Assassination n00b.

[Frostmourne27]

sector24 said:

...

I got the national hero assassin, and gave him a longbow of accuracy and 2 +attack rings. He had 36 attack, and against an indy mounted commander, he fired two shots that either missed or failed their attack roll, then got killed in one hit.

...

Ranged weapons are affected by the prescision stat, not attack. Try forging an eye of aiming instead. (Don't equip two - you go blind)

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Generally, when I've found assassins most useful, I've went for quantity, not quality. As Atlantis, 5 Tupilaks a turn can mess with an opponent's plan. As a nation who can recruit assassins, I think the key is not to use them to soon. Once you start using them, your enemy gets cautious and careful with bodyguards. Instead, try to gather five or ten to a key province, depending on your economy and number of target provinces.

Key provinces... research centers, if you can take em all out. Armies sieging one of your castles (any units dedicated to patrols are NOT tearing down your walls. Best yet, assassinate as many leaders of an invading army as you can while your army is nearby. If they're light on spares, then you'll split their forces in two. And if you're attacking that province (with a scout, even, and the rest of their forces moved out) the unled troopers left behind will rout and scatter further.

After you do this, the bodyguards will be on hand, so it better be a critical moment, unless you have super powered assassins. You sometimes can still assassinate after this, but your loss rate will be higher. With capital only assassins...

One of the more overkill, but effective asssassins I've seen. Only once, for some reason. I don't think you need to go this far.
Now, as you're playing Ctis, you'll probably be facing some priests, since skellyspam is expected. I don't suggest the following tactic once your up against player nations. A Skull Talisman can give that indy mounted commander a couple other things to charge. It gives you one skeletal bodyguard and lets you summon additional ones for 5 fatigue. Script a couple casts, then attack as normal. (You don't want to cast only, or else you'll be out of luck when facing a priest)

A few Empoisoner ideas
D2 Spells castable with gems (pref), or boosters.
Disintegrate (alt 8) (prec 100) + penetration items like Eye of the Void
Raise Skeletons/Dead (ench 3)
N2 spells as above
Storm of Thorns (evo 7) - enough projectiles you might actually hit something, especially if you have the time to cast Eagle Eye (Agartha, Abysia, slow races w/o cavalry)
Sleep Cloud Evo3, Sleep Thau2. (cloud Forty-six fatigue approximates -4 def, -2 attack for them, whereas you get a -2, -1 penalty. If you can hit them several times, sleep. Perhaps summoned skeletons to tie them up? (regular 110 fatigue equals sleeping target. First problem is its single target, second problem is that both sleep spells can be resisted by MR- not a good thing at all, though with astral randoms comes penetration items.

Untouchable Miasma of Death (construction four)
Snake Bladder Stick
Raw Hide Shield
Cat Charm
Scripts - Attack
Defense - 20
Total Nature Gems - 20

EDIT:
This build is uncomplicated and pretty effective. The high defense means most crappy bodyguards can't touch you while the area-affect poison works.

Ironically, wild carnivorous lizardmen can take you down. They tend to bodyguard their shaman, and have two attacks per warrior, meaning -4 def per attacker. Be careful around them, and avoid them if you skipped the Cat Charm.
[/EDIT]
If you're on a budget, you can just equip the Raw Hide Shield (con 0, 5 gems). It'll let you keep and use both your weapons. Equip two shields and you get a Useless Kick, though you can still spellcast and sling. A Thorny Staff will get you slightly better defense as well as some extra attack, but has its own downsides.

On the other hand, if you want to scale up, there's the Vine Shield, Totem Shield, and Eye Shield, all of which also have zero defense and encumbrance penalties.

There are other things to consider, such as Skullface, and Wraith Crown, if you've got to many gems for your own good, and theres' a lot out there depending on what independents you find.

The most absurd, but mildly plausible combination I can imagine involves (The Ankh - automatic life after death), Carcator the Pocket Lich, Sandals of the Crane (blink), Wraith Crown, Robe of Missile Protection, Treelord's Staff.
Script? Creeping Doom for 70+ ants.

I'm tempted to actually put this together just to see what kind of zombie, if any, 70 ants make.

[Archonsod]

One handy thing I tend to find with assassins is giving them items which will cause problems in your opponent's territories too. A bane venom charm (or the sword with a similar effect) which causes disease and poison, if wielded by a suitably immune assassin, can be neat. You can do the same thing with a scout, however if your assassin can take out commanders too you can prevent portions of his army leaving the province for a couple of turns.

[sector24]

"Ranged weapons are affected by the prescision stat, not attack. Try forging an eye of aiming instead. (Don't equip two - you go blind)"

Hah! User error, please replace user and press any key. This kind of thing happens to me all the time, the game is way too complicated to play casually but I like it all the same. The only reason I gave him all that stuff was because I stole it from Bogus and his merry band of misfits. Basically every new game shows me how little I know about the underlying mechanics of the game.

lazy_perfectionist, thanks for the in depth post. I definitely need more practice with assassins, but usually a fight starts with the opponent casting raise dead, phantasmal warrior, etc. and it's already over unless I summon an equal or greater amount of chaff.

It seems to me that with the dizzying amount of options available in the game, I could do better with a Wraith Lord, Mind Hunting, etc. I see that there are a few situations in which an assassin is a unique answer to the problem at hand, but would I have 5 well equipped assassins in the right place at the right time? Probably not.

One last question; how easily are assassins killed on the world map? Does the fact that the assassin is sitting in an enemy controlled province give him/her any protection from Mind Hunting and similar spells? Basically are assassin's reusable or is killing an enemy commander the equivalent of a death sentence?

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

1). You're welcome.
2). Would you have five well-equipped assassins in the right place at the right time? You may have gotten the wrong idea from me. I'm not a fan of the thug-assassin approach, but instead favor quantity over quality. A spell such as Tupilak fails as often as not, for instance, but is useful (although too pricy). As Ctis, you can manage 10 assassins at 110 gold each, unequipped.

If even a three manage to take out key targets, at the right time, you've got a potential bargain. If killing three 110 gold mages saves 70 infantry, you've made your money back.

I do not favor use of assassins as a form of attrition, however. Kill and attack, is how I use them.

3). The key to avoiding summons is using the enemy's own momentum against him. If he's expecting a minor battle, or researching away, he likely will have summon skeleton scripted. If he expects to face a dozen wights, he'll probably have wither bones or Dust to Dust scripted instead, leaving it to auto spellcasting when there are no valid targets. As well, spell AI sometimes overrides gem use when it determines an enemy isn't a big enough threat, overruling that 'Living Earth'. If he's expecting a large, pitched battle where he needs to pull out ALL the stops, the very first spell scripted by those random astral marshmasters will likely be astral communions.

Asssasins require bait, traps, and timing. Any uber-equipped assassin can be wasted by simply spamming indie commanders, though there are times that better equiped assasins are handy. (as an aside, that build I mentioned early works quite nicely). If you wait until a situation comes along where the enemy has to script for maximum potential, you avoid counters or at least make them waste gems.

It's worth noting that magical beings require magical leadership. If you can figure out a way to kill that commander before you're killed, all those summons die as well. In that situation, melee is not the way to go.
On the plus side, if the timings right, and they just wasted so many gems on a single asssasin instead of your army, that may be agod trade as well, if you can take advantage of that before they restock from a scout or what not.

4). Killing an enemy commander does not have to be the equivalent of a death sentence. Sure, if you have one thug picking away each turn at the capital, someones going to come after him. But if you present the enemy with a dilemma... If you have raiding parties going on, anything patrolling is not hunting down your raiders. If you have an army threatening them, anything patrolling the countryside is outside of the fortress, exposed to attack, rather than bolstering the defenses of a long siege.

As a side note, it really only takes about 80 militia to guarantee the death of an assassin. Less with PD. If you have an army nearby, or remote summon spells, then that militia (no Abysian PD, please, ouch) either has to expose itself, unsupported, to attack and slaughter by a small detachment or they have to take mages off of research/summoning/rituals in order to give their patrollers proper support. A win-win situation.

Worth noting is that unrest decreases the effectiveness of patrols. A Black Servant with a bane venom charm can serve for about a turn before patrols catch up (move out soon), increasing unrest. Battles such as scouts and assassins also increase unrest. Neither fast enough alone to enable survival, but combined with hit&run, spell support such as Baleful Star or Blight, it can make retaliation impossible.

One way to preserve thugged assassins is to let the enemy invade and take your lands BEFORE you retaliate. If the enemy's just encroached on your land, overtax provinces around three deep to 200%. Not only will this raise funds for the war, but the unrest generated by this and the invading army will make it much harder to detect your assassins.