As many might know I have been involved in two exercises with NS.  The first involved two of my towns vs NS...well they captured my town and won.  The second was anyone willing in roads vs anyone willing in NS.  The rule was anything goes like before...with exception that one town on each side would be under peril of siege.  Each town was only to be seiged and then armies recalled once the target population was reached...and again NS handed me my ass (good job guys).

This time I am looking to make it a multi-alliance exercise.

Proposed rules are as follows:

1.  Only two towns (volunteered) would be under peril of being seiged.  Not to be captured or razed.  Again the first to the target population wins...

2.  No one would know which towns they are...Stay with me here.  The volunteered towns would have a special designated commander name.  In order to figure out which town to target for a siege...you would need to present a scout report with the said commander name.

3.  After presenting a scout report with the designated commander name...that commander would have to be successfully assassinated.  

4.  The designated commander would be required to stay in an army and the town must have at least one other commander available to step into his place.

Any and all Alliances are welcomed to play.  We currently have two sides to this future conflict.  Roads and NS on one side, Fairies and possibly members from Ecrow on the other.  IGM ropa or post a reply here to sign up...It will be a while before this kicks off as to allow time for rebuilding.

special thanks to Bimoda for this fantastic idea :)

Just good clean fun man...that's all.  I do see your point tho...That Idea would simplify things.  The details and preferences are not set in stone...once we get the player base set...the rules are open to modification.  

Once the correct cities are discovered and you have a target, then you can send assassins.  Meanwhile the target city resets its runes to kill 400 assassins and their whole alliance piles defensive diplos in as reinforcements, so you end up sacrificing many hundreds if not thousands of assassins trying to kill one commander, who may get lucky enough with defy death or whichever talent it is to survive a few waves of assassins who make it through the defense.  Also very expensive.

Is the target commander required to remain in that city with his army, or can he hide out in the countryside?  If he can hide then not only will you be dealing with the runes and defenders once, but possibly multiple times trying to catch him at home.  Very, very expensive.

Then assuming you eventually succeed, only then are you allowed to send a siege, which an entire alliance will be focused on breaking?

If I'm reading this right it sounds mainly like an operation which is guaranteed to cost many thousands of spies, many thousands of assassins, and probably hundreds of thousands of troops.  There had better be one heck of a price payout at the end.

During wartime, this has the additional advantage as being annoying to someone who has to read a lot of diplo spam (or to decide to delete it without reading it).

Until changes are made to mechanics of diplomatic units, single-unit spam is the most cost-effective method for scouting, spying and assassination.  It is essentially impossible to beat it.

Personally I think this is a bit unfortunate since a method that is completely predictable (over large enough numbers) ends up being far less interesting.  Then again perhaps this is the "reward" for people who are willing to either think of this or learn from someone else who has thought of it and also to spend the time clicking to send all the units.

:edited to thank Rill for pointing that technique out.