MA ULM: expanding your dominion

[jaif]

I generally play ulm. I find myself expanding my provinces much faster than my dominion. I tend to keep my prophet on the front lines, build plenty of fortresses+temples+labs, occasional lonely temples in convenient spots, but still I always seem to be fighting deep inside enemy dominion.

Do I need to build an army of (crappy) priests just for preaching purposes? Is there some other trick?

-Jeff

[vfb]

Your prophet is actively preaching in the negative dominion, right? H3 priests have a much better chance than your H1s at removing dominion.

Can you make stone idols? (Const 6). Stick them on some Spies and eat up the enemy dominion.

You could take a pretender with astral and a little earth, high astral is always nice in the late game. You just need E2S2 for idols. You could even go with a astral-only high-dominion Oracle/Statue/Monotlith, and empower it in earth since you've got such huge earth income. Saves you 40 points, so you can go for better scales. And no-one's going to be mind hunting in your capital.

Or, by the end of year 3 you've got a half-decent shot at having recruited a F1E2S1 smith. Empower him to F1E2S2 and start cranking out idols.

[Sombre]

There's no quick and dirty trick to getting better dominion, but if you always find yourself out of your dominion it might be that your domstrength is actually too high - if it is only 5 candles or something it only needs to fill those 5 before it will spill over into other provinces, whereas with domstrength 10 it takes longer to fill up each province radiating from your cap.

[OmikronWarrior]

Sombre said:
There's no quick and dirty trick to getting better dominion, but if you always find yourself out of your dominion it might be that your domstrength is actually too high - if it is only 5 candles or something it only needs to fill those 5 before it will spill over into other provinces, whereas with domstrength 10 it takes longer to fill up each province radiating from your cap.

Let me just point out now that this is totally inaccurate. The chance of a "dominion spread" raising your dominion in a province is only 30% - 3%X(Current Dominion Level). So, usually your dominion will spread. Now, keep in mind the chance of CREATING a dominion spread is 10%X(Max Dom Strength). I did some math with excel and odds of creating a spread are ALWAYS better with higher max dominion, even if the procinve in question is already at max dominion strength.

Keep in mind higher dominion makes it harder for enemy dominion to diminish your dominion, and higher max dominion gives you better odds of reducing enemy dominion.

On another note, invading another nation means fighting an enemy dominion. Its the way of the world. To speed up the process of pushing your dominion into newly conquered lands, lots of cheap indies is the order of the day.

[jaif]

On another note, invading another nation means fighting an enemy dominion. Its the way of the world.

Agreed, unless I'm putting special effort.

My problem is that I continually find myself 3-4-5 provinces away from my dominion. But I think I already have my answer: just because ulm has crappy priests doesn't mean I should ignore them. I'll build an army of them, equip them with factory-add-ons, and have them out their preaching.

Meanwhile, the idea about spies with idols is awesome.

-Jeff

[thejeff]

What do you usually have for starting dominion?

In SP, I usually build temples rather than have lots of priests preaching. Carpet the kingdom with temples. It's more effective than crappy priests. And you can build more priests faster.

[Micah]

vfb - what I was driving at was that keeping your scales in play in your "home" provinces was worthwhile, but that trying to actively push dominion along with a fighting force was not. The gains from such a venture are limited, especially if your opponent is raiding your new conquests, which results in unrest in the provinces (reducing income, and thus the effect of good scales) and displaced or dead priests.

Even in the cases of Rlyeh and Ermor by the time you get into most of their territory the population damage is long past done, and you'd be wasting time putting in order-3 scales in a 1000 population province. Not to mention the loss of banishers vs Ermor.

There's also the point that a level 1 priest supposedly can't even touch enemy dominion over 6 without a temple in the province, making it even more difficult to effectively push into deep enemy territory.

[Panpiper]

I've only ever played Ulm in SP, but I would inevitably put a temple in every province and priests preaching anywhere they could have an effect. If the province had dark candles, it would keep getting priests until it wasn't dark anymore. Redistributing priests becomes part of the game mechanic. The priests aren't a total waste, especially if you're dealing with undead or demons. I would also tend in the later parts of the game to give all of them either a Spirit Helm or a Rod of the Phoenix, sometimes both, plus an armor. Plus I need bodies to carry all those pearls.

[Micah]

The best way to get rid of enemy dominion is to kill the nation that its attached to. Other than that it's really not much worth worrying about unless you've got an established border with someone you're not planning on killing any time soon, then it might be worthwhile to put a few preachers in to keep your scales in play. Research centers are also key to keep preached up if you have a magic scale. In general, though, bothering with dominion is a large waste of time, since the effects of it are very limited outside of pretender HP.

[jaif]

Friendly dominion gives a morale bonus, fwiw. Also, I find it amusing to give some of my troops boots of stone(?) and the tunic that turns them into sacreds. They end up with 20 prot in the body and sacred.