Re: Defending your candles
 

However, 2 things to bear in mind here -

First, and more obvious, if you are starting with enemy dominion, even if it's at 10 then you can still preach it down fairly fast with large numbers of weak priests.

Second, and less obvious, I am quite positive that if you have a large number of priests in one location, it performs the "able to preach" check for all of them before it runs the temple checks. That is to say that they can preach beyond their max if you have multiple priests, and the Dominion level was below their max at the start of that turn, eg - 5 H1 priests in a Dom2 province may push it to Dom5 in that turn, and then be unable to preach further.

Re: Defending your candles
 

It's a psychological thing with me. I just cannot stand the sight of a red candle in my lands!

Jim, I agree. I've used a bunch of H-1's to counter a red candle and ended up with 3 or 4 white candles that were very unlikely to have come as a result of temple checks. So if Dom is low enough for an H-1 to preach, I think it works best to whack a whole bunch in the province and do it all together. Otherwise you'll end up with just 2 candles and H-1s won't be able to do anything more without a temple.

Re: Defending your candles
 

For temples it's better to have them close to the borders that are in danger of getting enemy dominion.
For temples I think it works like this:
If the province with the temple doesn't get the dominion a random province next to the temple is the selected and checked for dominion increase. If the check fails a random neighbouring province is selected.
The same check is done again and if that fails another random province is selected and so forth.
That means the farther away your temples are from your borders the more checks have to fail and the possibility that the dominions goes in the wrong direction increases.

That said you might also want to look at the connections the province with the temple has. More connections outward than inward means a higher chance of of dominion going outward instead of inward.

Re: Defending your candles
 

If you are preaching in a province with an enemy temple (either through stealthy preachers or a priest besieging a castle) do you get the bonus from the temple?

Re: Defending your candles
 

I seriously doubt it, but IDK.

Re: Defending your candles
 

you should not, but it is quite possible :p

Re: Defending your candles
 

I think Jim's right that priests can raise a province above their theoretical maximum. Presumably the game is letting them all check based on the initial dom, rather than checking one by one and stopping when the max is reached. I've not tested this, just thought so anecdotally.

I'd see temple dominion as a spreading plant, like kudzu. You don't really control it much, it goes creeps dominion along everywhere. The advantages of friendly Dom are listed above by others, and hence you might view some provinces as "key" ones that it's best to convert quickly. My suggestion is letting your temples do the generalised advance, whilst having one or two "firefighting" squads of H2/H3 (H1 if you've nothing better) priests to work on key provinces where necessary.

Re: Defending your candles
 

I don't exactly have my book with me, but IIRC, preaching has a 30% chance of success per Holy level. I don't recall if preaching suffers the 'enemy dominion penalty' that is associated with temple checks, but I don't think it does.

I'll write a simple simulation program to find out answers to some questions, and put the results here.