Temple Location
 

Does it make any difference where temples are built (purely in terms of domain spread)? Are they all "pooled", so you may as well build them safe in your heartland, or do they "push outward" from where they are situated (like, I assume, your pretender & prophet at least do, and maybe your capital too)?

Re: Temple Location
 

Dominion pushes outward from the temple.

Re: Temple Location
 

Every temple generates a "temple check," which has a chance of either improving the Dominion Score in the province its located, or choosing a random neighboring province and raising its dominion score or choosing a random neighboring province and... etc. etc.

So, yeah, Dominion spread does come from temples, so it makes sense to build temples along borders. However, a temple outside of a fortress is a huge target for opponents (though not the AI). Raiders, stealth troops, or regular armies if they get close enough, will attack the province and bye-bye 400 gold investment! Still, when it comes to pushing Dominion near borders, a small attachment of priests will work wonders.

Re: Temple Location
 

So if you use a Jade knife...the 'extra temple checks' it gets will extend your domain from the place you sacrificed the Blood slave?

Re: Temple Location
 

Never checked this myself, but that was the common wisdom, yes.

Re: Temple Location
 

Yes. The only thing a Jade Knife changes is that it allows you to sacrifice 2 more slaves. The mechanics work just like regular blood sacrifice, which works just like 2 regular temple checks for each sacrifice. Thus temple with an H3 priest with a Jade Knife can produce 11 temple checks per turn for most nations. This is considered overpowered by some.

Re: Temple Location
 

it certainly is OP if you know how to use it, but so are many many things :)

Re: Temple Location
 

Let's go through this in a touch more detail, if I may. Say that all of my owned provinces are already at my maximum dominion level. Does that mean that any successful checks bubble all the way out to my borders? And then at that point I might as well build a new temple back home, on that basis?

Re: Temple Location
 

Yes.

Once your dominion is maxed in the province with a temple, the temple check will necessarily expand outwards, so if your whole lands are at max dominion, you can pretty much build new temples wherever you like, they will spread far.
However, I don't think anyone has managed to provide a valid formula for how the temple checks expand outward and when they fail to expand.

Re: Temple Location
 

There's a formula in the manual. It seems to be correct. The thing that's in dispute is whether checks that fail to settle in enemy dominion propagate or die. The manual is unclear.

It's rare to actually max dominion in all your provinces and even if you do you want dominion to spread into one enemy's lands so it's still often better to place temples near the desired target.

Re: Temple Location
 

It's not rare at all when you blood sacrifice. It's certainly better to place the temples near the target in the short term, but if your temples are far from the front, when your target dominion plummets, he will have a lot more trouble fighting back as he can't reach an easy target like the temple of the border.

Re: Temple Location
 

Depends on the stage of the game, I guess. Later on, it's not much harder to raid unfortified temples anywhere on the map, than on your borders.

It also depends whether you're trying a dominion push on one enemy or just trying to build up the unstoppable wave that converts the whole world. If you're trying to target, temples near that enemy will not only do more to his dominion, but also be less likely to alert/anger your other neighbors.