[ExitJudas]

I think an "information about commanders in province" scouting skill should be part of the assassin skillset.

If you balance the assassin so that the chances of him killing a highpowered commander with bodyguards is extremely small anyway, then the job of the assassin should be to seek out, identify and kill lesser commanders and unprotected commanders, i.e. idenityfing weaknesses in the opposing players command structure and exploiting this weakness.

What if an assassin could report back from its province what commanders where there, including his bodyguards and maybe a general description of his target viability? On top of this you could allow for the assassin to select his target directly, instead of choosing it randomly. As long as you make sure assassins cannot be constructed to be powerful enough to have more than a, say 25% chance of killing a strong commander with bodyguards.

this would make assassins more interesting imo, and less random.