Using assassins for expansion
 

There are several nations with good recruitable assassins, which, as I understand, can be used to expand through indies with relative ease. My question is: how exactly does it work?
1)How do I know, how many commanders do the indies have? If I assassinate one of two commanders and attack, will it weaken the indies?
2)Do indie commanders reappear? Meaning, do I have to assassinate them and attack the province with other troops at the same turn?
Any other advice is welcome too, of course :)

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

They dont reappear.
The best way to know how many commanders the indy province has is to attack with a single commander with retreat orders. you loose nothing and you get to see the exact forces in that province.

still that expansion is unreliable unless your assasins are strong, good if you get an assasin right away (abysia?), but if you recruit an assasin then you are not recruiting a mage...

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

Well, some nations have mage-assassins )

By the way, if I attack with retreat orders, and there are no more commanders in that province - will I get the province?

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

That depends entirely on who is faster with retreating from the battlefield completely - your commander or the enemy troops, routing without guidance.

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

It's a tricky balance.

You want to set your commander to hold long enough and/or far enough forward to let a retreating enemy escape before he does, but for him still to retreat fast enough if they're attacking.

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

another way is to just keep assassinating until a month where there's no assassination fight, this means there's no commanders left in the province, so an ycommander can take it by just walking in (either the assassin themself, or some other person you have for the purpose); this takes a little longer, but it's a little easier to manage than attacking with a guy earlier to count how many commanders there are, and then keeping track of the kills so you know when it's empty. If renaming is on, i suppose you could rename the assassin to keep track of the commanders left in a province.
Zlefin :)

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

I don't if this can be useful, but with ctis I sometimes take indie provinces with an empoisonner: I order him to assassinate ennemi commander (select a province with only commanders, no knights or strong indies). With the indies set to 8 there usually are 3 commanders. When the empoisonner set to assassinate doesn't attack anybody, this mean that there is no more commander. You can now take the province with the empoisonner.

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

The number of commanders depends on the poptype of the province. Edi's DB lists these. But Torin's suggestion to send in a probing commander is a good one. That way you'll notice extra priests etc.

Horse Tribes usually just have one commander. Amazons and Tribals have two, but Amazons have bodyguards usually. Lizards can also have bodyguards I think.

It's a bit of a waste to use an assassin to take ownership of a province on the turn after the commanders are all dead. Any indy commander or scout can do that, on the same turn the last commander dies. Indy commanders at the back on Holdx4,Retreat usually survive if you miscount or your assassin fails.

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

Yes, lizard shamans can have bodyguards. The rare Bakemono indies also have them.

Judging by above comments, looks like the best way to use assassins is to pair them with scouts or commanders.
Turn one - assassin moves into a province, scout attacks it and counts commanders. Turn two - assassination, scout either moves to capture the province, or waits for next turn, etc.

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

Any assassin can usually win 99% of independent provinces if carrying a bottle of water (Water Elemental). Just setup the assassin to hold, hold, hold, attack rear. The elemental does all the work.

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

Also, when using assassins to take provinces keep in mind you're (almost certainly) using an army and/or pretender to expand as well. Focus your assassins on those juicy farmlands full of knights and leave the bear tribe pushovers for your regular troops. Assassination for initial expansion can be very worthwhile used like this, 2 or 3 assassins can net you a couple extra very nice provinces in the first year which can easily be better than a couple extra mages in some situations.

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

Attacking with a scout who has a Skull Talisman works well. The undead it creates helps hold off attacks while the scout checks out the situation to see who is left needing assassination. If the assassin is a mage you can also use the scout to safely store gems and occassional-use equipment.

Mictlan has an assassin god. A titan, with stealth and flight, who summons help during the assassinations.

Giving the Skull Talisman to an assassin is a cheap way to give them assistants during the assassination. Also it makes an assassin able to check for job-done fairly safely.

Pangaea has no assassin but does have Pans who can gather maenads to them each turn. With a Black Heart (to make them assassins) they will auto-check the province each turn. They will assassinate, followed immeadiately by an attack by maenads which will give you a nice view of who is left to take out.

Scripting a assassin who has magic with a spell such as Charm or HellBind Heart triples your assassins abilities.
A) He will try to assassinate a commander
B) If that fails then he will end up in one-on-one combat with the commander. He will try to take over the commanders mind. Set it for 2 tries (which is usually safe) and then combat actions.
C) If the spell works then the new converted commander will attack his old friends in that province. If he loses then you have both weakened them AND seen what is left. If he was the last commander then his own troops will rout from him which is kindof fun to watch. PLUS you get a new commander with all his equipment.

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

While this method does work, it should be noted that its really slow. You have to spend 1-2 turns assassinating (this assumes a group of assassins) and then another turn to move to the next province. So 2-3 turns per province if things go well. Whereas if you spent the money on troops you could buy mages instead and your troops can attack a new province every single turn.

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

Yeah, it's really more of a cheat against indy provinces and maybe a stupid AI, for people who can't beat them normally. Or MP players with a LOT of money problems (i.e. almost dead). Assassinations don't work against PD commanders, after all.

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

Right, as I said I think it really only makes sense if you're able to snag a couple very nice and otherwise well defended provinces. Depending on the nation you're playing it's not terribly uncommon to encounter a very high population farmland defended by too many heavy cavalry or elephants to be feasible to take with your initial expansion parties....yet could almost double your income. Plus, getting an assassin is not always mutually exclusive to getting a mage, your mage-assassins can go back to researching once they've cleared the high value targets. It's also not completely worthless to have assassins out scouting afterwards, people tend not to put bodyguards with their mages until after the first assassination attempt and loosing a couple combat mages the opening turn of a war can be fairly significant.

Situational, sure, but effective if the situation is appropriate.

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

Thats worth keeping in mind as people read all of the discussions. What might be a bad game strategy to build on, can be a useful game tactic to keep in mind.

Being predictable would seem to be bad. :)

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

Keep in mind the effectiveness of this strategy increases with the Indie setting. On Indie 9 there can be provinces you can't take w/o a medium-large army or a thug/SC. If you can take that with 1 or 2 assasins over 2 or 3 turns you have freed those busier forces to deal with something like invading other players or defending against incursions.

I have also found assasinations to be a cheap way underwater if there are untaken UW indies near you. A ring of water breathing is a lot cheaper and available sooner than any of the methods for getting troops under water.

Just remember to make sure another player doesn't take your cleared province before you can!

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

Also worth noting that there are fewer UW poptypes that have commanders that might be "dangerous" to your assassins.

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

If I remember, the era also makes a difference.
In era 1 you are more likely to run into barbarian commanders, and indie mages?
Its more effective in era 3 games where a single commander is usually an armored one, and likely to be leading larger groups of troops.

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

I use assassins to aid expansion in some games, especially as abysia. If you aren't running sacreds, prophetising a starting assassin works a charm. Definitely focus your assassins on the tougher opponents, saving your troops

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

I know you weren't considerng 'seducers' as assassins but I'd like to expand the category and address their utility as well.
Some nations have a commander that can seduce - Arcocephale, Pangaiea, and Lanka come to mind.

These kind of commanders can give your race a valuable entry into magic paths you might not otherwise be able to find; can save you money, and can gain you items that you might otherwise not be able to afford.

I *love* CBM games with garrisons - because it is not unusual that when your seduction works - you gain a commander that has 30 gems and various magic items.

Early game - those 30 gems are huge. And for example against blood druids you can do it 5 times. If you get lucky - this means you can cast GoH as fast as you can research it!

Additionally, as dragar noted, prophetizing an assassin is fairly synergistic. The assassin gets improved hp, attack/def.
Which increases his ability to assassinate. Plus he is now a stealthy prophet.

Finally, sending an assassin can break the script for a well crafted province, even if it loses. This works especially well for a skelly spamming assassin.

The assassin may kill blood slaves, or the mage may cast gems reducing the defenses.

And, depending on your luck, there are times when just killing one commander may have large implications. For example if you are ermor/ctis - and you get lucky and assassinate the only priest in a garrison you have probably just saved *quite* a few undead. No need to assassinate the remainder.

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

It isn't the hp and attack/def that matters, its the ability to smite :) not many indy commanders can survive more than a couple of rounds of smiting

Re: Using assassins for expansion
 

I'd say be save and just use a group of 3 assasins and a scout. 3x assassinate then take it with the scout and keep moving :D Having said that I think it'll be slower than regular expansion since it takes more turns. Also loosing an assasin can be more expensive than just loosing 1-2 troops each province.