Using assassins for expansion

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by Ironhawk

While this method does work, it should be noted that its really slow. You have to spend 1-2 turns assassinating (this assumes a group of assassins) and then another turn to move to the next province. So 2-3 turns per province if things go well. Whereas if you spent the money on troops you could buy mages instead and your troops can attack a new province every single turn.

Right, as I said I think it really only makes sense if you're able to snag a couple very nice and otherwise well defended provinces. Depending on the nation you're playing it's not terribly uncommon to encounter a very high population farmland defended by too many heavy cavalry or elephants to be feasible to take with your initial expansion parties....yet could almost double your income. Plus, getting an assassin is not always mutually exclusive to getting a mage, your mage-assassins can go back to researching once they've cleared the high value targets. It's also not completely worthless to have assassins out scouting afterwards, people tend not to put bodyguards with their mages until after the first assassination attempt and loosing a couple combat mages the opening turn of a war can be fairly significant.

Situational, sure, but effective if the situation is appropriate.