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[GoblinCookie]

There's plenty of reasons already you might want to protect someone, plenty of potential freak accidents that could happen that could be avoided with a few armored soldiers.
Werebeasts for one, there's always a chance they'll have to wander out of the fort for w/e reason and get caught with their pants down, so to speak. Then they either get ripped to shreds or end up being infected.
Also, would you be okay with the risk of your child being taken by a snatcher? if i was a king, i sure as hell would not be.

But if you want to view all of your dwarves as disposable RTS units, then that's your choice.
Yes yes, "Dividing my forces blah blah blah", if they aren't currently either engaging a siege or training, i don't see why some of them couldn't run guard duty? i mean if they're off-duty, they'll be scattered all over the fort anyway.

Bodyguards only sort of make sense if you see all the dwarves except an elite as disposable RTS units.

The security of civilian dwarves against random threats is presently far better served by having more guards patrol the areas where the dwarves in general live and work than by having guards follow a particular individual about regardless of whether he is any greater danger than anyone else.  That way we protect both the important dwarves *and* everyone else at the same time because we can place patrols in a strategic fashion rather than as with bodyguards deploying our protectors according to whatever the civilian dwarves we are guarding happen to be doing at the moment, irrespective of whether it makes strategic sense.

It would be practical to assign a bodyguard to a web-gatherer. Don't need to patrol the whole caverns that way.

It makes sense when he is web-gathering, it does not however make sense when he is safe inside the fortress.  I am arguing that bodyguards make sense when some individuals are in greater risk of harm than the average person, which is why I think bodyguards should be implemented aside assassins, once those are in leaders are in greater danger than the average dwarf *whatever* they are presently doing. 

Defining danger zones and assigning dwarves to 'protect' said danger zones makes sense here.  The soldier dwarves assign themselves to guard any civilians passing through the danger zone but otherwise return to their station. 

Patrols don't protect against internal threats like berserk dwarves, vampires, or tamed animals reverting to wildness. I speak from experience, because patrols are implemented. You know the notes system? You can use the notes as points on a patrol route. Hit r when you're in the Notes menu, and then add a route, name it appropriately, then edit it, and add the notes you want to use as waypoints and presto! you have a route ready to be patrolled. To get dwarves to partol along them all you need to do is put it in their squad's schedule, once you've made the route it should show up as an option for scheduled activities.

Patrolling the interior of the fortress does not protect against general internal theats?   

Guarding a strategic asset from hidden and internal dangers is not a strategic weakness. Vampires almost perfectly fill the same role as assassins, just with a different goal, namely to drink people, and they're already in-game. Yeah, in Europe kings generally took part in war for sure, but I highly doubt it was to add his bodyguard to the army since it'd usually be just one or two guys who still stick near him during the battle anyways, it was likely as a display of confidence (and possibly divine will?) to boost troop morale, and to offer the strong leadership that kings were supposed to possess.

Vampires do not perfectly fit the same role as assassins, because they do not select any particular rank of person as their particular targets, they are a general threat.

My point here is that bodyguards reduce the average security of your fortress but increase the security of an individual dwarf that is guarded.  That means it is not rational to deploy bodyguards unless the benefit to the individual dwarf exceeds the loss to the average dwarf.  That is the case if there is a particular danger to the dwarf, but there is only a particular danger that is always present if assassins are a thing.

Small differences in numbers potentially make a big difference in warfare.  So I would not dismiss the possibility that the actual reason medieval kings fought on the battlefield was because otherwise their bodyguards would have to be deployed somewhere else to protect the king and the lack of those few men might easily tip the battle in the enemy's favour.

The idea that the point of assassins was to force opponents to waste manpower on defense fills my brain with fuck. The point of assassins is to kill the enemy leadership.

This kind of thinking might well be why America so often loses wars despite having the most powerful army.

The point of war is *not* to kill the enemy's leadership.  The point of war is to destroy the organization/concentration of the enemy's army.  If I force the enemy's army to scatter to the four winds to defend any number of targets I destroy the organization/concentration of the enemy's army while if I kill the leadership I *also* destroy the origination of my enemy's army.  It is a win-win situation for the assassin's party, if the enemy protect their leaders they undermine their organization/concentration while if they don't protect their leaders I kill them and the same happens.

If I force the enemy to defend an innumerable number of separate objectives at the same time, dividing their forces to the point they cannot raise enough forces to decisively defeat my actual army then I can potentially win the war without actually winning a single battle.

[Ninjabread]

Patrolling the interior of the fortress does not protect against general internal theats?   

Yeah, weird right? Vampires is a totally understandable failure on their part, but they just never seem to be where you need them for the other stuff either, unless you shorten the routes to the extent that there's always someone present, at which point you're using more dwarves than you would use for bodyguards.

Vampires do not perfectly fit the same role as assassins, because they do not select any particular rank of person as their particular targets, they are a general threat.

My point here is that bodyguards reduce the average security of your fortress but increase the security of an individual dwarf that is guarded.  That means it is not rational to deploy bodyguards unless the benefit to the individual dwarf exceeds the loss to the average dwarf.  That is the case if there is a particular danger to the dwarf, but there is only a particular danger that is always present if assassins are a thing.

Small differences in numbers potentially make a big difference in warfare.  So I would not dismiss the possibility that the actual reason medieval kings fought on the battlefield was because otherwise their bodyguards would have to be deployed somewhere else to protect the king and the lack of those few men might easily tip the battle in the enemy's favour.

I said vampires almost perfectly fit the role, and even specified that they have a different motive. My point is that vampires kill in a similar manner to assassins: quietly and when their target is at their most vulnerable. There is also the fact that anyone who isn't a noble can be safe by sleeping in a dorm, but nobles whine if they don't have a private, vampire-friendly room.

I'm well aware of your point, you've repeated it many times. Many people disagree with your conclusion though, it assumes that all dwarves are of equal value, to many people they are not. There is also the fact that you set the limits on how many dwarves you have available; bodyguards taking dwarves from the garrisons at the entryways? Conscript some of the peasants to fill in the gaps.

Small numbers of highly trained individuals can affect the outcome of a battle yes, but when we're talking about open battle between hundreds, sometimes thousands of men per side, one or two guys won't turn the tides, especially if they're specifically trained as bodyguards. An important difference between bodyguards and soldiers is that soldiers are trained en masse, as a unit. Adding in one or two guys with zero experience with unit cohesion isn't going to help, so they stay back and do what they do best; try to avoid the death of the king.


Merry Christmas GC!

[GoblinCookie]

Yeah, weird right? Vampires is a totally understandable failure on their part, but they just never seem to be where you need them for the other stuff either, unless you shorten the routes to the extent that there's always someone present, at which point you're using more dwarves than you would use for bodyguards.

While the bodyguards are inside their charge's rooms watching over their sleeping bodies they aren't protecting any other dwarf than him/her.  However the odds are the vampire will select someone other than their charge is 99.5% (in a fortress with a full population of 200).  If I set the guard to patrol the hallways instead, there is a considerably greater chance that he will be in the vicinity of the vampire whenever it strikes.  Once the vampire is dead, the king is now 100% safe from vampire attacks and there is a far greater chance a patrol will catch the vampire when he strikes than 99.5%. 

I said vampires almost perfectly fit the role, and even specified that they have a different motive. My point is that vampires kill in a similar manner to assassins: quietly and when their target is at their most vulnerable. There is also the fact that anyone who isn't a noble can be safe by sleeping in a dorm, but nobles whine if they don't have a private, vampire-friendly room.

I'm well aware of your point, you've repeated it many times. Many people disagree with your conclusion though, it assumes that all dwarves are of equal value, to many people they are not. There is also the fact that you set the limits on how many dwarves you have available; bodyguards taking dwarves from the garrisons at the entryways? Conscript some of the peasants to fill in the gaps.

Small numbers of highly trained individuals can affect the outcome of a battle yes, but when we're talking about open battle between hundreds, sometimes thousands of men per side, one or two guys won't turn the tides, especially if they're specifically trained as bodyguards. An important difference between bodyguards and soldiers is that soldiers are trained en masse, as a unit. Adding in one or two guys with zero experience with unit cohesion isn't going to help, so they stay back and do what they do best; try to avoid the death of the king.

Merry Christmas GC!

Merry Christmas Ninjabread!

It is not a question of the subjective value of particular people.  It is simply that there isn't any inherent competition at the moment between the security of particular people and everyone in general, if you want to make your king 100% safe you carry this purpose strengthening your general defenses to make every civilian dwarf 100% safe than you do by weakening your general defenses to protect individuals you are not safe anyway if your fortress falls as a result. 

If we are housing everyone but a few nobles in dorms, then it is a still question of patrolling the few bedrooms that there are, the nobles are safe the rest of the time so they don't need bodyguards as such.  The funny thing of course is that you can house pretty much an infinite number of bedrooms in the same space, so you can very much house your nobles in dorms as well, you just designate the dormitory to be part of the bedroom of all your nobles and as long as the dormitory is nice enough the nobles will be happy.  Nobody complains about sharing rooms at the moment, it is entirely roleplaying to have separate rooms for our dwarves. 

A small numerical advantage does make a difference in a battle and the longer the battle goes on the more that initial advantage matters.  The reason is that the numerically larger forces inflict more casualties on the smaller force proportionate to that they take, which means their numerical advantage snowballs, this is one of Lanchester's laws.  So by taking a small number of dwarves from your army to pointlessly guard certain individuals that you are paranoid about losing, you are very much undermining your security to a far greater extent than you likely realize. 

As I said before, the real strategic value of assassins (and all covert attackers) is to force the enemy to deploy forces to protect their assets separately, let's say that I have a valley that is accessible from one mountain pass.  In the valley there are 20 hillocks but the dwarf nation has blocked off access to the valley by deploying 500 dwarves to block off the mountain pass.  The goblins are only 400 in number and it seems they have been beaten without a fight, but goblins being goblins, they have a cunning plan. 

They take 10 of their assassins and have them infiltrate the valley.  This forces the dwarf nation to deploy 10 guards in each hillocks in order to keep the party of assassins from wiping out whatever hillocks they please.  However divided between 20 hillocks this amounts to 200 dwarves, reducing the numbers of dwarves defending the pass into the valley to 300.  The hill dwarves are sufficiently well guarded that the assassins don't even bother to reveal themselves, they simply cackle evilly knowing that their true purpose has been fulfilled without them having to kill anyone at all.  With the dwarves reduced to 300, the goblins now have 390 goblins (400 -10 assassins) which means they have now a numerical advantage when they did not before.  With that advantage they attack the forces in the mountain pass and rout them, taking the whole valley for themselves. 

A clever dwarf general would have done something differently.  He would have left all the hillocks entirely undefended and deployed 20 dwarves to patrol the valley in general looking for the assassins, allowing the assassins to kill hill dwarves as they will.  Because every time they attack a hillocks, they give away their location and there is a chance that the patrol will be able to catch them.  If the chance of not getting away safely is a mighty 90%, it means 10 hillocks survive on average since there are 20 hillocks in total; once the assassins are dead the patrols can rejoin the main force.  As I said the real strategic purpose of assassins is to force you to deploy many times their own value in order to protect against them, not to actually attack targets.  Once the assassins have to actually attack, they are eliminated, be eliminated and once eliminated the enemy not only loses their value but the value of all the forces you deployed to counter them (bodyguards and patrols alike). 

[Ninjabread]

While the bodyguards are inside their charge's rooms watching over their sleeping bodies they aren't protecting any other dwarf than him/her.  However the odds are the vampire will select someone other than their charge is 99.5% (in a fortress with a full population of 200).  If I set the guard to patrol the hallways instead, there is a considerably greater chance that he will be in the vicinity of the vampire whenever it strikes.  Once the vampire is dead, the king is now 100% safe from vampire attacks and there is a far greater chance a patrol will catch the vampire when he strikes than 99.5%. 

Remember that this is the part that I have experienced personally. The patrols don't catch the vampires. The doors block line of sight, unless a) you have 100 militiadwarves standing guard in the 100 bedrooms, and give the militiadwarves barracks, b) you give them rooms with such little space that the vampire can't close the door, or c) you make a dorm for the commoners and everyone but the nobles are safe, and then if the nobles have bodyguards all is well.

Merry Christmas Ninjabread!

It is not a question of the subjective value of particular people.  It is simply that there isn't any inherent competition at the moment between the security of particular people and everyone in general, if you want to make your king 100% safe you carry this purpose strengthening your general defenses to make every civilian dwarf 100% safe than you do by weakening your general defenses to protect individuals you are not safe anyway if your fortress falls as a result. 

If we are housing everyone but a few nobles in dorms, then it is a still question of patrolling the few bedrooms that there are, the nobles are safe the rest of the time so they don't need bodyguards as such.  The funny thing of course is that you can house pretty much an infinite number of bedrooms in the same space, so you can very much house your nobles in dorms as well, you just designate the dormitory to be part of the bedroom of all your nobles and as long as the dormitory is nice enough the nobles will be happy.  Nobody complains about sharing rooms at the moment, it is entirely roleplaying to have separate rooms for our dwarves. 

A small numerical advantage does make a difference in a battle and the longer the battle goes on the more that initial advantage matters.  The reason is that the numerically larger forces inflict more casualties on the smaller force proportionate to that they take, which means their numerical advantage snowballs, this is one of Lanchester's laws.  So by taking a small number of dwarves from your army to pointlessly guard certain individuals that you are paranoid about losing, you are very much undermining your security to a far greater extent than you likely realize. 

As I said before, the real strategic value of assassins (and all covert attackers) is to force the enemy to deploy forces to protect their assets separately, let's say that I have a valley that is accessible from one mountain pass.  In the valley there are 20 hillocks but the dwarf nation has blocked off access to the valley by deploying 500 dwarves to block off the mountain pass.  The goblins are only 400 in number and it seems they have been beaten without a fight, but goblins being goblins, they have a cunning plan. 

They take 10 of their assassins and have them infiltrate the valley.  This forces the dwarf nation to deploy 10 guards in each hillocks in order to keep the party of assassins from wiping out whatever hillocks they please.  However divided between 20 hillocks this amounts to 200 dwarves, reducing the numbers of dwarves defending the pass into the valley to 300.  The hill dwarves are sufficiently well guarded that the assassins don't even bother to reveal themselves, they simply cackle evilly knowing that their true purpose has been fulfilled without them having to kill anyone at all.  With the dwarves reduced to 300, the goblins now have 390 goblins (400 -10 assassins) which means they have now a numerical advantage when they did not before.  With that advantage they attack the forces in the mountain pass and rout them, taking the whole valley for themselves. 

A clever dwarf general would have done something differently.  He would have left all the hillocks entirely undefended and deployed 20 dwarves to patrol the valley in general looking for the assassins, allowing the assassins to kill hill dwarves as they will.  Because every time they attack a hillocks, they give away their location and there is a chance that the patrol will be able to catch them.  If the chance of not getting away safely is a mighty 90%, it means 10 hillocks survive on average since there are 20 hillocks in total; once the assassins are dead the patrols can rejoin the main force.  As I said the real strategic purpose of assassins is to force you to deploy many times their own value in order to protect against them, not to actually attack targets.  Once the assassins have to actually attack, they are eliminated, be eliminated and once eliminated the enemy not only loses their value but the value of all the forces you deployed to counter them (bodyguards and patrols alike). 

You can't really make every dwarf, be they a civilian, a king, or otherwise, 100% safe, since they are also potential threats themselves, if they happen to either be a vampire or go berserk, not to mention tavern-related fatalities. But in terms of safe from everything except for turning into a threat themselves, or dying via drunken brawl, as I said before, patrols require lots of people to cover lots of ground effectively, and often end up with dwarves patrolling areas that contain nobody else for the time being. A few standing guards in high traffic areas, plus some bodyguards for some dwarves, might be just as good while using less dwarves, since chances are the guarded dwarf will be near other civilians, but I'd have to try it out to find out for certain.

If we're gonna be exploiting quirky room definitions to put nobles in a dorm, we're removing one of the biggest disadvantages to having bodyguards: the guarded dwarf's bedtime.

Judging by that wiki page, Lanchester's square law applies to firearms and thus is irrelevant, and Lanchester's linear law completely disregards the possibility of one side using superior tactics, weapons, or the advantages afforded to defending over attacking, all of which are present in dwarf fortress. These things can more than make up for one or two people arriving a little late cause they were guarding a guy on the other end of the fortress.

You're still 100% certain that the sole purpose of assassins was a diversionary tactic? Couldn't possibly be to eliminate the enemy's strategic assets before they had a chance to use them? What if, having gotten past the patrol, the assassins went straight for actual strategic targets rather than random hillocks? If the dwarves have such little use for them that they would leave them undefended, then surely they aren't important enough to be the target of an assassin.

What if they took out this clever dwarf general instead? Without strong leadership the dwarven army may struggle with strategic decisions, and will likely take a significant hit to morale.

What if they infiltrated the dwarven army and poisoned the provisions? That has very obvious benefits for the goblins, and doesn't even totally give away the assassin's position.

What if they killed the king and started a dwarven civil war over the throne? Provided there is enough grey area around who the heir is of course.

[GoblinCookie]

Remember that this is the part that I have experienced personally. The patrols don't catch the vampires. The doors block line of sight, unless a) you have 100 militiadwarves standing guard in the 100 bedrooms, and give the militiadwarves barracks, b) you give them rooms with such little space that the vampire can't close the door, or c) you make a dorm for the commoners and everyone but the nobles are safe, and then if the nobles have bodyguards all is well.

The nobles still don't need bodyguards, they just need you to assign a dwarf to protect their rooms while they are sleeping.  But yes, vampires are very flawed as a mechanic, doors and such should not work as well as they do.  But doors are also not needed for room definitions, so you can simply take out all your doors and build all your rooms to be observable from a single point. 

You can't really make every dwarf, be they a civilian, a king, or otherwise, 100% safe, since they are also potential threats themselves, if they happen to either be a vampire or go berserk, not to mention tavern-related fatalities. But in terms of safe from everything except for turning into a threat themselves, or dying via drunken brawl, as I said before, patrols require lots of people to cover lots of ground effectively, and often end up with dwarves patrolling areas that contain nobody else for the time being. A few standing guards in high traffic areas, plus some bodyguards for some dwarves, might be just as good while using less dwarves, since chances are the guarded dwarf will be near other civilians, but I'd have to try it out to find out for certain.

Patrols are more efficient than bodyguards because they guard multiple dwarves at the same time and can be deployed to guard space rationally rather than being beholden to whatever the individual they are guarding is doing. 

If we're gonna be exploiting quirky room definitions to put nobles in a dorm, we're removing one of the biggest disadvantages to having bodyguards: the guarded dwarf's bedtime.

If the guarded individual is presently in some corner of the fortress, it has similar inefficiency to bedtimes.  Patrols still work better as there is a far greater chance that they will be there when the adversary attacks their randomly selected victim, but yes getting rid of individual bedrooms closes the gap .

Judging by that wiki page, Lanchester's square law applies to firearms and thus is irrelevant, and Lanchester's linear law completely disregards the possibility of one side using superior tactics, weapons, or the advantages afforded to defending over attacking, all of which are present in dwarf fortress. These things can more than make up for one or two people arriving a little late cause they were guarding a guy on the other end of the fortress.

Lanchester's square law applies to missile weapons in general, not specifically firearms.  The linear law applies to melee weapons in general, the reason for the difference is that a person using missile weapons engages all opponents they are fighting at the same time while someone using melee weapons can only fight a single opponent at a time and that opponent can fight him back.

Lanchester's laws presume for the sake of simple explanation that all combatants have exactly equal capacities.  While superior tactics are irrelevant (since superior tactics are simply your ability to use the laws to your advantage), better weaponry and training makes a combatant have a mathematical value greater or less than 1 according to either law, but it does not mean they don't apply.  In reality they apply in a far more complicated way but all strategy is reducible to these laws, it is all about ensuring that there is a greater amount of strength deployed at any point of engagement than the enemy has, regardless of whether that strength is more troops or more powerful troops. 

In my parable the dwarves were defeated in detail.  Even though the dwarves actually outnumbered the goblins, the goblins won because they were able to force the dwarves to divide their forces and then they deployed their entire force, minus ten against the divided dwarf army.  Even though a weaker force defeating a larger on is against the logic of the laws, it was still according to the laws that goblins prevailed. 

You're still 100% certain that the sole purpose of assassins was a diversionary tactic? Couldn't possibly be to eliminate the enemy's strategic assets before they had a chance to use them? What if, having gotten past the patrol, the assassins went straight for actual strategic targets rather than random hillocks? If the dwarves have such little use for them that they would leave them undefended, then surely they aren't important enough to be the target of an assassin.

What if they took out this clever dwarf general instead? Without strong leadership the dwarven army may struggle with strategic decisions, and will likely take a significant hit to morale.

What if they infiltrated the dwarven army and poisoned the provisions? That has very obvious benefits for the goblins, and doesn't even totally give away the assassin's position.

What if they killed the king and started a dwarven civil war over the throne? Provided there is enough grey area around who the heir is of course.

As I said it is a win/win situation.  If I kill their leaders they lose, if they guard their leaders well enough that I can't kill them they lose.  The more targets in separate locations that have to guarded, the more effective my assassins are.  Eventually we get to the strange situation where the assassins have tied up so many forces that them *not* doing anything becomes the optimal strategy, since if they do anything they risk being exposed and eliminated. 

However at the moment all civilian personnel, regardless of their rank are like the hillocks in my parable.  You can afford to lose all your leaders because there are plenty more people can can fill in their shoes.  To assign bodyguards to leaders is pretty much identical to what the dwarf general did in my parable with the hillocks, you are dividing your forces to protect entirely expendable targets.

[voliol]

Barring the discussion whether bodyguards are a bad idea strategically, they should be included either way on the merit on being a very real thing that happens in real life all the time. Also, in the spirit of the game and that losing is !fun!, players should be allowed to make bad decisions, and be bad generals. Bodyguards being a thing also makes it possible for smart player generals to trounce the computer-controlled forces, assuming they use bodyguards and this is a strategic flaw. In other words, a game that strives for realism shouldn't shy away from realistic features just because they prove disadvantageous when used by the player.

[Ninjabread]

The nobles still don't need bodyguards, they just need you to assign a dwarf to protect their rooms while they are sleeping.  But yes, vampires are very flawed as a mechanic, doors and such should not work as well as they do.  But doors are also not needed for room definitions, so you can simply take out all your doors and build all your rooms to be observable from a single point. 

That first suggestion sounds incredibly tedious to implement since there is no way to add something to a military schedule exclusively during a dwarf's bedtime, so you'd have to station and dismiss the dwarf manually every time the noble went to bed. The removing of doors is more feasible, at least from a gameplay perspective, but honestly I'd rather be free to build however I like and be able to assign bodyguards, but that's personal preference, and yours is clearly different.

Patrols are more efficient than bodyguards because they guard multiple dwarves at the same time and can be deployed to guard space rationally rather than being beholden to whatever the individual they are guarding is doing. 

Bodyguards can still guard multiple dwarves if they're guarding a dwarf in a crowd as dwarves often are, and they're always guarding at least 1 dwarf, a dwarf that you deem to be particularly valuable.

If the guarded individual is presently in some corner of the fortress, it has similar inefficiency to bedtimes.  Patrols still work better as there is a far greater chance that they will be there when the adversary attacks their randomly selected victim, but yes getting rid of individual bedrooms closes the gap .

Yeah if the guarded dwarf is alone in some perfectly safe corner of the fortress that's the one last inefficiency of bodyguards, but as I've expressed earlier, patrols have their own issues, namely that you can't guarantee that they're going to be where they need to be unless you have very short patrol routes and significantly more militiadwarves on patrol than you would have bodyguards if you assigned them to every noble and legendary craftsdwarf. Patrols and bodyguards both have their place, and I reckon if you used both but used them sparingly you'd be able to reap the benefits of both and negate a lot of the disadvantages to each by using the other.

Lanchester's square law applies to missile weapons in general, not specifically firearms.  The linear law applies to melee weapons in general, the reason for the difference is that a person using missile weapons engages all opponents they are fighting at the same time while someone using melee weapons can only fight a single opponent at a time and that opponent can fight him back.

Lanchester's laws presume for the sake of simple explanation that all combatants have exactly equal capacities.  While superior tactics are irrelevant (since superior tactics are simply your ability to use the laws to your advantage), better weaponry and training makes a combatant have a mathematical value greater or less than 1 according to either law, but it does not mean they don't apply.  In reality they apply in a far more complicated way but all strategy is reducible to these laws, it is all about ensuring that there is a greater amount of strength deployed at any point of engagement than the enemy has, regardless of whether that strength is more troops or more powerful troops. 

In my parable the dwarves were defeated in detail.  Even though the dwarves actually outnumbered the goblins, the goblins won because they were able to force the dwarves to divide their forces and then they deployed their entire force, minus ten against the divided dwarf army.  Even though a weaker force defeating a larger on is against the logic of the laws, it was still according to the laws that goblins prevailed. 

That wiki page needs updating then, it specifically states firearms. Also, there are melee weapons and stances specifically designed for fighting multiple opponents at once IRL, I've used them, they're really fun.

Tactics are far from irrelevant, but I'll not be going down that rabbit hole. My point was that dwarves are "worth" so many goblins in Lanchester's laws that a few of them being a few seconds late because they were protecting a guy a little deeper into the fort than the barracks isn't gonna change much.

Interesting that the wiki page on defeat in detail that you linked doesn't mention assassins at all, rather it mentions sabotaging communications, or winning battles so fast that reinforcements can't arrive.

As I said it is a win/win situation.  If I kill their leaders they lose, if they guard their leaders well enough that I can't kill them they lose.  The more targets in separate locations that have to guarded, the more effective my assassins are.  Eventually we get to the strange situation where the assassins have tied up so many forces that them *not* doing anything becomes the optimal strategy, since if they do anything they risk being exposed and eliminated. 

However at the moment all civilian personnel, regardless of their rank are like the hillocks in my parable.  You can afford to lose all your leaders because there are plenty more people can can fill in their shoes.  To assign bodyguards to leaders is pretty much identical to what the dwarf general did in my parable with the hillocks, you are dividing your forces to protect entirely expendable targets.

If I kill their leaders they lose

You can afford to lose all your leaders

Make your mind up GC

Barring the discussion whether bodyguards are a bad idea strategically, they should be included either way on the merit on being a very real thing that happens in real life all the time. Also, in the spirit of the game and that losing is !fun!, players should be allowed to make bad decisions, and be bad generals. Bodyguards being a thing also makes it possible for smart player generals to trounce the computer-controlled forces, assuming they use bodyguards and this is a strategic flaw. In other words, a game that strives for realism shouldn't shy away from realistic features just because they prove disadvantageous when used by the player.

I agree entirely, even if bodyguards were a bad idea, you should be allowed to have that bad idea

[GoblinCookie]

Barring the discussion whether bodyguards are a bad idea strategically, they should be included either way on the merit on being a very real thing that happens in real life all the time. Also, in the spirit of the game and that losing is !fun!, players should be allowed to make bad decisions, and be bad generals. Bodyguards being a thing also makes it possible for smart player generals to trounce the computer-controlled forces, assuming they use bodyguards and this is a strategic flaw. In other words, a game that strives for realism shouldn't shy away from realistic features just because they prove disadvantageous when used by the player.

The problem is that new players will assume from the existence of bodyguards there is some strategic value in having them.

That first suggestion sounds incredibly tedious to implement since there is no way to add something to a military schedule exclusively during a dwarf's bedtime, so you'd have to station and dismiss the dwarf manually every time the noble went to bed. The removing of doors is more feasible, at least from a gameplay perspective, but honestly I'd rather be free to build however I like and be able to assign bodyguards, but that's personal preference, and yours is clearly different.

'Obviously' that is a proposed new mechanic to deal with vampires.

Bodyguards can still guard multiple dwarves if they're guarding a dwarf in a crowd as dwarves often are, and they're always guarding at least 1 dwarf, a dwarf that you deem to be particularly valuable.

But that's accidental, plus bodyguards have orders which contradict being used to substitute for patrols.  A bodyguard guards their charge, they cannot unlike a patrol go off to chase down an enemy. 

Yeah if the guarded dwarf is alone in some perfectly safe corner of the fortress that's the one last inefficiency of bodyguards, but as I've expressed earlier, patrols have their own issues, namely that you can't guarantee that they're going to be where they need to be unless you have very short patrol routes and significantly more militiadwarves on patrol than you would have bodyguards if you assigned them to every noble and legendary craftsdwarf. Patrols and bodyguards both have their place, and I reckon if you used both but used them sparingly you'd be able to reap the benefits of both and negate a lot of the disadvantages to each by using the other.

You patrol the hallways and the thoroughfares, an enemy has to travel through those to get to anywhere else, or out of anywhere else.

That wiki page needs updating then, it specifically states firearms. Also, there are melee weapons and stances specifically designed for fighting multiple opponents at once IRL, I've used them, they're really fun.

Tactics are far from irrelevant, but I'll not be going down that rabbit hole. My point was that dwarves are "worth" so many goblins in Lanchester's laws that a few of them being a few seconds late because they were protecting a guy a little deeper into the fort than the barracks isn't gonna change much.

Interesting that the wiki page on defeat in detail that you linked doesn't mention assassins at all, rather it mentions sabotaging communications, or winning battles so fast that reinforcements can't arrive.

Wiki pages only provide a rudimentary understanding of a concept.  Because of the reason it applies to firearms, the square law applies logically to all missile weapons, the linear law applies to a situation where opponants can only engage a single other opponent at the same time.  There are ways to get a square law situation with melee weapons, but missile weapons pretty much always follow the square law. 

According to the linear law the number of survivors at the end of the battle is equal on average to the difference in strength between the winner and the loser.  So a few dwarves can make the difference between winner at a high cost (which can be replaced by immigrants) and simply losing.

If I kill their leaders they lose

You can afford to lose all your leaders

Make your mind up GC

I was arguing there was no purpose in having bodyguards at the moment.  There is also no purpose in having assassins if the enemy can afford to lose their leaders with no ill-effect.  The point of assassins (in real-life) is partly to force the enemy to guard their leaders, drawing forces away from the frontline.  Assuming there are number of leaders in seperate location, this means that a small number of assassins can force such a disproportionate deployment of forces since all locations have to be guarded seperately, that we get to the point where the cost of guarding all the leaders actually exceeds that of actually losing them.

[Ninjabread]

The problem is that new players will assume from the existence of bodyguards there is some strategic value in having them.

players should be allowed to make bad decisions

'Obviously' that is a proposed new mechanic to deal with vampires.

The option to have military schedules based around the sleep schedule of other dwarves? Bodyguards sound easier to implement and more versatile in nature to me.

But that's accidental, plus bodyguards have orders which contradict being used to substitute for patrols.  A bodyguard guards their charge, they cannot unlike a patrol go off to chase down an enemy. 

So what if it's accidental? If they do the job, they do the job, and how would you know what they can or cannot do when guarding a dwarf? They will chase down any enemy they see when stationed to guard a position, what if guarding a dwarf is just guarding a moving position? Even if not, at any given time you can just order them to go kill a guy and they'll go do that, and then return to their usual schedule, which, depending on how it is implemented, may or may not be guarding a particular dwarf, if not, when they're done with the killing you can order them to go back and guard their old charge again.

You patrol the hallways and the thoroughfares, an enemy has to travel through those to get to anywhere else, or out of anywhere else.

Well yes that's the idea, but if your fortress spans from the surface to the magma sea, that's a lot of ground to cover, so either they have a long route and have a significant chance to be in the wrong place when you need them, you have a lot of patrol routes and thus you use a lot of dwarves for patrols, or have a long patrol route and a few bodyguards for your best dwarves and most important nobles to make sure they don't die because the patrol was on the opposite side of the fortress. Bonus: since nobles often are just uppity peasants, their bodyguards should keep the taverns, temples, libraries, e.c.t. pretty safe.

Wiki pages only provide a rudimentary understanding of a concept.  Because of the reason it applies to firearms, the square law applies logically to all missile weapons, the linear law applies to a situation where opponants can only engage a single other opponent at the same time.  There are ways to get a square law situation with melee weapons, but missile weapons pretty much always follow the square law. 

According to the linear law the number of survivors at the end of the battle is equal on average to the difference in strength between the winner and the loser.  So a few dwarves can make the difference between winner at a high cost (which can be replaced by immigrants) and simply losing.

But they're not away for the entire battle as you're implying, they're possibly a little bit late because their charge may be further from the entrance than the barracks, a problem that they share with patrols. I have been saying that those few extra moments it may take for them to get to the battle are more than made up for by the vast advantage dwarves have over goblins.

Off-site battles are a different story, but you kinda gotta keep some of your militia back at the fortress anyway, just in case you get attacked while they're away.

I was arguing there was no purpose in having bodyguards at the moment.  There is also no purpose in having assassins if the enemy can afford to lose their leaders with no ill-effect.  The point of assassins (in real-life) is partly to force the enemy to guard their leaders, drawing forces away from the frontline.  Assuming there are number of leaders in seperate location, this means that a small number of assassins can force such a disproportionate deployment of forces since all locations have to be guarded seperately, that we get to the point where the cost of guarding all the leaders actually exceeds that of actually losing them.

The problem there is that if you know that there is an assassin in the first place, they haven't done their job right. Assassins are covert operatives, you aren't meant to know the enemy have sent them, so the idea that they are sent as a distraction is a bit of an odd one.

If the enemy can send assassins, that might draw troops from the front line, but if that's the case then chances are that you can also send your own, so either the enemy risks allowing your assassins to wreak havoc in their pits, or they have some guards too and it all evens out nicely.

And yes, currently most nobles can die and everything will just continue as normal, but I'm pretty sure that will change, and it's not like there isn't anyone worth protecting, if you lose your mayor they can't be replaced until next election, and neither can any other noble you lose in that time, aside from auto-selected nobles like the monarch. Would be a bad time to lose your manager for sure.

[betaking]

what about guards dragging their charge to a saferoom if they encounter trouble. (or even being able to set up a designated panic room that specific dwarves will run to when they spot something dangerous or something dangerous is spotted or whatever)

[FantasticDorf]

what about guards dragging their charge to a saferoom if they encounter trouble. (or even being able to set up a designated panic room that specific dwarves will run to when they spot something dangerous or something dangerous is spotted or whatever)

Nice idea, could default to the civilian alert burrow for simplicity. Though i imagine you'd need to have the bodyguards multi-tasking fighting the attacker and guard particularly doing the dragging action if the target doesn't run there themselves.

[GoblinCookie]

The option to have military schedules based around the sleep schedule of other dwarves? Bodyguards sound easier to implement and more versatile in nature to me.

Bodyguards is the very opposite of versatile.  It also does very little to deal with any threats, because the odds are the target we are guarding is not going to be the target of the vampire, so the vampire can kill dozens by the time he happens to go for someone we are guarding.  Guarding sleeping dwarves in general is far more likely to catch vampires, which is why it works better as a concept. 

So what if it's accidental? If they do the job, they do the job, and how would you know what they can or cannot do when guarding a dwarf? They will chase down any enemy they see when stationed to guard a position, what if guarding a dwarf is just guarding a moving position? Even if not, at any given time you can just order them to go kill a guy and they'll go do that, and then return to their usual schedule, which, depending on how it is implemented, may or may not be guarding a particular dwarf, if not, when they're done with the killing you can order them to go back and guard their old charge again.

They are following a civilian, the civilian can be expected to flee from danger.  The bodyguard is better employed to chase after the danger than to follow after his charge.  If there are multiple enemies, the bodyguard dispatches one of them, he will then try to return to his charge, which might be on the other side of the fortress by now.  This is the dispersal of forces/defeat in defeat situation at it's worse, a lot of people running about between contradictory orders.

Well yes that's the idea, but if your fortress spans from the surface to the magma sea, that's a lot of ground to cover, so either they have a long route and have a significant chance to be in the wrong place when you need them, you have a lot of patrol routes and thus you use a lot of dwarves for patrols, or have a long patrol route and a few bodyguards for your best dwarves and most important nobles to make sure they don't die because the patrol was on the opposite side of the fortress. Bonus: since nobles often are just uppity peasants, their bodyguards should keep the taverns, temples, libraries, e.c.t. pretty safe.

You built an insecurable fortress, which is your fault.  You can always build walls to create chokepoints and close off old mining tunnels or the ilk. 

But they're not away for the entire battle as you're implying, they're possibly a little bit late because their charge may be further from the entrance than the barracks, a problem that they share with patrols. I have been saying that those few extra moments it may take for them to get to the battle are more than made up for by the vast advantage dwarves have over goblins.

Off-site battles are a different story, but you kinda gotta keep some of your militia back at the fortress anyway, just in case you get attacked while they're away.

At the moment the dwarves have a massive advantage over goblins.  But that is a problem that will presumably be fixed. 

The problem there is that if you know that there is an assassin in the first place, they haven't done their job right. Assassins are covert operatives, you aren't meant to know the enemy have sent them, so the idea that they are sent as a distraction is a bit of an odd one.

If the enemy can send assassins, that might draw troops from the front line, but if that's the case then chances are that you can also send your own, so either the enemy risks allowing your assassins to wreak havoc in their pits, or they have some guards too and it all evens out nicely.

And yes, currently most nobles can die and everything will just continue as normal, but I'm pretty sure that will change, and it's not like there isn't anyone worth protecting, if you lose your mayor they can't be replaced until next election, and neither can any other noble you lose in that time, aside from auto-selected nobles like the monarch. Would be a bad time to lose your manager for sure.

If the mayor dies there is automatically a new election and a new mayor.  I agree with you, at some point leaders won't be so easily replaced, at which assassins will make sense and then bodyguards will make sense (in that order).

That you don't know the strength of an enemy force, is an ideal state for that enemy.  This because it guarantees that they will either overdeploy their forces, at which point you are unable to attack but you don't need to because you have tied down a greater quantity of troops with a less quantity.  Or they will underdeploy their forces, at which point you can easily dispatch said forces and then take whatever it is they are guarding. 

The enemy are going to know they are there as soon as they do anything.  Ideally they know that they are there but not enough to actually eliminate them altogether, that is because as already discussed having to guard an indefinite number of targets against an enemy of indefinite strength can potentially consume more resources than the assassins would do *in* the time before they slipped up and were located by the enemy. 

If you guard everything well enough we get to the point where the assassins do nothing at all, but them doing something is the best way to catch them.  As long as they are there, you have to guard stuff, but the guards subtract far more from your strength than the assassins did the enemy's strength.  Because one group of assassins can go after multiple targets, all of which need to be individually guarded with an equivalent amount of strength.  So if the assassins can attack 10 targets, that means we need to have to deploy 10X the strength of assassins to thwart them; the trick is to find ways to guard multiple targets at once or stack your targets together in one location.   

[Ninjabread]

Bodyguards is the very opposite of versatile.  It also does very little to deal with any threats, because the odds are the target we are guarding is not going to be the target of the vampire, so the vampire can kill dozens by the time he happens to go for someone we are guarding.  Guarding sleeping dwarves in general is far more likely to catch vampires, which is why it works better as a concept. 

Bodyguards are more versatile than specifically guarding one particular dwarf, exclusively while they sleep. Period. Presuming the average citizen sleeps in a dorm, and thus is safe from vampires, this suggestion is as good at combating vampires as bodyguards are, but only protects a dwarf while they are sleeping, other threats are not covered, thus it is less versatile. No matter how lacking in versatility you view bodyguards to be, they protect against more than just vampires. Presuming instead that all dwarves have their own bedroom barring the militia who have a barracks, then depending on how synchronised your dwarves' sleep cycles are, you may need anywhere between 16.5 and 50% of your population watching the rest of them sleep. That's a minimum of 33 sleepytime guards if your population is 200, not even accounting for the time spent while the guards themselves sleep, vs a dorm and however many bodyguards as you have nobles with bedroom requirements, which is a max of 7.

They are following a civilian, the civilian can be expected to flee from danger.  The bodyguard is better employed to chase after the danger than to follow after his charge.  If there are multiple enemies, the bodyguard dispatches one of them, he will then try to return to his charge, which might be on the other side of the fortress by now.  This is the dispersal of forces/defeat in defeat situation at it's worse, a lot of people running about between contradictory orders.

Civilians are currently about as likely to flee from danger as they are to engage in fisticuffs. Military dwarves automatically attack threats regardless of current orders, it seems unreasonable to say that bodyguards wouldn't do this just so that you can say they would be bad. If there are multiple enemies, they will likely all attack the bodyguard, which might kill the bodyguard, but it'll give their charge time to flee and give your militia time to arrive, but even if the enemies don't gang up on the bodyguard, you can still give orders to kill the lot of them, dwarves ignore schedule when given orders, overwrite old orders with new ones, and yes, you can give a single order to kill multiple creatures, so it works no matter how bodyguarding is implemented, you cannot have contradictory orders, that isn't how the game works. Even if you don't give that order, they will also engage any threat on their way back to their charge.

You built an insecurable fortress, which is your fault.  You can always build walls to create chokepoints and close off old mining tunnels or the ilk. 

Except I didn't build it, every worldgen fort is like this. Try a reclaim and you'll see for yourself. I also described a fairly reliable way to secure it, by combining patrols and bodyguards, provided bodyguards are added in.

At the moment the dwarves have a massive advantage over goblins.  But that is a problem that will presumably be fixed. 

Then you're forgetting your fantasy tropes. Goblins are supposed to only be able to win through sheer number and/or devious plots. Dwarves are supposed to be better skilled craftsmen, giving them better equipment, better skilled strategists, giving them the upper hand tactically, and better skilled martial artists, giving them the upper hand individually, and that's without even mentioning that the dwarves are defending a fortified position, which boosts tactical advantage massively. Granted the goblins are a little too weak atm, cause they're not armed or armoured in their best stuff, and usually there isn't a single goblin that has armour on every body part, but they will never be on equal footing with dwarves, meaning dwarves being a few moments late to a battle with goblins isn't really ever going to be a big issue unless you've seriously dropped the ball on equipment and training.

If the mayor dies there is automatically a new election and a new mayor.  I agree with you, at some point leaders won't be so easily replaced, at which assassins will make sense and then bodyguards will make sense (in that order).

That you don't know the strength of an enemy force, is an ideal state for that enemy.  This because it guarantees that they will either overdeploy their forces, at which point you are unable to attack but you don't need to because you have tied down a greater quantity of troops with a less quantity.  Or they will underdeploy their forces, at which point you can easily dispatch said forces and then take whatever it is they are guarding. 

The enemy are going to know they are there as soon as they do anything.  Ideally they know that they are there but not enough to actually eliminate them altogether, that is because as already discussed having to guard an indefinite number of targets against an enemy of indefinite strength can potentially consume more resources than the assassins would do *in* the time before they slipped up and were located by the enemy. 

If you guard everything well enough we get to the point where the assassins do nothing at all, but them doing something is the best way to catch them.  As long as they are there, you have to guard stuff, but the guards subtract far more from your strength than the assassins did the enemy's strength.  Because one group of assassins can go after multiple targets, all of which need to be individually guarded with an equivalent amount of strength.  So if the assassins can attack 10 targets, that means we need to have to deploy 10X the strength of assassins to thwart them; the trick is to find ways to guard multiple targets at once or stack your targets together in one location.   

Is that future buff to nobles before or after the future buff to goblins? Anyway, the next election is not immediate, there is a period where no nobles can be assigned, it's expedition leaders, which do the same job but only in the smallest of fortresses, who are replaced the very same tick that they "go missing".

Yes, not knowing the strength of an enemy force is advantageous for the enemy, it doesn't guarantee over- or under-deployment, but it makes it very likely, I'd use the phrase "all but guarantees" myself.

Even more advantageous for the enemy, assuming that by "the enemy" we mean assassins, is that they will likely be posing as visitors so that they can come and go as they please, meaning, contrary to your claim, you actually don't necessarily know that they're here once you find a dead body, you just know that they were here. They might have another target in the fortress and may have stuck around to take them out too, or they might have finished their mission and returned home.

So really, you kinda gotta either catch an assassin in the act, or not catch them. How's best to catch them in the act? A bodyguard's how, just one per potential target will do for catching them, if multiple assassins attack and overwhelm the bodyguard, good job you just identified multiple assassins, now send other militiadwarves after them, if they're lucky the bodyguard might survive long enough to be rescued by said militiadwarves and receive medical attention.

[GoblinCookie]

Bodyguards are more versatile than specifically guarding one particular dwarf, exclusively while they sleep. Period. Presuming the average citizen sleeps in a dorm, and thus is safe from vampires, this suggestion is as good at combating vampires as bodyguards are, but only protects a dwarf while they are sleeping, other threats are not covered, thus it is less versatile. No matter how lacking in versatility you view bodyguards to be, they protect against more than just vampires. Presuming instead that all dwarves have their own bedroom barring the militia who have a barracks, then depending on how synchronised your dwarves' sleep cycles are, you may need anywhere between 16.5 and 50% of your population watching the rest of them sleep. That's a minimum of 33 sleepytime guards if your population is 200, not even accounting for the time spent while the guards themselves sleep, vs a dorm and however many bodyguards as you have nobles with bedroom requirements, which is a max of 7.

While the dwarves aren't sleeping they don't need protecting against vampires.  That means the bodyguards are free to do other things, like train for instance or do regular civilian work.  It makes sense to have the bodyguards guard the entrance to the rooms while their occupants sleep, but it makes even more sense to guard the entrances to the corridors and fix the whole vampires are rendered invincible by doors thing. 

Civilians are currently about as likely to flee from danger as they are to engage in fisticuffs. Military dwarves automatically attack threats regardless of current orders, it seems unreasonable to say that bodyguards wouldn't do this just so that you can say they would be bad. If there are multiple enemies, they will likely all attack the bodyguard, which might kill the bodyguard, but it'll give their charge time to flee and give your militia time to arrive, but even if the enemies don't gang up on the bodyguard, you can still give orders to kill the lot of them, dwarves ignore schedule when given orders, overwrite old orders with new ones, and yes, you can give a single order to kill multiple creatures, so it works no matter how bodyguarding is implemented, you cannot have contradictory orders, that isn't how the game works. Even if you don't give that order, they will also engage any threat on their way back to their charge.

We don't want to have to rely on the game's clunky interface being used perfectly by the player.  I give my bodyguard orders to bodyguard, my charge runs away, I order him to kill an opponant, immediately he goes off to his charge by now on the other side of the fortress, ignoring enemies in the next room.  But the other bodyguard saw the enemy in the other room so he does not return to his charge, so we end up with divided forces and the other bodyguard dies unnecessarily. 

Except I didn't build it, every worldgen fort is like this. Try a reclaim and you'll see for yourself. I also described a fairly reliable way to secure it, by combining patrols and bodyguards, provided bodyguards are added in.

The first thing you do when you take over a worldgen fortress is seal it off with walls.

Then you're forgetting your fantasy tropes. Goblins are supposed to only be able to win through sheer number and/or devious plots. Dwarves are supposed to be better skilled craftsmen, giving them better equipment, better skilled strategists, giving them the upper hand tactically, and better skilled martial artists, giving them the upper hand individually, and that's without even mentioning that the dwarves are defending a fortified position, which boosts tactical advantage massively. Granted the goblins are a little too weak atm, cause they're not armed or armoured in their best stuff, and usually there isn't a single goblin that has armour on every body part, but they will never be on equal footing with dwarves, meaning dwarves being a few moments late to a battle with goblins isn't really ever going to be a big issue unless you've seriously dropped the ball on equipment and training.

A lot of the fantasy tropes are contradictory.  Goblins are numerous, but goblins are also primitive, but also high-tech, but also small, but also cowardly. They cooperate well to form big mobs, but they also evil.  They fight things bigger than they are, but they are cowardly.  They are primitive, therefore they have low productivity but they are also numerous.  They cooperate well but they are also universally evil.  These are all contradictory traits aren't they?

Is that future buff to nobles before or after the future buff to goblins? Anyway, the next election is not immediate, there is a period where no nobles can be assigned, it's expedition leaders, which do the same job but only in the smallest of fortresses, who are replaced the very same tick that they "go missing".

Yes, not knowing the strength of an enemy force is advantageous for the enemy, it doesn't guarantee over- or under-deployment, but it makes it very likely, I'd use the phrase "all but guarantees" myself.

Even more advantageous for the enemy, assuming that by "the enemy" we mean assassins, is that they will likely be posing as visitors so that they can come and go as they please, meaning, contrary to your claim, you actually don't necessarily know that they're here once you find a dead body, you just know that they were here. They might have another target in the fortress and may have stuck around to take them out too, or they might have finished their mission and returned home.

So really, you kinda gotta either catch an assassin in the act, or not catch them. How's best to catch them in the act? A bodyguard's how, just one per potential target will do for catching them, if multiple assassins attack and overwhelm the bodyguard, good job you just identified multiple assassins, now send other militiadwarves after them, if they're lucky the bodyguard might survive long enough to be rescued by said militiadwarves and receive medical attention.

Remember I was not arguing that bodyguards weren't useful once assassins are a thing  .  Yes they are useful for the exact reasons that you mentioned but none of the above works if they simply select a random target as vampires do at the moment. 

However a powerful bodyguard may simply discourage the assassins from attacking at all.  If you want to catch the assassins you leave a seemingly valuable target seemingly undefended, that is because they are most vulnerable to detection just after they have struck.  It is going to be very difficult for assassins in a dwarf fortress to ever get away after they have killed a target, because the place is compact and the all-seeing eye of the player will quickly figure out what is going on. 

Since assassins are actually going to be in the next release of the game I propose that assassins work like this.  The assassins arrive, posing as visitors or immigrants and take up residence in the fortress.  They carry with them when they arrive, hidden from the player within an item of clothing three objects, a flask of water, a vial of poison and a small weapon like a dagger.  When they replace that item of clothing they will move those items invisibly into the new item of clothing that replaces it. 

The assassins take up ordinary jobs and otherwise behave like ordinary citizens.  All the assassins of the same faction in the fortress, have a secret assassination strength, which takes into account the power of the target against the power of the assassins.  Things like arming and armouring the target, or simply the target being a 20ft giant all add to the strength of the target.  Bodyguards also add to their strength as well.  The target also has a value, the assassins will never deploy a greater amount of strength to eliminate a target than the target is worth. 

When the assassins decide to commence, a number of assassins that is moderately greater than it's strength (not everyone necessarily), stops doing the job they are presently doing but without informing the player as to this fact.  To the player it seems they are still doing the reported job, but this is not the case.  The assassins will assemble a point close to the target, remove their hidden weapons, apply poison to their weapons and then descend onto the target.  They aim to kill the target, any bodyguards and anyone who engages them in combat. 

Once the assassins have killed their target and all combats are concluded they use their flasks of water to wash off any blood or contaminants that are on them.  They then dump all assassination items on the ground and return to their original job, aiming to maintain cover for a little while.  Once they have completed their job, they take up the next job BUT unknown to the player they don't actually ever do it.  Instead they head to the fortress edge as individuals and disappear, the job they were about to do was just a cover; in effect they were lying to the player.

[Dorsidwarf]

Oh look the latest dev diary says that assassinations are going to be a thing in Villain Arc, guess all this time spent arguing over whether bodyguards are an appropriate suggestion yet was... basically wasted.