Assassin Success Rate a Lie?

[MagicCuboid]

I did a number of forum searches and I was surprised I couldn't find anything about this.

I rarely use assassins, but once my Shah lost his sickly son to the Romans, I decided it was time to make some dread lords and butcher the Roman armies I caught and train up some spies to kill their bishops. Consequently, my Shah went from being known as "the honorable" to "the malevolent", and lost four Chivalry points (he still has three). I don't mind much because he's 61 years old and hasn't been reigning very long anyway.

Anyway! On to the point - I wanted to kill a bishop, and it said I had a 74% success rate. That's pretty good, I thought, so I took a swing at him, and the assassin died. OK, I thought, I have another one waiting nearby, I'll just send him over. 70% success rate - not so bad, I thought, but he still missed. Angered at rolling so poorly, I reloaded my save (something I normally hate doing, but what can I say? I had it in for this bishop...)

Well, this became an ax to grind for me and in the name of science I continued on. To the point where my assassin with the 74% success rate has swung at this bishop a total of 15 times now and has still not succeeded. That is completely ridiculous, as far as I'm concerned, and I really have to wonder if the game isn't lying to me? Has anyone else ever encountered this?

[MagicCuboid]

I should note that I am using Stainless Steel 6.4 with RR/RC enabled. The only other submod I'm using that isn't purely cosmetic is Serbian Hussar's slow map expansion. (sorry, no edit button yet)

[MikeNice808]

I have had this happen to me. I love assassins and their abilities but SS(an overall excellent mod) does assassins no justice. I have trouble killing heathens and enemy priests with them. They work but nowhere as well as in vanilla.

[danielrech]

Reloading won't make a difference because M2TW pre-calculates the random numbers (or maybe the random seed is somehow saved into the savegame file).

[Ruprecht]

I have always found the inner workings of agent abilities suspicious. In the first 15 turns i must have lost roughly 7 Merchants to hostile takeovers. Annoyed by this, i checked their finance levels and they had around 19% chance to succeed yet they succeeded 7 times in succession.

It's the same for Assassins, when it says you have a 95% chance ... there is only a 5% chance of that.

[MagicCuboid]

Daniel, do you have a source for that? I've definitely reloaded priests to purge the insane heretics SS throws at you. though it's admittedly much more efficient to just have a priest train go after them.

[Stario]

To the point where my assassin with the 74% success rate has swung at this bishop a total of 15 times now and has still not succeeded. That is completely ridiculous, as far as I'm concerned, and I really have to wonder if the game isn't lying to me? Has anyone else ever encountered this?

If you are going to reload make sure you do something else prior to attempting to use you assassin, otherwise the outcome will be the same. What I usually do is move a General out of a settlement; save the game, and re-attempt assassination. If assassination fails, I move the General back in the settlement; save the game, and re-attempt assassination; rinse repeat until assassination succeeds.

[Ichon]

There is something else going on... I had the same thing happen when I first started playing when I did not mind reloading. I tried around 50 times each test and a few times if you reload often enough without doing any other moves the mission would succeed. It did seem that moving some other units first improved the chances however so its perhaps a combination of 2 numbers- the assassins chance and the target chance- the target rolls a high chance and that doesn't change until you move some other units resetting the chance while occasionally repeatedly trying the assassin can roll a high enough chance to overcome the targets defense even if it was also high.

I do know that not all the ancillaries are calculated by the game in giving the odds. I believe traits and natural odds and character levels but ancillaries aren't. Try giving your assassin a handgun or poison and compare the odds before and after.

[MagicCuboid]

Interesting, Somo. I've thought about moving guys around before, but never thought about saving after.

Jukutatsu, I bet you're onto something with that. My guess is that just as the game hardcodes a 95% success cap, so too does it set a lower limit, however minute. This would help explain why we've been rarely successful in the past.

[k/t]

Soko and Jukutatsu are titles given by the forum based on how many posts you have. Your name is MagicCuboid, not Ikko-Ikki, and those guys' names are above their avatars.

[MagicCuboid]

Oh for crying out loud, thanks k/t. Sorry Adolphbin and Ichon, I was posting from my cell phone and wasn't paying any attention.

[Anesthetize]

Yes, the random seeds are set until you do a major change to the map (i.e. move a general out of a settlement/into a settlement). As far as I know, moving only army doesn't help, so you have to do it with a general/FM.

[Byg]

What a pity they didnt predefine the dice throw seeds at turn one for the entire campaign. Then nobody could cheat the system.

[Cyprexinia]

I find it annoying, I've had my faction leader killed by a 2 sub assassin, not to mention the NPC ones can fail over and over and never died.

[Big-Tony]

I've actually found the if after you reload the save game, save it again, and then try your assassination mission. I think the act of saving with cause the random numbers to regenerate behind the scenes.