Dominion Vs Military

[Arralen]

I'm very shure you don't benefit from your neigbours luck scale, but you suffer from his turmoil if it encroaches upon your provinces.

Wrong temperature scale hurts your economy and the fighting skills of you troops. Keep in mind, though, that there are seasons in the game, which adjust the temp scale as well. Generally, though, the chance for ideal temp is much better with higher dominion.

Dominion gives you -poor- scrying ability.

Every 5 temples your maximum dominions strenght gets +1. That does not only make it harder for the enemy to repell it, it makes dominion-depending effects stronger (spells etc.) and it lets you recruit more holy troops per turn and province (up to the max dom number)

So always remember:
Dominion is a pretenders best friend !

[Arryn]

Ermor is going to have a very tough time recruiting undead in provinces with *your* dominion ...

[Boron]

Arryn said:
Ermor is going to have a very tough time recruiting undead in provinces with *your* dominion ...

you need dominion as a lot of nations :
- ae/sg ermor / pan cw / ctis miasma : if you play these nations and can spread your dominion in the territory of other pretenders you hurt them really A LOT and as arryn said as ermor you get lots of better freespawns with this , as ctis miasma higher income
- if you have good positive dominion scales ( growth , luck , order , productivity ) they help yourself great
- if you bloodhunt : negative dominion increases unrest so it makes bloodhunting a bit harder
- playing a heat / cold nation and these are a lot :
pan cw , ae/sg ermor , atlantis , r'leh , jotunheim , caelum , vanheim , abysia , mictlan , machaka , some themes like marignon df . so about 1/2 of the nations in the game .
here fighting under your heat / cold aura helps you alot :
e.g. caelum : better BoW damage shield , higher protection from your ice armors , a lot higher fatigue for your enemies

- many mages are priests too so they need a temple to recruit (MICTLAN!,abysia) or the priests themselves are good (e.g. caelum , man )

so temples are really good

ulm can bring drain to the enemies this way


i personally have this Build Order :
bloodnation :
lab , start hunting , castle , temple
nonbloodnation : castle , temple , strategic important provinces : lab

unless you guard it well NEVER build the temple before the castle , especially lategame ( ghost riders ) .


against ermor temples + lots of priests are almost a must earlygame .


conclusion : about 1/2 of the nations profit extremely from spreading their hostile dominions to the enemy .
the other 1/2 of nations has to build temples to counter this .

[Cainehill]

Also, spending 200 on troops gives me an ongoing drain on my economy. If those troops aren't needed or useful for even 10 turns, that's about ... 180 additional gold they've cost me. The temple, like PD, is a one time cost that gives an ongoing benefit.

I've got some MP games going where I have over 30 temples. And I still have provinces I've owned for 20 or more turns where it's been enemy dominion for all that time.

If I didn't have the temples, I'd be up the creek without a paddle; if I'd bought troops, I'd probably have a negative income.

On some maps, the troops might well have been more cost effective, allowing me to raze enemy temples. But between having non-aggression treaties (which allows me to focus my military efforts on other borders) and maps that have chokepoints that make it harder to bring huge amounts of troops to bear, the temples are, imo, more worthwhile.

If it had been Karan or Inland, something where every province has 4-6 neighbors, things might be different. But even then, razing my peaceful neighbor's temples would lead to my having a war on all fronts, and rapidly losing my conquests.

[magnate]

I disagree with Pickles - I always choose Dom 9 or 10 in SP if I can afford it. It makes a big difference to a lot of little things - you'd be amazed at the number of spells or effects that are bigger and better in your dominion (or don't work at all outside it). I need hardly any scouts when my dom is so strong that I get very accurate reports of neighbouring provs. Unrest goes away faster, so income comes quicker. All my summoned commanders have 2x hp. It's particularly useful at the moment where I'm up against Ermor, who also has strong dominion, and his gets him free troops.

What interests me is how many castles MP players seem to build - in SP I hardly ever need to build castles because there's always an AI capital to take when I need one! If I ever get into MP I'll have to read up on castling ....

CC

[Pickles]

magnate said
"I disagree with Pickles"

No you don't . Building lots of temples is irrelevant in SP as the AI does not defend his or preach much. So your dominion will spread for free - especially if set at 9+. And its benefits are the same in SP - at least offensively - the AI will never try to squeeze you or spam immortals etc.

I am not sure why your summoned commanders get more HP in dominion either are you sure? (hot things like hot better etc but more HP?)

Pickles

[Boron]

Pickles said:
magnate said
"I disagree with Pickles"

No you don't . Building lots of temples is irrelevant in SP as the AI does not defend his or preach much. So your dominion will spread for free - especially if set at 9+. And its benefits are the same in SP - at least offensively - the AI will never try to squeeze you or spam immortals etc.

I am not sure why your summoned commanders get more HP in dominion either are you sure? (hot things like hot better etc but more HP?)

Pickles

i think magnate means together with GoH because it works only in friendly dominion

[Arryn]

Pickles said:
Building lots of temples is irrelevant in SP as the AI does not defend his or preach much. So your dominion will spread for free - especially if set at 9+. And its benefits are the same in SP - at least offensively - the AI will never try to squeeze you

1. The AI doesn't preach (or preach much) because it doesn't need to. The AI spams temple-building instead.

2. Your dominion will not spread for 'free'. Dominion spreads outwards a maximum of two provinces away from dominion sources (temples, prophet, pretender). So you need to have temples strategically placed to act as centers for that spread. Having more temples than the minimum needed to blanket your nation will boost the spread of dominion faster.

3. The AI *will* try to squeeze you with dominion. As I said in #1 above, the AI builds lots of temples. It does not attempt, deliberately, to kill you via dominion, but it might do so incidentally if you take no steps to counter it.

4. The AI does not defend its temples with castles as many humans do, but as a general rule it does keep non-PD garrisons in provinces with temples. It does not always do so, but it does often enough that you cannot assume that temple provinces will be nearly-free pickings.