What's even better is that monks can be put on 'agressive stance' which then allows them to spot assassins from distance and run towards them at really fast speed. They cost 10 gold (you need a cathedral though) and 2 monks will easily wipe out an assassin that costed 60 gold. First of all, the best way to protect your economy from assassins are actually monks (I bet you didn't see this coming). Most beginners hate them as they can be very annoying, but once you learn some basics they stop being dangerous. However, I have to tell you that assassins are not as problematic as you think. Yes there are competitive games without peace time, and those are my favorite, because they require very strategic and balanced development of economy and army, just like in starcraft. Of course, the assassins move like race cars to the assembly point, but it highlights so many subtleties the rush can revolve around (do I have to move units so that assassins unassign from the rally and move slower, do I have to reassign the rally point, should I have a few slingers for chip damage?).Īlso, is putting stationary assassins out in the open worth it to discover enemy assassin attacks (be it one or a group of them)? I visualized that in case of 2k gold bum assassin rushes, as the defender, you could just minesweep with the map with the cathedral, so you know when the assassins move out and build up your economy until then.

What I think is, that starting with no peace time and little starting allows enable players to be mechanically challenged in the early-game, like rushes are done in Starcraft. My liege, have there been competitive games with no peace time? The few games I have seen were about building woodcutters, then building massive industries for weapons, ale and bread by the peace time is over, so that you could either attack with massive armies, with little unit variety (horse archer, mantlet, assassin, knight, occasionally xbows) or perish.

Stronghold crusader units