Guardsman and defending against Assasination attempts

[Blackmantle]

IMO, its not an exploit if there is no alternative...

All units should have thier counter... and Mobility II assassins cannot be caught 'on the counter-attack', as they have 3 movement! The only counter to assassins, are Guardsmen (or Royal Guards), and those are only rarely available.

I would rather have a horribly expensive national unit that is always available, and is very weak, than workers. But since none exist ATM, I will have to use the 'exploit'

But Assassins should be guaranteed which target they will be up against... its nasty to be shouted "SURPRISE, you aren't going up against the lvl 10 Archmage... you are going up against a lvl 15 Hero!!". As a result, 50% is FAR too low...

Heres another idea to consider... a "Protector" Promotion.

Available to Melee, Archery, and Recon units.
Requires Combat III
-100% Strength (With Combat III this gives a final value of -40% of the base strength)
Doesn't gain XP from combat (Use the withered promotion effect, but with -100% instead of -50%, if possible)
Intercepts Marksman Attacks

If it whould be "just" hawks and (edit due to typo: )workers one could argue that one to a certain (since hawks are somewhat limited by slots and workers are expensive) but since slaves work just as well and are even more odd as targets chosen by assasins for assasination its very cheesy. (you can get many slaves from slavery civic + barb-hunting or from slave trade via the undercouncil civic / resolution.). Using that can yield you like 10 - 20 "meatshields" easiely and cheaply. And those are hard to bypass even by blitzing assasins.
Hence i restrain from using either. Especially since the AI whould not pull something like that off.

I whould very much like a late game-low strength high-cost guardsmen for all civs as well. (perhaps as a national so you con't spam them / make your mages untouchable.) With Marksmen-Units bypassing noncombats just like all other units (including greath people but perhaps not ships if thats not to much of a problem codewise.).

Perhaps a spell in one of the new spheres or a relocation and an addition in shadow-magic like suggested by xienwolf might be fine as well..

Main problem with hawks having that ability is that they perhaps are already one of the most powerful and underpriced units in the game with all they offer. Add that one in and they are insanely strong against nigh anything exept places where brute force is needed alone. But there is more than enough to take care of that allready.

 

[avalonnn]

Workers and hawks will take the hit for you.

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

 

[avalonnn]

Main problem with hawks having that ability is that they perhaps are already one of the most powerful and underpriced units in the game with all they offer.

Don't they add to the unit count? If your armies have 2 defenders at least per city + 1 hawk, army costs could be expensive.

 

[westamastaflash]

Why not just give a unit the ability to take the Guardsman Promotion with, say, Drill III?

 

[Ecofarm]

I'd like it if Marksman only gave chance of striking the weakest defender, chosen after the decision to attack but before actual combat. Either they slip past the sentries or are caught. The City attack penalty could be replaced by a lower chance of "Marksmanning" in cities.

How large the chance should be is open for debate. How about 50% base, +10 in friendly territory, -10 in enemy, -20 for city?

This is good.

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

People? Since I play Svart sometimes, I occasionally have encountered such defense in PvP MP (they expect it from svart). Personally, I count on visability from hawks to give me the first hit on them with my assassins if they are playing a civ likely to have assassins.

As grigori, good luck using an assassin against my combat5 archmage, though I've lost them to stacks of assassins before.

As balseraph, good luck hitting yvain, druids or (later) beastmasters - that's all I'm likely to field.

If you mean players vs. the AI... if the AI gets assassins, game over. You can't defend against waves (immortal difficulty). I guess on lower levels the AI doesn't/can't spam assassins and you can pick them off like vs. players via hawk visibility and your own assassins or you just don't have to worrycause they come once in awhile and don't really hurt you. The thing is, the AI doesn't start building assassins until after the player (err, I) has tier4 units, even on immortal -weird, since assassins are only tier3. If the AI started beelining assassins and spamming them, we'd all be playing prince or less.

 

[Grey Fox]

Stoneskin is a decent defense against assassins too. Especially for archmages, but even for mages it can help.

And Ecofarm, yeah huge stacks of assassins are hard to defend against, but a combination of siege weapons and your own assassins can help turn the tide.

 

[KingOfLands]

It's not really very different from the workers/hawks suggestion, but slaves are a renewable resource and work just as well as either of those. I've been having a good time thwarting AI assassins in Fall Further with them as the Cualli.

 

[onedreamer]

It seems like there should be a good unit that has can counter the assassin.

there is, and it's the assassin itself.

 

[Grand Seeker]

Originally Posted by PapaMonkey View Post
It seems like there should be a good unit that has can counter the assassin.

there is, and it's the assassin itself.

hehe

Originally Posted by digitCruncher View Post
But Assassins should be guaranteed which target they will be up against... its nasty to be shouted "SURPRISE, you aren't going up against the lvl 10 Archmage... you are going up against a lvl 15 Hero!!". As a result, 50% is FAR too low...

I would like to say that 80% probability for the assasin to hit their actual target would be realy nice. That means that atleast once in a while you will loose your assasin on an attack!

Many people are also talking about having guardsman promotion more available. I haven't use the guardsman promotion myself, but what I hear is that a guardsman promotion means curtein death to the unit, cuz it will defend regardless its strength. Which means you can send in a few normal attackers to kill the guardsman, and then use assasins afterwords.

If a guardsman promotion is to work it need to be placed on CHEAP units.

Personaly I would love to see as I said earlier a divination spell which removes the marks-man promotions on all units within an area, maybe only temporarily.

Has anybody tried to make a wall of cheap units around the units you need to protect?

 

[Honor]

How about coding an interface where you can actually select the unit you wish to assasinate and against that, implement a special promotion only available to recon units of level 6+ called "Counter Intelligence I-II-III" that give +% against assasination attempts to every unit in the stack?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'm guessing that that would have to be a rather cumbersome python interface, similar to the pre-BtS spell interface. That unfortunately often froze and caused crashes.

I was hoping that they would add this

<UnitClassTargets>
				<UnitClassTarget>
					<UnitClassTargetType>UNITCLASS_CHALID</UnitClassTargetType>
					<bUnitCombatTarget>1</bUnitClassTarget>
				</UnitClassTarget>
			</UnitClassTargets>
			<UnitCombatTargets>
				<UnitCombatTarget>
					<UnitCombatTargetType>UNITCOMBAT_DISCIPLE</UnitCombatTargetType>
					<bUnitCombatTarget>1</bUnitCombatTarget>
				</UnitCombatTarget>
			</UnitCombatTargets>

to CIV4PromotionInfos.xml instead of just CIV4UnitInfos.xml. That would let you add simple, xml-only spells that would let marksman units target specific unitcombats and/or units. You still couldn't choose which of 2 units of the same unitclass to target though. Adding <PromotionTargets> could be nice too.

 

[Grey Fox]

How about making some unit have FLANKING vs assassins?

 

[JanusTalaiini]

Unless it's been changed in a recent version, the guardsman promotion is not working anyway. We had a thread about it a few months back. I was having my mages killed by assassins while they were in a stack with a number of guardsman units.

Edit- Here's the thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=276891

 

[Frogmanx82]

I like the protector promotion idea or if assassins would go against other marksmen units first. I don't like the fodder concept for defense so this is an area I'd like to see addressed. You should be able make it difficult for assassins to get through to your weakest units by intercepting their efforts.

 

[onedreamer]

hehe

wasn't really a joke. Seriously, a stack of assassins will stop a stack of assassins any day of the week.

 

[Grey Fox]

And the key for your assassins to beat their assassins is to scout and know where they are so you can strike first.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

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.

Assassins don't need a direct counter because they are, themselves, a specialized counter unit. They exist to knock off priests and mages. You want a counter to assassin spam that doesn't involve workers or hawks? Try a conventional army that doesn't rely on squishy spellcasters. As in, just a big load of champions, rangers, and what have you. If your opponent is spending hammers spamming assassins, which aren't a match for those units, your standing army will beat the crap out of theirs.

Unless I'm going senile, Aristocracy unlocks a fast moving guardsman with 2/9 or something ridiculous like that. So there's an option if you're really desperate.

 

[Grey Fox]

Assassin is a counter to ALL UNITS. Just use them together with either siege units or magic. Doesn't matter if it's rangers, champions or fast moving guardsmen. They all get low hp eventually.

 

[digitCruncher]

Unfortunatly, there are only 3 (for me There may be others, which I am missing) ways to bombard city defences...

#1: Catapults. Unfortunatly, these are even more squishy than spellcasters.
#2: Spell casters. Already the same problem.
#3: The 3 hill giants from either subdue Beast (good luck ), or the Pact of the Nilhorn. Thankfully, these guys are NOT squishy. They are just rather hard to get.

Aristocracy is a good idea... except its 'bonus' turns farms into +1 +2 patheti-improvements -.- (And this is WITH sanitation... otherwise you would need to be running Agriculture to be able to increase population in a city!!)

The sad part is assassins are very powerful units in general, with no real counter except workers / hawks.

That said, the aristocracy solution is a half-decent one. Of course, you would have to be PRETTY desperate to reduce food bonuses of farms!

Now... all we need is Guardsmen to stop defending against all OTHER units... and have the Guardsmen promotion just defend against assassins (or, alternatively, have it have something like a +20% bonus when the defender is selected... if it isn't already. From what I can gather, Guardsmen defend ALWAYS in a stack, until they all die. After which assassins come and blow you out of the civilisation!!)

 

[Grey Fox]

You don't really need to bombard cities, just bring enough units. Units with withdrawal can work as a semi-catapult damaging one unit and possibly surviving. Though having access to bombard does help a lot.

EDIT: And aristocracy works best as a Financial civ since all farms will produce 3 Commerce (4 if riverside). Think of it as a quick growing cottage that stops at hamlet/village size which is easily replaceable if pillaged. And as a bonus they supply at least +1 food (with sanitation and/or agriculture).