Assassin rebalance/rework ideas and discussion

[b2198]

Here we go again, sorry Endru for another wall of text

I hadn't really tried using assassins ever since they stopped one-shotting castles (because they were mandatory back then), other than using them here and there against some elephants if I didn't have anything better at the time, because I don't like their idea of "exchanging 4 turns of your production for the life of any flesh-and-blood enemy unit", so I'm not really that used to how they play out in games (and since I'm a vision freak, I usually kill any on-sight before they even get near range).

Today I got hit (Note: yes, me posting this is partially biased by that, but the ideas for reworking them have been on my notes for some months now, so not completely biased) by a use of them that beforehand I didn't think could be this strong, but now after some testing I think is definitely way too strong: Put them in a wagon, preferably along with a unit that can capture TCs, get the wagon inside 7-9 range of an enemy TC, preferably hidden inside a TC of your own or really any building that hides units inside, then go close to the TC, and use Assassination Sweep Inside on it. After that, you most likely just won a TC.

Now, here are the points that make me think current assassins are in a unhealthy state:

1. Imo one-shot abilities in games with hp numbers are inherently unbalanced, because they tend to disregard a lot of mechanics of their target, like their armor, damage, categories, effects, etc. And to counterack them they usually have to get similarly unbalanced counters, like invulnerability or spell immunity. And all of those are just bypassing mechanics entirely, which potentially means that there are some cases in which those other mechanics they bypass are better not used, effectively reducing the complexity of the game (which in this case I think is a bad thing, since the mechanics they bypass are the core of this game). (Note: on re-reading, this one might have come out of not-as-rational-as-they-should reasons, take it with a mountain of salt, though I can't really see anything wrong with it right now, but if you can, please point it out so that I can change my view on it)
2. They incentivize mass spams of cheap units instead of risking to lose dozens of turns worth of units in a single ability if the costly units are garrisoned in their target, or in a garrison inside their target, like a mantlet inside a TC, for example.
3. Due to the point above (and some other ones, but that's for another topic), elephants are basically out of the game ever since they stopped being "missiles" with bard+herbalist buffs.
4. They don't make sense flavour-wise. Afaik, groups of assassins didn't go exterminating entire armies inside fortifications or cities, they went just for those who weren't guarded well enough and could be easily and quickly assassinated, like leaders, or supports in general (which will the main points I'll be making in the rework ideas below, but hold on a bit)
5. They play like anti-flesh-and-blood petardiers, except way stronger. Petardiers, while also utilizing the concept of suicide attacks, even the ones with 23 ability power that were trained before 1.159 (18 from before the nerf +5 from the new tech) and with the new bonuses, don't one-shot a high castle, even though it's one of their primary targets, because that would break the game's balancing, just like assassins back when they could one-shot structures. Back then, castles basically shouldn't be used as defenses, only as factories, and you were supposed to protect THEM instead of them helping you to protect against the enemy army, so they were usually just hidden as far away from the battlefield as possible. (Note: I didn't have a lot of experience in the game back then (and I still don't have that much ), so if you think this is wrong, please feel free to correct me, this was just my view on the game back then after having a lot of castles taken down by assassins, and also taking down a lot of castles with assassins)
6. Wagons not being nerfed anytime soon, etc.
7. Even if the above point were to happen, making them harder to utilize, they'd still have basically the same devastating effects by having them inside rams/siege mantlets/siege towers

Now to the rework idea I was thinking about for some months:

• Remove the Assassination Sweep Inside ability from them.
• Change the Assassination ability so that it instead gives them +2 (or maybe even +3?) range for 1 turn, maybe along with some damage increase, with a cooldown, and doesn't kill them anymore. The range increase flavour-wise could be motivated by a similar reason than that of winged hussars: they can go in, do their damage, and go out very quickly.
• Change their category from [Misc] to [Melee], so that they can be affected by auras and blacksmith.
• Increase their speed from 3 to 4.
• Increase their armor and p. armor (+1/+2, +2/+2 or +1/+3 maybe?)
• Increase their hp a tiny bit (+1 or +2 probably)
• (Not sure) Increase their base damage a bit?
• (Not sure) Make their damage hybrid so that it gets reduced by both armor and p. armor? (Is this even possible to do?)

This way they would only do their thing once every few turns, making their positioning very important if you want to keep them alive after attacking, and would make them only do large amounts of damage to units that are

• leaders (since they're just a single target in the army that could be attacked during the night or something like that)
• healers (since they're not that well protected compared to soldiers, at least I think so, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)
• ranged units (since they're not very good at dealing with fast attacks in melee range (units that can do both are categorized as melee primarily or can transform between those two categories))
• other supports in general (since they also should be less protected, I guess)
• machines in general (since their operators also should be less protected)

like their bonuses imply, and make them less of a threat to, say, heavy infantry armies, or elephants, for example.

@friedrich Your participation on this topic is essential, given that you were the catalyst to make me actually go and write this lol

(Phew, took around 1h40min of writing, but it's done XD)

[Endru1241]

I'll start with flavour:

4. They don't make sense flavour-wise. Afaik, groups of assassins didn't go exterminating entire armies inside fortifications or cities, they went just for those who weren't guarded well enough and could be easily and quickly assassinated, like leaders, or supports in general (which will the main points I'll be making in the rework ideas below, but hold on a bit)

Assassins went for targets not guarded enough, because that given them highest chance to survive.
Training or even just hiring assassins was always pricier than any other personnel if considering 1-1 cost and often by tenfold, so it wouldn't make sense to risk it for regular people. Plus how trained a person would need to be to go into sure death without any dilemma?
Even if one had super crazy assassins (like original ones), that would sacrifice their lives easily - would they manage to reach their objective, when would always be much less assassins than defenders?
But who's telling, that eliminating a unit is always a direct kill?
E.g. Poisoning the only well in the castle/city, along with destroying stored drinkable liquids would basically mean sacrificing themselves to exterminate whole crew along with civilian population.
That was not very common occurrence for towns, as it couldn't be used later on (city power lies in it's civilian population), but it happened for military only structures, when defenders would be all killed anyway and fortification wouldn't be planned to be used any time soon.
Plus the later times we consider, the more disadvantages would be gotten from reputation hit, when something like that would spill to public opinion.
E.g. killing elephant mahouts (trainers) and doing something to irritate elephants would be effective way to make them rage, effectively eliminating them.
E.g. killing a leader of the unit (every unit would have some sort of leadership inside) plus making it look like conspiracy of lower ranked people could create enough chaos to do something else - kill the horses or poison food.
Plus units with Leader category would often have elite guards, the same would go for higher ranked religious people.

And as for balance:

1. Imo one-shot abilities in games with hp numbers are inherently unbalanced, because they tend to disregard a lot of mechanics of their target, like their armor, damage, categories, effects, etc. And to counterack them they usually have to get similarly unbalanced counters, like invulnerability or spell immunity. And all of those are just bypassing mechanics entirely, which potentially means that there are some cases in which those other mechanics they bypass are better not used, effectively reducing the complexity of the game (which in this case I think is a bad thing, since the mechanics they bypass are the core of this game). (Note: on re-reading, this one might have come out of not-as-rational-as-they-should reasons, take it with a mountain of salt, though I can't really see anything wrong with it right now, but if you can, please point it out so that I can change my view on it)

It's not really kill all, but deal 9999 damage to [flesh and blood]. It could be configured. It could be even set to be decreased by armor or p.armor.

2. They incentivize mass spams of cheap units instead of risking to lose dozens of turns worth of units in a single ability if the costly units are garrisoned in their target, or in a garrison inside their target, like a mantlet inside a TC, for example.

It could also be seen as assassins being counter to otherwise impossible to destroy flesh wall.
It's not free - you have to sacrifice assassin unit.

3. Due to the point above (and some other ones, but that's for another topic), elephants are basically out of the game ever since they stopped being "missiles" with bard+herbalist buffs.

I think they are separate discussion, but if we go with configurable damage, instead of straight kill - damage could be set to be not enough to eliminate elephants.

5. They play like anti-flesh-and-blood petardiers, except way stronger. Petardiers, while also utilizing the concept of suicide attacks, even the ones with 23 ability power that were trained before 1.159 (18 from before the nerf +5 from the new tech) and with the new bonuses, don't one-shot a high castle, even though it's one of their primary targets, because that would break the game's balancing, just like assassins back when they could one-shot structures. Back then, castles basically shouldn't be used as defenses, only as factories, and you were supposed to protect THEM instead of them helping you to protect against the enemy army, so they were usually just hidden as far away from the battlefield as possible. (Note: I didn't have a lot of experience in the game back then (and I still don't have that much ), so if you think this is wrong, please feel free to correct me, this was just my view on the game back then after having a lot of castles taken down by assassins, and also taking down a lot of castles with assassins)

Not really - petardiers self explosions have area of effect, plus they are cheaper.

6. Wagons not being nerfed anytime soon, etc.

Let's only hope it will come at all. In disscusssion there was idea to have wagons get spec, that removes action from unloaded units, so that would be sufficient to stop combination with wagons.

7. Even if the above point were to happen, making them harder to utilize, they'd still have basically the same devastating effects by having them inside rams/siege mantlets/siege towers

Those can always just be set to not allow assasins inside.

As for ideas to rework:

• Remove the Assassination Sweep Inside ability from them.
• Change the Assassination ability so that it instead gives them +2 (or maybe even +3?) range for 1 turn, maybe along with some damage increase, with a cooldown, and doesn't kill them anymore. The range increase flavour-wise could be motivated by a similar reason than that of winged hussars: they can go in, do their damage, and go out very quickly.
• Change their category from [Misc] to [Melee], so that they can be affected by auras and blacksmith.
• Increase their speed from 3 to 4.
• Increase their armor and p. armor (+1/+2, +2/+2 or +1/+3 maybe?)
• Increase their hp a tiny bit (+1 or +2 probably)
• (Not sure) Increase their base damage a bit?
• (Not sure) Make their damage hybrid so that it gets reduced by both armor and p. armor? (Is this even possible to do?)

That really is another new unit.
If something like that would be planned to be done, then I'd just leave assassins like they are for map editor only and add new trainable unit.
But the question is - do we really want to remove current assassins?

This way they would only do their thing once every few turns, making their positioning very important if you want to keep them alive after attacking, and would make them only do large amounts of damage to units that are

• leaders (since they're just a single target in the army that could be attacked during the night or something like that)
• healers (since they're not that well protected compared to soldiers, at least I think so, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)
• ranged units (since they're not very good at dealing with fast attacks in melee range (units that can do both are categorized as melee primarily or can transform between those two categories))
• other supports in general (since they also should be less protected, I guess)
• machines in general (since their operators also should be less protected)

like their bonuses imply, and make them less of a threat to, say, heavy infantry armies, or elephants, for example.

First one is probably false - those units represent some sort of commander along with elite guards.
For healers/support it depends, but in most cases we can assume they are much less protected in their unit (or to say in other way - unit is probably consisting of some more non-fighters, like medical personnel, some carrying special ordnance, etc.
Archers are still organised army men, so they would easily deal with open threat like a bunch of men (some group, but at least few times smaller).
Their weakness compared to other units would come with lesser armor and lesser numbers compared to costing the same unit of some melee infantry. So easier to attack from ambush, shooting from unseen position or attacking at night.
For machines I agree - operators would be some very small number of people capable of calculation (or intuition) to properly order how to set machines plus unarmed workforce to do heavy workload.

[makazuwr32]

Let me put several points into this discussion.
In aof we also are planning to remake assassins.

1. Give them attack around 80-100 at base (in aos it will be around 27-33).
2. Their sure kill abilitiy will become actual ability (ofc with self sacrifice) instead of on-hit effect. Ability will alas have several limits on whom it can be used — it can't target any buildings, mechanical units or ships.
3. They will be removed from tcs to mega building and specific building.
4. They also will get 2-4 poisons (can also be casted onto other units) and 2-4 throwing weapons with corresponding poisons.
5. Cost will be kept at 4.
6. Some abilities will be locked behind special training techs.
7. Invisibility will not be permanent but will be required to turn on. Cooldown will be higher than duration.
8. Limitations on whom they can attack (with regular attack) — non-ship, non-structure, non-flying non-cavalry targets.

Reasons:
For what assassins are known?
1. Assassination of their target
2. Somewhat good in melee combat, esoecially if striking from shadows
3. Poisons and traps
4. Being mercenaries (in many cases at very least)
5. Spying
6. Technology stealing
7. Bribery

While aof does not have mercenaries (yet) to use bribery or technology stealing since there are good variety of races rest points will be represented in assassin of aof — assassination of target (high attack and sure kill ability with self sacrifice), good in melee combat (high attack), variety of poisons, mercenaries (they will be part of adventurers and dark guild sub), spying (high sight range).

[godOfKings]

My original revamp idea for assassination sweep inside was basically similar to how it can kill the current production in the building, by pressing a graphical cross icon, there would b cross icons on all garrisoned units in the building, so the assassin could sacrifice itself to kill any specific unit that is garrisoned in the building rather than all units, it will still b useful in capturing tc as I could kill the tankiest guard in the tc with assassin and kill the other weaker units with the appropriate counter, if there is a carrier unit like wagon, may b it could not b killed but selecting it would open the next layer of garrison inside wagon like how it works now, and then player can once again cross the garrisoned unit it wants to assassinate, so even siege mantlet can't protect, in this way not only assassin works like on open land but can also spy and gather more information on the units hidden in the building than a spy

[Endru1241]

Let me put several points into this discussion.
In aof we also are planning to remake assassins.

1. Give them attack around 80-100 at base (in aos it will be around 27-33).
2. Their sure kill abilitiy will become actual ability (ofc with self sacrifice) instead of on-hit effect. Ability will alas have several limits on whom it can be used — it can't target any buildings, mechanical units or ships.
3. They will be removed from tcs to mega building and specific building.
4. They also will get 2-4 poisons (can also be casted onto other units) and 2-4 throwing weapons with corresponding poisons.
5. Cost will be kept at 4.
6. Some abilities will be locked behind special training techs.
7. Invisibility will not be permanent but will be required to turn on. Cooldown will be higher than duration.
8. Limitations on whom they can attack (with regular attack) — non-ship, non-structure, non-flying non-cavalry targets.

Reasons:
For what assassins are known?
1. Assassination of their target
2. Somewhat good in melee combat, esoecially if striking from shadows
3. Poisons and traps
4. Being mercenaries (in many cases at very least)
5. Spying
6. Technology stealing
7. Bribery

While aof does not have mercenaries (yet) to use bribery or technology stealing since there are good variety of races rest points will be represented in assassin of aof — assassination of target (high attack and sure kill ability with self sacrifice), good in melee combat (high attack), variety of poisons, mercenaries (they will be part of adventurers and dark guild sub), spying (high sight range).

AoS works on a lot more symbolic approach - at least that's my feeling playing both games.
In AoF unit is more like 1 single being exactly shown on picture and only human ships and some buildings break that.
While AoS more often indicates, that unit is only representation of higher number - some group being symbolically shown as 1 person on image.
Only very few campaigns goes into direct 1 unit - 1 person.
So I disagree with assasins having enough poison to equip much bigger regular army unit.
I would also disagree with high attack stat in AoS.
It's not unit big enough to have significant attack power.
Plus I try not to use valid targets on main attacks, so that unit will normally deal those 1 hp always (which is a lot more in AoS hp scale).

Btw. just in case you are not aware of current AoS assassin unit parameters:
I dropped stealth innate ability of death touch some time ago, making targetable abilities instead - one for flesh and blood targets and another for carriers. Both sacrifice assasin unit, 1st one killing target and 2nd one killing all flesh and blood units inside.
In addition it can attack everything, but have quite low power (only 5 with endgame units having 16+3-7 from buffs), only having significant bonus damage against leaders, healers and siege machines (+200%), still quite big vs skirmishers and non-healer support units (+150%) and somewhat increased vs other shooters (+100%) and wagons (+80%).

[makazuwr32]

Let me put several points into this discussion.
In aof we also are planning to remake assassins.

1. Give them attack around 80-100 at base (in aos it will be around 27-33).
2. Their sure kill abilitiy will become actual ability (ofc with self sacrifice) instead of on-hit effect. Ability will alas have several limits on whom it can be used — it can't target any buildings, mechanical units or ships.
3. They will be removed from tcs to mega building and specific building.
4. They also will get 2-4 poisons (can also be casted onto other units) and 2-4 throwing weapons with corresponding poisons.
5. Cost will be kept at 4.
6. Some abilities will be locked behind special training techs.
7. Invisibility will not be permanent but will be required to turn on. Cooldown will be higher than duration.
8. Limitations on whom they can attack (with regular attack) — non-ship, non-structure, non-flying non-cavalry targets.

Reasons:
For what assassins are known?
1. Assassination of their target
2. Somewhat good in melee combat, esoecially if striking from shadows
3. Poisons and traps
4. Being mercenaries (in many cases at very least)
5. Spying
6. Technology stealing
7. Bribery

While aof does not have mercenaries (yet) to use bribery or technology stealing since there are good variety of races rest points will be represented in assassin of aof — assassination of target (high attack and sure kill ability with self sacrifice), good in melee combat (high attack), variety of poisons, mercenaries (they will be part of adventurers and dark guild sub), spying (high sight range).

AoS works on a lot more symbolic approach - at least that's my feeling playing both games.
In AoF unit is more like 1 single being exactly shown on picture and only human ships and some buildings break that.
While AoS more often indicates, that unit is only representation of higher number - some group being symbolically shown as 1 person on image.
Only very few campaigns goes into direct 1 unit - 1 person.
So I disagree with assasins having enough poison to equip much bigger regular army unit.
I would also disagree with high attack stat in AoS.
It's not unit big enough to have significant attack power.
Plus I try not to use valid targets on main attacks, so that unit will normally deal those 1 hp always (which is a lot more in AoS hp scale).

Btw. just in case you are not aware of current AoS assassin unit parameters:
I dropped stealth innate ability of death touch some time ago, making targetable abilities instead - one for flesh and blood targets and another for carriers. Both sacrifice assasin unit, 1st one killing target and 2nd one killing all flesh and blood units inside.
In addition it can attack everything, but have quite low power (only 5 with endgame units having 16+3-7 from buffs), only having significant bonus damage against leaders, healers and siege machines (+200%), still quite big vs skirmishers and non-healer support units (+150%) and somewhat increased vs other shooters (+100%) and wagons (+80%).

1. Poisons — it can be just limited to self only.
2. I'd say giving them some attack range will become good synergy with poisons on attack. For example via transformation when he throws poison coated knives (also limiting self poisons to this form).
3. As for good attack — what if unit will have normally low attack and being visible and you will give him some ability to go into shadows for extra attack and invisibility for period of time? Also it must give him no counter attack specification thus effectively pointing out that he is vulnerable to any counter measures in that state.

And anyway that is my proposal and changes to aof.

It is up to you to keep or not them.

[b2198]

Assassins went for targets not guarded enough, because that given them highest chance to survive.
Training or even just hiring assassins was always pricier than any other personnel if considering 1-1 cost and often by tenfold, so it wouldn't make sense to risk it for regular people. Plus how trained a person would need to be to go into sure death without any dilemma?
Even if one had super crazy assassins (like original ones), that would sacrifice their lives easily - would they manage to reach their objective, when would always be much less assassins than defenders?
But who's telling, that eliminating a unit is always a direct kill?
E.g. Poisoning the only well in the castle/city, along with destroying stored drinkable liquids would basically mean sacrificing themselves to exterminate whole crew along with civilian population.
That was not very common occurrence for towns, as it couldn't be used later on (city power lies in it's civilian population), but it happened for military only structures, when defenders would be all killed anyway and fortification wouldn't be planned to be used any time soon.
Plus the later times we consider, the more disadvantages would be gotten from reputation hit, when something like that would spill to public opinion.
E.g. killing elephant mahouts (trainers) and doing something to irritate elephants would be effective way to make them rage, effectively eliminating them.
E.g. killing a leader of the unit (every unit would have some sort of leadership inside) plus making it look like conspiracy of lower ranked people could create enough chaos to do something else - kill the horses or poison food.
Plus units with Leader category would often have elite guards, the same would go for higher ranked religious people.

Hm, got it.

It's not really kill all, but deal 9999 damage to [flesh and blood]. It could be configured. It could be even set to be decreased by armor or p.armor.

Well, 9999 damage is so above everything else in the game that it's effectively kill all. Changing to a lower value might be good though.

2. They incentivize mass spams of cheap units instead of risking to lose dozens of turns worth of units in a single ability if the costly units are garrisoned in their target, or in a garrison inside their target, like a mantlet inside a TC, for example.

It could also be seen as assassins being counter to otherwise impossible to destroy flesh wall.
It's not free - you have to sacrifice assassin unit.

But you're usually already "sacrificing" units in exchange for a "turn count" advantage, since turns are the resource of the game. For example, if you have a lancer, and send it to kill a hussar, even though it will die afterwards due to a nearby pikeman, you've sacrificed 4 turns to kill 5 turns, effectively giving you a 1 turn lead (though it's usually not that simple, but that's the general idea).

Also there is no such thing as impossible to destroy flesh wall in multiplayer games, because conversion exists (even with loyalty, fervor, promote loyalty and against high-resistance units, it's still practical to do if you have an inquisitor and some senators, which you probably would do, because that's the current meta, but that's also for another post). Theoretically, sure, you could feed a jaguar or eagle warrior a ridiculous amount of kills with an aztec priest behind so that it gets to stupidly high amounts of damage, hp and mental resistance, but the amount of time required to do that, along with the fact that your opponent most likely wouldn't just keep sending units to death mindlessly, and instead would try to coordinate an attack to kill your scaling unit in a single turn, make this practically impossible to do in a real scenario where bots are not involved (and even with bots it's not completely trivial to do so, and still takes a very long time).

Also the biggest problem here is assassins killing multiple units at once inside buildings and TCs, because that makes them VERY cost-effective to capture TCs, since TCs almost always have to be garrisoned to not get taken by an enemy unit, and assassins just kill the entire (flesh and blood. It's not practical to leave siege machines to defend TCs other than mantlets and maybe wagons, which are both carriers, but wouldn't be able to carry anything, because if they did, the assassin would also kill what's inside them) garrison regardless of anything, allowing for an easy capture of the TC for just 4 cost, while potentially killing dozens of turns worth in units inside.

3. Due to the point above (and some other ones, but that's for another topic), elephants are basically out of the game ever since they stopped being "missiles" with bard+herbalist buffs.

I think they are separate discussion, but if we go with configurable damage, instead of straight kill - damage could be set to be not enough to eliminate elephants.

Yeah, I've been thinking about a post on elephants specifically, but that will have to wait for the post on conversion, since with this one and the conversion one together it might also help solve elephants indirectly.

5. They play like anti-flesh-and-blood petardiers, except way stronger. Petardiers, while also utilizing the concept of suicide attacks, even the ones with 23 ability power that were trained before 1.159 (18 from before the nerf +5 from the new tech) and with the new bonuses, don't one-shot a high castle, even though it's one of their primary targets, because that would break the game's balancing, just like assassins back when they could one-shot structures. Back then, castles basically shouldn't be used as defenses, only as factories, and you were supposed to protect THEM instead of them helping you to protect against the enemy army, so they were usually just hidden as far away from the battlefield as possible. (Note: I didn't have a lot of experience in the game back then (and I still don't have that much ), so if you think this is wrong, please feel free to correct me, this was just my view on the game back then after having a lot of castles taken down by assassins, and also taking down a lot of castles with assassins)

Not really - petardiers self explosions have area of effect, plus they are cheaper.

Killing every unit inside a carrier (and inside carriers that are inside that carrier, etc.) also affects multiple units, similarly to area damage. Also they are 1 turn cheaper, but can only one-shot cheap structures, and not in all cases (depends on enemy techs too).

6. Wagons not being nerfed anytime soon, etc.

Let's only hope it will come at all. In disscusssion there was idea to have wagons get spec, that removes action from unloaded units, so that would be sufficient to stop combination with wagons.

Yeah, this was more of a side-point, since the point below still exists, that's why I didn't delve too much into it.

7. Even if the above point were to happen, making them harder to utilize, they'd still have basically the same devastating effects by having them inside rams/siege mantlets/siege towers

Those can always just be set to not allow assasins inside.

I think that it would be kinda counterintuitive for player if only assassins themselves were to be added to the list of excluded units, and if they were to not allow any [Misc] unit it would be a heavy nerf to buffers, converters and healers, which is not necessary imo.

As for ideas to rework:

• Remove the Assassination Sweep Inside ability from them.
• Change the Assassination ability so that it instead gives them +2 (or maybe even +3?) range for 1 turn, maybe along with some damage increase, with a cooldown, and doesn't kill them anymore. The range increase flavour-wise could be motivated by a similar reason than that of winged hussars: they can go in, do their damage, and go out very quickly.
• Change their category from [Misc] to [Melee], so that they can be affected by auras and blacksmith.
• Increase their speed from 3 to 4.
• Increase their armor and p. armor (+1/+2, +2/+2 or +1/+3 maybe?)
• Increase their hp a tiny bit (+1 or +2 probably)
• (Not sure) Increase their base damage a bit?
• (Not sure) Make their damage hybrid so that it gets reduced by both armor and p. armor? (Is this even possible to do?)

That really is another new unit.
If something like that would be planned to be done, then I'd just leave assassins like they are for map editor only and add new trainable unit.
But the question is - do we really want to remove current assassins?

Well, I think so, but other players might disagree, so we'll have to wait and see, I guess.

This way they would only do their thing once every few turns, making their positioning very important if you want to keep them alive after attacking, and would make them only do large amounts of damage to units that are

• leaders (since they're just a single target in the army that could be attacked during the night or something like that)
• healers (since they're not that well protected compared to soldiers, at least I think so, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)
• ranged units (since they're not very good at dealing with fast attacks in melee range (units that can do both are categorized as melee primarily or can transform between those two categories))
• other supports in general (since they also should be less protected, I guess)
• machines in general (since their operators also should be less protected)

like their bonuses imply, and make them less of a threat to, say, heavy infantry armies, or elephants, for example.

First one is probably false - those units represent some sort of commander along with elite guards.
For healers/support it depends, but in most cases we can assume they are much less protected in their unit (or to say in other way - unit is probably consisting of some more non-fighters, like medical personnel, some carrying special ordnance, etc.
Archers are still organised army men, so they would easily deal with open threat like a bunch of men (some group, but at least few times smaller).
Their weakness compared to other units would come with lesser armor and lesser numbers compared to costing the same unit of some melee infantry. So easier to attack from ambush, shooting from unseen position or attacking at night.
For machines I agree - operators would be some very small number of people capable of calculation (or intuition) to properly order how to set machines plus unarmed workforce to do heavy workload.

I see, thanks for the info.

Edit: broken quote

[b2198]

My original revamp idea for assassination sweep inside was basically similar to how it can kill the current production in the building, by pressing a graphical cross icon, there would b cross icons on all garrisoned units in the building, so the assassin could sacrifice itself to kill any specific unit that is garrisoned in the building rather than all units, it will still b useful in capturing tc as I could kill the tankiest guard in the tc with assassin and kill the other weaker units with the appropriate counter, if there is a carrier unit like wagon, may b it could not b killed but selecting it would open the next layer of garrison inside wagon like how it works now, and then player can once again cross the garrisoned unit it wants to assassinate, so even siege mantlet can't protect, in this way not only assassin works like on open land but can also spy and gather more information on the units hidden in the building than a spy

Yeah, choosing the target inside a carrier would be a lot better than killing everything [Flesh and Blood] recursively inside it. But I still think it shouldn't be a simple one-shot to those units.

[b2198]

Let me put several points into this discussion.
In aof we also are planning to remake assassins.

1. Give them attack around 80-100 at base (in aos it will be around 27-33).
2. Their sure kill abilitiy will become actual ability (ofc with self sacrifice) instead of on-hit effect. Ability will alas have several limits on whom it can be used — it can't target any buildings, mechanical units or ships.
3. They will be removed from tcs to mega building and specific building.
4. They also will get 2-4 poisons (can also be casted onto other units) and 2-4 throwing weapons with corresponding poisons.
5. Cost will be kept at 4.
6. Some abilities will be locked behind special training techs.
7. Invisibility will not be permanent but will be required to turn on. Cooldown will be higher than duration.
8. Limitations on whom they can attack (with regular attack) — non-ship, non-structure, non-flying non-cavalry targets.

Reasons:
For what assassins are known?
1. Assassination of their target
2. Somewhat good in melee combat, esoecially if striking from shadows
3. Poisons and traps
4. Being mercenaries (in many cases at very least)
5. Spying
6. Technology stealing
7. Bribery

While aof does not have mercenaries (yet) to use bribery or technology stealing since there are good variety of races rest points will be represented in assassin of aof — assassination of target (high attack and sure kill ability with self sacrifice), good in melee combat (high attack), variety of poisons, mercenaries (they will be part of adventurers and dark guild sub), spying (high sight range).

AoS works on a lot more symbolic approach - at least that's my feeling playing both games.
In AoF unit is more like 1 single being exactly shown on picture and only human ships and some buildings break that.
While AoS more often indicates, that unit is only representation of higher number - some group being symbolically shown as 1 person on image.
Only very few campaigns goes into direct 1 unit - 1 person.
So I disagree with assasins having enough poison to equip much bigger regular army unit.
I would also disagree with high attack stat in AoS.
It's not unit big enough to have significant attack power.
Plus I try not to use valid targets on main attacks, so that unit will normally deal those 1 hp always (which is a lot more in AoS hp scale).

Btw. just in case you are not aware of current AoS assassin unit parameters:
I dropped stealth innate ability of death touch some time ago, making targetable abilities instead - one for flesh and blood targets and another for carriers. Both sacrifice assasin unit, 1st one killing target and 2nd one killing all flesh and blood units inside.
In addition it can attack everything, but have quite low power (only 5 with endgame units having 16+3-7 from buffs), only having significant bonus damage against leaders, healers and siege machines (+200%), still quite big vs skirmishers and non-healer support units (+150%) and somewhat increased vs other shooters (+100%) and wagons (+80%).

1. Poisons — it can be just limited to self only.
2. I'd say giving them some attack range will become good synergy with poisons on attack. For example via transformation when he throws poison coated knives (also limiting self poisons to this form).
3. As for good attack — what if unit will have normally low attack and being visible and you will give him some ability to go into shadows for extra attack and invisibility for period of time? Also it must give him no counter attack specification thus effectively pointing out that he is vulnerable to any counter measures in that state.

And anyway that is my proposal and changes to aof.

It is up to you to keep or not them.

I have no problems with it having permanent invisibility, since protecting against invisible units is very easy in AoS (that's one of the reasons why I proposed higher defensive stats in the rework)

Poison weapon to self could also be a good idea.

That attack increase Is similar to what I had in mind for the rework too (though with way smaller numbers , so it would depend on bonuses to actually be deadly to the units it should counter)

[Endru1241]

1. Poisons — it can be just limited to self only.
2. I'd say giving them some attack range will become good synergy with poisons on attack. For example via transformation when he throws poison coated knives (also limiting self poisons to this form).
3. As for good attack — what if unit will have normally low attack and being visible and you will give him some ability to go into shadows for extra attack and invisibility for period of time? Also it must give him no counter attack specification thus effectively pointing out that he is vulnerable to any counter measures in that state.

And anyway that is my proposal and changes to aof.

It is up to you to keep or not them.

Well - I think ranged poison ability with some stronger poison would fit a lot better, than poisoning weapon.
Throwing knife projectile on ability would make a lot more sense than transformation.
For AoF at least. Not yet sure if AoS would need such ability.

Having high attack and no way to attack many units is kind of counter-intuitive imho.
I think it should be left only for situations when unit really cannot possibly reach/attack target (some untouchable ghosts, flying high, underground etc.)
In other cases I'd always choose lower attack with bonuses against units they should really hurt.
Especially now, when we could set damage bonuses to be constant and not affected by buffs/techs.

The idea of ability affecting units inside carriers was great and even if with a little different effect, that proposed - I managed to add it.
I am very proud of making it somehow after many, many trials.
It's kind of proof of concept, that such thing is actually possible.
I'd be happy if the idea could be used in more variants, after proper rebalance of course (which is needed for AoS as well).
I would need to test it, but some variant like poisoning all units inside should be possible too.

My original revamp idea for assassination sweep inside was basically similar to how it can kill the current production in the building, by pressing a graphical cross icon, there would b cross icons on all garrisoned units in the building, so the assassin could sacrifice itself to kill any specific unit that is garrisoned in the building rather than all units, it will still b useful in capturing tc as I could kill the tankiest guard in the tc with assassin and kill the other weaker units with the appropriate counter, if there is a carrier unit like wagon, may b it could not b killed but selecting it would open the next layer of garrison inside wagon like how it works now, and then player can once again cross the garrisoned unit it wants to assassinate, so even siege mantlet can't protect, in this way not only assassin works like on open land but can also spy and gather more information on the units hidden in the building than a spy

I somehow skipped you post earlier - sorry.

That idea was great, but would need to wait a long time.
Possibly very long time.
It requires engine change and new interface interaction at that, which Stratego already stated would all have to wait until unity migration.

So I made something at least similar to, like you originally pointed out - avoid making assassins useless after removing ability to attack buildings.
And it was still not easy.

Well, 9999 damage is so above everything else in the game that it's effectively kill all. Changing to a lower value might be good though.

I know - I am waiting for proposals of exact target of damage - what it should kill and what not.
From that point exact damage to set could be worked out.
It could even be changed with tech.

Also there is no such thing as impossible to destroy flesh wall in multiplayer games, because conversion exists (even with loyalty, fervor, promote loyalty and against high-resistance units, it's still practical to do if you have an inquisitor and some senators, which you probably would do, because that's the current meta, but that's also for another post). Theoretically, sure, you could feed a jaguar or eagle warrior a ridiculous amount of kills with an aztec priest behind so that it gets to stupidly high amounts of damage, hp and mental resistance, but the amount of time required to do that, along with the fact that your opponent most likely wouldn't just keep sending units to death mindlessly, and instead would try to coordinate an attack to kill your scaling unit in a single turn, make this practically impossible to do in a real scenario where bots are not involved (and even with bots it's not completely trivial to do so, and still takes a very long time).

Fervor gives +50%, Senator promote loyalty +70% and stacking it with any leader promote loyalty of +60% and 100% resistance unit makes 280%.
It needs 8 unsuccessful tries to even get the chance for demoralise, so around 9-12 actions to convert.
Most units would die in one turn if attacked by poison this many times in one turn and if we are not talking about 1 turn, then defender didn't use dismiss propaganda properly. And if it happened in one turn, then 2 siege towers full of senators must be in range.
I think there are cheaper ways to deal with such wall.

Also the biggest problem here is assassins killing multiple units at once inside buildings and TCs, because that makes them VERY cost-effective to capture TCs, since TCs almost always have to be garrisoned to not get taken by an enemy unit, and assassins just kill the entire (flesh and blood. It's not practical to leave siege machines to defend TCs other than mantlets and maybe wagons, which are both carriers, but wouldn't be able to carry anything, because if they did, the assassin would also kill what's inside them) garrison regardless of anything, allowing for an easy capture of the TC for just 4 cost, while potentially killing dozens of turns worth in units inside.

I didn't really think very hard about exact damage here, because I was concentrated to make it possible to even affect units inside.
It's configurable and up to discussion what exact target damage (or other effects) should be set here.
This time unfortunately not possible to be affected by tech/buffs as final damage is actually dealt by carrier added aura.

Killing every unit inside a carrier (and inside carriers that are inside that carrier, etc.) also affects multiple units, similarly to area damage. Also they are 1 turn cheaper, but can only one-shot cheap structures, and not in all cases (depends on enemy techs too).

Fair enough. They can indeed be much stronger in many cases.

I think that it would be kinda counterintuitive for player if only assassins themselves were to be added to the list of excluded units, and if they were to not allow any [Misc] unit it would be a heavy nerf to buffers, converters and healers, which is not necessary imo.

Well - at least they are slower.

[b2198]

The idea of ability affecting units inside carriers was great and even if with a little different effect, that proposed - I managed to add it.
I am very proud of making it somehow after many, many trials.
It's kind of proof of concept, that such thing is actually possible.
I'd be happy if the idea could be used in more variants, after proper rebalance of course (which is needed for AoS as well).
I would need to test it, but some variant like poisoning all units inside should be possible too.

Could be another working idea for them, applying poison to all units inside, effectively reducing hp of all [Flesh and Blood] units inside by 4 for at least that turn. If it were to be changed to work like that I think it should also not kill the caster, and have a range higher than 1 (2 or 3 probably).

Well, 9999 damage is so above everything else in the game that it's effectively kill all. Changing to a lower value might be good though.

I know - I am waiting for proposals of exact target of damage - what it should kill and what not.
From that point exact damage to set could be worked out.
It could even be changed with tech.

If it's to keep killing caster on usage, I'd say something around 20 base damage on the ability, scaling with attack power and reduced by armor (so that they would still kill or at least heavily injury most units, especially cheaper ones, without needing specific bonuses against them), and add some bonuses to make them one-shot healers and, depending on attack of assassin and hp/armor of target, leaders aswell, with smaller bonuses against elephants, machines and ranged units? Maybe also change them to [Melee], similarly to Lasiq Assassins, so that they could also be benefited from auras and techs?

Fervor gives +50%, Senator promote loyalty +70% and stacking it with any leader promote loyalty of +60% and 100% resistance unit makes 280%.
It needs 8 unsuccessful tries to even get the chance for demoralise, so around 9-12 actions to convert.
Most units would die in one turn if attacked by poison this many times in one turn and if we are not talking about 1 turn, then defender didn't use dismiss propaganda properly. And if it happened in one turn, then 2 siege towers full of senators must be in range.
I think there are cheaper ways to deal with such wall.

Oh, I forgot that some promote loyalties stack with some others (I also forgot what is the exact rule for that, how does it interact with healer's promote loyalty, for example?), but even then, yeah, that wouldn't be as cheap as I though without delving into the actual numbers, so it's probably valid to leave then as counters to those uncapped scaling units. But how would it be done? For highlander it should be easy (I think), just give them a category like [Uncapped Scaling] and give assassins a bonus against that, but what about primitives? Should all of their melee units also get that category, or just after they've been affected by sacrificial altar at least once? If I remember correctly there's currently no way to assign new categories to a unit with abilities, so I'm not sure something like that would be possible.

[Endru1241]

The idea of ability affecting units inside carriers was great and even if with a little different effect, that proposed - I managed to add it.
I am very proud of making it somehow after many, many trials.
It's kind of proof of concept, that such thing is actually possible.
I'd be happy if the idea could be used in more variants, after proper rebalance of course (which is needed for AoS as well).
I would need to test it, but some variant like poisoning all units inside should be possible too.

Could be another working idea for them, applying poison to all units inside, effectively reducing hp of all [Flesh and Blood] units inside by 4 for at least that turn. If it were to be changed to work like that I think it should also not kill the caster, and have a range higher than 1 (2 or 3 probably).

No, no. That's huge overnerf.
Regular poison would be USELESS!
It's healed by building along with hp, which if I remember right would preserve unit even if it had 1 hp.
It would need to be some special unhealable by buildings poison. Preferably stronger.
Or used along with some initial damage.

Well, 9999 damage is so above everything else in the game that it's effectively kill all. Changing to a lower value might be good though.

I know - I am waiting for proposals of exact target of damage - what it should kill and what not.
From that point exact damage to set could be worked out.
It could even be changed with tech.

If it's to keep killing caster on usage, I'd say something around 20 base damage on the ability, scaling with attack power and reduced by armor (so that they would still kill or at least heavily injury most units, especially cheaper ones, without needing specific bonuses against them), and add some bonuses to make them one-shot healers and, depending on attack of assassin and hp/armor of target, leaders aswell, with smaller bonuses against elephants, machines and ranged units? Maybe also change them to [Melee], similarly to Lasiq Assassins, so that they could also be benefited from auras and techs?

It would be 4x of attack, so with +2 from blacksmith, +1 morale, +1 fervor and +3 from battlefield blacksmith 12*4 = 48 damage.
Enough for any foot unit.
Strongest cavalry could survive.
Nothing much for elephants, so they'd need at least +75-100% bonus to make any kind of impact.
On the other hand 20 damage on early game won't be enough to even kill 4 turn units - quite bad deal imho.
Not very fortunate.

Without changing the cost straight 100 damage would work much better imho.

Fervor gives +50%, Senator promote loyalty +70% and stacking it with any leader promote loyalty of +60% and 100% resistance unit makes 280%.
It needs 8 unsuccessful tries to even get the chance for demoralise, so around 9-12 actions to convert.
Most units would die in one turn if attacked by poison this many times in one turn and if we are not talking about 1 turn, then defender didn't use dismiss propaganda properly. And if it happened in one turn, then 2 siege towers full of senators must be in range.
I think there are cheaper ways to deal with such wall.

Oh, I forgot that some promote loyalties stack with some others (I also forgot what is the exact rule for that, how does it interact with healer's promote loyalty, for example?), but even then, yeah, that wouldn't be as cheap as I though without delving into the actual numbers, so it's probably valid to leave then as counters to those uncapped scaling units. But how would it be done? For highlander it should be easy (I think), just give them a category like [Uncapped Scaling] and give assassins a bonus against that, but what about primitives? Should all of their melee units also get that category, or just after they've been affected by sacrificial altar at least once? If I remember correctly there's currently no way to assign new categories to a unit with abilities, so I'm not sure something like that would be possible.

All those with promote loyalty not tied to ability power are stackable with those having it tied.
So probably any leader+ any support.
It wasn't even intentional.
I'd probably have to add somewhat changed icon to make a distinction.

Highlander without geass survive is nothing much and like you mentioned before it's extremely hard to boost it too much.
The same goes for primitives.
So I don't think they need to be specifically punished.

Writing about unbreakable walls I thought more about all those, that require significant preparation ( too high in proportion to defending unit cost).

[DreJaDe]

The idea of ability affecting units inside carriers was great and even if with a little different effect, that proposed - I managed to add it.
I am very proud of making it somehow after many, many trials.
It's kind of proof of concept, that such thing is actually possible.
I'd be happy if the idea could be used in more variants, after proper rebalance of course (which is needed for AoS as well).

I'd you're talking about it's ability to kill unit inside carriers. This is actually adapted to AoWW also. It is a great asset to have and adds more strategy to the game but somehow more problematic than in aos cause the defenses in aoww are capturable and when the said carrier are captured, your units will die also.

So if you can't secure it for the next turn. Deleting it would be more optimal.

As for the OG post. Dang... This is a complete diff unit. Or a total rebalance... Not sure.

[b2198]

No, no. That's huge overnerf.
Regular poison would be USELESS!
It's healed by building along with hp, which if I remember right would preserve unit even if it had 1 hp.
It would need to be some special unhealable by buildings poison. Preferably stronger.
Or used along with some initial damage.

Not really, because poison is applied at the start of the turn, while building's heal is applied at the end of it, so they would take the damage and would only be healed back if they stayed inside for another turn or had other means of healing themselves. Maybe applying all 3 existing poisons (for a total of 9 damage, and debuffs of -1 speed and -2 damage) to cripple the units inside until they get healed would be better? This would make it possible to slowly kill them inside if the assassin is not dealt with afterwards, since he wouldn't die anymore from that.

If it's to keep killing caster on usage, I'd say something around 20 base damage on the ability, scaling with attack power and reduced by armor (so that they would still kill or at least heavily injury most units, especially cheaper ones, without needing specific bonuses against them), and add some bonuses to make them one-shot healers and, depending on attack of assassin and hp/armor of target, leaders aswell, with smaller bonuses against elephants, machines and ranged units? Maybe also change them to [Melee], similarly to Lasiq Assassins, so that they could also be benefited from auras and techs?

It would be 4x of attack, so with +2 from blacksmith, +1 morale, +1 fervor and +3 from battlefield blacksmith 12*4 = 48 damage.
Enough for any foot unit.
Strongest cavalry could survive.
Nothing much for elephants, so they'd need at least +75-100% bonus to make any kind of impact.
On the other hand 20 damage on early game won't be enough to even kill 4 turn units - quite bad deal imho.
Not very fortunate.

Without changing the cost straight 100 damage would work much better imho.

I just think that they shouldn't be a more efficient option to kill regular units of 5-6 cost other than leaders, healers, etc. in comparison with the actual counters of those units.

All those with promote loyalty not tied to ability power are stackable with those having it tied.
So probably any leader+ any support.
It wasn't even intentional.
I'd probably have to add somewhat changed icon to make a distinction.

I see, thanks.

[Endru1241]

The idea of ability affecting units inside carriers was great and even if with a little different effect, that proposed - I managed to add it.
I am very proud of making it somehow after many, many trials.
It's kind of proof of concept, that such thing is actually possible.
I'd be happy if the idea could be used in more variants, after proper rebalance of course (which is needed for AoS as well).

I'd you're talking about it's ability to kill unit inside carriers. This is actually adapted to AoWW also.

Nice.
Or maybe - it was first and I was not aware?

It is a great asset to have and adds more strategy to the game but somehow more problematic than in aos cause the defenses in aoww are capturable and when the said carrier are captured, your units will die also.

So, turn count for aura is intentionally increased to have it more balanced?
That could work for AoS TCs.

No, no. That's huge overnerf.
Regular poison would be USELESS!
It's healed by building along with hp, which if I remember right would preserve unit even if it had 1 hp.
It would need to be some special unhealable by buildings poison. Preferably stronger.
Or used along with some initial damage.

Not really, because poison is applied at the start of the turn, while building's heal is applied at the end of it, so they would take the damage and would only be healed back if they stayed inside for another turn or had other means of healing themselves. Maybe applying all 3 existing poisons (for a total of 9 damage, and debuffs of -1 speed and -2 damage) to cripple the units inside until they get healed would be better? This would make it possible to slowly kill them inside if the assassin is not dealt with afterwards, since he wouldn't die anymore from that.

Ok, I mistaken it for regen from herb protection.

But even if used all three poisons - it would only work as slight nerf if using one assasin.
And good luck trying to make it survive.

I'd rather just leave ability to have self sacrifice and be somewhat useful to at least sweep supports or maybe along with archers.

If it's to keep killing caster on usage, I'd say something around 20 base damage on the ability, scaling with attack power and reduced by armor (so that they would still kill or at least heavily injury most units, especially cheaper ones, without needing specific bonuses against them), and add some bonuses to make them one-shot healers and, depending on attack of assassin and hp/armor of target, leaders aswell, with smaller bonuses against elephants, machines and ranged units? Maybe also change them to [Melee], similarly to Lasiq Assassins, so that they could also be benefited from auras and techs?

It would be 4x of attack, so with +2 from blacksmith, +1 morale, +1 fervor and +3 from battlefield blacksmith 12*4 = 48 damage.
Enough for any foot unit.
Strongest cavalry could survive.
Nothing much for elephants, so they'd need at least +75-100% bonus to make any kind of impact.
On the other hand 20 damage on early game won't be enough to even kill 4 turn units - quite bad deal imho.
Not very fortunate.

Without changing the cost straight 100 damage would work much better imho.

I just think that they shouldn't be a more efficient option to kill regular units of 5-6 cost other than leaders, healers, etc. in comparison with the actual counters of those units.

Support units other than leaders are weak enough to be easily killed by other means - why would anyone ever sacrifice 4 turn unit for that?
And for leaders alone there are still other means to sacrifice equivalent of 4 turns to deal with them.
As well as practically any unit using proper counters.
Plus in many cases you can preserve 1 or more of those units.
It's more efficient.
Assassin is surefire way to counter everything, but also surely loosing it, so unless it could be capable of killing 4+ turns units - I don't think there is a point.
The only issue I see are elephants carrying another unit, which may indeed be a little too good of a deal.

[DreJaDe]

Nice.
Or maybe - it was first and I was not aware?

Nope. It was definitely taken from here as I gain the idea from here and of course was put by stratego.

So, turn count for aura is intentionally increased to have it more balanced?
That could work for AoS TCs.

I believe it was kept as is.

The aura stays for the turn it is used so when capturing the defense during the same turn. The aura is still there so the units who will capture the defense would die also due to the aura.

[b2198]

Not really, because poison is applied at the start of the turn, while building's heal is applied at the end of it, so they would take the damage and would only be healed back if they stayed inside for another turn or had other means of healing themselves. Maybe applying all 3 existing poisons (for a total of 9 damage, and debuffs of -1 speed and -2 damage) to cripple the units inside until they get healed would be better? This would make it possible to slowly kill them inside if the assassin is not dealt with afterwards, since he wouldn't die anymore from that.

Ok, I mistaken it for regen from herb protection.

But even if used all three poisons - it would only work as slight nerf if using one assasin.
And good luck trying to make it survive.

I'd rather just leave ability to have self sacrifice and be somewhat useful to at least sweep supports or maybe along with archers.

Then maybe some new poison that deals 8 damage, but has a bonus vs [Support] (and [Misc] probably, or maybe just [Worker]?), increasing its damage to 16, so that it kills workers, healers and the squishier buffers immediately? Might need a cooldown of 1 or 2 turns though. This would give assassins another use other than being suicide units, similarly to how petardiers have the Set Petard ability that doesn't kill them (though in that case since the functions of the 2 abilities are very similar, Set Petard ends up not being as used as Explode Self by a considerable margin, though it still has its uses in some cases).

Also, with 2 or 3 range on the skill, and with the assassin inside a mantlet or siege tower it would take some effort to kill it.

I just think that they shouldn't be a more efficient option to kill regular units of 5-6 cost other than leaders, healers, etc. in comparison with the actual counters of those units.

Support units other than leaders are weak enough to be easily killed by other means - why would anyone ever sacrifice 4 turn unit for that?
And for leaders alone there are still other means to sacrifice equivalent of 4 turns to deal with them.
As well as practically any unit using proper counters.
Plus in many cases you can preserve 1 or more of those units.
It's more efficient.
Assassin is surefire way to counter everything, but also surely loosing it, so unless it could be capable of killing 4+ turns units - I don't think there is a point.
The only issue I see are elephants carrying another unit, which may indeed be a little too good of a deal.

Hm, fair enough, then maybe reduce the damage to something between 70 and 90 to account for that elephant case? So that they're not left as damaged as they would otherwise, reducing the cases where they're actually killed by that or right afterwards.

[godOfKings]

I think a damage of about 30-40 should b good enough, it can kill most of the units in aos but only the tanky ones survive, may b initial damage is 30 but an upgrade tech improves final damage to 40, I don't really think assassin's would b effective against or really want to risk trying to kill an elephant, also whatever the dmg we set it's still fixed dmg that is applied to all garrisoned flesh and blood units, may b if the damage is reduced by armor it would b great too

[Endru1241]

Nice.
Or maybe - it was first and I was not aware?

Nope. It was definitely taken from here as I gain the idea from here and of course was put by stratego.

So, turn count for aura is intentionally increased to have it more balanced?
That could work for AoS TCs.

I believe it was kept as is.

The aura stays for the turn it is used so when capturing the defense during the same turn. The aura is still there so the units who will capture the defense would die also due to the aura.

I checked and it works like that in AoS right now, when used on TC.

Not really, because poison is applied at the start of the turn, while building's heal is applied at the end of it, so they would take the damage and would only be healed back if they stayed inside for another turn or had other means of healing themselves. Maybe applying all 3 existing poisons (for a total of 9 damage, and debuffs of -1 speed and -2 damage) to cripple the units inside until they get healed would be better? This would make it possible to slowly kill them inside if the assassin is not dealt with afterwards, since he wouldn't die anymore from that.

Ok, I mistaken it for regen from herb protection.

But even if used all three poisons - it would only work as slight nerf if using one assasin.
And good luck trying to make it survive.

I'd rather just leave ability to have self sacrifice and be somewhat useful to at least sweep supports or maybe along with archers.

Then maybe some new poison that deals 8 damage, but has a bonus vs [Support] (and [Misc] probably, or maybe just [Worker]?), increasing its damage to 16, so that it kills workers, healers and the squishier buffers immediately? Might need a cooldown of 1 or 2 turns though. This would give assassins another use other than being suicide units, similarly to how petardiers have the Set Petard ability that doesn't kill them (though in that case since the functions of the 2 abilities are very similar, Set Petard ends up not being as used as Explode Self by a considerable margin, though it still has its uses in some cases).

Also, with 2 or 3 range on the skill, and with the assassin inside a mantlet or siege tower it would take some effort to kill it.

I just think that they shouldn't be a more efficient option to kill regular units of 5-6 cost other than leaders, healers, etc. in comparison with the actual counters of those units.

Support units other than leaders are weak enough to be easily killed by other means - why would anyone ever sacrifice 4 turn unit for that?
And for leaders alone there are still other means to sacrifice equivalent of 4 turns to deal with them.
As well as practically any unit using proper counters.
Plus in many cases you can preserve 1 or more of those units.
It's more efficient.
Assassin is surefire way to counter everything, but also surely loosing it, so unless it could be capable of killing 4+ turns units - I don't think there is a point.
The only issue I see are elephants carrying another unit, which may indeed be a little too good of a deal.

Hm, fair enough, then maybe reduce the damage to something between 70 and 90 to account for that elephant case? So that they're not left as damaged as they would otherwise, reducing the cases where they're actually killed by that or right afterwards.

I think a damage of about 30-40 should b good enough, it can kill most of the units in aos but only the tanky ones survive, may b initial damage is 30 but an upgrade tech improves final damage to 40, I don't really think assassin's would b effective against or really want to risk trying to kill an elephant, also whatever the dmg we set it's still fixed dmg that is applied to all garrisoned flesh and blood units, may b if the damage is reduced by armor it would b great too

Considering those how about:
1. No changes in attack, adding melee category (to mimic offensive usage exactly like lasiq assassin), but also spec cannot attack while garrisoned (which would need to be added to lasiq too probably).
2. Assassination ability changed to deal straight 80 damage, not decreased by armor. Sacrifices itself.
3. Assassination Sweep Inside ability to deal straight 21 damage with bonuses +35% vs [Mounted], +50% vs [Machine], +200% vs [Armored Siege Machine], [Leader] decreased by normal armor. Sacrifices itself.
4. Adding researchable 2 cooldown, 2-3 range ability, dealing 50% of melee damage and leaving poison.
That way we force assassins to be used outside, have some way to deal damage without sacrifice and with sacrifice - sure way to kill off 1 unit outside apart of elephants or clear one carrier from support units, leaders, cheap infantry, non-defensive archers, wagons, siege machines, while leaving stronger infantry, more defensive archers, horse archers, cavalry damaged to varied degree.
Sacrificing 2 would leave only elephants, late game melee cavalry and heavy infantry.
Sacrificing 3 would clear off everything apart of elephants and armor boosted heavy infantry.

[b2198]

Considering those how about:
1. No changes in attack, adding melee category (to mimic offensive usage exactly like lasiq assassin), but also spec cannot attack while garrisoned (which would need to be added to lasiq too probably).
2. Assassination ability changed to deal straight 80 damage, not decreased by armor. Sacrifices itself.
3. Assassination Sweep Inside ability to deal straight 21 damage with bonuses +35% vs [Mounted], +50% vs [Machine], +200% vs [Armored Siege Machine], [Leader] decreased by normal armor. Sacrifices itself.
4. Adding researchable 2 cooldown, 2-3 range ability, dealing 50% of melee damage and leaving poison.
That way we force assassins to be used outside, have some way to deal damage without sacrifice and with sacrifice - sure way to kill off 1 unit outside apart of elephants or clear one carrier from support units, leaders, cheap infantry, non-defensive archers, wagons, siege machines, while leaving stronger infantry, more defensive archers, horse archers, cavalry damaged to varied degree.
Sacrificing 2 would leave only elephants, late game melee cavalry and heavy infantry.
Sacrificing 3 would clear off everything apart of elephants and armor boosted heavy infantry.

Seems good for me

[friedrich]

Nice rework concept! addresses both: Assasins are too strong for capturing tcs but at the same time too weak in all other circumstances.
I feel like options like assasins are really important to prevent too much turtling and drawn out games. They motivate a more offensive play which i would consider more entertaining.
80 damage sounds reasonable to protect elephants, but elephants are not really a threat at the moment as converting is far more dangerous and cheaper than using assasins...

Not sure if there will be a wagon rework, maybe then assasin can't be used so effective anymore, so maybe we need buffs then again (4 speed for example)?

[b2198]

Nice rework concept! addresses both: Assasins are too strong for capturing tcs but at the same time too weak in all other circumstances.
I feel like options like assasins are really important to prevent too much turtling and drawn out games. They motivate a more offensive play which i would consider more entertaining.
80 damage sounds reasonable to protect elephants, but elephants are not really a threat at the moment as converting is far more dangerous and cheaper than using assasins...

Not sure if there will be a wagon rework, maybe then assasin can't be used so effective anymore, so maybe we need buffs then again (4 speed for example)?

Yeah, I agree.

To the conversion point, that's what I had in mind when I said that a topic specifically about elephants would have to wait before one about conversion is discussed, because they're very connected problems, so solving the bigger one might also help solve the smaller one as a side-effect. I'm still putting together my ideas for that though, and most of them probably would be very hard or outright impossible to implement without code changes, so I think this might take a while for me to decide on suggestions for it. Also, that should be in another topic (and there's already an existing one that has a similar idea to one of the things I was thinking about in regards to conversion, so I'll probably just revive that one).

[b2198]

After some testing in matches, I feel like the new ability (Assassin Dagger Throw) could be buffed a bit. Even with blacksmith + auras it still deals a quite low damage. Considering the fact that it has a 2 turns cooldown and has to be researched beforehand, and that assasins can't use skills from inside garrisons anymore (so the chance of them surviving after using it if the opponent has detection nearby are way lower), I think it would be valid to increase its damage, maybe to the same as of the normal attack?

[Endru1241]

After some testing in matches, I feel like the new ability (Assassin Dagger Throw) could be buffed a bit. Even with blacksmith + auras it still deals a quite low damage. Considering the fact that it has a 2 turns cooldown and has to be researched beforehand, and that assasins can't use skills from inside garrisons anymore (so the chance of them surviving after using it if the opponent has detection nearby are way lower), I think it would be valid to increase its damage, maybe to the same as of the normal attack?

Not sure.
After both blacksmith researches ability deals 3.5 base damage, so 7 vs archers, wagons, 9 vs support, skirmishers, 11 vs healers, leaders, siege machines.
Minus armor.
Plus poison.
With battlefield blacksmith boost it becomes 5 base damage, so 9 vs wagons, 10 vs archers, 13 vs support, skirmishers, 15 vs healers, leaders, siege machines.
It's enough to one shot bishops, priests, most supports (e.g. herbalists, bards).
Against others it's invisible chipping of hp, forcing to get some heal.

[b2198]

Yeah, but it still takes a considerable effort for doing that, because you have to research the ability first, buff your assassin beforehand (or get auras nearby for a slightly lower damage), get your assassin in 2 range of the target, and at the end you still deal less damaga than you would have done by just attacking normally (albeit with a higher risk, but getting an assassin in open field near the enemy units is risky both at 1 and 2 range), and with a cooldown that makes you only able to use it every other turn. Maybe increasing the cooldown to 3 to increase the damage by ~90%-150% would make this ability more useful and worth the investment?