I've just had a massive assassin slugfest around Milan, mainly becuase France decided it was going to use massed assassin's against the city and that was my only counter.

My conclusion is that assassin's are seriously unreliable and a waste of money unless you have no choice, as in this case. There seesm to be very little attention paid to the % chance of success when deciding an outcome. Even the few assassin's who made it through the 16% success period died stupid deaths eventually trying to take out noob French assassin's, and despite all my efforts more French assassin's died by their own snakes than were killed by the massive investment I made in trying to kill them.

Mind you the vision of Milan surrounded by 15+ assassin's all hacking at each other was different, if somewhat pointless.