Killing Indi Commanders
 

If i attack an independent province and kill the commanders before being driven off, can i attack again the next turn with like a scout or something and win the province? I mean, will they all just run away?

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

If you kill *all* the indie commanders, then yes, they will just run away. They are not PD and do not spawn a commander each battle.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Nations with decent assassins can actually use this to their advantage, though the vast majority of the time it isn't worth it. Plus, its not uncommon for nations with assassins to also have some ridiculously powerful troops. Abysia and its starting armies, for instance.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Yeah, with assassins, it's tough because indie provinces usually have several commanders, you never know exactly how many, and your assassin will always find a target: once actual commanders run out, he'll start targeting generic indie commanders that don't technically exist.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

That's incorrect. Once all the indie commanders are killed, he will get a message that says "So and So could not find any suitable targets". It works the same way for seduction and lure as well.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Really? Are you sure? Because I've spent many a season trying to clear a province of indie commanders

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

I agree with FoodStamp. Once all indy commanders are killed, the assassin stays idle and kills nobody, which means it's time for him to single-handedly rout the 440 heavy infantries and archers staying there alone.
Still very very inefficient.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

I've used assassins to compliment expansion a few times. To maximize the time effectiveness you need a couple scouts, first attack and retreat so you can check how many commanders you need to kill, and then to take the province the same turn you kill the last commander. If you're a blood nation you can give the assassin some blood slaves, used as chaff in the assassination battles.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Expanding with assassins can actually work. But you need to memorize how many commanders a specific indy type have.

The best ones to attack this way is the Woodsmen indies. (Not the dark vine once. Oh God no.) Because they only ever have one commander. Normal Tribe indies are also fine because they always have two commanders. Never use this tactic against generic indies because they can have a random number of commanders. And they often have as many as 4 of them.

This could be an excellent use of an abyssian Slayer prophet btw.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Expanding with assassins works, but it usually means you recruit assassins instead of mages, and it's quite slow.
So it's actually useful if:
-your assassins are mages (e.g. LA Abyssia)
-you are broke and can't afford a mage this turn but can buy an assassin
-you start with an assassin
-you got a free fort where you can't build mages yet but can build assassins
-you found the site that allows you to recruit assassins.
I suppose the assassin mercenary may also be worth buying in order to do this.

Anyone can see other cases where it would be efficient?

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

I can see a plan where you buy assassins only the first few turns, perhaps in conjunction with awake SC, and use the money saved to build a very early second and third fort.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

After a turn or two you could use indie commanders or indie scouts to attack the province the same turn that the last commanders are taken out. Would be interesting at least.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

For the record, i attacked an indi province with 2 commanders and 30 something units. I lost - retreating only 1 of my 14 units. But the battle summary said that i killed 2 of the 2 commanders. Next turn i attacked with only 1 commander and i won.

So all to say...

if you kill the indi commanders but lose the battle, you can take it next turn regardless of the number of troops remaining (at least in this case).

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Assassins can also be quite efficient when taking some cul-de-sac provinces. Unfavorable terrain in combination with general map layout can sometimes mean a delay of several turns for ordinary armies that could be used for something better.


Assassins can also be devastating in an early war. If you get an early second castle (e.g. from site searching) on a crowded map, you may want to hire a few in preparation of an impending war and they can be put to work on expansion in the mean time. It is not efficient purely in terms of indie expansion, but the strategy as a whole is.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Assassins work well on elephant provinces when you have expensive troops that are hard to mass early in the game. For example, Abyssia can send an assassin to knock off the commanders of an elephant province over a few turns while the troops are taking out multiple other provinces without being trampled. Sure, you could probably just take the province brute force, but you'd lose a few troops that wouldn't die as quickly against standard indies.

When an assassin doesn't find a commander in the province, you don't get any report in the turn messages. Or I don't, anyway.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

So assassins only work in very specific situations. So specific that recruiting them is almost always suboptimal.

It might work once as a trick vs players, but after that it will just give bodyguards to his commanders. (That almost always means the assassin loses. (Yeah, I know, there are some assassins that can win, but I don't care)).

And while you have been recruiting assassins, the other player has been recruiting mages, and researching. And while some assassins have mage levels, these are usually lower than other mages. So in the end you probably lose the research race.

Of course, you could have spare forts without labs. But then, you already are in a superior position.

And of course assassin/seducers mages (Lanka has a cap only one), can be used to assassinate enemies that are sieging your cap. But then they are already sieging your cap, and you have other problems. (And, even then, using a 300+ gold mage to have a chance at killing a random commander, with a high chance of death himself is not good (Murphy says: you always try to assassinate the SC)).

And lets not talk about assassin pretenders. Using those as assassins is almost as smart as using a "do nothing for 30 turns" niefelheim strat.

Assassins as commanders simply isn't that good. Assassin spells are a lot better. But only against other players. Expansion using assassins just takes to long.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

While I do not use assassins that frequently and certainly do not want to argue for them as some sort of general purpose unit, I do not see any reason to deny that they are occasionally very useful. One should not be unreasonable when considering the value of a unit.

Assassins are specialty units. When you recruit them you do so for a specific purpose. That there are plenty of occasions where they are not useful is not particularly relevant in the situations where they are useful.

Once is all you need, if that once is good enough.

Then there is the fact that assigning bodyguards to every commander you have is not always that easy. In the early game, expansion parties are often heavily optimized to make expansion as fast as possible. Having a unit or two hanging around the commander may demand extra units and thereby reduce efficiency quite a bit. And, of course, in assigning bodyguards to all your commanders, you are probably paying a lot more than your opponent paid for his assassins.


Ah, yes, if I recruit an assassin, I lose the research race. I take it the same goes for mages that are wasted by fighting at the front. Or mages casting rituals or forging or site-searching. Come to think of it, actually using what you have researched before everything is researched means that you lose the research race.

Strangely enough, none of the above seems to be true when I actually play the game. Yes, if I go overboard on any of the above, I will fall behind in research, but a moderate usage of such options does not carry the same consequences. A commander must be useful and assassins sometimes are.


You must research assassin spells, assassins you can hire from day one or - even better - get for free at the start of the game.

That said, an expansion strategy based on assassins is too slow.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Starbelly,

I like the idea of using assassins for elephant provinces. I may try it in SP to see how effective it is when using a nation that doesn't stack up well against elephants out of the gate.

Soyweiser,

Did someone mention using pretender assassins in this thread or are you taking cheap shots at someone?

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

It was part of the wiki a LA Mictlan pretender. And it is actually still listed in that other wiki. (The one newbies find because it has a higher google ranking...) I removed it but still. I hope nobody read that and though, "yeah. good idea!"

Of course that never happens. Because comparing normal mage usage with normal mage usage + assassins isn't a fair comparison. As everybody uses mages this way, you will not fall behind.

Try a heavy blood nation for example. These usually lack in research as they need a lot of mages to blood hunt. (Or need scales to take magic 3). Blood nations fall behind.

Of course you may think your assassins are all that useful. But they simply are not if you trade a assassin for a mage. The mages can always cast assassination spells later. Bonus, if the spell fails, you do not lose the mage :D. Another bonus, the mage does not have to be in the targets province for it to work.

(Of course, both tactics can be ruined by just buying a lot of indy commanders).

Sure, but the tradeof for buying them is usually just to high. And as assassins almost always are a tradeoff between buying mages. They are not useful. Perhaps if you find indy assassins without a indy mage. But I think they do not exist.

Well that means you are either very lucky. (Taking out that one mage that holds the entire enemy battleplan together, a mage that has no bodyguards, and is scripted such a way that it does not kill your assassin, and it does not go offscript). Or you bought a lot of assassins and do a one turn strike. And in the second case after the one turn strike all the assassins are worthless. Also, you lose your entire investment if the enemy army patrols for one turn.

Assassins are not even guaranteed to win. Even a low level mage can usually blast one to bits. And 1 or 2 guards is enough to hold them down long enough to kill them.

Sure assassins might work great if you give them items. But that dumps even more resources in a already failing strategy.

Look if they where that useful in any way. There would have been more blood succubus guides. And even with the great stats for an assassin, and seduction nobody really uses them. 66 blood slaves is just to useful in other ways.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

I know how you guys like to take shots at Gandalf, so I figured it was something to that effect. I do agree that assassin pretenders are a bad idea. I think it is interesting you tried, or did delete it from the wiki though, especially if it was a strategy for SP.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Yeah, nice try throwing in the "it is a SP" strategy card. :D But as the AI tends to buy even more commanders than normal players it will not work ;).

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki?title...ht&oldid=24480

On a unrelated note. Anybody seen Gandalf?

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

"if it was a strategy for SP" means something quite a bit different than "It is a SP strategy". The strategy will work fine for SP simply because the AI is so bad. I've done it before with a Vamp Queen and the Black Heart just for ****s and giggles and it worked fine.

What really concerns me about you deleting the guide is that I think you did it out of friendship to certain people who don't like Gandalf rather than trying to guide new players along a path of righteousness. The reason I said I found it interesting is because I never considered the wiki would be used to fight your childish mickey mouse war.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

I think your are seeing things that are not there. As you could clearly see it wasn't a guide. It was just advice, and bad advice even.

I doubt the original statement was even from GP. But if you want to think it was that way, and think I'm fighting some sort of war against GP. Go ahead. :) But that wasn't the reasoning behind removing the bad advice on the wiki.

And any strategy works in SP (example: http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Sons_...strategy_guide). Especially on normal. I think you could even win a never sitesearch game.

Now excuse me, I have a Disney war to fight!

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

How many of these guides that you consider bad have you deleted? BTW, I agree that Felgar's guide is bad.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Like I said. I have never deleted a guide. But I have removed bad advice and outdated information from guides on the wiki. Why?

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

I was just curious. I guess I shouldn't be so wiki ignorant but I didn't know people were modifying guides and such. I can see if someone put 1+1 = 5 on there, but I would think guides would be left alone, with maybe a little note at the bottom saying "This patch changed this" or something to that effect. Not additions and deletion to the body of the guide.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Well I disagree. Esp when the guide just posts bull****.

"Mindless units are useless patrolling" for example.

"Vampire lords get a bonus getting blood slaves".

I also updated a LA atlantis guide to point out the new underwater recruits.

So either falshoods or outdated information get edited. I see no added value in leaving guides untouched. And people can always use the view history command.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Poking around, the wiki entry for Lord of Night had that material added by "Lch" a while back, but endorsements of using that pretender as an assassin date back to the Dom2 board here. There are a number of references to how great the LoN is as an assassin in Dom3 threads going back to 2007.

It, um, does look like GP liked the LoN for use as an assassin. I guess he's not wrong: the Lord of Night is probably the toughest assassin out there in the game. That's kind of like being the tallest blade of grass, though...

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Lch just copied the other wiki. The strategy wiki.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

But that was not the comparison I made. The point was that one mage not researching produces exactly as much RP as an assassin not researching. A mage not researching makes you lose the research race exactly the same way an assassin not researching it does.

However bad units you think all assassins are, there is no escaping the fact that a mage sent to the front produce exactly the same amount of RP as an assassin sent behind enemy lines - none.

Again, you need to have the spells researched. Later is frequently a lot worse than now.

And though I certainly do not deny that assassin spells are generally a lot better than assassins, there is the gem cost. Would you recruit gems for a small amount of gold instead of a commander?


The above does not make much sense. If the tradeoff is usually too high, it is implied that it is sometimes not to high. This in turn implies that assassins are occasionally useful. And yet you claim that assassins are not useful.

How do you want it?


Is this really supposed to cover all possibilities?
Especially in light of my earlier mention of optimized expansion parties, it seems a bit on the thin side. Shutting down a few armies for a couple of turns is often enough to win a war.

Look, if I am to take your comments seriously, I would have to say that investing in at least one assassin per game is always a sound move. One assassin attack will make a player guard all his commanders with a couple of units. Reasonably early in the game this represents a far larger drain than a measly assassin.

I do not see it like that, but it is what your hyperboles lead to.
They do not strengthen your argument.


A blood 5 summon requiring a blood 4 mage and 66 blood slaves is not the same as an assassin recruitable from day one requiring only a small amount of gold.

I am not that big a user of assassins, but I just cannot agree to that they are never useful.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

I was going to post a comment about using tarts in besieged fortresses as assassins. :p But this got me thinking about skratti. This may already be on the bug list (and even if it isn't considered a bug, it is an exploit) or already be well known, but a skratti with a black heart can sneak into a province, the next turn change shape into the giant form and issue the assassinate command, using the script change shape + attack/cast spells. After the assassination attempt the skratti will change back into wolf form and still be hidden.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Yeah, and how much RP does the assassin produce when he returns?

I don't understand this last statement.

I always said it was almost always suboptimal.

Please don't try to put words in my mouth.

Sometimes.

Which only works if you have an assassin in the province where he currently is. So you need to be lucky, or good at guessing where is going to move. Or have multiple assassins.

And you are describing a very specific situation here. Still in the early expansion phase, having assassins in the field at the right spot, and your assassin can reliably kill an enemy commander. And the enemy player didn't put additional troops on guard commander to save his commanders when an enemy unit breaks through his lines. (Some players do that).

The chances of this all coming together is so low that it just isn't worth trying to use this as a real tactic. Especially, and I'm going to say it again, when you have to use fort turns for it that could also have been used to recruit mages.

Assassins which have a fort turn cost, in the early game this means capital fort turns, so you are not spending time recruiting mages or expansion parties. Ergo, suboptimal.

And yes, if your enemy overreacts it is perhaps smart to invest in one assassin. But it depends on the opponent. But an assassin spell is way more effective here.

Yeah, but they have one more cost apart from gold. Fort turns. And early game these are at a premium. And later in the game it is easy to script/guard. So it simply isn't effective.

Also, why does the succubus almost never see play? And was the disease demon spell nerfed in recent CBM versions? Because the assassin spells are that much better than an assassin unit. Target anywhere you can cast is a lot better than having a unit in a specific place that is easily countered by finding it with pd+patrollers.

Assassination is a good mechanic, sadly most assassins as units are not worth it.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

I did not know that. Wow... very sneaky.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Sounds to me more like a workaround for lack of full battle scripting, rather than an exploit.

I mean, it makes sense that a unit with a stealth form could sneak into someone's house, kill them on the toilet, and change back into the stealth form. All in one month.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

That's a fair point. Thinking it over I can't really see a difference between giving something like an uba a black heart and this method to get around the skratti's three forms. Unlike, say, using non-stealthy commanders in a besieged fort as assassins, which goes against the idea that assassins be stealthy.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Why on earth would you make him return? An assassin has only one business in a lab and that is killing people inside it.
I cannot imgagine that I am the only one who frequently buys mage-commanders that will never research, but stay on the front till they die. An assassin is no different, it is simply a commander bought for a reason that is not research.

If you buy an assassin and use it instead of an assassinating spell to kill a commander, you just saved yourself some gems. In that sense recruiting assassins can be the equivalent of recruiting gems for gold in a commander spot.

Understand that I am not claiming that assassins are better than such spells - or even as good. When you have them researched they are usually much better than assassins, but they do carry a cost recruitable assassins do not. The point is that in your argument against assassins you continually stress the cost of assassins and brush over the cost associated with other options. Assassin spells generally require a fair amount of research done and some gems (and a suitable mage, of course).

The focus in this thread, for myself and most others it seems, has been assassins as a fairly early game option. Assassinating spells are mostly not on the table at that point and as such not a reasonable comparison.

Please do not accuse me of putting words in your mouth when all I do is use what you actually wrote. Especially not when I support it with a quote. Your exact words - which you can find in your own post and quoted by me above the statement that offends you so - were: "They are not useful."

Perhaps you meant something else with "They" than assassins in general, but the context seems to imply this particular interpretation. Please feel free to elaborate, but whatever you wanted to say, my reply was definitely not an attempt to put words in your mouth and neither would a fair reading suggest it.

I assume this is all because of a misunderstanding - accidental misunderstandings are far more common than deliberate - but please be careful about accusing people of deliberate deceptive argument practices.

I saw a discrepancy in your argument and I still do. The point is that none in this thread has argued for assassins as some sort of general purpose strategy or commanders to buy in case they should be needed some time in the future. What has been argued for is that there are a number of particular situations where assassins
are useful - or possibly so, experiments pending. If your argument is that assassins are only sometimes or rarely useful, there is really no argument. I do not think anyone here disagrees - I certainly do not. However, you do seem to go on from this to claim that because of it, assassins are not useful at all. If you do not, that is fine, but then I would like to know what it is you are arguing.


Again, you only recruit assassins when you have a specific use for them in mind. Judging from my own in-game experience and numerous guides and discussions here on the boards, the use of heavily optimized expansion parties is not an uncommon strategy. And it is usually not very hard to figure out in what order someone will take independent provinces. Prime target would be someone using a small number of sacreds shepherded by indy priests. The priests are generally easy to assassinate and a bit harder to replace than non-priest commanders.


It is not something you plan on before a game starts, it is an opportunity to seize if it presents itself. Remember that the nations with recruitable assassins frequently start with one as a scout. If they happen to find a prime target, one is already in place. The addition of another may be all you need to wreak serious havoc.

Come now, you know as well as I do that players make frequent use of indy commanders for expansion purposes. Assassins are not generally very costly in resources or gold, so recruiting one does not stop you from buying expansion troops in your castle.

Just to reiterate: assassin spells need to be researched before they can be used.
You can talk all you want about the spells, but before they are researched they cannot kill anything.


Does that mean that you acknowledge that some assassins are worth it?

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Amorphous, first line of my first post explains it it all.

You can try to bait me into saying that sometimes assassins are useful after all, but I clearly already said that. The rest of the time I just tried to explain my reasoning behind it.

I tried to explain that cap fort turns esp in the early game are very useful. So useful that most of the times it is suboptimal to recruit assassins over something that can research. Each assassin you buy is <gamelength> of research turns and site search turns you do not perform. Which is only useful if the assassin removes more of these research turns from the enemy.

I basically said all I can say about it without going into a huge post explaining turn advantages. Which is a bit hard to explain.

The only viable strat I really see for assassins is the one Fantomen mentioned.

Re: Killing Indi Commanders
 

Fair enough.

If I understand you correctly your stance is that assassins are sometimes (very rarely) useful and the other arguments you presented were about situations when they are not useful. This makes sense and is the sort of thing I was after - it was not at all clear to me before that this is what you meant. I was certainly not trying to bait you into anything.

It also seems to me that it is a possibility that I find assassins slightly more useful than you do because of play-style. Other than as a fun SP strategy (thereby requiring practically no efficiency at all) I do not think that I have ever included assassins in a pre-planned strategy. When I have used them it has been because they were the most efficient tool for a job at hand.

I have occasionally found it useful to build one on maps with a couple of dead-end provinces, when diverting armies to the task would have required quite a few extra turns of those armies producing nothing worthwhile. It does cost you a fort turn, but I like early forts, so with some nations that cost is not prohibitive. The experimenting I have done with them after they fulfilled their function have usually had decent results, meaning that given the right circumstances, recruiting the assassin would have been a good move even without the province capture.

That said, I think I have only done this with nations with particularly good assassins. It would be rather dicey trying province capture with an ordinary human assassin.