Dominion question.
 

I'm an old strategy gamer but new to Dominions.
I downloaded the demo Last week and have been getting into the game headfirst http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .
I have to admit, this game seems to go "deeper" than any other TBS game I've played before.

So far I've been absorbing (reading) all the info I can find on "how to play" this game but there's one subject I have found very little explanation about. And that is the "dominion" factor itself.

Would anybody please care to point out to me why "dominion" is important ?
Why would I ever want to have a Dominion of 8 or more , why is a Dominion of 1 or 2 not enough.
In short, I'd like to know what effects Dominion-level has on the game.

Thanks for your help.

Re: Dominion question.
 

If you no longer exert your dominion into a single province you are dead. Even if you own provinces, but exert no dominion, it's over.

The strength of your dominion affects how easily the dominion can spread or be lowered. So if your neighbor has provinces (with temples) with dominion 8 and you have provinces (with temples) with dominion 1, it is much more likely that your dominion will be snuffed out and converted to your enemy's. Dominion spreads to other provinces by God, prophet, or temples. But the resistance to that spread is related to the strength of the existing dominion.

There is an excellent pdf file on dominion, but I don't remember where I got it...

[ July 16, 2004, 18:09: Message edited by: Inigo Montoya ]

Re: Dominion question.
 

Its the "push" of your godhood. If your scales are providing cold and order and strong bonuses to magic for your nation then you would want to push that ahead of your conquests. That way your nation can always be inviding areas with the bonuses that are involved.

Of course then there is also the guy who is pushing heat, chaos, and negatives on magic. When you two reach each other things might get shakey. You may need to concentrate on temples and praying priests. Push the dominion high so that your god and prophet can both suop up their hitpoints and other stats. Maybe even push some benefits into his province. Or at LEAST shove things into a neutral setting so that neither one of you have bonuses. If you reach his castle and he has a really nasty god thats hard to shake out of the castle you CAN even "pray him to death" by getting his dominion to nothing.

Thats general terminology. Others can give you hard numbers of pluses and minuses. Oh yeah, small dominion. Sometimes its more important that they NOT know where you are and where you are coming from.