inexplicable defeat?
 

I have a server which I play on with a friend, but after applying the last patch, for no apparent reason his nation suddenly just "died". I looked at the turn and he had lots of provinces (even took a few on the same turn), but at the end it just kills him off. Anybody have any idea what this is about or how to fix it?

Re: inexplicable defeat?
 

Domkill, maybe ? Particularly probable if your buddy is playing EA or LA Mictlan and hasn't bothered sacrificing virgins to keep his dominion up.

Re: inexplicable defeat?
 

Normally, there's a message explaining why the player 'died'.
The most likely is indeed dominion death: He no longer had dominion in any province.
Considering it requires some dedication to dom-kill someone, this can happen only if:
-he was playing EA or LA Mictlan and didn't do blood sacrifices.
-he had a very low dominion score (1 for instance) and was near someone with an even half-decent dominion score that flooded his(like 7 or more - I never took less than 5 in MP and even then only because I could blood-sacrifice to boost my own dominion).

Re: inexplicable defeat?
 

Yeah, it said he didn't rule a single province. That I knew was not true, and I could see that his dominion was even in some of my border provinces. I restored a backup and it seemed to fix the issue, we've gone a few turns now and it hasn't happened again. Might be some kind of weird bug but without knowing the cause, it's hard to replicate.

Re: inexplicable defeat?
 

Dominion and province rule are two entirely different concepts. Dominion is represented by candles, representing the influence of the god within a region. If the god loses all influence, game over. Province control is a measure of which nation controls which province, and while there is a correlation between nation and dominion, particularly if temples are built, one can collapse without the other or grow without the other.