Can a low base dominon be helpful?

[Vynd]

OK, as I understand it, when the game does a temple check (or pretender check, etc.) in a province and it determines that dominion should go up, then it will always boost the dominion of that province unless it is at max. If it is maxed out, then and only then will your dominion (possibly) be pushed into a neighboring province.

If I have this correct, then I wonder if anyone has had success playing with a low-ish starting dominion and trying to get it to quickly spread beyond their borders rather than building up to very high levels within their nation.

[Cainehill]

I've seen a number of things written about this, and yes, some were saying that it could be a useful / viable strategy. I think it depended on the game settings, but it was one way to offensively push dominion - either a nasty death / miasma dominion (Ermor or C'Tis), or simply to push friendly dominion so immortals, prophets, etc, could fight there with an advantage.

Think I saw it working myself, but it was some time, as I decided that wide but shallow dominion was just asking to get dominion killed, especially by blood sacrifice nations.

One thing that I think might work well though - a relatively low dominion on the two nations that can build cheap temples. In theory, Man and Pangaea can pick a low dominion and either build temples in the center, or on the edges.

In the center would, I think, help generate a higher dominion but still spread quickly at the edges. At the edges might spread spread a little less rapidly outward, but could leave the central area at a weaker dominion, for those themes that might want this. (Killing dominions mostly; CW Pangaea might well want to leave it's capitol population dying less quickly, for instance.)

On a large map I don't think this would work so well, as others would build up enough high level dominion to nail yours. On a relatively small map, you might be able to spread your dominion widely enough to have a shot at a quick ending before others high dominion really came into effect.

But that's all mostly theoretical (which some might call BS ), as it's been a -long- time since I took a dominion less than 5 or 6 in MP games, and SP don't count.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Vynd:
OK, as I understand it, when the game does a temple check (or pretender check, etc.) in a province and it determines that dominion should go up, then it will always boost the dominion of that province unless it is at max. If it is maxed out, then and only then will your dominion (possibly) be pushed into a neighboring province.

If that was true, in the first turn your dominion wouldn't spread outwards before it is maxed in the capital. Anyone who has played more than a couple games should know it doesn't work like this. Did you really never notice that surrounding provinces might have a positive dominion in turn 2 while you capital was still below its optimal value?

[Cohen]

Starting with a low dominion doesn't mean it spreads quickly ... even ...

If you've dominion 3 you've a 30% for each dominion check (temple, god, prophet, capitol) that 1 point of dominion is "created".

So probably your dominion will spread far slowly that someone picking dominion 7.

[PDF]

As NGF says : dominion spread is quicker when dominion level is higher, there's no such "rule" than "max territory first then spread", both are done simultaneously .
So the only remaining use that I know of a low dominion are
- to voluntary *slow* the spread of crappy scales you've taken (for example mandatory Sloth of some themes)
- to get unnoticed when you sneakily conquer "distant" provinces, Gandalf said it used that as a strategy
- to have more design points for other things - Pretender, scales, castle..

[Rainbow]

As I understand Vynd's question, and proposed strategy, you don't really care if you have a 10% or a 90% chance per God/Prophet/Temple etc., when you can have 10 cheap priests praying in your border province, and any dominion points they generate past your pretenders dominion value will spill into other provinces. This might be _very_ effective if combined with the special theme that lets your priests pray at their holy level +2.

The fact that dominion can spread into adjacent provinces without having reached the max. dominion in province that generates the dominion points is interesting. Perhaps there is a random chance that the new dominion point(s) go into adjacent provinces instead of increasing the dominion towards the max. of the province in which it is generated. That also raises the question if dominion points might be wasted if they are generated in a province that already have max. dominion.

/Rainbow