Hmmm ? Mysterious death ?

[Taqwus]

More info:

(Disclaimer: Mictlan is a BIG exception. I'm not quite sure how it works or how to play it well.)

Every pretender type has a base dominion rating -- frequently 1 for the archmage types, 3 or 4 for the more powerful dominion spreaders. In addition, you can spend additional design points to increase the dominion effect of your pretender. This value becomes the initial maximum per-province dominion strength, and can be increased by building more temples (+1 per five temples up to the max of 10).

As for how you get up to that maximum, well... Your pretender, his prophet if any, temples, Juggernauts (available through astral magic) and a certain artifact (the Ark) all spread dominion. They affect the province they're in, and potentially nearby ones as well. In addition, priests can preach to increase the dominion in provinces they're in, but this effect doesn't extend to neighboring provinces. So priests can convert people locally (and can thus be useful in fighting the spread of enemy dominion into your lands; stealthy priests can try to spread your dominion into somebody else's land), but temples provide more effect spreading the word to the rest of the world. The 'Restless worshippers' type also spreads dominion to your neighbors I believe, but taking that requires at least 1 level of Turmoil.

Dominion is extremely important because as you've noticed, if you have none left your entire nation dies. If it happens to an AI, all their provinces become independent and undefended. If it happens to everybody but you, you win.

In addition, it's the stronger dominion whose effects alter productivity, growth et al. Fighting in a friendly dominion works better than hostile (+/- 1 morale point), pretenders and prophets have fewer hit points in hostile dominions and more elsewhere, and certain types of magic cease to work in hostile dominions (for instance, kill an immortal outside his dominion and he stays dead; nor does Gift of Health provide any benefit outside; nor can sacred units take advantage of Water Cult amphibiousness outside their dominion).

As Ermor -- well, at least either variety of dead Ermor; I haven't yet tried living Ermor -- dominion also affects the auto-generation of undead you get. It also affects the reanimation used by "Carrion Woods" Pangaea, according to the manual. And so forth.

It's all in all rather important. Building and protecting those temples is therefore important, and it also is good to have a prophet as much of the time as possible (even if your current one dies, you can name a new one six months later), and to take action as necessary to defend against significant incursions by enemy dominion. An attack that successfully conquers a province, for instance, always destroys an offending temple if present even if there's no chance of holding the province another turn.

Mictlan is different. I haven't experimented with it much, but apparently your temples, pretender and prophet do NOT automatically exude dominion; nor can your priests preach. Instead, every single Mictlan priest type is a blood mage, and to spread your dominion requires blood sacrifice. Such sacrifices must take place at temples, so you do need those structures still (not to mention that without them, you can't hire any of your mages anyway even with a lab since they're all mage-priests; plus, your sacred troops are better than your ordinary ones).


(Addendum:

Your prophet does not have to have been a priest first. Priest power is increased by 1 or to 3, whichever is higher. Thus, given at most six months (after your Last prophet's death), you should be able to get a priest. A problem might arise if your prophet's feebleminded; might have to send him off to die first if you absolutely need a new priest. I also haven't experimented with weirdness like making a mercenary your prophet, then not renewing his contract.

If your pretender gets killed, but your nation is still alive, your priests can Call God -- but he will appear in the home province. His return visit will probably be pretty short if that's strongly held by an enemy.
)

[ November 25, 2003, 02:13: Message edited by: Taqwus ]