Secret Assassinations?
 

I was thinking one time that going into a full battle would be a bit too obvious if you're trying to be sneaky you know? Even if the assassin wins the fight, everyone still knows who did it. Not only does it name the combatants before the battle, some assassins are rather . . . unique. That way the victim knows which nation to whack for stabbing at his commanders.

So I was wondering if it would be a lot of trouble to not allow players to see assassination battles that they lose? If the assassin kills the victim and his bodyguards, it's not like they'd tell you what happened at all would they? Likewise if your assassin is lying dead far behind enemy lines, it wouldn't really do any good contacting him. What does everyone else think if the idea?

Re: Secret Assassinations?
 

Ignoring for a moment that this is a pretty big change, your idea has merit. However, late game, when you have tons of mages and commanders, it becomes difficult enough to keep track of who dies where as it is, with spell attacks. Silent Assassinations with only a message that somebody named 'Ensign Ricky' died makes it far too complicated and unpleasant.

Besides, even if your commander dies, somebody should spot the assassin assuming the commander wasn't completely alone,... I mean if it's a giant earth elemental, you couldn't miss that, an ashen angel descending from the sky and flying away afterwards, an abysian slayer with charred footprints left all over the place, etc.

Re: Secret Assassinations?
 

Although it is rather realistic that you won't know everything and everyone when your kingdom is very big. Maybe after you ascend to God you will.

Re: Secret Assassinations?
 

If we really wanted to make it complicated it might be able to be rigged so that there's a chance the assassin gets identified fleeing the scene or something, but that it's not automatic.
It could even be unit-dependent. I have a suspicion that an assassin with glamor would be almost completely undetectable, while something like a demonbred slayer would be pretty noticeable. Or one could always take the easy way and make it dependent on the assassin's pre-existing stealth value.

Re: Secret Assassinations?
 

I do not with demonbreds are that noticable. If they were the army would just hunt it down.

I guess the assassin message could give hint of what happened.

Re: Secret Assassinations?
 

Yeah, one of my biggest pet peeves is "Commander so-and-so was mentally attacked and killed". Late game. Great....is that a research mage, one of my raider thugs, one of the commanders herding my armies around....? By late game where theres so much flying around and it's several days between turns I've often got 0 chance of figuring out where I'm being blasted and where I need to shore up my defenses. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Secret Assassinations?
 

Yeh, its almost as bad as the "you found a magic site with so and so searching spell", but it takes you to the casting mage and not the province. Useless, unless you can remember which province had that name.

Re: Secret Assassinations?
 

You can use F1 to help you find the province name. Nevertheless, I agree that it is annoying that the game does not give you more information.

Re: Secret Assassinations?
 

Even worse, in late game, there might be 2 commanders with the same name...

Re: Secret Assassinations?
 

Well, as long as they don't make it into the HoF, you can rename them. I name all my units by path, and by type too if they don't have paths or if they are unusual. So a Spectral Mage gets named SMwdd.

I go further with some specifically tasked units, so I've got units running around named tk loot, my tribal king who is supposed to pick up loot in a battle, or snn M Luck, my S1N2 communion master who casts Personal Luck. In one game I even went as far as renaming my scouts every turn like "sct 123", so I know someone's mind hunting in province 123 if he dies.