[Amorphous]

While I do not use assassins that frequently and certainly do not want to argue for them as some sort of general purpose unit, I do not see any reason to deny that they are occasionally very useful. One should not be unreasonable when considering the value of a unit.

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

So assassins only work in very specific situations. So specific that recruiting them is almost always suboptimal.

Assassins are specialty units. When you recruit them you do so for a specific purpose. That there are plenty of occasions where they are not useful is not particularly relevant in the situations where they are useful.

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)).

Once is all you need, if that once is good enough.

Then there is the fact that assigning bodyguards to every commander you have is not always that easy. In the early game, expansion parties are often heavily optimized to make expansion as fast as possible. Having a unit or two hanging around the commander may demand extra units and thereby reduce efficiency quite a bit. And, of course, in assigning bodyguards to all your commanders, you are probably paying a lot more than your opponent paid for his assassins.

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.

Ah, yes, if I recruit an assassin, I lose the research race. I take it the same goes for mages that are wasted by fighting at the front. Or mages casting rituals or forging or site-searching. Come to think of it, actually using what you have researched before everything is researched means that you lose the research race.

Strangely enough, none of the above seems to be true when I actually play the game. Yes, if I go overboard on any of the above, I will fall behind in research, but a moderate usage of such options does not carry the same consequences. A commander must be useful and assassins sometimes are.

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.

You must research assassin spells, assassins you can hire from day one or - even better - get for free at the start of the game.

That said, an expansion strategy based on assassins is too slow.