How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wall\"?
 

Hello,

I've got a new question to open up discussion about a fundamental concept of the game that I have yet to grasp. A big part of this game is the way that dominion affects your combat ability. It gives your troops morale bonuses and it directly affects the strength of your pretender and prophet. I am currently trying to master Ulm with a strategy that gives me dominion 5. I've noticed that in the beginning it's easy to attack indie provinces where I have dominion presence, thus taking advantage of those bonuses. I call this forward spread of dominion my "Dominion Wall". Later in the game, when I'm up against other nations I might be successful in getting this wall up initially, but after I attack into it I find that I cannot get it to jump forward for the next wave of attacks.

Is this normal? If I changed my strategy to use dominion 10, would I see a noticeable difference? Is it better as a dominion 5 nation to ignore the dominion wall entirely and utilize dominion purely for defensive purposes? I tend to play with Order, Productivity, Growth +3 so I have cash to buy temples in every province and still support many Ulmish troops and researchers.

=$= Big J Money =$=

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Actually this is a pretty common newbie mistake I think since when I first started playing I used to take dominion pretty high as well. Now I just use dominion 3 or 4 instead. The only time dominion really matters is with races like Abysia or Caelum who needs temperature scales and even that's pretty easy to swing with temples and such.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

I haven't dared to take that low dominion in a long, long time. In small maps, high-dominion opponent would force me to use resources on temples, and in long games, stealth preachers and raiders would mean that I couldn't benefit from my scales. Of course, I usually take positive scales and tend to rely on them, so your mileage may vary...
One of Gandalf's "experimental" (i.e. interesting concept that probably doesn't work) is to take VERY negative scales with a nation that doesn't rely too much on its capital, let your dominion die out almost everywhere, and use the points for something good. Like triple-bless. Of course, one'd have to be Mictlan to be able to increase dominion fast enough when it's needed, and even that's risky.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Well, what about the Dominion Wall, though? Is it something you rely upon? Do you count on being able to attack into your own Dominion rather than attacking someone else's, or is it more of a convenience?

=$=

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Sometimes I rely on it heavily, and sometimes I purposely try to stay ahead of it (if its a damaging dominion). But keep in mind that it does not follow your armies. It grows with temples and preaching. And some with your prophet and pretender. Sometimes other specialized units and even equipment.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Unless your using your prophet/pretender in combat alot you shouldnt worry about the small dominion change from dominion, if you rely on it get a tough commander (ie black lord) and give them a herald lance and a horror helm. Make them 'stay behind troops', he/they will provide a standard to keep your troops in the fight and fear to scare the enemies making up for enemy dominion.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

IIRC, the higher your base dominion the bigger the chance it will spread, so a high dominion should help.
Keep in mind though that dominion must first "fill up" a province before it can spread further, so with a high dominion you will have to wait a while before it spreads outside.
As for taking 3 or 4 dominion - don't. You'll be snuffed out before you notice and you will hardly be able to counter it.
Also, this thread should be called "How to successfully utilize the maximum amount of characters allowed in the title of a thread", just look at the titles of everyone's responses.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

My prophet is going to be on the front lines, regardless. For Ulm, the prophet is the only priest that can cast Sermon of Courage. So, if he isn't good enough in hand to hand, yeah, I'll keep him back. Question: Are you sure the standard effect is useful if he "stays behind troops"? I thought troops had to be within a certain radius of the standard to recieve the benefits. Either way, standard effects probably don't stack with Sermon of Courage, so I guess it's not important in this case.

=$=

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Im pretty sure standard stacks with sermon but not 100%, you do have to be within a radius which is why i said to set him on stay behind troops.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

It's not a newbie mistake to take a high dominion. I never play with a starting dominion less than 6. With a dominion strength of 3, your temples will only spread dominion 3 out of 10 turns, whereas anybody with 6 will have twice as many dominion spreading events.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

I've never had trouble with dominion with dominion 3 or 4. I'd much rather spend the extra points on scales/magic. There are rare times I can find dominion spread immediately important (such as VQ, Ermor etc) but those are more exceptions than rules.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Taking Dominion 3 or 4 is really risky. If you start near some high-dominion nation(s) you're pretty much doomed. Not necessarily because of dominion death, but by having to spend too much resources on priests and temples.

I think that the optimal dominion (if your strategy doesn't require high dominion) is 5 or 6.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

If I start near someone who spend all their points in a high dominion, I'll be sure to take his free provinces with my vastly superior army + pretender.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Why don't you provide us with a pretender design then, since you obviously seem to have one figured out that you think makes better use of the 42 points it requires to go from dominion 3 to 6.

Here's a simple one that doesn't waste a bunch of extra points on magic paths or scales that you won't actually use.
C'Tis Ghost King.
A4 W4 E4 D5
Order 3, Sloth 3, Heat 1, Misfortune 2, Magic 3.
Research straight to alteration 5, then enchantment 1, then conjuration 2, then contruction 4, then enchantment 3, then alteration 6. Once you reach alteration 3, your ghost king has a script of quickness, ironskin, mirror images, mistform. Add in breath of winter, switch in invulnerability, and add in soul vortex once it's researched. You also have everything you need for neverending skeleton spam with both drain life and raise skeleton researched.

What would you add in using the 42 points it cost to bring dominion to 6 from 3 that would overwhelm any opposition?

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

I dont know what a good average would be, but in keeping with my own area of interest I have have fun proving the concept of both maximum and minimum dominion.

Thats what I love about this game. There are no "winning" strategies. And very few "majorly wrong to do" strategies. There is only "works ok for me" strategies. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Gandalf Parker

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

I find averaging around 5 is not overly expensive, and is sufficient to prevent most early AI dominions, which are sometimes very high, from overwhelming you.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

One thing I noticed in the "Council of Wyrms" game was that my high dominion (8) combined with lots of early temples (cheap for Man) meant that my no-magic pretender was able to comfortably take out nearly any independent province, even those with knights and the like that other more magically-endowed pretenders were falling to. The difference between a 200hp Wyrm and a 400hp Wyrm, especially when you consider the doubled regeneration, is pretty significant.

Of course, there are plenty of pretender designs to which this does not apply nearly as much, and there are many bad things to be said about taking no magic on your pretender. Just another example where different strategies can all work pretty well.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

If I'm using designs such as Dragon or similar low dominion pretender, the extra points are vastly more than 42 to go from 3 to 6. Similarly if I'm using immobiles, obviously I would pump dominion a bit. My point is, dominion tends to be the least concern of where I spend my points when creating a pretender. I've already pointed out there are exceptions to this such as when I'm creating a VQ or using miasma, etc. Setting up a straw man for my argument is rather annoying, to say the least. Six is not a high dominion. A dominion of six will not overwhelm my provinces. Had they spent like something to dominion eight, I'm pretty sure the 80 odd points would tilt things in my favor instead.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

That's one of the reasons you don't use dragons in the unmodded game. The other is that a wyrm is a better combat pretender, and starts with higher dominion.

Yes, a dominion strength of 6 will overwhelm your provinces when I have 20 temples and your temples only work at a dominion strength of 3.

How so? You'd still have the ghost king that's capable of dealing singlehandedly with your armies, only he'll start with less extraneous magic.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Actually dragons in the modded game starts with only dominion 1 as well.

And 20 temples = 4000 gold, if you spent 4000 gold on temples, not only is your dominion going to be higher than six, you'll be massively underfunded in battle mages of which I will use to raze all 20 of those temples to the ground.

As for the Ghost King, yes he's a good pretender chassis for combat but there are many ways to counter him even early game. Dust to Dust, my own pretender, or even plain just raiding where he's not. Furthermore I attempted to make the Ghost King you mentioned and came up several points short.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

The number of temples you have only affects your maximum dominion strength and the number of holy troops you can recruit. The probability that dominion will spread from a temple is set at pretender creation and never changes. You also seriously underestimated the amount of gold I'd spend, since every temple would also have a castle built before the temple goes up. Which is why I wouldn't be particularly worried about raiding parties killing temples.

Then you had better turn off your mods. Or get rid of a couple of levels of magic, since he's got way more than he would need anyways.

I'm still waiting to see how you would spend an extra 80 points in a manner that would completely crush such a pretender, which already has the optimum scales for C'Tis in the unmodded game.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

I don't play unmodded since then I'd change my scales (since you have A LOT more points to play with from unmodded) and probably be willing to pump dominion up a bit. Also unless you're talking about late game, I can't even fantom how you'll get the time to amass that much extra gold for castles and temples in any MP game. Considering you're talking about the cost of well over 20 extra mages had I not sunk the resources in them. And in terms of crushing your pretender, I'll be perfectly willing to duel you anytime.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

If you two play a game against each other, please make sure to save all of your saves, I'm sure everyone would like to see how this one turns out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif
My guess is Graeme will win, because I agree with him that dominion-3 is suicide.

And KissBlade, if he builds 20 temples, and you spend the same amount of money on mages, than you built absolutely no temples - you'll be gone before you know it.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Whoever is ahead in dominion is also going to win more battles and, depending on scales, be racking up other assorted bonuses. It always seems like a small thing, but the extra production or magic or morale on every province or unit adds up. Then, once the higher levels are reached, there are various globals which are directly tide to dominion. If I am just a couple of % ahead of you each turn, by the end of 40 turns I have a big lead.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Very low dominion is hardly suicidal, particularly if you have mage-priests. I have only ever dominion died twice that I can remember- once as Atlantis totally surrounded by Ermor dom 10 temples, once as Mictlan when the possibilty of it just slipped my mind.

Mictlan is actually the perfect illustration of why dominion is not all that important, they considered are one of the best nations, yet most of the time most of your provinces won't even have your dominion.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Ive purposely played with low dominion. With a stealth race like Pangaea it can help hide you for a few turns longer.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

LoL, reminds me of the game Qm picked dom ONE and simply took advantage of Pan's 100 gold temples XD.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Interesting. Against the AI, I allways take dominion of at least four (I consider that to be VERY low) and usually take six or seven. I find that that allows me to forget about temples for the early part of the game, and lets me spread a bit of dominion around my teritory, though I've yet to crush anybody without taking a higher dominion or something sneaky (skeptics, stealth preaching, restless worshipers etc). IMHO dominion above seven is useful only as a pop-killing theme, anyone building lots of sacreds, if you KNOW you're fighting pop-killing dominion or other really high dominion, or to dominion kill your opponents. When I play a water nation, I often take a higher than average dominion too, as I find that water nations have rapidly fluctiating dominion, thats either really strong, or really low, and if I'm not paying attention I can easily end up in dire straits, having to scramble madly to avoid the inogmonious lost to the easy AI that took dominion strength 10.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

With water nations, when possible i also try to take ceremonial faith, it lets rlyeh have decent preachng defence and atlantis have it very strong.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

That might work, but I almost allways take turmoil and luck, so I can't (you need order for ceremonial faith don't you?) I find that turmoil gives me more gems, and that turmoil 3/luck 3 is about the same as order 0 no luck. It's alos easier to get those nice underwater heroes... btw, just how strong is ceremonial faith? It's double or something isn't it?

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

If its the one im thinking of its +2 to your holy level when in friendly dominion, it makes coral queens basically holy 6 priests. Turmoil 3/Luck 3 might net you a few more gems but it also gives you a -21% to income which, along with other things could be used for mages which can search for sites therefore gaining you gems.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Turmoil 3/Luck 3 is also 42% less income than order 3/misfortune 3.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Don't take Turmoil unless you're forced to from your theme or if you're Ermor Death theme. It is by far the most crippling scale to take. The only one worse I think is Drain.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Yeah but w/ fortune you can get great events, many of which provide cash. If you hunt around here, I believe some one did some analysis of the two and found fortune 3 / turmoil 3 to give about the same amount. Of course if you're unlucky, it can completely screw up your game. For MP, turmoil probably isn't the best though.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

I am not aware of anybody who has shown anything of the sort. Some people have claimed that the luck events can help to overcome the tremendous disadvantage, but they don't come close to replacing the lost income. Nor do the number of events scale properly to the number of provinces you control as there is a maximum of three events per turn. I doubt that getting a single 1500 gold event every few hundred turns (If you also have a death scale.) comes anywhere close to making up a 42% loss in your income over that same few hundred turns.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Well, a couple of things, firstly I should clarify, that fortune 3 / turmoil 3 is (IMHO) about the same as order/turmoil 0. Secondly, its not the once in 100 turns 1500 gold events (though those are nice) that make up most of the income, but the +100/200 gold ones which happen much more often. I won't complain about how only order/turmoil is compared +3/-3, and not to balanced scales (you dont say magic 3 give all mages +6 research do you?) even if its a bit weird (I guess that that's sort of a complaint). Also, you can do a lots with 240 pretender points, and you don't have the random knight/vampire attacks, as well as the nasty temple/lab killing events. Single player of course is very different, but even in multiplayer I'm not sure that some compromise like order 1 / balanced fortune or turmoil 1 / luck 1 might not be better, as they do let you take higher starting dominion, a bigger fort or w/e.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Ummmm...
To (crudely) test this I created two gods, an abysian oracle with nothing but order 3 / misfortune 3, and a man oracle with turmoil 3 / luck 3. I 'played' on clash of the titans, found that starting income is about 165 for abysia and 140 for man (i did this several times, these #s are average) set tax rates to 50 (I had to - abysia kept getting unrest events - without actually playing the turns, I couldn't work around that. I got REALLY screwed up results. I hosted balnks and checked money level every five turns for the first 15 turns, then did it all over again. I found that they were usually about equal on turn five, fortune ahead on turn 10, and fortune/turmoil having about 2x the gold on turn 15! That's crazy, I MUST have screwed with settings somewhere. I'm playing on a modded CD 5.4 complete, but I don't think I've changed the scales at all. Could someone PLEASE do something similar and maybe generate some results that are... sane, or have I screwed up badly in this? (that's probably more likely...)

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Yeah note the 50% tax for abysia and the 100% for man.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

No - 50% for each (Please, I'm not THAT stupid)

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Order-3 gives a +21% bonus to income. Result: 121% base income.
Turmoil-3 gives a 21% penalty to income. Result: 79% base income.
That makes Order-3 ~53% more income than Turmoil-3, but Turmoil-3 is ~35% less income than Order-3.
Amusing, isn't it?

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

That halves the amount of income from provinces while the amount of income from events stays the same. The effect is also very different with 10 or 20 provinces, because order gives income from all provinces while there are only few more events.

Also, the fact that Abysia is heat-dependent might have affected it somehow. I'll test is quickly myself and post the results.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
ULM 5 15 25
income: 153 187 187
gp total: 848 2400 4200
extra gems: - - 7
---------------------------------------
MAN 5 15 25
income: 130 137 103
gp total: 875 2097 3400
extra gems: 15 26 34
other: hero 2 more heroes, suffered from bad events, a site
</pre><hr />


I lowered taxes to get rid of unrest. I killed off any militia/flagellants that appeared (one of both for Man).

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

Magic 3 gives mages a +3 research bonus.

You won't see very many of these if you play with an order scale.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

You know, if you are playing a modded game, then perhaps you should say so in the first place. The benefits of each of the scales are different enough in the CB mod, that the optimal choices can be quite different for different nations.

Re: How to successfully utilize your \"Dominion Wal
 

I wasn't aware that CB changed the order scale that much, but the point about tax rates and luck events not being reduced is well taken. Short of actually playing a game i can't figure out how else to test it - stupid unrest events. Endoperez, thanks for dooing the hard work - those results make more sense, though 34 gems is quite alot. Looking over the scales cahnges, it's not exactly a big change of luck and order, only the likelyhood of luck making events good changes, from 10% to 14%, I wouldn't think that would make much difference. On the other hand, the other scales change alot. Most of the scales seem to have larger effects but I'm not really sure what I would/wouldn't take one way or the other though - perhaps you could enlighten me.