[PhilD]

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.