chances of assassin success?

**Ichon** · July 04, 2009, 09:31 PM

Just finished my Armenian campaign and figured I'd try Rome to see what it is like having Epicurus with land bridge right there and I have to say this is the most fun I've had playing Rome. Usually you can steam roll everyone but with the amount of rebels and the rebel city garrisons are quite large... I actually found it easier to expand as Armenia because Pontus and Sels garrisons often quite small compared to the rebel cities. Anyway- Pyhrrus made a mistake and sat in Corfinium after winning that siege and was trapped so Rome expanded down the boot and into Apollonia before 276 but then Greek Cities started sending lots of assassins so I figured I'd build some up too. I never bothered in my other campaigns with Ex so this is the first I've noticed this... what file was changed to make assassins fail so often now even with good odds? My first 5 assassins died their first mission and finally one lived awhile and increased his skills to 7, then when going after a minor Greek family member with 92% chance of success he was killed and every other assassin was dying on easy missions as well. Only mission seemed they could accomplish was to sabatoge buildings.

I don't mind some changes to assassins as formerly it was a bit too easy sometimes to build up a whole clan of them but it seems crazy when after losing my best one on an easy mission next guy I got up to level 5 and on a mission with 74% chance success I reloaded 54 times and he never succeeded. I was going to try 100 times but after 54 I figured that was enough. Is there any way to make the % chance actually reflect closer the reality? I made one city produce nothing but assassin and only managed to get 2 assassins to live past 3 missions in about 20 years of game time or 80 turns with 4 turn a year script. That seems bugged... why even bother to leave assassins in if its so low usefulness? Especially since Greek Cities seems to spend rounds of its production on assassins as well when they could have been producing armies instead.

**Minucius** · July 04, 2009, 09:37 PM

I think you will find that reloading more than once doesn't change the result (I've experimented with this for testing some things myself)- RTW apparently uses a random number generator off a seed that must be included in the save file. Hence if you want to get another throw of the dice on an asassination attempt after it fails after reloading, you'd need to do something else that would retrieve a random number (e.g. fight a battle, sacrifice another agent on a differnent mission).

**Ichon** · July 04, 2009, 10:15 PM

Originally Posted by Minucius

I think you will find that reloading more than once doesn't change the result (I've experimented with this for testing some things myself)- RTW apparently uses a random number generator off a seed that must be included in the save file. Hence if you want to get another throw of the dice on an asassination attempt after it fails after reloading, you'd need to do something else that would retrieve a random number (e.g. fight a battle, sacrifice another agent on a differnent mission).

That can't be right... sometimes the mission does change but only difference is between- "slain by bodyguards" to "misses target" though I think if you reload on spy sneaking into a city that is caught and executed it also can be reloaded and its a successful sneak. I haven't reloaded very often for such things until I tried this 54 times but I'm sure in regular RTW it does chance results. I remember when I first playing I'd refight a single battle multiple times to see what different tactics worked etc and often on the same turn would do spy missions more than once before the battle started and after...

**Minucius** · July 05, 2009, 02:11 AM

Does this make it clearer?

{do random stuff}
Save game
Try assasination - get result 1
Reload
Try assasination - get result 2
Reload
Try assasination - get result 2
Reload
Try assasination - get result 2
Reload
Try assasination - get result 2
Reload
Try assasination - get result 2

and so on ad infinitum.

**despot_of_rhodes** · July 05, 2009, 02:26 AM

The best chance to train your asassins is to kill other asassins ( there is allways a 64% chance if yours got 1 talent skill and the enemy´s one too ).
Try to assasinate diplomates without influence. A 95% chance is, as the number says, almoust sure way to be successfull.
If you build a great forum or curia your assassins recruited in that town will automatically become cutthroat or murderer, independent of their starting assasination skill.
To successfully eliminate a family member without influence or other security traits, you´d need at least 8 or 9 star asassin. Everything below 90% is quite risky, and trying to kill a general with high security values and/or influence, is quite a matter of luck, not a planing. Assasinating faction leaders or heirs has almoust zero chance, so why waste an asassin, you´ve spent a lot of time to train, if you simply can take them out in a battle?

**Ichon** · July 05, 2009, 12:09 PM

Ah, that is helpful about the great forum and curia. I hadn't built those yet. I thought the easier the mission the less chance of building skills? When I kill other assassins I hardly ever get skill level from it. Of course higher level diplo and spies are more difficult to assassinate just like faction leader or heir. Although lower level family members, especially ones with high managerial and command but low influence are easy to take out.

Minucius- I don't know if that is correct. I tried reloading multiple times again just to see and this time after 13 tries I got a different result so I think the odds are just very poor or not reflected accurately sometimes but doesn't mean you are getting exact same roll on reload.