Question on Strength of Dominion in God Design

[onomastikon]

I think I understand how dominion works, what it is good for, and how it spreads. What I dont get is how this works in connection with the dominion value you select during god creation. If my god has a starting value of 2 and I pump it up to 6, what does this actually mean? Does it mean the maximum dominion level (white candle) I will ever get is 6? (But I think I saw 7 somewhere...) Does this affect the rate of dominion spreading or its magnitude once spread or the level of preaching or what?

Sorry if this is obvious, and thanks for your help

[General Tacticus]

Originally posted by onomastikon:
I think I understand how dominion works, what it is good for, and how it spreads. What I dont get is how this works in connection with the dominion value you select during god creation. If my god has a starting value of 2 and I pump it up to 6, what does this actually mean? Does it mean the maximum dominion level (white candle) I will ever get is 6? (But I think I saw 7 somewhere...) Does this affect the rate of dominion spreading or its magnitude once spread or the level of preaching or what?

Sorry if this is obvious, and thanks for your help

It affects how effective your priests are while preaching (I believe it is 10% chance by initial level to increase the candle ?). And most likely how much your God and prophet automatically spread your dominion. Perhaps also the spread by temples. It also affects the number of holy units you can recruit each turn.

So basically, it affects how hard it is to raise your in-game dominion (i.e., the candles ...)

[Saxon]

It is my understanding that it also effects how high you can raise your dominion. If you raise it to 3, the enemy only has to undo 3. However, if it is at 7, they have more work to do. I am currently trying to clean up some captured provinces and the enemy had high dominion. It is taking forever to sort out…

You can effect this by building more temples. I believe that every 5 temples you build boosts the number by one. This represents 1000 gold for most races, so it is not a small investment.

Finally, and I am not sure about this, it may effect how many of your dominion scales com into effect. Each province has a dominions score as well as a rating on each of the scales. I would love clarification if lower dominions only allow you to effect a smaller number of these. If that is the case, a lower dominion would lead to you having less of your chosen scales come into effect.

[General Tacticus]

I believe your God's dominion do not limit you max dominion (only makes it harder to get there). I know that, with my God sitting in my capital, I routinely get 9 Dominion there after a while, and my God's dominion is never that good.

For dominion scales, I think only the province's dominion matters. Of course, high God Dominion makes it easier to raise it, but a low God dominion to not make it impossible if I am correct.

I have heard about the 5 temples = 1 Dominion, and it certainly works for holy units recruiting, so it should for spreading dominion as well

[Gandalf Parker]

Besides the formulas and facts provided, I kindof miss the analogy of dominion that Dom1 had. In Dom1 not only did you have the candles but you could turn on a map filter which would show the effect on the map. Neutral or no real dominion was grey. Your dominion got a whitening effect of the provinces. And anyone elses dominions showed up black.

So the areas near your capital, or your pretender, or your prophet, would often show very white. You could see the gradual greying of the "light of your god" as you moved farther away from the capital. And you could see the effect of the darkening of other dominins pushing on yours.

All of this is now reflected only by the size of the candle which I dont find nearly so informative and I dont think is as easy for new players to grasp. Anyway, the dominion power in a way refers to your "push power"

[Catquiet]

Originally posted by General Tacticus:

I have heard about the 5 temples = 1 Dominion, and it certainly works for holy units recruiting, so it should for spreading dominion as well

It does.

If you click on the temple button, it will show you how strongly your God, Prophet, temples, and home province are spreading your dominion.

[General Tacticus]

Originally posted by Catquiet:
It does.

If you click on the temple button, it will show you how strongly your God, Prophet, temples, and home province are spreading your dominion.

Well, it gives some numbers, but since I don't know what they actually MEAN, I don't really look at them. I mean, what does it mean if my God is 25 and my temples 5 ? How do all these numbers correlate into my chance of gaining (or holding) a level 5 candle in some province ?

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
Besides the formulas and facts provided, I kindof miss the analogy of dominion that Dom1 had. In Dom1 not only did you have the candles but you could turn on a map filter which would show the effect on the map. Neutral or no real dominion was grey. Your dominion got a whitening effect of the provinces. And anyone elses dominions showed up black.

So the areas near your capital, or your pretender, or your prophet, would often show very white. You could see the gradual greying of the "light of your god" as you moved farther away from the capital. And you could see the effect of the darkening of other dominins pushing on yours.

All of this is now reflected only by the size of the candle which I dont find nearly so informative and I dont think is as easy for new players to grasp. Anyway, the dominion power in a way refers to your "push power"

Sad and true! The terrain changes and the representation of dominions is our greatest loss. Unfortunately we couldn't find a good and simple solution to the graphical problems posed by the new maps in the old system.

[Psitticine]

It'd be some extra work for the map-makers, but possibly scale effect look up maps would work?

This is right off the top of my head, so please excuse me if I'm not being very clear with it. What I'm thinking about would be optional files that show both what areas should be affected by each scale's settings, and what color effects each scale will have on that particular map.

For example, black areas would not be affected by scales at all. However, if one goes in and uses a paint program to quickly replace all the greenery with a tint of white (or, if feeling ambitious, do more detailed work), then their hue will shift one way or the other based on the scale represented by that look-up map. A map for Heat/Cold look-up could have a brownish-red color for Heat and a pure white one for Cold placed in an otherwise nul area at the top, so that those treetops appear to "dry out" in the Heat as the brown is multiplied in with the straight color off the main map file. Likewise, they would be frosted with snow in the Cold.

The amount of white in a pixel in the look-up map, adjusted by scale settings as they change during the game, would give the actual intensity of the color overlay, rather the same way an alpha channel affects image opacity. Thus, the brown would get more and more so as the Heat index climbs due to the effects of Dominion there. If you give the grass a pure white and the trees an airbrushing of white-grey, the brown will have more life-like variety in how it is applied.

Heat/Cold would be the primary recipient of this attention, I'd think, but I'm also thinking of all the interesting special effects possible to map-makers. What if Growth/Death settings tints the foilage and water to white or black? It'd make the land seem more (or less) vibrant, or even unnaturally vital/dull. How about if Magic/Drain uses a very lightly flecked map to add subtle traces of blue for an unusual energetic quality to magical lands or a flat brownish-grey to deaden things? Some unique and wild effects would be possible - a perfect tool for all the lively imaginations around here!

It wouldn't be hard to produce at least a quick-and-dirty map of this kind with color selections and the other tools available in any decent paint program. They should be optional, however, to prevent people who only have time to do the straight map file from being overwhelmed and thus not being able to produce anything at all. Still, as I say, it shouldn't be much work to produce these overlays. I have to whip over dozens of similar things for even a small animation project and they can be produced very quickly!

[onomastikon]

That was interesting info, but most of you were still talking about dominion effects and its spreading, not the effects that the initial *setting* (in God creation phase) of the dominion may have. That still seems unclear.