My pretender died for no reason!

[ShadowBlade]

No, I had like 10 provinces or so. Victory conditions were standard, so I assume I had to wipe everyone out to win. It seems to be a bug, and I hope it doesn't happen to me again.

It's truly a game breaker, especially due to Dominions 3's saving 'policy' (the game is always saved at the start of every turn, and you can't reload previous savefiles...).

[Graeme Dice]

ShadowBlade said:
No, I had like 10 provinces or so. Victory conditions were standard, so I assume I had to wipe everyone out to win. It seems to be a bug, and I hope it doesn't happen to me again.

Did you lose the game and receive a message about how you were wiped out, or did your pretender just die in a battle? If you lost the game while still controlling 10 provinces then you probably were dominion killed. If you don't have any provinces with your dominion (White candles) then nobody believes in you and you lose automatically. Not a bug, but just something to watch out for.

If your pretender died during the battle, then there are a half dozen spells that could have killed him without you noticing it right away. You can always call him back with priests if that's what happened.

[Psitticine]

The number of provinces you have is different than how strong your dominion is. The "vanquished" message indicates that your dominion has faltered, which is an instant game-over.

Keep an eye on those candles. They measure how fervently you are worshipped by the people within the individual provinces. If there isn't a single white candle left burning, you'll lose the game, as there is nobody left who really believes in your pretender's divine nature.

Be sure to design pretenders with a fair amount of dominion strength (5-6 is good for starters). That'll affect how fast you spread your faith and make it easier to avoid such a fate.

Even more importantly, be sure to appoint a prophet. (Select a commander and choose the appropriate command from his/her/it's menu.) The prophet, much like the pretender him/her/itself, spreads dominion automatically. That can be a vital early boost, plus the prophet also gains some nice clerical powers. In Dominions, that means some nice spells for the battlefield.

You can also build priests and set them to spread dominion. Having them build temples is also important, albeit costly.

Last word: if it seems unfair to have to juggle this aspect of things, remember that your enemies have exactly the same issue to deal with. Often, you can avoid costly battles in an enemy's home province by simply preaching their dominion down to zero and vanquishing them that way.

[Truper]

It would help to know exactly what the message said, but it does sound to me like a dominion death. The number of provinces you own has little to do with your dominion strength in those provinces. Dominion is represented in the game by white candles, and you can think of your dominion as your people's belief in your pretender. If no one believes in him, he dies. Dominion strength is one of the things you choose when creating a new pretender, and I recommend taking a strength of 6 or so, until you know the game better, and under what circumstances you might want to deviate from that.

[KissBlade]

This could also be the dominion explosion bug mentioned before. I do know there is some weird issues with dominion suddenly getting vanished out of the blue but I forget what're the specifics.

[HoneyBadger]

I had this happen to me twice, the first time I was just starting, maybe had 5-6 provinces, and poof, all gone. The second time I had an enormous empire, probably 30+ provinces, and my whole empire disappeared out from under me. Both times it was because of low domain. Suddenly, I took a much greater interest in all those cheapo priests with 1 level of holiness you can recruit all over the place.

[ceremony]

I haven't had any game end on me yet with my dominion suddenly disappearing. That's not to say such a bug doesn't exist, but with a new player, I would suspect this was simply a dominion loss. Shadowblade, take a quick look at the bullet points in the manual on p. 92. As Honey Badger said, dominion is something new players often overlook, until they feel its ill effects.

[ShadowBlade]

Perhaps that's the case: everything just disappeared, he didn't die in battle (there was only one message besides the vanquished one, and it was just a random event that increased defense by 10 in some province; irrelevant).

Unfortunately, I don't have the last savegame (overwrote it when I started a new one), so I can't recall the exact last message I got, though it did mention something about his lifeforce and *maybe* that he didn't touch anyone, so it's another argument in support of the dominion death hypothesis.

I remember there were a nasty lot of black candles to the north of my realm, where I was fighting the Abysians (or something like that) near their capital. However, I think the southern provinces were under my dominion. Hard to believe I didn't have a single white candle...

Anyway, I'll keep that in mind. Now, what are the best tactics for increasing my dominion? I assume using priests and have them "Preach the word of God" in provinces, but do they affect neighbouring territories as well? If that's the case, it'd be wise to strategically place them in the same way I place forts. That is, creating a network where each fort affects its own province and neighbours but without interfering with the next fort's area of effect.

[Shovah32]

Place alot of temples, sure they cost 400 gold and are easily destroyed but they give a great boost (and every 5 increases your max dominion by 1). As for preaching, i put the majority of my priests on my borders to hold enemy dominion at bay but i still spread some around my empire so dominion dosnt go down there either.

And yes, priests can affect neighbouring provinces (or else only stealth priests could remove enemy dominion)