but when I tried it RTW I failed and was rather disappointed , so have anyone else tried this , and what is your opinion on those guys in RTW , are they of any use to you?

Assassins are very useful.

The AI uses them and defends against them too. Overall the AI does a pretty good job of it, better than the previous TW versions.

Given that, the AI doesn't engage in the Chessy tactic you describe.