Re: Improve assassins
 

Assassins going first is insane! It sounds good on paper, but think about it from a late-game perspective for a minute. If you were assured of attacking first, you could basically assure that your assassinations would always work. Assassins can absolutely not go first IMO.

Re: Improve assassins
 

Hmm, what do you mean by always work?
Work against mages or against thughs?
What would you give him?

Re: Improve assassins
 

The assassins may work against their targets, but when they get caught by a patrolling army on their assassination turn, with their orders set for assassination, they usually die. All you need is one earth mage in your patrolling army set to petrify. The assassin won't go first in the discovery battle.

I suppose you could stick Virtue on some high-HP assassin, and it might be more difficult to kill it. But that's going to a lot of effort to kill one commander every 2 months.

I'd object to remote assassinations (Disease Demons etc) getting the first move in though, since that's a totally different situation.

Re: Improve assassins
 

@ Ironhawk: Late game? The first would work. Then all the important commanders would have serious bodyguards. ;) Hey, actually it's already this way :D