[Lord_Bob]

Ok, let's take a basic scenario. You have main armies, each on the edge of the the nations border. Both can attack two different provinces of the other player. The player that is playing T'ien Ch'i buys 55 gold worth of PD in his two bordering provinces(a 400 gold army each) and then rushes one of the Patala provinces. The two worst cases for Patala are if Patala hops to the side and T'ien Ch'i charges, T'ien Ch'i takes a Patala province, and Patala takes nothing. If T'ien Ch'i attacks the other province, while Patala charges, then Patala still must face the 400 gold army, while T'ien Ch'i is unharmed by the Patala PD. Worse, now T'ien Ch'i's main army can now attack significantly deeper into Patala than Patala's main army can move to block. Every 15 soldier force broken off siezes a province, builds 10 PD(400 gold worth of soldiers) and then rejoins the main army the turn after. Should Patala break up it's soldiers to attack these province.. oh wait, it can't, because it needs at least an 600 gold army to dispatch 55 gold worth of PD without more casualities than the PD is worth. Of course, it CAN do this, but it is loosing money at it. Meanwhile, T'ien Ch'i occassionally loses a 150 gold force... but deprives it's enemy of far more income than those 150 gold of soldiers are worth. The best case that can happen for Patala is that it guesses right, but doesn't have to face T'ien Ch'i's main army with 400+ gold of PD tacked on. Basically, this will only happen 37.5% of the time. Of course, T'ien Ch'i can still win that fight.

Or T'ien Ch'i can send out a 150 gold raiding force, and sit in the province it is in, hoping to be attacked with the Dominion bonus it has and 400 gold of PD. If Patala fails to hop to the side, the next turn T'ien Ch'i's main army joins the raiding force... and maybe T'ien Ch'i buys a ridiclious amount of PD hoping that Patala attacks and maybe not.