Assasins

[Taqwus]

Skull talisman is nice and extremely cheap. For similar reasons, it's hard to assassinate death mages -- the cheap battlefield summons. And be careful with feudal leaders, as it's not uncommon for even a priest to have one or more heavy cavalry as bodyguards...
Star children make nice assassins because of the prec-100 mindbLast, but against a leader with fast bodyguards or that can summon troops, they have problems.
Spirit helmet or phoenix rod are nice but very expensive. Boots of quickness = good combo with items that require action e.g. phoenix rod, skull talisman.

[Teraswaerto]

An Empoisoner with a Skull Staff (or something like that, gives +1 death magic) casting raise dead or raise skeletons is IMO the best type of assassin, since it's only one item and C'tis probably has plentiful death gems.

[Wendigo]

Generally speaking, I find assasins kind of inefficient: Investing coin & gems in some guys that are going to be sitting on their arses waiting for the right time to strike, or running around looking for the right place seems a waste most of the time.

Specially considering that you can get the same results out of magical assasination from the safety of your labs, with much more flexibility regarding the location to strike.

[Gandalf Parker]

Pangea has a number of units I have fun turning into assassins with the heart. (at least in DOm 1 unless some fixes happened I havent tested) Some interesting tactics show up....

Such as using a Pan as an assassin. Expensive mage but it has some interesting bonuses. If you use an assasin now to take independents you need an army nearby to take the province. Its guesswork on when to attack. But if you have a Pan (with no maenads assigned to it) then maenads will appear and go to the bar to be assigned to a commander later. But they arent stealth so there is a fight. What this means is that the Pan will do an assassination, then a few maenads will attack the province. Basically they test the province automatically every turn. Repeat until all commanders are dead and the troops flee from the 3 or 4 maenads.

The same thing occurs in a different way if you use Pandemoniacs. With their blood magic they can cast "hellbind heart" as their first couple of actions in an assassinaton. This worked fairly often in turning the commander to your side. Of course the commander was usually not stealth so what followed was an immeadiate battle in that province between that commander and the units he used to fight with. Continue until the Last commander wins the province for you, then capture more slaves and move on.

[ December 10, 2003, 15:27: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Teleolurian]

I've always wanted to make a mageslayer assassin with a Bow of Botulf.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Teleolurian:
I've always wanted to make a mageslayer assassin with a Bow of Botulf.

It can certainly be a big help in taking a province. Especially if the mage is leading alot of nasty summons.

[ December 10, 2003, 17:51: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Saxon]

I can see a nice use for assassins if you are playing Ermor in multiplayer. You know your enemies will buy lots of priests, who hurt your undead, but are useless in hand to hand. If you send your assassins in against an army with lots of priests and only a couple of other commanders, the probability is that they will attack priests.

Any assassin will kill a priest, so you likely to get results with no loss. The main (or at least my main) counter to your undead has just been weakened and you have recouped most of the cost of your assassin. One more success and you are costing them more than you are paying. (I think priests cost 50 and assassins 60)

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Saxon:
I can see a nice use for assassins if you are playing Ermor in multiplayer.

Any assassin will kill a priest, so you likely to get results with no loss.

The hard part is getting assassins as Ermor which cant be banished by priests. I havent played Ermor much in Dom2 but Im guessing this is still true.

You can use the heart thing to give assasin skills to any stealth unit. You might use a druid province to create units for that. Hmmm actually I guess in this case just a cheap independent scout would do. Never mind. I guess its not all that hard after all. Good idea.

[Argitoth]

Originally posted by Teraswaerto:
An Empoisoner with a Skull Staff (or something like that, gives +1 death magic) casting raise dead or raise skeletons is IMO the best type of assassin, since it's only one item and C'tis probably has plentiful death gems.

You are wrong. The best way to kill commanders is to script your assassin to cast Swarm. Thats 1 nature gem per dead commander. It works better than a star child or whatever that R'lyeh assassin is called, and it is even better than spending 10 death gems to cast raise skeletons.

The reason is that once swarm is cast, the mage will be dead before he gets to pull off a spell. Any other commanders will also die very quickly.

[ December 11, 2003, 15:48: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

[Teleolurian]

What school is Swarm?