Pure Dominion victory

[Saxon]

Has anyone found a way to win with Dominion? I don’t mean surrounding a tough pretender in his last province and preaching him out, I mean knocking out a fairly large nation with just dominion.

In my recent AI game, I have done it by accident, but I have not read about it much in the forums. Is there a strategy associated with this? I kept a stable front between C’tis and myself and was trying to max dominion as I was Pangea. I used BS and Queens of Elemental Air to target their temples, but did not engage their main armies. It was a long game and would not have worked except for the length of the game.

[Gandalf Parker]

Its a definate strategy. Particularly for nations that have stealthy priests. But to speed it up people often try to come up with scales that will hurt the enemy. Its difficult to create a scales setting which hurts them but you can still play under it.

Ive used it as Pangaea against heavily armored nations such as Ulm. I can take very low money, resources, food but sneak-preaching that all over Ulms territory hurts him bad. Also many other nations. I can also take a major hit on magic. But of course there are balancing nations and pretender choices which makes it a strategy that wont work every time in every game. (thats what I love about Dominions)

[shovah]

its cruel with certain tactics, try it with ctis miamasa (not stealthy priests but assains can raise skeles to assasinate priests and target temples and their priests are strong), pangaea (also send in some f9 white centaurs for fun) and caelum (these guys rock, having your dom in their provinces gives them less money, makes their troops tired, gives you higher prot, gives you more money if you conquer them and makes soem arty spells better. Take turmoil, luck and magic. They dont benefit from your magic and luck irrc so they are good scales (and helpful for caelum). Having flying, stealthy, lvl 3 priests for 90 gold each is mean. Can also work with man, they get cheap temples and only pay 30 gold for a lvl 2 stealthy priest.

[Arker]

I'm attempting it now. Kind of by accident. Jotunheim in the little 'Brittain' map, with Caelum, Abyssia, and Mictlan as opponents. Started on Ireland, so I ran for Connor I think it is, the northern province that bridges over to Scotland. Abyssia was set up on the other side, so I built a fortified city there and consolidated my Island. In the meantime Abyssia took out Mictlan. I got some water mages, so I forged some gear and started taking over the water provinces. Right now I have them almost completely encircled. One province left with a Kraken and stuff so I'm waiting till I can consolidate a good army to take it. The Abyssians have Caelum down to their home province and it under siege, but nearly half their territory is my dominion now. All with temples and living fortresses and garrisoned with triton guards or troopers. And it turned out there was still some neutral territory left on the east coast, so I'm grabbing that and digging in. Decided not to attack them, try and see if I can't kill them with dominion. If they attack me I should be ok, I have a fairly good bunch of troops built up, and a lot of good forged items, every province gone over with a fine-toothed acashic comb for magic, and leading solidly in gem income.

[Manuk]

Sure thing I've done it. Try Man
dominion 10
(half price temples)
stealthy priests
A prophet bard (stealth +30)
A sealthy god, mother of tuathas I think is called (stealth +25)
Add restless worshippers dominion (more spread)
Is the most I can think of.

[shovah]

Manuk covered it there but i would change 1 thing: the pretender. I find you dont need a stealthy pretender, restless worship+your monks is enough so make your pretender a mage, give it 5 nature and 5 air (i used the divine serpent) and anything else you want on it (points permitting, i took some production for longbows). He sits at home researching while a bunch of longbowmen (35-40) shielded by 10-15 axemen conquer indies. Your bard prophet should head straight towards the enemy and your home province should crank out mothers of avalon. Put your main research into conjuration until you reach lvl 7 then get construction+alteration. While all your conquered provinces crank out monks try to establish a very well fortified choke point (would be amazing on clahs of the titans) patrolled by huge numbers of lnogbowmen. Once you reach conjuration 7 you should have enough monks in enemy territory to do dominion damage, help them along with air queen SC's popping the enemies temples. I suggest you give her snake bladder stick, vine shield, some sort of helmet, armour of displacement that gives 3 defence, ring of regen and something else (cat charm/amulet of luck maybe). I did this to thuella, she had 3 lightning swarms, an AoE 4 poisonous attack, caused fear, had 18 prot, 24 defence, good regen and could buff. She anihilates armies since they attack her, get caught by her vine shield and then get left to die in the big poison cloud.

[Wish]

I tried the man thing on forgotten cliffs, with a snake pretender, won in 31 turns, which was exactly how long it took me to get an air queen out.

[shovah]

Good job, when i played i didnt go completely for dominion, spent alot of my time being indecisive which i tend to do alot with tests until i actually decide on a strategy.

[Saxon]

Ok, it sounds like it is possible, but would it stand up in MP? It seems that MP is the real test of strategies. It seems to me that your enemy could fairly cheaply start putting up temples, PD and preists and hold you off. In the mean time, could them then stomp on you with some other strategy? How does this rank as a strategy versus many of the others?

[Gandalf Parker]

I dont know that ANYTHING stands up well as a "strategy" in a Dom MP game. But it does make a good "tactic". Particularly if you ally yourself with a strong up-front type of army.

Its like my "stealth guerrilas" tactics with Pangaea. By itself it would be really hard to take that final home castle and win the game. But without it, a nation could be much stronger for not having to invest in PD everywhere or keep roaming armies behind his front lines. So if I team up with someone like Ulm or Ermor then together we can totally frustrate someone.

Id say its the same with the dominions-invasion tactic. Sure he can combat you but it forces a different type of combat then he would use against someone else. So if its used to keep him spending gold on two fronts then its something worth adding to the tactics toolbox. It makes certain races well worth allying with.

This aint chess. Its more rock-paper-scissors.
Gandalf Parker