Dominion Push

Immaculate · #1 November 5th, 2009, 05:58 PM

Does anyone have a good link to a strategy article on dominion pushing as a weapon?

I have a few questions:
when is it a good time to try? timing? circumstances?

How many priests can blood sacrifice in one province? if unlimited, it seems like multiple priests cutting necks in one province will eventually overwealm neighbors even if they have a temple/prophet/even pretender?

is there a way of making an intelligent guess about an opponents dominion value?

Lets say you do extinguish their dominion, what happens? Empty provinces? What about their home capital fortress?

Anyway, any responses are welcome.

I.

Omnirizon · #2 November 5th, 2009, 06:43 PM

as a general strategy, it won't work.

however, as a means of finishing off a recalcitrant opponent holed up in their capital and final province, it is a worthwhile approach. it only works then because you can just saturate the province with priests and preach them into oblivion, without needing to tear down their walls and force a battle.

that's about all there is to killing via dominion push. it does have other uses though. you can get a province to your dominion prior to battles, and then get a moral bonus and allow your immortals (if any) to fight with relative impunity.

Gregstrom · #3 November 5th, 2009, 06:50 PM

As regards blood saccing - this can be used for dominion push. Only one priest can be used per temple, though. Jade Knives plus H3 priests on a whole load of temples can be pretty good, I understand.

Fantomen · #4 November 5th, 2009, 07:04 PM

Dom pushing as a weapon and dominion kill as a strategy are not the same. For example you can dom push to boost morale, leverage immortals, wreck economy if your enemy has income scales and to push a specific dominion bonus like abysias fire power, niefels cold power, Agarthas statue hp bonus etc. If you can combine more than one of these benefits it can make dom pushing a part of your core strategy.

So there are many cases where dompush is a devastating weapon besides going for a dominion kill.

Raiel · #5 November 5th, 2009, 07:56 PM

Contrary to most of the posts above, I have seen Dominion Push and Dominion Kill by Pan in the SummerMadness game I'm in... As far as I know, Pan barely ever fought R'lyeh, but they've been eliminated from the game by Pan's dominion push. And EVERY other nation in the game is at risk of this... If you're doubtfull, here's a link to the scores:

http://www.llamaserver.net/showScore...=SummerMadness

Just take a look at the Dominion ratings.

So, it just depends on the situation.

Yes, it is possible to make an educated guess on your adversary's dominion strength (both starting and current). Familiarity with the Dominion chapter of the manual will help with this. As will knowing the scales, chassis and paths of your opponent's pretender.

Gandalf Parker · #6 November 5th, 2009, 09:20 PM

They may have meant that its often not a workable tactic against experienced human players in a multiplayer game. Altho even then I dont know if Id agree except maybe on small blitz-type maps.

Also keep in mind that even if you dont KILL a god by dominion it can often be quite helpful to push the dominion down. Taking down the extra boosts that a god and prophet gets from dominion can be very important if they have a super combatant god.

The tactic is kindof "built in" to certain nations. In discussions of balance Kristoffer often made an effort to point out that a nation had stealth priests. And some nations have stealth preaching on units which are vastly multi-purpose, so you dont have to spend gold on just that one tactic. For instance, the Centaur leaders of Pangaea can lead a large and capable stealth force on their way to doing stealth preaching.

Does CBM change the effectiveness of stealth preaching?

Trumanator · #7 November 5th, 2009, 10:30 PM

One other thing to consider is that water nations are generally much easier to dom kill w/out conventional war. This is because they tend to lack a "heartland" on most maps, as almost any sea province is within 2 provs of a land province. Thus, a number of nations pushing dominion together can overwhelm the water nation. This is more easily arranged against LA Ryleh.

Agema · #8 November 6th, 2009, 10:30 PM

If you've bottled an enemy up in a fortress (often their capital), and it's full to the brim with enemy units and mages such as to make an assault massively punishing, a Domkill may be the quickest and least painful option.

* * *

I don't really rate stealth preaching.

For most nations, a stealth preacher will be purchased instead of a mage. Fewer mages = less research and fewer battle mages. If you have a stealthy mage/priest (e.g. Vanheim, Eriu), most of the best things you could do with it involve magery, not stealthy preaching. I suppose once your research is finished, you could employ all your spare Vanjarls or whatever to ruin someone's Dom.

Offhand, you want to look for stealthy heretics to unpick Dom, maybe - Arco philosophers? MA Man has cheap castles, cheap temples and stealthy priests, so you could quickly devote a castle to pumping out Monks to ruin someone's Dom.

As a mass tactic, it's hard to see working very efficiently. It's got more usefulness just to target a few individual squares: highly productive ones to spoil an enemy's income, or ones you think you're going to fight on and want the morale/god/prophet bonuses on your side.

LumenPlacidum · #9 November 7th, 2009, 12:37 AM

EA Pangaea's most cost-effective researcher is the dryad, which is a stealthy, commander mage-priest with holy 2. They also have a splash of blood and the ability to blood sacrifice, with cheap temples. They get significant benefits from turmoil and can easily get along with sloth. Your good luck is someone else's bad luck. Seems like they have everything required to reap advantages from a weaponized dominion and to wield it pretty effectively.

Redeyes · #10 November 8th, 2009, 10:35 AM

The Marignons have extremely powerful blood sacrificing, with its ubiquitous holy 3 priests being capable of it. The might even have the strongest chassis for it, at least large scale.

I would be curious to see if it could be made into an effective offensive strategy, the problem as far as I can tell lies in the difficulty in directing the push in any given direction - you certainly can't save your allies from it or even focus on removing a single enemy from the game.