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:
- 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)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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)
- 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)
- Wagons not being nerfed anytime soon, etc.
- 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
- 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?)
- 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)
@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)