So many accidental deaths...

[Excalibur Bane]

I must say, it is very entertaining to specialize in assassins. I paid special care to build up two cities for this purpose. One with an Assassins Headquarters and the other with a Spies Headquarters (The exact names escape me at the moment). I carefully groomed my hordes of Assassins and Spies to perfection, assassinating and investigating anything that had the misfortune of walking through France. After about a dozen or so turns of pumping out Assassins and Spies, I had deployed over 20 spies throughout Portugal, all of them maxed out in espionage. I had complete LOS on everything coming and going from their 20 odd province empire.

I tracked down each and every family member I could find and followed each one with a spy every turn. I figured I had most of the family tracked down. It was time to deploy my elite cadre of French Assassins to do their work. A few turns later, my maxed out Assassins were in range. I struck each and every member I knew about. By the time the stones had finished falling off bridges, the snakes had finished biting people, enough buildings had been burned and twice as many daggers had been lodged in the back of the Portugese family. 16 family members had died, 3 princesses, 1 heir and 1 king. It was truly epic in it's scope and planning, and I think I just happened to be very, very lucky. The next turn rolled around, and suddenly their entire empire is either Rebel controlled or has gone to Allies, including 2 provinces for me. I figured I got most of them, but not all of them. I certainly wasn't expecting the entire empire to crumble. I didn't lose a single Assassin, and I only have a few failures to boot. The worst success rate was about 40% on the King. Everyone else was a piece of cake to take down. Who says peacetime is boring?

The Danes are next on my list to be exterminated. Kings, Princes, Bishops, Merchants, Popes, all shall fall before the blades of the great French assassination machine! Muhahaha!

[Lord Condormanius]

That's awesome. Some people are saying that the assassins are buggy or don't work right or something. They seem to work just fine for me. I haven't brought down entire kingdomns with them just yet, but they do what i need them to do most of the time.

[Dooz]

The only reason people are complaining about assassins is because they don't have 100% or some other obsenely high percent success rate. Let's be reasonable here. How can one think it makes sense to have more than, even say a 50% chance of killing someone? Even if they're not successful, more often then not they get away so it's not some game-breaking thing where your constantly starting wars because of failed assassins or whatnot. I think in general people are too quick to tag something as a "bug" when it's just something they're either not used to or disagree with as far as game mechanics are concerned. Of course this is not to say there are plenty of bugs, but you get the idea.

[littlebktruck]

High level assassins are a lot of fun. I used 3 of them to exterminate the French royal family over a period of 10-15 turns, as half of the cheezy finish to my English short campaign (the other half being lightning amphibious raids on Scotland's 2 cities). I had surprisingly good luck, succeeding many times with 30-40% chances and not dying even after trying plenty of times with 15-30% chances.

[JimBob]

Does the assassination school still work? Building dozens of assassins and then giving them all orders to assassinate each other? Whoever survives gets to try again.

[Kekvit Irae]

Nope, cant target any of your own agents, family members, or armies. There's plenty of enemy merchants and diplomats running around Milan in my game, so there's no shortage of targets.

[Excalibur Bane]

As far as I'm concerned, the Assassins are working perfectly. The fact that I was able to do the above is proof that they work fine. It just takes patience to train them, really. Rebel generals, priests, merchants, anything that happens to wander into your lands, make good practice. With the Assassin's Headquarters building, if trained in the same city as the building, gives you an effective +3 to his skill. You gain +1 for having the building there, as well as the +2 global effect on top of that. Add your standard agent starting amount, and often you can start off with a skill level of 5 or more, depending on how lucky you are, I guess. They often gain ancillaries just sitting around in a city, no idea what effects that though.

It provides a nice change of pace during peacetime, to pass the turns, so to speak while building up or waiting for an opening to present itself that you can exploit.

Ah, well. It looks like the Danes are going to be spared my wrath for the moment. My French Assassin Legion© has begun to have the audacity to start dying of old age on me. I tell you, it's so hard to find good help in those days.

[Lochar]

It took me awhile but finally got an assasins guild, and that in istelf helps alot.

Even with a master thieves guild I would get lvl 1 assasins and basically all they could do was sabatoge. Churches seem the easiest thing to do so would level them up until they got a second increase. From there it was taking chances on 50-60% targets. Once got third skill it was a bit easier as it omcreased chances.


My highest assasins tho are only 5 as I dont have a masters guild nor have I been offered any HQ's of any kind.

I think the problem is, with a spy, all I need to do is spy anything, be it rebel,merchant,diplomat,priest, whatever and it's a skillup. With assasins even getting a successful kill doesnt guarantee a skillup. Plus it might be I have bad luck but most of my assasination failures are death. The ones that dont kill me are the ones that trigger the snake vids, I think Princesses and some others.

But that does sound awesome what you accomplished and sounds like you put alot of patience into it.

I wonder tho if you need to target non family members. I guess it adds to the hunt but I really never thought about what happens to priests and such when a faction dies. So far I only killed of scotland and they had no one on the map.

Good story tho!

[Jagger]

Great story!

I am regularly getting 10 star assassins. I do have the guild but I train them carefully. I start them off blowing up buildings. Once they get to around 6-7stars, I start assassinating captains and rebel captains to top them off and get some assassination skills. Then I am ready to take out the family members with the best odds. Works very well but never a guarantee when I send them off on a tough assassination but I have lots of good assassins.

[Barry Fitzgerald]

Assassins are not working properly, and the proof is the silly low percantage chances for killing inquisitors and priests etc....almost no hope at all, even half decent assassins.

So def some issue there...sure whacking a merchant is easy enough....

[Prodigal]

I know this maybe making excuses for what maybe a balance issue, but if you were going around burning people it stands to reason you maybe a little more paranoid about someone wanting you dead than if you were wandering about looking for stuff to sell.

Agreed the inquisitors could do with a little nerfing, (which has been discussed at length in other threads), but I don't think it shouldn't be related to assassination success, as that would mean a dash to get an army of 10 star killers that could knock them off as soon as they appeared anywhere.

As the inquisitors stand now they seem to have two effects, annoy people, & scare them into running for the nearest boat, the former is because its a game & it IS annoying, the latter is quite funny as it would be exactly the kind of thing someone likely to be burnt at the stake would do.

[Kraxis]

Personally I think assassins are fine, just that some targets are crazy.

Inquisitors and spies in particular. I would even go so far as to say that family members and generals are too easy to kill.
So for most targets the assassins do well enough. But for the one targets that can be absolutely vital, they have little chance, which is a shame.

[Kobal2fr]

The only reason people are complaining about assassins is because they don't have 100% or some other obsenely high percent success rate. Let's be reasonable here. How can one think it makes sense to have more than, even say a 50% chance of killing someone? Even if they're not successful, more often then not they get away so it's not some game-breaking thing where your constantly starting wars because of failed assassins or whatnot. I think in general people are too quick to tag something as a "bug" when it's just something they're either not used to or disagree with as far as game mechanics are concerned. Of course this is not to say there are plenty of bugs, but you get the idea.

There's that, and there also the fact that many many "experienced" players start the game in VH/VH right off the bat, and in VH campaign agents have huge penalties (for instance, a 1 skill assassin will have 30ish percent chance to kill an army captain. In VH, it's more like 9%...). Which leads them to believe it's just the way they are, and not wonder why...

[SoulforgedMage]

Ah, well. It looks like the Danes are going to be spared my wrath for the moment. My French Assassin Legion© has begun to have the audacity to start dying of old age on me. I tell you, it's so hard to find good help in those days.

That just made my day. Funniest thing I've heard.

[Daveybaby]

I agree with most of whats been posted here, in that assassins seem to work just fine, and could even be considered overpowered if you really take your time to do it right.

Would agree that Inquisitors are probably too hard to kill, but thats only in the context that inquisitors are too damaging to be left alive, and theres no other way (barring exploits) to get rid of them. A level 10 inquisitor should be next to impossible to kill, there just shouldnt be so many of them, and they shouldnt have such a high success rate in their own operations.

I'm betting that the people so quick to complain that assassins are underpowered would be equally quick to complain if CA 'fixed' it in a patch and the AI suddenly started wiping out their generals families in the same way that Excalibur Bane has done to the AI. The same thing applies to bribing armies, chumming up to the pope and forcing the AI to accept alliances. They want to be able to do it to the AI but get annoyed if the AI does it to them. I'm starting to think that some people would in fact be much happier if the entire game consisted of a blank screen with the words 'YOU WIN' in huge flashing letters.

[gardibolt]

What happened to the early reports that the stated percentage of successful assassination seemed to be off--I know I've had assassins with a stated 90% chance to kill someone, and they almost never succeed, so I've stopped building them.

[Daveybaby]

What happened to the early reports that the stated percentage of successful assassination seemed to be off--I know I've had assassins with a stated 90% chance to kill someone, and they almost never succeed, so I've stopped building them.

I think there are two issues here.

(1) The percentage given is just an estimate based on the target's valour and (probably) retinue. I dont think it takes into account any other factors like how many spies are in the stack/city, stack size, if youre on foreign soil, etc, which may also affect the final probability. This was certainly the case in MTW1 w.r.t. watchtowers etc

(2) I think the game precalculates some dice rolls for stuff like assassinations etc, so that reloading a failed attempt doesnt seem to change the outcome very often. If thats the case, then great - it stops people save/load exploiting - but it also makes people think the game is bugged.


Note: the above is just educated guesswork based on what i've witnessed happen in the game. I may be talking garbage. It wouldnt be the first time.

[Ulstan]

Sounds like assassins are far too good then, aside from dealing with inquisitors. You shouldn't be able to just wipe out entire countries with a handful of assassins and no real chance for the enemy to respond.

I avoid relying on assassins, because the AI seems incapable of dealing with them well, and it makes things far too easy, because family members are far too easily assassinated.

[Slaists]

I think there are two issues here.

(1) The percentage given is just an estimate based on the target's valour and (probably) retinue. I dont think it takes into account any other factors like how many spies are in the stack/city, stack size, if youre on foreign soil, etc, which may also affect the final probability. This was certainly the case in MTW1 w.r.t. watchtowers etc

I believe, the probability displayed for example for city sabotage attacks does show the effect of spies located in that city. I see it jump up if an enemy spy enters. Once the spy exits, the probability goes back to default. (I see the spy because my spy is in the same city).

However, there is a caveat. If you have a spy in an enemy city and the city used to be 100% sure hit target, it might not be so in the next turn. Once an enemy spy enters the city the probability of your spy successfully re-entering changes. However, if you select your spy while still in the city and target the city again (for example, to level his spying skill up), it still displays 100% chance of entering. Executing the entry migh yield a nasty surprise: your spy's death. However, if you take your spy physically out of the city and target it again - the probability displayed would be adjusted to reflect the enemy spy in there.

I have seen people complain about their spies dying on 100% targets; I suspect, this is the reason, trying to reenter the town without exiting.

[derfinsterling]

I have one issue with Assassins vs. Spies - You can send a Spy to a city and he'll be successful 99% of the time, slowly accumulating experience.
Most of my spies range around 8-10.

But assassins might lose some of their ability when they fail. And that really sucks when you're trying to build up your assassins and then fall back two levels. Easily a couple of turns wasted.

But I'd like to try something like the original poster: Establish a marriage alliance by wedding my heir to a princess, then killing off the princess's family, with the king as the last one - then the entire kingdom should fall to me, right?

[Ii Naomasa]

But assassins might lose some of their ability when they fail. And that really sucks when you're trying to build up your assassins and then fall back two levels. Easily a couple of turns wasted.

That relates to the question I was going to ask those who think assassins are overpowered or perfectly fine compared to their targets. Are you saving/reloading before attempts to help build your uber assassins? If so, then in my humble opinion that tosses out any opinion on the balances. If you're letting the dice roll as they may and don't restore after failures, then it can become a frustrating game to create assassins that have any chance of success against anything but the lowest starred cretins.

I'm not saying assassins are underpowered either... without any reloading, I had about three assassins in the 6-8 point range at one point close to midgame and a couple of times had one or two of skill. To me, having but a few great ones feels right and their still chancy attempts made sense, as assassins tended to have dangerous and often frustrating lives. They are weak against other higher level agents, which both makes and doesn't make sense, depending on how you look at it.

As derfinsterling points out, one of the most frustrating things about assassin 'training' is the 'one step forward, two steps back' situation with them. It would be nice if there was a better way to train them, but it probably would be exploited.

You know what I would almost like to see which would both help assassins and also be a bit realistic (except in terms of how long it takes to kill someone)? If an assassin could stalk someone, sort of like a siege. Tell an assassin to kill someone and when he gets near them, he's giving the option to strike or stalk. Stalking would spend that turn justing following a target and learning his/her habits and/or get into the target's confidence. Of course, the assassin has to make a skill check to avoid detection. If successful, the assassin would gain some percentage of success chance. You could choose to strike or keep stalking, each time needing a check against detection. In theory, an assassin who doesn't get detected for a bunch of turns would have a darn high chance (realistically, either he's become best of buds with the target and therefore has a billion chances to strike or knows exactly when the target will be least guarded). It would create a little risk vs. reward minigame of sorts as the player tries to figure out when it's best to strike.

[Barry Fitzgerald]

It is more an inquisitor problem, they do too much damage, and are far too hard to kill off.

So in this way assassins are underpowered v them...or you could say inquisitors are overpowered.

Inquisitors are just a pain full stop. So you go on a crusade to keep the pope happy, and he whacks off your leader/general? What is the logic on that? Are you not helping out the pope to start with? The whole aspect of this is at best a pain, at worst highly unrealistic. Just how does some dude in a robe and book get let into kill off a top general..? Just because he doesnt go to church! Come on CA you can do better than this...its just a wild variable put in to make life harder...very unrealistic...and slightly absurd.

[suleo]

On a related topic, I wonder if there are still faction-specific bonuses for agents. In my HRE campaign which I completed (full game, 45 provinces), I had an assassin's HQ in Nuremberg but for the most part I would end up with 4-star assassins. Plus, they took a seriously long time to train, both in sabotage and in assassinations.

Now, in my Byz campaign, I am getting near-perfect assassins, right out of the HQ in Thessaloniki (5 starts minimum, several 6-starred ones). In addition, they are *much* easier to level up. I routinely have level 10 assassins that are under 30 years old.

In MTW1, I remember that Byzantium had an advantage in agents, as a faction-specific trait. I wonder if that advantage is back. My empirical evidence seems to suggest that so I am wondering if anyone else has experienced that playing Byz.

Incidentally, my best use of an assassin was to elimiate the head of a Hungarian crusade army besieging Jerusalem. The entire army dissolved in the next turn However, that turned my relations with all catholic factions to "abyssmal". It took some time and a lot of money to fix my standing with my allies...

[Kraxis]

Sounds like assassins are far too good then, aside from dealing with inquisitors. You shouldn't be able to just wipe out entire countries with a handful of assassins and no real chance for the enemy to respond.

I avoid relying on assassins, because the AI seems incapable of dealing with them well, and it makes things far too easy, because family members are far too easily assassinated.

Take note that it wasn't a handful of assassins, but rather a massive operation.

However, reloading doesn't seem to help you much.
I have tried reloading with herecy trials and a bit on my super-assassin. I had a cardinal with 48% chance of burning the heretic... He failed every single of my 12 attempts with reload. That just isn't right according to the percentage.
However, higher chances of success might help. So in essence saving can only help you avoid losing an agent (or ability), and help you secure the kill that you were meant to get anyway.

But it seems that if you do something else before attempting the 'kill' (be it trials, assassination, checking persons or cornering merchants, then the game could be cleaning the memory for a new calculation. But I'm not certain (didn't help my cardinal in the mentioned example).

[Oaty]

However, reloading doesn't seem to help you much.
I have tried reloading with herecy trials and a bit on my super-assassin. I had a cardinal with 48% chance of burning the heretic... He failed every single of my 12 attempts with reload. That just isn't right according to the percentage.

Well the original Programming for STW/MTW had the asassins chance already decided before you turn began the turn. So if an asassin failed he was going to fail no matter how many times you reloaded it, if he killed he'd, he was going to make that kill no matter how many times you reloaded it.

[Whacker]

However, reloading doesn't seem to help you much.
I have tried reloading with herecy trials and a bit on my super-assassin. I had a cardinal with 48% chance of burning the heretic... He failed every single of my 12 attempts with reload. That just isn't right according to the percentage.
However, higher chances of success might help. So in essence saving can only help you avoid losing an agent (or ability), and help you secure the kill that you were meant to get anyway.

But it seems that if you do something else before attempting the 'kill' (be it trials, assassination, checking persons or cornering merchants, then the game could be cleaning the memory for a new calculation. But I'm not certain (didn't help my cardinal in the mentioned example).

Welcome to my sad existence kraxter.

I'm probably going to get ganged up on here, but I see two problems with assassins, one is taste, the other is a bug.

In terms of taste, I think they're underpowered by a good margin, at least the low level ones are. Keep hearing about how godlike the 9-10 skill assassins are but I can't even get my morons above 5-6 in skill. Before anyone jumps on this, I know how assassins work, I know how to train em, been playing these games for years, yadda yadda thank you drive through.

In terms of bug, I am adamant about the chance of success (displayed as a percentage) not being remotely accurate. I've tested this extensively, the success rates (positives) for a given set in a test doesn't remotely reflect the chance to succeed. I had a 6 skill assassin have a 33% chance of success on a nameless captain, he only managed to kill the sot 4 times out of 50 using quicksave/quickload. You guys can do the math. I've done other tests that I've documented in other threads for those who care enough to go hunt them down.

[Lord Condormanius]

In terms of bug, I am adamant about the chance of success (displayed as a percentage) not being remotely accurate. I've tested this extensively, the success rates (positives) for a given set in a test doesn't remotely reflect the chance to succeed. I had a 6 skill assassin have a 33% chance of success on a nameless captain, he only managed to kill the sot 4 times out of 50 using quicksave/quickload.

I think that the success percentage in this game is based on more than just the assassin's skill. I have had a target with as high as 80% one turn and the next turn, after he has moved it wil be like 36% or something. I think his position on the map, what other units are around, etc., may have something to do with it.

Like I said before, they seem to be working fine for me.

[Whacker]

I think that the success percentage in this game is based on more than just the assassin's skill. I have had a target with as high as 80% one turn and the next turn, after he has moved it wil be like 36% or something. I think his position on the map, what other units are around, etc., may have something to do with it.

Like I said before, they seem to be working fine for me.

After doing some more searching and reading here and twcenter, I'm now inclined to believe that. Some others have reported enemy and friendly spys in proximity to the target affecting the outcomes. If this really *is* the case, then I'm halfway to retracting my "it's a bug" statement. The problem in my view is that we really need CA to tell us exactly how the math works that goes into calculating an attempt and whether or not it is successful. And for that matter, how a good deal of other things are calculated. (yeah yeah, I know about the intellectual property excuse, but I still don't buy it )

[Kekvit Irae]

In my personal experience, reloading works some of the time with me. I think the game gives you one last chance to succeed on a dice roll when you reload, but if you fail that, any further reloading will also fail. I've had my assassins, priests, and inquisitors all fail the first time sometimes, only to succeed on the first reload. If they didnt succeed at that point, then it wouldnt matter how many reloads you did.

And before you ask, I have the all-factions mod installed, which is why I have inquisitors (by playing the Papal States).

Personally, I find the best way to train up a young assassin is to train assassins in towns with Assassin Guilds and maxed out brothel/cafe buildings. Then go to a rebel settlement (or an enemy) and target only the religious structure. I found that churches and mosques have a MUCH higher percentage chance to sabotague than other structures. Continue destroying structures until you get to the point where everything is 80% or more, and then start targetting newbie priests/imams/diplomats/merchants. Eventually you'll get a maxed out assassin with penty of good traits and followers or relics (Exquisite Blade). At that point, start targetting your enemy's family members. If you are bold enough, go for the heir or faction leader.

[Zenicetus]

I have tried reloading with herecy trials and a bit on my super-assassin. I had a cardinal with 48% chance of burning the heretic... He failed every single of my 12 attempts with reload. That just isn't right according to the percentage.

From what I've seen so far, those percentages "to hit" don't work the way most people understand math. I've seen the same thing with princesses looking for a marriage with a foreign prince. If it's 46%, I can try/reload and try again, and I'll never succeed. It's the same with assassins... very different from RTW, where it was worth trying a kill with a 35% chance.

Either something is wacky in the game math, or else you really do need the screen to show a 50% or better chance, before you'll get a hit.