[MaxWilson]

Raising dominion locally is easier than extinguishing it locally--dominions prefers to spread rather than deepen/attack. I haven't done a lot with dominion killing, but I suspect you'd have gotten it more quickly by building lots of temples (way more than 7) back in A's homeland.

Paradoxically, it would also help if A and B were both surrounded by a hostile (high) dominion C, so that A's successful temple checks didn't spread so far and had a better chance of landing on B.

Keeps do not generate extra dominion, but homelands (capitals) do generate one (special) temple check each round. That, plus his temple, is probably what helped B push back A's dominion.

(The specialness of the temple check is that it's one of the few temple checks that actually works as advertised in the manual, i.e. increases by 1 for every 5 temples built. Pretender and prophet checks work this way too IIRC, but most other temples just check against your starting Dominion.)

-Max