Assassins & Longbow questions

[uncs23]

Two quick questions.

#1. How do you level up assassins? At best I can find something that I have a 75% chance to kill but it seems like a difficult way of leveling considering the possible outcomes (lose skill, die)

#2. How do you use "sharpened stakes" with Longbowmen?

thanks

[Dutch_guy]

Two quick questions.

#1. How do you level up assassins? At best I can find something that I have a 75% chance to kill but it seems like a difficult way of leveling considering the possible outcomes (lose skill, die)

#2. How do you use "sharpened stakes" with Longbowmen?

thanks

1) it helps if you accept the assassin guild line of buildings, in a city where you're going to be pumping out assassins. You'll get subterfuge bonuses on assassins trained cities which contain such a guild, the bonus depending on the level of the building.
You should try leveling your assassins up on captains, enemy priests, or other enemy agents. Once you've levelled him up somewhat, target the bigger fish.

2) you do this by selecting the longbowmen in the pre battle deployment fase, and clicking on the special abilities button.

[Vlad Tzepes]

1. Try get some successful action from an assassin. If you succeed, not only - supposedly - the character's rating will increase, but you should ASAP post the novelty, so that the whole community would rejoice at such a wonderful announcement.

I missed the movie for the only successful sabotage attempt in my English campaign only because I was soooo bored to see that assassin getting caught again and again.

2. In sieges or pre-battles, in deployment mode, you should have that option as special ability for longbowmen - hover your mouse over options, down-right corner, and you'll notice.

[Flavius Gonzo]

I've found using a spy with an assassin helps, especially for sabo missions. And honestly, I "cheat" sometimes by saving and reloading if I don't like the results. I'm more likely to do this with a higher level assassin... the rookie ones get thrown to the wolves.

[myz]

can longbows use fire arrows in battle?

[dainjah]

You have to take a big-picture approach with Assassins. Get your assassin-factory-to-be producing an Assassin every turn, and send it on the highest % mission you can find. A lot of times for me this is as low as 19%. It doesn't matter. A lot of your new assassins will die but the few that live will rank up, which makes them much more likely to survive failures in the future.

It gets a lot better as you get the guild houses. With the HQ, your Assassins start out usable (4-6 skill) and are very easily trainable. The key is that skill does wonders to keep your Assassin alive, even if he fails. There's always the chance that an assassin will lose skill, but this also seems to be tied to skill. Very rarely have I seen an assassin lose "Adept Assassin" or "Master Assassin" from a failure, and I've sent the same master assassin on 3 failures in a row.

[Oaty]

can longbows use fire arrows in battle?

yes but you have to activate it after the battle starts, unless they are on a wall and you can automatically activate it.