I've found that a fun way to play Dominions for a change of pace is to create a nation with 1 recruitable which is the sage unit (Next time I am going to make the only recruitable a philosopher). Using map commands, I place a party of adventurers on the map in a desolate 0 pop province. Then I set the nation starting province somewhere else and make it detached from any other province. I give that province an awesome immobile patrolling unit that also acts as a dominion spreader.
Then I play the game as my party of adventurers trying to decide the outcomes of the AI wars, gaining experience, trying to make it into the hall of fame etc. As I raid provinces, that gives me the only gold income I have. That gold is spent on recruiting independents (prefer stealth because my party is all stealth) which I employee in my raids and quests. Also some of my gold gets spent on my research units back at home to give me new spells or chances to plop down a lab long enough to forge an item or summon a monster. My PD is abysmal and I could never hold a province even with it jacked up to 150.
One of the cool things I have learned from doing this is that my home detached province never gets random events, no matter my scales. That tidbit may be handy for future modding.
I need to reinstall RanDom and generate some cool provinces for better adventures
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