Dune: Spice Wars

Defeating an opponent with an assassination will require the most setup and monitoring of any win condition in this game and I found that it isn't explained just what it is you need to do if you decide to skip the campaign.

I will cover the step-by-step guide here to completing an assassination and provide some useful tips as well. But first, let's cover the game setup.

Factions

You can use any faction you want for this, but I would highly advise against the Fremen. They have no Landsraad Standing which severely hinders them when it comes to voting in the Landsraad Council. This is important as during any Council meetings after an Assassination has started there will be a vote to cancel any ongoing Assassination attempts. This must be prevented from happening otherwise you will be forced to start from scratch. I highly advise putting all of your Influence into rejecting this vote to ensure your victory.

Opponent

You will only want to play against a single opponent so that you don't have to waste time killing the others first. As previously mentioned, the Fremen have no Landsraad Standing and rely solely on their Influence generation to vote, this allows you to steamroll them in pretty much every Landsraad Council and pass or reject everything as you wish. They will also be unable to vote to stop the Assassination when it comes up. As such, playing against the Fremen is, in my opinion, the best choice.

Settings

Nothing too fancy here, just play with all the settings turned down to their lowest setting and disable all the other win conditions aside from Assassination.

Tactics

As soon as the game starts you want to focus on conquering all of the regions immediately around you, starting with whichever region contains the Spice. Once that is done, focus on building up your economy as you would in every game.
When it comes to research, focus on Statecraft and Military. You want to grab anything that increases Agent generation and that will make your troops stronger.
Once you start recruiting Agents you should place the first few into Arrakis to generate more Authority for taking over Villages and then put an Agent into the Faction you are against. From here we can finally begin setting up for the Assassination attempt.

Assassination

Once your Agent has levelled up to one against the Faction you are targeting you can begin prepping the Infiltration Cells Operation. Once finished, find the closest enemy Village and use the Operation on it. This will place the Cell within the Village and allow you to monitor it. You now need to repeat this step and place a second Cell (Ideally you should place this in the next closest enemy Village, preferably near the first).
If you have researched the Nefarious Contacts Development then you can even place a third Cell.

From here you will now need to place additional Agents against the faction until it reaches level three. Once it does you can finally begin prepping the Assassination Operation.
Once complete, you need to use the Operation on any enemy Village or Base to trigger it.
But before you do that, you should first head to the enemy Villages with your army and destroy any defending troops and buildings. You should then station your army within easy-reaching distance to monitor these Villages, the reason for this will become apparent shortly.

Once you start the Operation a progress bar will appear in the top right corner. It will slowly tick up with the efficiency slowing as the days progress. To reset the efficiency you will need to send an Assassin into any enemy Village containing an Infiltration Cell. This is one reason all defending troops need to be gone to allow an uninterrupted path to the Village. In total, you will need around three Assassins on Easy difficulty to reset the efficiency each time it drops below 50%.

Depending on how many Agents your enemy has placed in their counterintelligence, they will at some point discover the attempt and begin to work to counter it. To do this they will need to destroy all of your Infiltration Cells. They do this by sending a unit to the Village containing an Infiltration Cell and having the unit remove it, you will not be alerted when this is happening. Because of this, you need to be constantly monitoring any Villages containing an Infiltration Cell and have an army ready to eliminate any approaching units. Losing one or two (if you have the maximum three) Infiltration Cells will slow down how quickly the progress bar fills but will not prevent you from completing the Assassination. However, should you lose all of them the attempt will fail and you will need to start again.

The last thing to mention is upkeep costs. As the progress bar fills the daily cost of the Assassination will begin to increase. As such you should make sure you have sufficient Solari and Intelligence to fund the operation. By the time you reach this point, it shouldn't be an issue as long as you haven't been using a bunch of Intelligence to fund unnecessary Operations outside of those required.

Once the progress bar reaches 100 the enemy Base will be instantly destroyed and you will get the win. Congratulations!

TLDR

• Build up an economy
• Research Statecraft and Military Developments
• Place Agents to spy on your opponent
• Prepare two Infiltration Cell Operations and place them both in enemy Villages
• Place two more Agents to spy on your opponent
• Once reaching level three against your opponent begin preparing the Assassination Operation
• Defeat any defenders near the enemy Villages where Infiltration Cells have been placed
• Start the Assassination Operation
• Make sure to vote against any attempts to stop ongoing Assassinations at the Landsraad Council
• Defend the Infiltration Cells from incoming enemy units
• Send in Assassins to reset efficiency when it drops below 50%
• Win!