[Agema]

Yeah, I've found assassination problems.

In a SP game someone put up Lord of the Hunt, and he popped round killing all my Vanadrott/Vanjarls simply by routing the bodyguards. In fact quite often my mage cast thunderstrike, hit and routed his own bodyguards, then routed straight after them. The only answer I found was to kit every high level Van hero up as a thug and not use bodyguards, and that's stupidly gem-expensive and not reliable.

Casting communion master/slave in assassinations is not always fatal, but it's one wasted turn where the mage could cast a spells to defend himself or kill the assassin.

Retreating from an assassination has never happened to me yet, but I'm sure it will eventually.

* * *

I think generally assassins coming across the average mage or even some commanders are going to have a success rate under 50% even tooled up with magic equipment - but then assassins are much cheaper than mages, so that's not unreasonable.

I think the autodeath for assassination targets that rout or retreat should be turned off. Retreating to a nearby province is potentially disruptive (especially if they leave their troops behind) so the assassins would still have some effectiveness.