How to successfully utilize your "Dominion Wall"?

[KissBlade]

Gandalf Parker said:
Ive purposely played with low dominion. With a stealth race like Pangaea it can help hide you for a few turns longer.

LoL, reminds me of the game Qm picked dom ONE and simply took advantage of Pan's 100 gold temples XD.

[Frostmourne27]

Interesting. Against the AI, I allways take dominion of at least four (I consider that to be VERY low) and usually take six or seven. I find that that allows me to forget about temples for the early part of the game, and lets me spread a bit of dominion around my teritory, though I've yet to crush anybody without taking a higher dominion or something sneaky (skeptics, stealth preaching, restless worshipers etc). IMHO dominion above seven is useful only as a pop-killing theme, anyone building lots of sacreds, if you KNOW you're fighting pop-killing dominion or other really high dominion, or to dominion kill your opponents. When I play a water nation, I often take a higher than average dominion too, as I find that water nations have rapidly fluctiating dominion, thats either really strong, or really low, and if I'm not paying attention I can easily end up in dire straits, having to scramble madly to avoid the inogmonious lost to the easy AI that took dominion strength 10.

[shovah]

With water nations, when possible i also try to take ceremonial faith, it lets rlyeh have decent preachng defence and atlantis have it very strong.

[Frostmourne27]

That might work, but I almost allways take turmoil and luck, so I can't (you need order for ceremonial faith don't you?) I find that turmoil gives me more gems, and that turmoil 3/luck 3 is about the same as order 0 no luck. It's alos easier to get those nice underwater heroes... btw, just how strong is ceremonial faith? It's double or something isn't it?

[shovah]

If its the one im thinking of its +2 to your holy level when in friendly dominion, it makes coral queens basically holy 6 priests. Turmoil 3/Luck 3 might net you a few more gems but it also gives you a -21% to income which, along with other things could be used for mages which can search for sites therefore gaining you gems.

[Graeme Dice]

Turmoil 3/Luck 3 is also 42% less income than order 3/misfortune 3.

[Agrajag]

Graeme Dice said:
Turmoil 3/Luck 3 is also 42% less income than order 3/misfortune 3.

Order-3 gives a +21% bonus to income. Result: 121% base income.
Turmoil-3 gives a 21% penalty to income. Result: 79% base income.
That makes Order-3 ~53% more income than Turmoil-3, but Turmoil-3 is ~35% less income than Order-3.
Amusing, isn't it?

[KissBlade]

Don't take Turmoil unless you're forced to from your theme or if you're Ermor Death theme. It is by far the most crippling scale to take. The only one worse I think is Drain.

[Frostmourne27]

Yeah but w/ fortune you can get great events, many of which provide cash. If you hunt around here, I believe some one did some analysis of the two and found fortune 3 / turmoil 3 to give about the same amount. Of course if you're unlucky, it can completely screw up your game. For MP, turmoil probably isn't the best though.

[Graeme Dice]

Frostmourne27 said:
Yeah but w/ fortune you can get great events, many of which provide cash. If you hunt around here, I believe some one did some analysis of the two and found fortune 3 / turmoil 3 to give about the same amount.

I am not aware of anybody who has shown anything of the sort. Some people have claimed that the luck events can help to overcome the tremendous disadvantage, but they don't come close to replacing the lost income. Nor do the number of events scale properly to the number of provinces you control as there is a maximum of three events per turn. I doubt that getting a single 1500 gold event every few hundred turns (If you also have a death scale.) comes anywhere close to making up a 42% loss in your income over that same few hundred turns.