Dominion spread into enemy territories?

[Quietly]

heh, last time I played, I played ashen empire ermor, and had someone else's random event apparently cause a province of theirs to have an undead revolt, resulting in my gaining control of a 3 dominion strong province deep in their territory, a small army of undead, and 5 1H ermorian cultists, who immediately began herding the local populace into some massive ghoul breeding pit

[PhilD]

I've been reading the Dominion chapter of the manual pretty carefully, and have a few questions that some of you may be able to answer

* dominion spread: the manual says that when a "dominion spread" occurs (not produced by preaching), either the local dominion will increase, or enemy dominion will decrease, or it will be "passed" to some randomly chosen neighbouring province. Does this mean that each successful "temple check" will result, somewhere (potentially far away) in a dominion increase (or enemy dom. decrease)? (My past experience was that the effect didn't seem to be that radical)

* order of things: since dominion increase don't "leak" to other provinces, the order in which things happen can be important - as is the interleaving of these actions between nations. Is this specified somewhere?

(What I mean is that, if preaching happens first, successful preaching can make it easier to get a successful temple check, which in turn might leak to adjacent provinces; while, if preaching occurs last, it's more likely to be "wasted" as previous temple checks - and leaks - could have increased dominion to the limit before it happens. Also, enemy dominion spread can change conditions, so the question of "who goes first" can be important)

[acesman]

I haven't studied the dominion spread algorithm much either, I am playing on a large map (Glory of the Gods, IIRC) with a dominion of six in my setup. I have taken about 25 provinces and put temples in most of them. I currently have dominion of strength of 3-4 in enemy (not neutral) provinces 6-9 spaces away from any of my troops, across an ocean that I have not entered yet. I was a bit surprised, since this covers about 10-12 enemy provinces. My core area dominion is about 9.

[PhilD]

Are you playing SP? The AI tends to be very bad at keeping your dominion at bay; I also like to play SP on large maps, and most of the time my dominion spreads ahead of my provinces.

[acesman]

"Are you playing SP? The AI tends to be very bad at keeping your dominion at bay; I also like to play SP on large maps, and most of the time my dominion spreads ahead of my provinces."

Guilty, I am still learning the game, never played Dom 2. I was just surprised about how far it spread into the enemy territory.