How To Skill Up Your Assassins

[BeeSting]

Any tips? I could really use some help here.

[Zharatustra]

save frequently...

there are several ways to skill up yer assassin...
building an assassin in a town with a thieves guild gives 'trained in espionage' trait +1...
i think a retinue add in scotland is 'false documents' +1...
of course train up on low level victims, and save yer game just before you do.
if you fail load and try again... yer chance to succeed is the same but its random so the results CAN BE different every time...
just like saving before a battle or any other agent action...

p.s. this game rox so much...

[Quillan]

For starters, build a lot of them. You'll lose some skilling up. First, pair them with a spy. Have the spy infiltrate a foreign settlement, then use the assassin to sabotage buildings. You'll get some skill ups there. Once he's up to about a 4 rating, try killing off captains in charge of small armies, like bandits. You get more skill ups from assassinations than you do from sabotage. At some point you'll be offered an Assassin's Guild. Build it, and then build your new assassins there. Each one will get the "Trained killer" trait, worth +1 to skill. Continued use (coupled with city growth) will get you the opportunity to upgrade that to a Master Assassins Guild (gives +1 skill to all assassins you train anywhere) and possibly an Assassins Guild Headquarters (gives +2 skill to all assassins you train anywhere). That will give you a head start on training up your new assassins. Try to get two guild halls in different cities; for some reason you lose the first bonus when you get the second. You'll want to build your assassins where you have a base guild building so you get both bonuses.

[Beren Son Of Barahi]

As said above, start with alot of them, make sure you have enough spies to spot targets and in your target settlements. Also the easiest targets i have found is young princesses. normally a lot higher % then most of the other targets. so if you can find an area that has both cities and princesses, you have the best training ground known to man, once you skill them up, send you best spies and assassins down to pope town, that will teach the poope to get all ex-communicated with you..

[Finn]

Personally in my spanish (I have assasinated portugal and france out of existence, currently working on milan) campaign I have a lot of assassins but have never had a single one trait up from sabotage, they have however traited down on failure. I'll admit I have done a lot of saving and reloading as its just to horrific to see your best maxed out assassin, get killed or lose half his traits on a single failure.

Princesses seem to be the absolute best way of traiting up that I have found (if you can find them!), usually they are over 50% success for even a low level assassin, followed by low level priests and if your feeling lucky low level merchants. Princesses, priests and merchants also seem to have a less negative effect on relations if they get killed as it just seems to annoy the faction rather than delcare all out war that an heir does.

it gets a lot easier once you get the guilds and can start kicking out assassins in the 3-5 range.

I'm seriously disappointed in assassins in the game though as personally even my 2 maxed assassins still need quite a bit of reloading when taking on even low powered heirs and it was a hell of a lot of work getting them maxed in the first place.

[46852]

Personally in my spanish (I have assasinated portugal and france out of existence, currently working on milan) campaign I have a lot of assassins but have never had a single one trait up from sabotage, they have however traited down on failure.

They do get skill gains from sabotages, but I think the game doesn't inform you about those gains. Look for "Plotter", "Schemer" and "Grand Conspirer" traits on your assassins.

I even got a "Plotter" trait for my spy who was in a city where I sabotaged a building with my assassin. Not sure if that's a bug or an intentional feature.

[Spendius]

Maybe I've been very lucky... My first turkish assassin started with skill 2. He killed a 0 skill diplomat, got a +1 bonus and a +2 retinue. 2 turns later, he kills a general, got another +1 bonus and yet another +2 retinue ! he's level 8 now !

[d1ng0d0g]

In games with the Spanish, Portuguese and all non-catholic factions I tend to build a lot of assassins to get rid of those annoying priests that convert the people away from the true faith.

I start them out on a training run against a small rebel mob that I leave standing about in the territory where the assassins are trained (for Spain that is Toledo, for Portugal that's Lisbon) and try to kill the rebel captain until they "level up". Then I send them after Moorish captains foolish enough to be spotted walking about alone in their territory. Usually by the time they've butchered some captains they are skilled enough to take out minor generals.

Two things I have noticed from observation. Building assassins in a city with an assassin guild and some form of "smith" usually gives them a weapon that gives them a +1 to assassination.

Sabotaging stuff tends to give the assassin retinue that only improves their sabotage skill, before any general subterfuge upgrades. Having a general member around with a bonus to agent recruitment is also very very useful as this reduces the cost of the assassin by quite a lot eventually.

At least half of all the assassins I trained also get retinue that drastically improve their subterfuge for assassination, or for all things.

In one game I killed 8 consecutive popes (all from Poland and Hungary) and then my cardinal got elected and the elite assassin that killed all those popes (added up, he must have had an subterfuge for assassination of 20-something)

One thing I did notice. When you use assassins a lot, generals from neighboring factions, even those you do not harass with your assassins gain all kinds of retinue increasing their security although that may have been because another faction was attempting to assassinate their leaders a lot.

[Oaty]

save frequently...


i think a retinue add in scotland is 'false documents' +1...

Didnt realize it was scotland that was pumping out those false documents for me but your right, but for some factions thats quite a trip to pick up those false documents

[PaulTa]

Does anyone know if Syria still produces great assassins just by nature of location?

[Zardoz]

I feel that it isn't really worth the time and effort to train up a good one, since they have such miserable chances to succeed in anything but sabotage(which can be quickly repaired anyway). Even 0-star rebels and foreign national captains have had near about 20% chances for my low level guys. :/

[Quillan]

They are quite worth the effort of skilling up, in my opinion. I have a suspicion (only that) that the game might calculate for subterfuge higher than 10, even though the display only goes to 10. Back in RTW, if I had an assassin who reached 10 counting all his base stat, skill ups, and retinue members, he stopped gaining skill, even though technically his "skill" of GoodAssassin could go up to 5. In this game, it keeps climbing. I had an assassin, born with a base 3 trait, +1 for being built in a city with an assassins guild, +2 for having an assassins guild HQ in another city, +5 for retinue members, +5 for max skill as an assassin, +2 for the "Plotter" line of traits, and +1 for Exquisite Blade. That adds up to 19 total. He had better chances to assassinate than my other "10-skill" assassin at the time. I know it counts the blade, because that's just "+1 to assassination", but he had the highest success chances I've ever gotten. Besides, sometimes you get a really good one, and then you see things like this:


Wouldn't you take a shot at it?

[Senta]

nice one Quillan! i guess i will go back to work on my 'sins!

[Zharatustra]

can anyone confirm the smith/assassin weapon conection...?

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

Assassins can get skills much higher than the 10 shown on the card.

If you have a guild-master assassin house you can pump out level 5s every turn - and they still gain at the normal rate, so your first kill will still guarantee a +1 to traits etc.

You gain the exquisite blade retinue from a variety of events it appears, so it isnt specifically linked to a smithy etc.

There are also TWO separate ratings on Assassins, only one of which is shown - that being subterfuge.

They also have a "sabotage" rating which, although indicated in traits (plotter{?}) and in some retinue additions (explosives) doesn't get shown on the card.

So you can "level up" your assassin in sabotage but it wont help them assassinating people (theoretically anyway).

I have two or three "level 15 subterfuge" assassins and one level 9 chap who can blow up anything - really need to see if he causes more damage than a "Normal" assassin.

All the above obviously subject to confirmation and possible bug fixing/balancing.

[mattep74]

in the first TW you could train up your killers by having them train on eachother in last man standing type of way. Isnt this possible this time?

[Vladimir]

Didnt realize it was scotland that was pumping out those false documents for me but your right, but for some factions thats quite a trip to pick up those false documents

Excellent. I plan on using the (conquered) Scottish capitol as my subterfuge base.

Edit: Wait. Does that happen if you train them in their territory or play as the faction?

[Finn]

in the first TW you could train up your killers by having them train on eachother in last man standing type of way. Isnt this possible this time?

You cant target any of your own units.