Assassinating priests and astral mags

Sombre · #1 October 24th, 2007, 02:41 AM

Assassins don't really work that well in Dom3. If you start giving them equipment and such, you have to be sure they will win or they won't be worth it, which means they have to be able to beat bodyguards, scripted spells etc

If you go for mass production you will find almost any basic assassin can be countered by a bodyguard or even a random spell, additionally they don't reliably take stuff like mounted commanders down, so again they usually aren't worth the cost.

If you give them the skeleton producing talisman, any assassin becomes much more likely to win, but you're right it's very boring.

Then there's the problem that if you do get assassins working, what you're really doing is forcing the opponent to micro orders and bodyguards, something which annoys them and isn't exactly 'fun' to play against.

But I do still use assassins sometimes and almost always without the 'cheap' skele-talisman, because I like them. Sometimes I thug them out with a little bit of equipment and use them to support armies as well, but mostly I just send several out and hope for them to cause a bit of disruption.

Maraxus · #2 October 24th, 2007, 04:37 AM

One bottle of living water costs only 10 water and is really good. Patroling troops, high provincial defence and most of all: Good Bodyguards are still heavy problems.

The best assasin is not the assasin that sneaks into his opponent's reseach and murders untill he is dead, the best assasin is the one, that sneaks around in the opponent's terretory and randomly murders someone every 3rd round or something.

ExitJudas · #3 October 24th, 2007, 05:44 AM

I think an "information about commanders in province" scouting skill should be part of the assassin skillset.

If you balance the assassin so that the chances of him killing a highpowered commander with bodyguards is extremely small anyway, then the job of the assassin should be to seek out, identify and kill lesser commanders and unprotected commanders, i.e. idenityfing weaknesses in the opposing players command structure and exploiting this weakness.

What if an assassin could report back from its province what commanders where there, including his bodyguards and maybe a general description of his target viability? On top of this you could allow for the assassin to select his target directly, instead of choosing it randomly. As long as you make sure assassins cannot be constructed to be powerful enough to have more than a, say 25% chance of killing a strong commander with bodyguards.

this would make assassins more interesting imo, and less random.

Sombre · #4 October 24th, 2007, 06:34 AM

I think assassins would be fun if they could just choose which commander to go after, displaying the name and unit type, when you gave them the order. That way you could consistently go for easier targets, but still not be sure the opponent hadn't 'mined' one of his weak commanders with an anti assassin item or some bodyguards.

VedalkenBear · #5 October 24th, 2007, 06:40 AM

From what I've seen on Assassins...

1) Jomon's Ninjas are among the best, IMO. Excellent stats and with Poisoned Shuriken.

2) Empoisoners (C'tis) come with Skele-Spam built in.

3) Any seducer is most likely worth it. I am astonished that the Serpent Cult's seducer is so very cheap.

In answer to your specific questions, like Konming said, almost all the spells you talk about can be avoided through high MR.

jimkehn · #6 October 24th, 2007, 07:58 AM

What I have fun doing with assassins is Indie provinces. Go in the province, kill off the leaders until he can't find anymore. Then attack the province the next turn. The indie army is leaderless and routes.

Humakty · #7 October 24th, 2007, 08:19 AM

I think that to hire some assassins can always be usefull in MP, to make your ennemy react. He won't know exactly how many you use, so he could be tempted to protect all his leaders. The same can be said of spies, who can divert many pounds of gold he could use elsewhere.

Ironhawk · #8 October 24th, 2007, 02:04 PM

Quote:

jimkehn said:
What I have fun doing with assassins is Indie provinces. Go in the province, kill off the leaders until he can't find anymore. Then attack the province the next turn. The indie army is leaderless and routes.

This does work, but its very time-intensive. You might take 3 turns to kill all the leaders of an indy province and then a 4th to take it. By that time you could probably have recruited an army that could cap the province and then continue on to cap more at 1/turn.