Enemy dominion too high for me?

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

didn't blood sac give 2 temple checks for each slave?

Manual states 1 per 1.

[Hrum]

I believe it's 1 temple check per slave sacrificed, but a given priest sacrifices a number of slaves equal to his holy level (+2 if he's wielding a jade knife). If you don't give the priest the number of slaves he wants (at a minimum, he's cool with holding on to extras), he will refuse to sacrifice any slaves (I don't think an H3 priest will sacrifice only 1 slave - it must be beneath him).

So an H3 with no knife sacrifices 3 blood slaves causing 3 temple checks in the province he's in, and the same H3 priest with a jade knife sacrifices 5 slaves causing 5 checks. Priests can only sacrifice in a temple, and only a single priest can sacrifice in a given temple, so if you go nuts with sacrificing you max out at an H3 priest with jade knife sacrificing in each province costing you 5 slaves * # of provinces in your empire per turn (for a 20 province empire that would be 100 slaves sacrificed a turn - you better be doing some major bloodhunting!).

All those added temples also increase your effective dominion from whatever the base dominion level was that you designed for your pretender. So in the example with 20 provinces, if you had a base dominion of 6 you now have an effective dominion (20 temples/5 = +4 to base dominion) of 10. Which makes those temple checks 100% likely (effective dom * 10% = chance of candle produced?) of producing +1 candle each not counting resistance from any dominion on your borders. Use an H3 w/ a jade knife to sacrifice from every province you own and your dominion will spread rapidly. Unless you just don't own enough territory; resolve that with military might or fail in your bid to rule the world.

[Amhazair]

Originally Posted by Hrum

All those added temples also increase your effective dominion from whatever the base dominion level was that you designed for your pretender. So in the example with 20 provinces, if you had a base dominion of 6 you now have an effective dominion (20 temples/5 = +4 to base dominion) of 10. Which makes those temple checks 100% likely (effective dom * 10% = chance of candle produced?) of producing +1 candle each not counting resistance from any dominion on your borders.

This is indeed what the manual says, but in fact doesn't work like this. Testing has shown that temple checks only take starting dominion into acount to calculate their chance to produce a candle, so if you've started with a very low base dominion there's often little you can do besides learning to live inside enemy dominion.

As for this particular situation, I'm not very fond of trying to tackle big enemy dominions with preaching, it just requires a massive amount of effort for mediocre gain. (Unless your research force consists of strong mage-priests and your research is finished already.) I would look first not at the province in question, but the adjacent provinces in your empire, (What is the dominion there like now? Also in (lower) enemy dominion?) and get dominion there as high as possible, so all the dominion spreading outward from your lands has a good chance to spread further into the offending province.

More in general, blood sacrificing is indeed the king when it comes to pushing your dominion, nothing else gets you nearly as much bang for your buck.

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by Amhazair

This is indeed what the manual says, but in fact doesn't work like this. Testing has shown that temple checks only take starting dominion into acount to calculate their chance to produce a candle, so if you've started with a very low base dominion there's often little you can do besides learning to live inside enemy dominion.

That is very significant, thank you.

As I said just above, it's a small map so we're only talking 7 provinces I have. It makes "pushing" more difficult!

[JonBrave]

Anyway, for those interested, I seem to have reduced enemy dom from #9 down to #1 now It's taken a few turns, but I've been preaching (prolly makes not a lot of a difference) and sacrificing with B2 +1boost +Jade Knife each turn, so hopefully that proves sacrifice is doing it's job!

[Hrum]

Originally Posted by Amhazair

This is indeed what the manual says, but in fact doesn't work like this. Testing has shown that temple checks only take starting dominion into acount to calculate their chance to produce a candle...

Originally Posted by PriestyMan

... if anyone is interested, a very in depth discussion of domspread mechanics can be found here:http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/...pic=233&st=105

i suggest you mainly just read calahan's stuff since in the end he was the one who was right about basically everything.

Thanks guys, for weighing in on this. Calahan's writeup looks exhaustive, and ideally should probably be included somewhere like the Strategy Index or the Wiki. Until it winds up somewhere like that, I think I'll need to bookmark that link.