Lower level priests and blood sacrifices.

[Endoperez]

Jurri just confirmed that manual has something for both dominion spread and blood sacrifice.

So, let's wait and see.

[Morkilus]

Page 93:

Blood Sacrifices To conduct a blood sacrifice, a priest of the appropriate nation can sacrifice a number of blood slaves up to and including to his priest level. The province he occupies must contain a temple. For each blood slave thus sacrificed, one temple check (described above) is generated. Thus, blood sacrifices can be a powerful method of spreading dominion.

I can't say anything about Mictlan's priests, since they're not specifically tabulated into the manual (yay, something for the Wiki, finally!)

[BigJMoney]

Um, that's the exact same as it was in Dom II. I'm just a scratchin ma' head, here.

Thus, blood sacrifices can be a powerful method of spreading dominion.

I really don't like debating here, but I have to point out that it's statements like these that caused me to believe that Mictlan is not supposed to be in any way less effective when it comes to spreading dominion. Maybe I'm creating fantasy for myself, of course.

=$=

[BigJMoney]

I'm going to display a little math here for the sake of Mitclan.

Example1:
A nation with 10 temples generating dominion for 20 turns.
Cost: 2000 gold (1000 for Pangea and Man)

Example2:
Mictlan with 10 temples and priests, generating the same dominion for 20 turns.
Cost: 3475 gold

That's the cost for Mictlan to equal the ability of the other nations, assuming their basic priests still cost 80 gold. My game will probably arrive tomorrow and I can see if the priests still cost 80 gold, and to confirm that they have actually been reduced a level in h like all the other priests. I will say again that in Dominions II, example2 had the same cost, but doubled the amount of dominion Mictlan was spreading versus the other nations. This was the way Illwinter designed Mictlan, and I never heard anything from anyone about them needing to be nerfed, so I am still presuming this was an oversight.

=$=

[Ygorl]

Well, Jade Knives aren't that hard to forge, nor are more powerful priests all that hard to hire.
It is true that they're not as good at it as they used to be, but they used to be *really* good. A crappy priest with a jade knife is still three times as effective as a normal temple...

[Endoperez]

Of course, temples are more expensive. 500 gold? Or 400? Something like that.

[Daynarr]

400 temples, 500 labs.