Assasians

[NooBliss]

Is it just me or you're slightly prejusticed against asians? ^^

[rdonj]

There's actually an even better way to test the assassin thing, and anything else involving questions of whether a nation will know who did what to them. Start a singleplayer game with two nations, both nations set to Human. You can then play both nations. Make sure one is a nation with recruitable assassins, and try to assassinate a commander from the other nation. When you open up that nation's next turn, you'll see the assassination attempt message.

[LDiCesare]

Assassin spells are anonymous, but often easily tracked back: 'who on this map could be casting 5 earth attacks against me?'.
Assassins are not very reliable but their main effect is to cause people to use bodyguards. This can be relatively useful if you can sneak an assassin near a research center where assassins will easily slay sages for instance. Equipping your assassins with a medallion of vengeance can also be quite efficient against human commanders without commanders, but is both expensive and random.

I did have some fun with a black-hearted vanjarl using Percival the pocket knight as a decoy against bodyguards and spells. Surprisingly effective, but still very sub-optimal.

[Ragnars Wolves]

Thanks Rdonj...that makes sense. I didn't know you could do that.

[GrudgeBringer]

Thanks to everyone who responded to my question (wingdog).

Originally I just wanted to know if I sent an actual recruit to assassinate say your mage and he got away with it...it would just seem logical that it would just say "Your Commander was assassinated" Instead of adding "by Abysia (or whoever)".

But now that you mentioned spells I see that you could very easily narrow it down to a couple of nations.

And Thanks rdonj and LDiCesare, I didn't know those things either.

[Soyweiser]

I think that using the debug log you can always determine who attacked you. But I haven't tested this.

[Gandalf Parker]

That might be the easiest.

But they dont actually both have to be human. If you use the --comptrn switch then you can open the files of AIs to see their turns.