Enemy dominion too high for me?

[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 Saxon

I would suggest you need your prophet involved in the preaching.

The other, longer term, solution is temple spam. Build temples in your back provinces, so you get some extra push outwards.

I take your point about maybe the Prophet, despite the bad dom.

As for temples, problem is it's a small map, I start from a corner, I only have 7 provinces before bottle-neck one.

[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!

[PriestyMan]

first of all, the booster on the blood guy does nothing. 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.

[Saxon]

Jon,

The preaching does help. As I understand it, preaching gives you temple checks and blood sacrifices give you temple checks. It is just that you can usually get more temple checks, per gold spent, from sacrifices. Total how many checks you got from sacrifices each turn and how many preaching generated checks you had, then divide by one of those to get the percentages. Of course, that would be a bit anal! The point is that both methods do the same thing, just in different ways and at different costs. What did the job for you depends on which tool you used the most.

Now that you have it so low, you will quickly see it flip over your way and you can return to crushing the enemy in your favorite fashion!

[Soyweiser]

Saxon, nope like the manual says, preaching works differently. It does not give temple checks. It helps if you read the whole thread. The mechanics make it almost impossible for low level priests to remove high dominion.

[Amhazair]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

Saxon, nope like the manual says, preaching works differently. It does not give temple checks. It helps if you read the whole thread. The mechanics make it almost impossible for low level priests to remove high dominion.

But, now that enemy dominion is almost gone, they will speed things up considerably. (lvl 1 priest with a temple in the province has 60% chance - 5%/enemy candle = 55% of succesful preaching, lvl 2 priest even 85%.) Basically, dominion war for this particular province is won now.

[brxbrx]

Originally Posted by Amhazair

But, now that enemy dominion is almost gone, they will speed things up considerably. (lvl 1 priest with a temple in the province has 60% chance - 5%/enemy candle = 55% of succesful preaching, lvl 2 priest even 85%.) Basically, dominion war for this particular province is won now.

I don't know, in SP games I've seen dominion fluctuate pretty rapidly

[iRFNA]

Priest checks happen before the other domspread (dunno about vs blood sacrifice, though). So what you see the dom at when you give the order is what your priest will be up against.