Assassin

[Pillager]

If all goes according to plan, I never bother to increase my heroes' personal strength. Command, -1 enemy stack and stack critical strike are much more desirable options.

Occasionally my hero will wind up alone and vulnerable after an unexpectedly close battle, and only then do I bother to increase their strength.

Beta 4 doesn't seem to address this issue. Ruins will be fought with undead lore, not strength... so, there won't be any more incentive to boost strength than there is now.

Here is a unit I thought up, that would terrify puny heroes everywhere....the assassin.

This incarnation of the assassin bears little resemblance to the DLR version (which had critical strike). My conceptual assassin would be a dedicated hero hunter.

The assassin would have the 'assassination' ability. This ability would allow it to ignore fight order to attack an enemy hero (if one is present). So, when the assassin gets its turn at bat (during a battle) it immediately goes for the opposing hero's throat. The hero fights back as normal. Once all assassins (or opposing heroes) are killed, fight order returns to normal.

The assassin would need to be quite weak and take some time to produce..probably 3 turns.

Assassination could also be a skill available to a rogue type hero.

[KGB]

Personally I'd hate this.

The thought that a good hero could be killed in this manner by several of these units would be very annoying. Just guessing here but I suspect a majority of players wouldn't like this either.

I agree with you that personal hero strength isn't important right now and that's unfortunate especially since ruins are going to be handled by undead lore. Hopefully something else (Warlords I&II granted extra command bonus from higher strength) can be tied to hero strength so that there are reasons to increase it but heroes have never fought on the front lines in any version of Warlords other than the Monk/Barbarian in DLR.

KGB

[LPhillips]

This just sounds like a pain in the neck. It encourages cheesy playing, sinking lots of production into a unit whose only use is to cripple/annoy other players. For one thing, it would create balance issues in games with more than two players.

[Pillager]

Well,

I don't argue that this would be an annoying unit...that is sort of the point.

Right now we don't have a lot of tools to counter powerful heroes with lots of command, negative stack, etc.
What I like about the assassin mechanic, is that it would encourage more balanced heroes. Choosing to focus on command alone would make for a fragile hero...so boosting strength would be a sort of insurance policy against assassin attacks.

It is true that several assassins would represent a significant threat to a hero..but a team of three assassins would be 9 turns of production...which is no small investment.

LPhillips,

Spending large amounts of time and money to produce lots of assassins doesn't seem like a winning strategy to me. I'm thinking that an assassin would be a 2-4 strength unit that takes 3 turns. Even 1 turn units would be able to fight them at even odds.

[Pillager]

Maybe a better way to work this ability would be to call it backstab and make units with the ability always target the last unit in the enemy's fight order.

[kenc80]

i dont like this idea. plus if i have 20 castles investing 3 turns in a potentially game changing manner like this would be huge. If there is a rampaging hero near me heck yeah im going to pump out an 8 stack of these babies and run them up there. heck yeah.

I mean the back of the stack idea is cool but i'd rather it be applied to allies (ie take out an archon) and call it a marksman/sniper or something. I think Heroes should remain just that - heroic and they fall last after all their army is wiped out.

[KGB]

If it always targeted the last unit in the stack I'd just make sure my hero isn't the last unit

Also this kind of unit in the game would mean that 100% of the time I would NOT have my hero be last in the fight order (and thus on top of the stack for my opponents to see on his turn). I'd always put some other unit on top to hide my hero so my opponent would be forced to attack every stack with a lone unit looking for my hero (something I do even now when I want to disguise where my heroes are as KenC can attest to ).

Also if you are going to invest 9 turns in 3 of these units, why not just invest 5 turns in an Archon and cancel the hero bonus? Or just invest in Ghosts/Wolfriders (4 of each in a stack kills virtually any hero stack or at least leaves it with only 1-3 men left so it can be finished off) and use the critical strike skill which has value against more than just heroes?

Ghosts will have far less setup cost/upkeep in Beta4 encouraging more of them to come into play. This assassination unit would have to cost at least 600-800 gold and if Ghosts come down to the 800-900 range where they belong there is no upside to not having Ghosts instead.

Incidentally what would happen if you had 2+ heroes in a stack. How would this mechanism chose which one to try against?

KGB

[LPhillips]

Pillager, you just made my point for me: this will never be a game-changing unit in a positive way. It sounds like a huge investment just to target one player to cripple/sabotage. You hurt yourself by sacrificing tons of production, just to cheese someone. I don't see any advantage to adding it to the game.

[Pillager]

KGB,

If you work the ability as 'backstab' then the assassin would go after the last unit in your fight order...if it kills that unit then it would target the new 'last unit'.

My original thinking was that assassins would target the first hero in your fight order, basically just bypassing units until they reach a hero.

I sort of like the backstab idea... but yeah, I would just change my fight order to have the hero protected. I forgot that you can do that in this version.

I kinda think you shouldn't be able to hide a hero under other units... maybe because this wasn't possible in the other warlords games.

[KGB]

Pillager,

Hiding the hero wasn't possible in other versions of the game. Not even DLR allowed it.

Here I think it's great because you can quickly hide your hero in the fog of war. It functions like a form of invisibility and is especially handy if you have a weak hero that's trying to flee and you want your opponent to guess which stack he might be in.

I just claimed another victim tonight in fact as Mr Bofa splatted his nice hero stack into a city with a hidden Hero + Allies waiting for him. Just had to make the city look *weak* with a couple of crappy units on top and he rushed in for the glory. Those are the moments when I wish the game could auto start a web-cam and take a photo of the players face when the combat screen popped up and they realized that it wasn't glory, but death that awaited them.

KGB

P.S. If you are really worried about it remember in Beta4 with the Scouting skill you'll be able to view the stack if you have a Scout unit.