Can a low base dominon be helpful?

[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

[Saxon]

For a very good explanation of how dominion spreads, check out this link. It is the best documentation I have seen for Dominions ever and it is a shame that the individual did not finish the strategy guide. I believe that a number of the earlier posters would be interested to compare their understanding of dominion to this guide.

http://www.maladjustite.com/dominion.pdf

Two quick things from the guide.

Preaching with priests only effects the province the priest is in, it can not spread outward.

Low dominion would spread faster than high dominion at first, but will spread more slowly when it encounters enemy dominion and tries to overcome it. Further, low dominion is more easily pushed back than high dominion. This is a combination of both your pretenders dominion and the dominion of the province in question.

From my own thoughts, you should consider how big the map is and how many temples you plan to build. In a huge map, you may build 25 castles, which would boost your dominion five points. On a small map, you would not be able to do the same.

If you go for a fast spread dominion, perhaps as part of a rapid expansion plan against indies with an immortal or SC, you will probably want to ensure you are building lots of temples before the mid game. This is to ensure that your dominion spreads faster and boosts it later, so you do not lose the dominion you spread early on.

When picking your starting dominion, you need to bear in mind that you can raise it, and then decide how important it is to you. Also, I believe that dominion maxs out at 10. I could be wrong, but if I am right, you probably do not want to start any higher than 8. After all, most people will build at least ten temples. If anyone can confirm this, please let me know.

[Yossar]

Originally posted by Saxon:
When picking your starting dominion, you need to bear in mind that you can raise it, and then decide how important it is to you. Also, I believe that dominion maxs out at 10. I could be wrong, but if I am right, you probably do not want to start any higher than 8. After all, most people will build at least ten temples. If anyone can confirm this, please let me know.

That's correct. Unless you absolutely need high dominion early or are going to make a lot of holy units (since the number you can make doesn't max at 10), 10 is viable only on the tiniest Maps (Urgaia maybe), 9 for something like Aran, and in general you'd probably want at most 8.

[Rainbow]

Thanks for posting that Saxon. Some very solid info on dominion in that pdf.

That -10% hit points per level of dominion must be a good way to discourage pretender SC's from going rampaging in your core provinces.

As far as I can tell from the guide, the only way a dominion point can be 'wasted' is if it is spread from one provinse into another (randomly chosen) province, which already has max. dominion.

The explanation of what the Restless Worshippers theme actually does is worth gold. Great info!

/Rainbow

[Vynd]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:

quote:

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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?

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You're right of course. And yeah I'd seen this many times but somehow just didn't think of it when I was framing my original post.

[Gandalf Parker]

Ive often used low dominion as a tactic. Usually in a game where Im a sneaking nation and want to stay hidden longer. Or Im going with really harsh scales to get high bless and planning to do most of my activities outside of the range of my dominion

[ June 01, 2004, 15:36: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]