Guardsman and defending against Assasination attempts

[Ahriman]

How many people use workers or slaves to defend stacks with weak valuable units like spellcasters? I'm playing at a lower difficulty level, so I usually don't need to do this

I do this all the time. Lightning elementals also work great. Or summoned skeletons.

I wish that the Defender promotion would give the unit higher defender status *only* against Marksman attacks. Its useless when you can't use the better defenders to block normal attacks, and the Defenders to block assassins. Like Digit says, normal units take out the sacrificial defenders and then assassins are free to kill the mages, which are irreplaceable because of the time to generate XP.

I can't help but wonder if the slow-XP-accumulation mechanic and level requirements are bad design choices. The AI can't handle them so magic is effectively a player-only phenomenon. The AI can get research bonuses to build high-tech units, but it can never preserve its units long-enough to get high XP ones. The concentration of power into such slow developing units is also a slippery slope; as long as you don't lose your powerful units, you can make them even more powerful and win battles and such at no loss, but if you lose them (eg because of some uncounterable assasins or something) then they are too hard to replace.

This, along with the power of the Agriculture civic and the doubling of the value of combat promotions, are the main reasons why FFH is so much easier than vanilla civ.

 

[Grand Seeker]

I'm geussing that a defender promotion that only works against assasins would be
hard to code. Besides, such a promotion might take away all the FUN elements about the assasin. Then once again the defender will allways have the edge. Just send in one or two of these and the defender got a defence versus everything. Making ofensive go down to crawling speed as in vannila civ 4.

A better approach in my view is to introduce a spell or effect that temporarily (?) removes the marksmann promotion. I think it will be easier to implement, and it will definitivly slow down the 'hordes of unstopable assasins'. Hopefully enough for you to kill the weakly defended assasins with your own army. Maybe the effect could be resisted. Maybe a unit may be given the passive effect of potentialy removing the marksman promotion when their stack is attacked.

The spell could be given as a level 3 divination spell, while the passive effect of removing marksman-promotion could be given to a 'guard' unit. Since a 'remove marksman promotion' effect can be resisted, you have endless of balancing oportunities to introduce an assasin counter and at the same time keep the assasin fun, just simply by tweaking how hard it is to resist the removal of the marksman promotion.

Also, an assasin should have great risk. Either the assasin manage to strike down its target, or he is cought by one of the guards.

 

[xienwolf]

Actually targetting the Marksman only for interception is easy. Just remove the "BetterDefenderThanPercent" line from Guardsman and leave the boolean for BlockAttackWeakest". And to keep things somewhat balanced you just make sure the people who can get Guardsman are all ALSO easy prey for an Assassin, and relatively weak for a standing army. Then someone who spams those will lose to normal units, and someone who doesn't bring enough will just run out of them quickly, leaving the Mages open for attack.

 

[Polobo]

Haven't actually started playing yet but one possible way to think of those workers are as decoys. The dress and act like mages but aren't actually mages (and thus are much cheaper to employ). Does the attack mechanism automatically target a unit or is a random chance weighted based upon unit strength? I assume the former but the later is code-able and would reinforce the idea of placing decoy units in the stack to protect against assassinations.

 

[Grand Seeker]

What I'm talking about is defence. Its incredible booring in regular civ IV how extremly slow it is to attack cities, even if you have the edge. If you implement a guardsman which only works good against assasins, all you need is a few guardsman and a few archer/whatever and valla, you got your self a great defence which will take a long time to destroy. The point being, assasins are quit weak at attacking cities have it not been for the marksman promotion. So you probably dont need many guardsman to protect your self from the assasins.

I enjoy the speed of striking in FFH2 and want to keep it. I also want the assasins to be an alternative to catapults/mages.

In order to keep the assasins as an alternative to mages, introduce an guardsman which give it a probability to remove the marksman promotion before the assasins attack. In that way guardsman will be a counter to assasins, but it will not be a bulletproof defence.

 

[Durin]

I know it's costly, but if the vital force of mage is surround by 8 others stacks of sufficient strenght (whithout mages) i think assassin can't reach their target.

Better if we have something who could see invisible units, the shield could be put with 5 stacks, letting the rear area exposed, but as we know from where the danger is coming result is the same.

Combining mage with mobility II + fireball at the center of the square and good troops around could be a solution agains small numbers of assassins. against a stack of shadow i fear it's another matter.

and finally if we could see the nationality of the killer : DOW should be the solution to destroy them before they do this to you.

 

[scutarii]

honestly, I do not get why people complain now: by far bigger problem is that AI can't handle situation. A now, AI uses assasins/marksmans AS DESIGNED, people start to moan oh why we have go through this.

In my recent game( not finished yet, 15% away from domination victory), AI effectively used assys to withhold my planned assaults: AI killed most of catapults I gathered, so my only solution was to overproduce and finally I prevailed.

 

[avalonnn]

honestly, I do not get why people complain now: by far bigger problem is that AI can't handle situation. A now, AI uses assasins/marksmans AS DESIGNED, people start to moan oh why we have go through this.

In my recent game( not finished yet, 15% away from domination victory), AI effectively used assys to withhold my planned assaults: AI killed most of catapults I gathered, so my only solution was to overproduce and finally I prevailed.

yes.

One possible way to think of those workers are as decoys. The dress and act like mages but aren't actually mages (and thus are much cheaper to employ). Does the attack mechanism automatically target a unit or is a random chance weighted based upon unit strength? I assume the former but the later is code-able and would reinforce the idea of placing decoy units in the stack to protect against assassinations.

works for me.


I had one game where luichirp or khazad had one city left on a distant island and I made peace with them but had no "see invisible" units in my borders and a shadow cut much of my mana nodes. Was a very interesting strat, possible only vs. a noob like myself.

 

[onedreamer]

If their assassins are more mobile (like, you're in their territory and they can use the roads and you can't) you're screwed.

not really, because the AI will never create an assassin stack, but you can.

 

[Jhoniten]

Could always ask that they bring the runeguards back. I know someone did it again in a mod somewhere. dang old age catching up to me again.

 

[Jules.lt]

the AI will never create an assassin stack

In my experience it does. I remember a game against the Khazad where most of their army was assassins, with only a few other units.

I think that assassins should have reduced defence and a reduced chance to defend in a stack: assassins are not meant to defend, but to attack.
Or maybe they should defend against assassins...
...
hey, that's what lowering their defence and defending probability achieves too!

 

[loffenx]

In my experience assassins seem to work as intended. I play on emperor, and I've never seen any over-the-top usage of Assassins or other marksmen units by the AI. They possess a considerable threath to weaker specialized units like casters, especially if these are brought up to the front, but can be countered by a more or less equal considerable effort. Removing this aspect would streemline warfare but also make it less interesting, imo.

 

[onedreamer]

In my experience it does. I remember a game against the Khazad where most of their army was assassins, with only a few other units.

I think that assassins should have reduced defence and a reduced chance to defend in a stack: assassins are not meant to defend, but to attack.
Or maybe they should defend against assassins...
...
hey, that's what lowering their defence and defending probability achieves too!

Khazad specifically builds more assassins than the other civs. Still, many assassins aren't an assassin stack. And for the records, assassins have very low defense (the lowest of their tier)

 

[Jules.lt]

Cross that. I didn't have access to the FfH manual at work and I didn't remember that they had lower defence. It would be nice if they also have a lower chance of defending the stack too, though...
Why would an assassin risk his life for others? What about adding to marksman the same lower defence probability effect that the divine and mage promotions have? You want to keep those units for attacking!

Did the team make the Khazad build more assassins on purpose or is that a side-effect of the reduced units choice for the AI?
I don't think it really fits the dwarf flavour, even the neutral ones...
(and those were assassin stacks I saw, btw, with more than a dozen assassins in each and maybe a healer or hero to go with them)

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

Well, the Khazad specifically have Dwarven Shadows as a UU so it would make sense that they'd specialize in assassin units... so maybe not stereotypically dwarfy but its pretty Khazady...

 

[zup]

The problem with guardsman I encountered is that guardsman units are too much of martyrs. Even when they have 1% hp left, they will happily defend instead of the full hp ones, who might be stronger anyway. Unless you have several guardsmen, in which case the defender with highest odds is selected. It is not much of an issue for Bannor as all of theirs have the promotion. But for defender leaders, it is suicide to have only 1 guardsman, have to save exp for promoting at least 4 at the same time. This is from my experience of facing raging barbarian god hordes. (aka deity) Against enemy uberstacks you would probably need dozens of guardsmen.