Building temples (noob question)

[FlyingElvis]

Last night I was playing single player and my temple was destroyed by what I think was a natural event (earthquake?). Anyway, I didn't seem to have any commanders that could build temples, and I couldn't recruit a priest (temple needed) and my pretender couldn't.

So how do I build a temple in this scenario?

[Edi]

You make one of your commanders a prophet and then use him to build a new temple.

Edi

[FlyingElvis]

Edi said:
You make one of your commanders a prophet and then use him to build a new temple.

Edi

Ahhhh, thanks! I knew there had to be a simple answer.

[Endoperez]

Losing your laboratory is a bit tougher, especially if your pretender doesn't have any magic. In that case, try to recruit a suitable mercenary group.

[Meglobob]

I have noticed in most my MP games that lots of players build temples, loads of them, in provinces without a castle.

Is this really a good idea?

I personally only build a temple/laboratory where I have a castle or in a province which gives me a special unit type (and then I protect it with at least PD 30, if its not worth building a castle), in order to keep my dominion up I just recruit priests. A temple costs 400 gold a go, while a priest costs 50 gold or less for some nations. 2-3 priests can do the job of 1 temple, I find and have the advantage of being movable. I am thus saving 250 gold and getting more benefit, so I think my strategy is better.

What do other players think? Is my strategy flawed? Am I missing something?

[Strages Sanctus]

priests preaching raise dominion in that province only. Preaching with a temple present makes them preach one level higher.

Temples generate 'temple checks' for the pretender and by themselves and are involved in spread checks. So pretty sure they are very good and adding to the overall effect of your dominion spreading, not just at the local level.

[Ironhawk]

Meglobob said:
I have noticed in most my MP games that lots of players build temples, loads of them, in provinces without a castle.

Is this really a good idea?

It is if you are doing something special with your dominion. Like if you have Gift of Health, which boost all your units health proportional to the amount of your dominion in that province. Or if you are trying to Dominion-kill someone. Or trying to spread your negative dominion into an enemies lands to weaken him w/o explicitly going to war.

[PvK]

Every 5 temples also raise max dom strength. I think it's usually best to have both temples and priests.

[Saxon]

Yep, getting your dominion any higher than two is going to need temples. Also, temples do a check every turn, while those traveling priests don’t on the turns they move. It adds up over time, especially if you end up pulling the priests into fighting somewhere. Now, the priest is obviously more helpful and flexible in that regard, but they are not a pure dominion item. Also, if you went for scales in your pretender design, you will be wanting to take advantage of them and dominion helps. Finally, those priests are not going to push your dominion into enemy territory, so you won’t get the advantage of fighting in your own dominion except on defense. The temples will push into the neighbor’s backyard and that +1 to morale is very nice in a close fight.

In short, the traveling priest team is a good idea (I plan to steal it) but you need temples as well.

[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.