Building temples (noob question)
 

Last night I was playing single player and my temple was destroyed by what I think was a natural event (earthquake?). Anyway, I didn't seem to have any commanders that could build temples, and I couldn't recruit a priest (temple needed) and my pretender couldn't.

So how do I build a temple in this scenario?

Re: Building temples (noob question)
 

You make one of your commanders a prophet and then use him to build a new temple.

Edi

Re: Building temples (noob question)
 

Ahhhh, thanks! I knew there had to be a simple answer. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Building temples (noob question)
 

Losing your laboratory is a bit tougher, especially if your pretender doesn't have any magic. In that case, try to recruit a suitable mercenary group.

I am hijacking this thread!
 

I have noticed in most my MP games that lots of players build temples, loads of them, in provinces without a castle.

Is this really a good idea?

I personally only build a temple/laboratory where I have a castle or in a province which gives me a special unit type (and then I protect it with at least PD 30, if its not worth building a castle), in order to keep my dominion up I just recruit priests. A temple costs 400 gold a go, while a priest costs 50 gold or less for some nations. 2-3 priests can do the job of 1 temple, I find and have the advantage of being movable. I am thus saving 250 gold and getting more benefit, so I think my strategy is better.

What do other players think? Is my strategy flawed? Am I missing something?

Re: I am hijacking this thread!
 

priests preaching raise dominion in that province only. Preaching with a temple present makes them preach one level higher.

Temples generate 'temple checks' for the pretender and by themselves and are involved in spread checks. So pretty sure they are very good and adding to the overall effect of your dominion spreading, not just at the local level.

Re: I am hijacking this thread!
 

I know all this, but those temple checks just create big blobs of dominion at the locations where you have the temples. To spread further, seems to take for ever especially to the outer reachs of your empire, which is usually where you want high dominion. Also temple checks only raise dominion in there province until you reach your dominion maxium. Only then do you get a temple check for a adjacint province.

A squad of 3 priests even lvl 1 can very quickly raise dominion to 2 in all your outer bordering provinces, thus protecting you from enemy dominion. Thery cost 150gp, and can move around, a temple costs 400gp and is fixed in place. Mobile units are often better then immobile buildings.

Re: I am hijacking this thread!
 

I'll hijack this thread too.

Speaking of protecting your temples with castles, why is it that you can add units to your PD on lands where you don't have a castle, but when you do have a castle, you're stuck with all bought units behind the castle walls in the initial attack. I could have a PD of 20 successfully guarding a castle, if I could buy specific support units, but instead, it's PD alone vs the enemy and then units alone for the seige. It actually means that castled provinces are LESS well-defended than ones without!
it just takes the enemy longer to annhilate a far more expensive-but far weaker-province.

Am I missing something? I hope so

Re: I am hijacking this thread!
 

you can set commanders to patrol province and they will defend with the PD in the initial pre siege attack.

Re: I am hijacking this thread!
 

Patrol. Also, Move & Patrol.

Re: I am hijacking this thread!
 

Yeah, any commanders patrolling in a castle province will fight (with their army) alongside the PD.

Also, I never knew there was a "Move & Patrol" command in D2 and I didn't discover it in D3 until about two weeks ago! And that was by accident.

Anyway, "Move & Patrol" works like this. Say you are in one of your provinces next to another of your provinces with a castle. On the other side of your castle province is a large enemy force about to move into the province with your castle. If you just "Move" into your castle province, you'll actually move your forces into the castle and the enemy will attack only your PD next turn. So if you want to defend with your army alongside the PD, give orders to "Move" into the province with the castle, then reselect your commander. Now he'll have the "Move & Patrol" command available. Select that and he'll move with his army into the castle province in a patrolling mode and when the enemy attacks they'll be facing both your commander, his army, and the PD.

By the way, "Move & Patrol" only works when moving a force into one of your castle provinces. Unfortunately you can't use it to move into one of your provinces with no castle and try and catch an enemy scout before they evac.

Re: I am hijacking this thread!
 

It is if you are doing something special with your dominion. Like if you have Gift of Health, which boost all your units health proportional to the amount of your dominion in that province. Or if you are trying to Dominion-kill someone. Or trying to spread your negative dominion into an enemies lands to weaken him w/o explicitly going to war.

Re: I am hijacking this thread!
 

A temple does raise dominion better than a couple of level 2 priests. Among other things the max dominion by preaching is 2X priest level. Temples do spread to other provences before they max the one they are in. The closer they get to max dominion level, the more likely the temple check is to travel.

On the other hand, building a temple without a castle in MP is pretty much a waste of cash unless you are at peace. It *will* be burned unless it is in a protected spot.

Re: I am hijacking this thread!
 

What annoys me is that the 'research hub' is better off in the plains instead of in a castle. Since zero of your researchers can fight with your pd, ever, unless you know an attack is coming the very turn it comes.

For that reason it's good to have a lab in a province that isn't a castle and have high pd and all your mages there researching....

Re: I am hijacking this thread!
 

Just be carefull against humans. 2-3 mages flying in with boots of flying on a suicide mission to cast earthquake x2, will kill a lot of unprotected human mages.

Re: Building temples (noob question)
 

Every 5 temples also raise max dom strength. I think it's usually best to have both temples and priests.

Re: I am hijacking this thread!
 

thanks everyone, I'm glad to see that this wasn't just a random handicap and that castles can be used for defense, rather than being obstacles to defense.

Re: I am hijacking this thread!
 

Oh - given that usually most of your researchers are fairly useless in combat ( almost any mage with no more than 1 level of magic ) you don't _want_ them getting into it. On the other paw, if you're getting indie mages with 2 or more in a path (main one I can think of in Dom3 being crystral mages and a fire mage school) you might want them out in the open doing double duty as research/defense.

But generally? Use a fort to keep them mages alive. Not many players take the time to script _every_ researching mages for combat - but when someone attacks your fort, you dang sure do. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Building temples (noob question)
 

Yep, getting your dominion any higher than two is going to need temples. Also, temples do a check every turn, while those traveling priests don’t on the turns they move. It adds up over time, especially if you end up pulling the priests into fighting somewhere. Now, the priest is obviously more helpful and flexible in that regard, but they are not a pure dominion item. Also, if you went for scales in your pretender design, you will be wanting to take advantage of them and dominion helps. Finally, those priests are not going to push your dominion into enemy territory, so you won’t get the advantage of fighting in your own dominion except on defense. The temples will push into the neighbor’s backyard and that +1 to morale is very nice in a close fight.

In short, the traveling priest team is a good idea (I plan to steal it) but you need temples as well.

Re: Building temples (noob question)
 

Also, it appears that the mechanics of dominion spread as described in the manual are wrong - there was some rather intensive testing done some weeks ago, and reported here.

While the manual says that the "strength" of temple checks (the probability that they actually produce a dominion change) scales with the maximum dominion (ie, it's supposed to be 10% per [starting dominion] + [1 per five temples]), it doesn't seem to increase with additional temples (ie, it's only 10% per starting dominion).

So, it seems that starting with a high dominion is actually more important than it seems if you want to push your dominion ahead of you.

Re: Building temples (noob question)
 

I think some players build too many temples, obviously you can never have too many, but you can build some pretty cool units for the amount of money some players spend on extra temples.

As far as temples in castles or not, now that castles cost a fortune, it makes sense to leave temples out in the open. Back when castles cost less than temples did it was reasonable to give every temple its own castle. Now I think of it more like giving every castle its own temple. But with the high cost of castles, even if you lose some temples to raids, it's still cheaper than trying to protect them all with castles. This is especially true if your nation has a discount on temples.

The effect of temples on preaching is more than just one level higher. It's double, plus one, and the odds of successfully preaching are also increased. Plus you get the automatic temple check. Still, IMO players build too many temples.

Re: I am hijacking this thread!
 

Winning by straight dominion takes a long time and when I was fiddling with it in a game yesterday (I had the day off) it seemed that I would have won the game faster by spending the money on troops. Of course, dominating the dominion situation helped by troops a lot, but having a temple in every province was overkill. However, I was surprised at how long it took, given the money I had sunk into it.

In other words, pushing dominion is tough and slow. I agree with the poster who said that money spent on temples is money not spent on troops and you can go too far down the temple road. Striking the balance is the tough part.

I also tried the mobile squad of priests. It did help quite a bit in beating down the enemy dominion. In particular, they help take down “dominion walls” in newly conquered areas. However, it was the temples which then push into enemy territory. You need both if you want to ever fight in your own dominion on the offensive. Otherwise the priests just clean up nasty dominion effects in your territory.