[Frostmourne27]

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.