Pure Dominion victory

[Ironhawk]

Saxon said:
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?

You are correct: the dominion-only strategy does not hold up in MP. As you say, humans detect your dominion-attack far better than the AI and rapidly move to patrol and preach to counter you. Additionally they would take your moves as a declaration of war and attack you - at least to destroy your temples if not wipe you out entirely.

The only case of a dominion-attack strategy that I have heard of succeeding was with GE Arco - BUT - the player only used the dom-attack in conjunction with a regular military attack. Big teams of Skeptics were used to nuke enemy dominion to great effect (provinces going from dom 10 -> dom 0 in a single turn!). Backed up with very strong dominion to overrun the dom of these provinces. I'm sure Stone Idols were put into play as well as Arco is great at building those.