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.

[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...

[GFX707]

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.

I think what people complain about is the 5% chance your assassins have of killing a priest or diplomat, when your chances for family members/royalty are actually much higher. It's just one of the many things about this game that don't make sense, as if they didn't bother to playtest it or something.

[Kraxis]

Because spies seems to affect the assassins' rate of success, I wuold personally prefer if assassins had a chance to kill spies. Right now I common see 1% chances for them. That is silly.

[Jagger]

I don't reload. What happens, happens.

I am on turn 120 as Venice on hard/very hard. My assassins have killed the King of France, the King of Spain and multiple family members from a variety of enemies. I have pushed several enemy cities into open rebellion due to destroying every law/order/religion building in a city and not allowing rebuilding. Properly trained assassins are great for destroying buildings and killing family members. That is what I use them for and I find them almost too powerful.

I will try to kill a cardinal every now and then but the odds are low. I keep very good relations with the Pope so I don't need to assassinate inquisitors. I don't try to kill enemy spies either. But spies aren't really much of a threat.

Again, I think assassins may be too powerful. In a "very hard/very hard" game, assassins may be necessary but in "hard/very hard" game, they give me too much of an advantage.

[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.