MA ULM: expanding your dominion

[Sombre]

There's no quick and dirty trick to getting better dominion, but if you always find yourself out of your dominion it might be that your domstrength is actually too high - if it is only 5 candles or something it only needs to fill those 5 before it will spill over into other provinces, whereas with domstrength 10 it takes longer to fill up each province radiating from your cap.

[OmikronWarrior]

Sombre said:
There's no quick and dirty trick to getting better dominion, but if you always find yourself out of your dominion it might be that your domstrength is actually too high - if it is only 5 candles or something it only needs to fill those 5 before it will spill over into other provinces, whereas with domstrength 10 it takes longer to fill up each province radiating from your cap.

Let me just point out now that this is totally inaccurate. The chance of a "dominion spread" raising your dominion in a province is only 30% - 3%X(Current Dominion Level). So, usually your dominion will spread. Now, keep in mind the chance of CREATING a dominion spread is 10%X(Max Dom Strength). I did some math with excel and odds of creating a spread are ALWAYS better with higher max dominion, even if the procinve in question is already at max dominion strength.

Keep in mind higher dominion makes it harder for enemy dominion to diminish your dominion, and higher max dominion gives you better odds of reducing enemy dominion.

On another note, invading another nation means fighting an enemy dominion. Its the way of the world. To speed up the process of pushing your dominion into newly conquered lands, lots of cheap indies is the order of the day.

[jaif]

On another note, invading another nation means fighting an enemy dominion. Its the way of the world.

Agreed, unless I'm putting special effort.

My problem is that I continually find myself 3-4-5 provinces away from my dominion. But I think I already have my answer: just because ulm has crappy priests doesn't mean I should ignore them. I'll build an army of them, equip them with factory-add-ons, and have them out their preaching.

Meanwhile, the idea about spies with idols is awesome.

-Jeff

[thejeff]

What do you usually have for starting dominion?

In SP, I usually build temples rather than have lots of priests preaching. Carpet the kingdom with temples. It's more effective than crappy priests. And you can build more priests faster.

[Micah]

vfb - what I was driving at was that keeping your scales in play in your "home" provinces was worthwhile, but that trying to actively push dominion along with a fighting force was not. The gains from such a venture are limited, especially if your opponent is raiding your new conquests, which results in unrest in the provinces (reducing income, and thus the effect of good scales) and displaced or dead priests.

Even in the cases of Rlyeh and Ermor by the time you get into most of their territory the population damage is long past done, and you'd be wasting time putting in order-3 scales in a 1000 population province. Not to mention the loss of banishers vs Ermor.

There's also the point that a level 1 priest supposedly can't even touch enemy dominion over 6 without a temple in the province, making it even more difficult to effectively push into deep enemy territory.