[Soyweiser]

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.