Enemy dominion too high for me?

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by Amhazair

This is indeed what the manual says, but in fact doesn't work like this. Testing has shown that temple checks only take starting dominion into acount to calculate their chance to produce a candle, so if you've started with a very low base dominion there's often little you can do besides learning to live inside enemy dominion.

That is very significant, thank you.

As I said just above, it's a small map so we're only talking 7 provinces I have. It makes "pushing" more difficult!

[Hrum]

Originally Posted by Amhazair

This is indeed what the manual says, but in fact doesn't work like this. Testing has shown that temple checks only take starting dominion into acount to calculate their chance to produce a candle...

Originally Posted by PriestyMan

... if anyone is interested, a very in depth discussion of domspread mechanics can be found here:http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/...pic=233&st=105

i suggest you mainly just read calahan's stuff since in the end he was the one who was right about basically everything.

Thanks guys, for weighing in on this. Calahan's writeup looks exhaustive, and ideally should probably be included somewhere like the Strategy Index or the Wiki. Until it winds up somewhere like that, I think I'll need to bookmark that link.

[Saxon]

I would suggest you need your prophet involved in the preaching. Hopefully, you made a holy unit the prophet, so now you have higher holy skills than normal. This helps a lot in this sort of situation and also gives access to higher level spells in combat. Some people like to make an expensive unit the prophet to cut down on maintenance costs, but I prefer having that extra holy power.

The other advantage to having the prophet there is the free temple check they provide. I understand your reasons for keeping the pretender unit away from such horrible domininon, but a the cost of losing a prophet is usually quite a bit less.

The other, longer term, solution is temple spam. Build temples in your back provinces, so you get some extra push outwards. By the look of it, your enemy is pretty strong in this area, so you are going to have this problem for a while. Long term planning may help. That plan way well include how you are going to invade them without using your pretender. Very long term, I usually find that defeating someone with better dominion is usually done by taking all of his provinces. It is hard to turn around a dominion advantage, much harder than other areas. You may just have to live with it and hope he doesn't case Dark Skies.

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by Saxon

I would suggest you need your prophet involved in the preaching.

The other, longer term, solution is temple spam. Build temples in your back provinces, so you get some extra push outwards.

I take your point about maybe the Prophet, despite the bad dom.

As for temples, problem is it's a small map, I start from a corner, I only have 7 provinces before bottle-neck one.

[PriestyMan]

first of all, the booster on the blood guy does nothing. if anyone is interested, a very in depth discussion of domspread mechanics can be found here:http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/...pic=233&st=105

i suggest you mainly just read calahan's stuff since in the end he was the one who was right about basically everything.

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by PriestyMan

first of all, the booster on the blood guy does nothing.

Of course, you are right. My bad: I keep forgetting that for sacrifice blood level/boosters are irrelevant, it's only holiness that counts! So I should have said, a level #2 priest + jade knife(=+2): I shall verify that he is 4 virgins light after next turn

While we are on the subject of virgins: I know hunting increases unrest. But what it ought to do, additionally, is reduce (pop) growth --- surely a reduction of eligible young maidens would cause that down the line?

[Amhazair]

Originally Posted by JonBrave

I know hunting increases unrest. But what it ought to do, additionally, is reduce (pop) growth

It does. It's not massive, but certainly noticeable. (Don't recall if I ever checked out the exact formula) From previous experience I seem to remember that Growth 3 (Or possibly 2?) is enough to balance out the population loss from bloodhunting, but with less growth your population drops. (Of course, if you patrol to get rid of unrest rather than just dropping taxes population loss is a lot bigger.)

[BlanketThief]

Originally Posted by Amhazair

It does. It's not massive, but certainly noticeable. (Don't recall if I ever checked out the exact formula) From previous experience I seem to remember that Growth 3 (Or possibly 2?) is enough to balance out the population loss from bloodhunting, but with less growth your population drops. (Of course, if you patrol to get rid of unrest rather than just dropping taxes population loss is a lot bigger.)

Drops by 2 per bloodslave found, rounds up to the nearest 10. I calculated how large a province would have to be to remain stable (on average) a while back, with 2-3 b2 bloodhunters, tax100 and patrolling and it was something like 13k+ with G3 scales.

[Saxon]

Jon,

The preaching does help. As I understand it, preaching gives you temple checks and blood sacrifices give you temple checks. It is just that you can usually get more temple checks, per gold spent, from sacrifices. Total how many checks you got from sacrifices each turn and how many preaching generated checks you had, then divide by one of those to get the percentages. Of course, that would be a bit anal! The point is that both methods do the same thing, just in different ways and at different costs. What did the job for you depends on which tool you used the most.

Now that you have it so low, you will quickly see it flip over your way and you can return to crushing the enemy in your favorite fashion!

[Soyweiser]

Saxon, nope like the manual says, preaching works differently. It does not give temple checks. It helps if you read the whole thread. The mechanics make it almost impossible for low level priests to remove high dominion.