My pretender died for no reason!

ShadowBlade · #1 November 11th, 2006, 07:53 PM

That. I was playing Man in a large random map with three other factions. I had formed a nice little kingdom and then, all of a sudden, when I begin a new turn, I get a message that my Pretender had been vanquished. He had like 50 longbowmen and 20 or so knights in his army, plus 5 wardens guarding him. I didn't get any assassination warnings, so that can't be the reason.

The only thing I can think of right now is a big bunch of items (about 6 or so) he gained after beating a couple of neutral heroes that were defending an independent province. Two of them, a helm and a piece of armour, granted negative (-3 and -1, respectively) Defense to him, for some reason.

I didn't threw those away, so they *might* have killed him if his own Defense attribute went negative when I ended of the turn. I wouldn't know, since I only got the game yesterday, so any ideas will be appreciated.

Twan · #2 November 11th, 2006, 08:54 PM

Had you a weak dominion ? You may lose the game if you have no dominion. You may also lose if an ennemy fulfill victory conditions (if you played with victory points or research as victory condition ie), but normally your pretender stats or items he may carry have not such effect (or it's a bug).

ShadowBlade · #3 November 11th, 2006, 10:18 PM

No, I had like 10 provinces or so. Victory conditions were standard, so I assume I had to wipe everyone out to win. It seems to be a bug, and I hope it doesn't happen to me again.

It's truly a game breaker, especially due to Dominions 3's saving 'policy' (the game is always saved at the start of every turn, and you can't reload previous savefiles...).

Graeme Dice · #4 November 11th, 2006, 10:53 PM

Quote:

ShadowBlade said:
No, I had like 10 provinces or so. Victory conditions were standard, so I assume I had to wipe everyone out to win. It seems to be a bug, and I hope it doesn't happen to me again.

Did you lose the game and receive a message about how you were wiped out, or did your pretender just die in a battle? If you lost the game while still controlling 10 provinces then you probably were dominion killed. If you don't have any provinces with your dominion (White candles) then nobody believes in you and you lose automatically. Not a bug, but just something to watch out for.

If your pretender died during the battle, then there are a half dozen spells that could have killed him without you noticing it right away. You can always call him back with priests if that's what happened.

Psitticine · #5 November 11th, 2006, 10:55 PM

The number of provinces you have is different than how strong your dominion is. The "vanquished" message indicates that your dominion has faltered, which is an instant game-over.

Keep an eye on those candles. They measure how fervently you are worshipped by the people within the individual provinces. If there isn't a single white candle left burning, you'll lose the game, as there is nobody left who really believes in your pretender's divine nature.

Be sure to design pretenders with a fair amount of dominion strength (5-6 is good for starters). That'll affect how fast you spread your faith and make it easier to avoid such a fate.

Even more importantly, be sure to appoint a prophet. (Select a commander and choose the appropriate command from his/her/it's menu.) The prophet, much like the pretender him/her/itself, spreads dominion automatically. That can be a vital early boost, plus the prophet also gains some nice clerical powers. In Dominions, that means some nice spells for the battlefield.

You can also build priests and set them to spread dominion. Having them build temples is also important, albeit costly.

Last word: if it seems unfair to have to juggle this aspect of things, remember that your enemies have exactly the same issue to deal with. Often, you can avoid costly battles in an enemy's home province by simply preaching their dominion down to zero and vanquishing them that way.

Truper · #6 November 11th, 2006, 10:57 PM

It would help to know exactly what the message said, but it does sound to me like a dominion death. The number of provinces you own has little to do with your dominion strength in those provinces. Dominion is represented in the game by white candles, and you can think of your dominion as your people's belief in your pretender. If no one believes in him, he dies. Dominion strength is one of the things you choose when creating a new pretender, and I recommend taking a strength of 6 or so, until you know the game better, and under what circumstances you might want to deviate from that.

KissBlade · #7 November 12th, 2006, 02:35 AM

This could also be the dominion explosion bug mentioned before. I do know there is some weird issues with dominion suddenly getting vanished out of the blue but I forget what're the specifics.

HoneyBadger · #8 November 12th, 2006, 02:52 AM

I had this happen to me twice, the first time I was just starting, maybe had 5-6 provinces, and poof, all gone. The second time I had an enormous empire, probably 30+ provinces, and my whole empire disappeared out from under me. Both times it was because of low domain. Suddenly, I took a much greater interest in all those cheapo priests with 1 level of holiness you can recruit all over the place.

ceremony · #9 November 12th, 2006, 03:45 AM

I haven't had any game end on me yet with my dominion suddenly disappearing. That's not to say such a bug doesn't exist, but with a new player, I would suspect this was simply a dominion loss. Shadowblade, take a quick look at the bullet points in the manual on p. 92. As Honey Badger said, dominion is something new players often overlook, until they feel its ill effects.

ShadowBlade · #10 November 12th, 2006, 10:22 AM

Perhaps that's the case: everything just disappeared, he didn't die in battle (there was only one message besides the vanquished one, and it was just a random event that increased defense by 10 in some province; irrelevant).

Unfortunately, I don't have the last savegame (overwrote it when I started a new one), so I can't recall the exact last message I got, though it did mention something about his lifeforce and *maybe* that he didn't touch anyone, so it's another argument in support of the dominion death hypothesis.

I remember there were a nasty lot of black candles to the north of my realm, where I was fighting the Abysians (or something like that) near their capital. However, I think the southern provinces were under my dominion. Hard to believe I didn't have a single white candle...

Anyway, I'll keep that in mind. Now, what are the best tactics for increasing my dominion? I assume using priests and have them "Preach the word of God" in provinces, but do they affect neighbouring territories as well? If that's the case, it'd be wise to strategically place them in the same way I place forts. That is, creating a network where each fort affects its own province and neighbours but without interfering with the next fort's area of effect.