What is the lowest you can go with dominion?
 

Is 5 too low?

Re: What is the lowest you can go with dominion?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It depends on a LOT of things, more information is needed.

Sammual

Re: What is the lowest you can go with dominion?
 

As Ulm, or as a nation with a surplus of cheap priests - maybe not. You can force your dominion outwards via other methods.

Re: What is the lowest you can go with dominion?
 

Man might be able to pull it off, since they have both stealth priests and cheap temples. Remember that every 5 temples you build adds 1 candle to your overall dominion.

Re: What is the lowest you can go with dominion?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't consider 5 low at all. 3 is low - you can expect to do a lot of fighting in enemy dominion unless you preach a lot. 5 is mediocre. 7 is strong - good for supercombatant pretenders, extreme temperature nations and some special dominion effects (like Miasma), but many nations will get better returns from a moderate dominion strength with better scales or magic (& bless effects). 10 is insanely strong unless you are Ashen Empire/Soul Gates/Carrion Woods - you will almost certainly do better putting those points in other things.

Also, I don't know how it works with Mictlan, but it may be that their god's dominion strength has almost no effect (since their prophet and temples don't radiate like other nations). If they depend on sacrifices for all their dominion, then it doesn't matter what their dominion strength is unless the effectiveness of sacrifice is linked to the god's dominion strength.

Re: What is the lowest you can go with dominion?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ive gone as low as 2 when I was purposely trying to hide my location.

Re: What is the lowest you can go with dominion?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Every sacrificed slave is as effective as one temple. Thus dominion 5 gives you a 50 % chance of getting an increase from a single slave.

Re: What is the lowest you can go with dominion?
 

You do want to be somewhat careful with your dominion. In Dom 1, I set up a game against all the ai on The Old World map - the largest. Imagine my surprise when I got the "the god of Arco is permanently banished because his dominion doesn't touch a single province" message on turn *two*!!

Re: What is the lowest you can go with dominion?
 

Gandalf: Wow, 2 dominion? As who? Did you survive?

Re: What is the lowest you can go with dominion?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">As Pangaea, and once as Man. In both cases the strategy was to sneak armies to find weak provinces then use call of wind/wild spells to soften it before my army attacked. Both nations have the ability to sneak in builders of temples and labs, and of course fotresses. They took cheap fast-build fortresses to be able to quickly recruit their own units. Then move on to find another weak spot.

I ended up with alot of points all over the map. Very tiny dominion signature let me remain unnoticed. Someone finding me and charging the location surprised them when they found no pretender, didnt cut my incomes, and couldnt find a line of owned provinces showing where I might have gone.

No, I didnt win any multiplayer games with this. But Im not known for winning. I am known for not doing whats expected though. Its not a bad tactic. Someone playing on a large map could maybe win with it.

Re: What is the lowest you can go with dominion?
 

I was going to try to do that with Vanheim and the stealthy Odin-like Allfather pretender in Doms I against the AI, though with a medium dominion. However, so far (game still in progress from time to time), I practically never used the stealth - I had barely made a decent foothold around my capital when I started getting overwhelmed by attacks from Man, Pythium, and Marignon, and was beaten down to two provinces. Particularly bad were the bunches of ethereal summons they were using, until I forged a few Elf Bane axes and some nice armor, and sent the Allfather and some others out to smash them. I just managed to regain my 1-2 provinces around my capital. I think maybe it's a bit hard to infiltrate when you have as many strong AI's as I have in that game.

Lots of fun anyway, though. Especially seeing the Allfather and another hero chop their way through masses of Summer Lions.

PvK

Re: What is the lowest you can go with dominion?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Every sacrificed slave is as effective as one temple. Thus dominion 5 gives you a 50 % chance of getting an increase from a single slave. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">hey you realize you unveiled at Last this blood sacrifice formula ? I remember in doms 1 I sacrified 39 slaves as Abysia in a single spot, because I didnt knew how much I needed. I think it was overkill http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: What is the lowest you can go with dominion?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">In Dom 1 there were events that weren't restricted to turn 3 and onwards. This is no longer a problem.

Re: What is the lowest you can go with dominion?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Every sacrificed slave is as effective as one temple. Thus dominion 5 gives you a 50 % chance of getting an increase from a single slave. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">hey you realize you unveiled at Last this blood sacrifice formula ? I remember in doms 1 I sacrified 39 slaves as Abysia in a single spot, because I didnt knew how much I needed. I think it was overkill http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Dom 1 blood sacrifices worked differently and wasnt very powerful. More like a preach with a high level priest.

Re: What is the lowest you can go with dominion?
 

Lowest dominion I ever won with was 1 on Old world, Ulm, all nations, all AI set to impossible, max province strength, extra points from lack of dominion into a strong rainbow mage. That was a _great_ game. Lots of hanging on by the skin of your teeth, summoned critter mobs from hell (ie huge battles with 2000 plus on each side), running away like mad to keep my pretender out of combat.

The trick, as much as there is a trick to anything with as many variables as dom, is to focus on raising your dominion every chance you get (ie temple in every territory, high province defence, preaching in every province with a swarm of crappy priests). Also, get conjuration high as soon as possible. You want summon leaders that can make minions, not one shot summons that create a finite set of strong criters (ie summer lions). The summer lions are needed at the begining for surving until conjuration 7, but shouldn't be used much afterwards. Also, don't waste gems in this sort of game with spell searching, move your pretender to search (I mentioned a strong rainbow mage http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif . All of your gems need to go into summoning criters. Your gold once you hit your stride goes into funding your swarm of crappy priest groupies (in the end game I was moving around stacks of 100+ rank two priests) and buying province defense (to keep the AI from using it's random swarm rampage attack on you).

Another thing about this sort of game is that you end up really paying attention to the other prenteder's dominions. When I play a low dominion game I end up in the end game having special purpose armies depending on the dominion of the pretender I'm attacking (ie cold resistant, heat resistant, don't need food, etc.).

Well, enough rambling http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif