Re: Assassinating priests and astral mags
 

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.

Re: Assassinating priests and astral mags
 

The problem is assassins is they're easily out performed by cheaper investments into remote spells.

Re: Assassinating priests and astral mags
 

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.

Re: Assassinating priests and astral mags
 

Well, yeah. But you can do both.

Build some assassins and recruit troops. Now you've got an army taking a province a turn and assassins taking one every 2-3 turns. Some types of indies, especially with higher indy strength are easier to take by killing the leaders anyway.

Re: Assassinating priests and astral mags
 

My favourite starting strategy when playing MA Abyssia is to prophet the Assasin you get at beginning on the first turn, and then move him into the toughest neighbouring province to assasinate the commanders. It's like extra province every 4-5fth turn. Not that awesome, but not that shabby either.

Just put him way back in the battlefield and script: Smite, Smite, Smite. It works, and if you get lucky, he gets awesome Heroic Ability when he eventually makes it into HoF.

Re: Assassinating priests and astral mags
 

If assassins were always an effective efficient attack, it'd be a bit silly. Assassins are good for surprise and keeping people off balance, and/or getting them to over-compensate. Many Dom players are highly paranoid and get overly upset when anything goes against their plans, so they tend to overreact to assassins. Assassin attacks at a ripe unexpected moment can be very worthwhile, especially if they get someone important, or take out a commander moving troops into battle.

Re: Assassinating priests and astral mags
 

I believe you misspelled swarm http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

assassin's are most useful for irritating opponents, and increasing the micro-management cost, which is really the most important and limited resource in the end-game...

also, killing an occasional battlefield commander who is moving troops around can mean the difference between victory or defeat

Re: Assassinating priests and astral mags
 

Yeah, swarm is one of the nastiest one on one spells for being a cheap spell. I like using an indie druid and swarm spells at the arena. Almost always win.

Re: Assassinating priests and astral mags
 

I have a lot of fun outfitting assassins with the bow that causes insanity. It doesn't work often, but it amuses me when it does.