My God died.

[Archonsod]

Did you build any temples? If your pretender was your sole source of dominion, his death would have triggered a total dominion loss...

[Arralen]

Not true. At first, you start with a temple. Second, you (should) have a prophet who spreads dominion, too. Third, dominion does not vanish into nothing on its own, it has to be pushed away by some others pretender dominion.

Instant dominion death seems rather unlikely in this case, unless he already had black candles all over his provinces ... .

[Archonsod]

Random events can lower dominion and destroy temples. If your pretender has a dominion of 1, and is the sole source of dominion then your pretty much guaranteed to lose it if he dies (especially if the only dominion you have is the 1 candle in the province your pretender is in).
Besides which I've noticed the AI suffer instant dominion loss a couple of times when they lost their pretender. Not sure if this is a bug or not - it appears to occur with pretenders who have a low dominion score (or low dominion presence).

[Gandalf Parker]

Winner should only have been declared if
A) you have no way to pray your god back. No priests, no temples, no dominion for him to return to.

or

B) the other player gained enough victory points on that turn. Thats only if the game was created as a victory point game

[thejeff]

Not having priests or temples is not necessarily fatal. You can always appoint a prophet. You may have to wait, but that shouldn't end the game.

You could also get a military or victory point victory even with the god dead.

No dominion is, of course, fatal, whether the god is alive or not.

[FAJ]

This is either a bug or a fabrication. The death of your god means little else except the loss of a powerful unit and the temple checks he provides. This isn't Total Annihilation. The death of your god has little to no effect on the strength of the dominion in 37 provinces over one turn.

[Archonsod]

Gandalf Parker said:
Winner should only have been declared if
A) you have no way to pray your god back. No priests, no temples, no dominion for him to return to.

I would have thought it would only happen if dominion was reduced to zero or you lost all of your provinces. After all, you can always build temples and recruit priests as long as you control at least one province.

Looking at the AI problem, I think it's similar to the implosion problem already reported with imprisoned/dormant pretenders. It looks as if the AI is taking a low dominion pretender and not increasing it beyond the initial dominion. It's then getting wiped out when someone lays siege to it's capital and slays it's pretender.

[okiN]

Archonsod said:
After all, you can always build temples and recruit priests as long as you control at least one province

Make that one province with recruitable priests and a temple in it.

[Shovah32]

Actually you can almost always get a priest, either you have a prophet or you can recruit a commander and (possibly after a wait if your previous prophet just died) prophetise him.