how does dominion expand your empire?

[gregarine]

How does dominion expand your empire? If a province you don't own builds up enough dominion for your god does that province suddenly switch over to your ownership? Or does it just make it easier for you invade?

Oh also what happens when your god/pretender gets killed? The game seems to go on without them...

[Taqwus]

Makes it easier, mostly. Dominion makes a +/-1 modifier for morale, for instance, and affects numerous pretender and prophet stats, plus some spells have greater effect in one's own dominion.
In addition, some of the dominion scales are such that you only benefit from the positive scales if they're from *your* dominion, and you might be happier in your dominion than somebody else's. For instance, regarding magic/drain, Ulm smiths ignore drain scale for research purposes. If it pushes drain into somebody else's lands, 'tho, that might hurt their research. Heat/cold can also be pushed usefully... sometimes very valuably, e.g. Caelum ice armors perform much better in Cold +3 than Heat +3. And Ashen Empire Ermor dominion is literally quickly lethal...

[Gandalf Parker]

Think of Dominion as a friendly environment. You can operate outside of it for abit but it can be helpful to design one that is healthy for you, bad for them, and then PUSH that ahead of your armies. Especially if you want your pretender or prophet to march into war.

The game doesnt end if your pretender dies since your clerics can pray him back. BUT if you ALSO lost all ability to pray him back (lose all your priests and temples) then the game will end even if you have lots of armies and provinces.