Re: Black heart
Do Pans still drop Maenaeds every turn? If so I imagine they're not great in MP because your opponent will know where they are and can take action against them. Of course, in SP it's very rare to lose an assassin in a 1-on-1 battle. Most of my losses are when patrolling enemies detect them and they try to fight 100s of enemies.
In Doms2 I used to use succubi with boots of quickness & rods of the phoenix. 2 casts of incinerate per turn will kill almost anything that isn't fire immune very quickly. They're very expensive though so if they get caught by patrollers you lose a big investment.
The annoying thing with the fiend is that you have to cast 'gift of reason' - you need a turn from a N4 mage and an extra 20 nature gems for it. Of course, the need to research blood 8 means that heliophagi are pretty hard to get.
Of course, if you can get them the heliophagi are just plain better than the fiends - I don't think the fiends have any advantages except price, but as you say, they're hard to research.
What's the stealth value on a fiend of darkness? If it's stealth+0 then I wouldn't recommend investing lots of gems on equipment & GoR as they'll get caught fairly soon even by province defence. Most assassin units have high stealth - I think succubi are +30 or something.
Actually, what stealth do pans have? They're quite expensive especially if equipped - the question with assassins for me is "Will he kill enough enemies to more than justify his cost?". If the enemies only cost gold, but he needs lots of gems then assassination becomes about fun rather than an efficient tactic.
(edit) use a spectre rather than ghosts. You save a lot of gems from not needing to GoR and the spectre has magic as well
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