Dominion Vs Military

[Lex]

okay. I've been analysing this game for a while, yet I can't for the life of me see the amazin value of high dominion (except in race-specific strategies).

Here's the logic running through my head. I'm sure its flawed, but here it is anyways:

If you have the choice to build a temple or recruit more troops, why do veteran players "always" seem to chose the temple? You could buy another caster with 200 gold, which would provide a much wider range of advantages the a temple that very slowly increases your scales (which may not even be super impressive) in parts of your empire that probably won't produce any troops, and statistically aren't high income. It just seems alot more "reliable" to control/defend valuable provinces, and attack new ones when you need more resources/gold. Why bother with dominion?

If your opponent has negative scales, they'll only affect your border provinces, which are only a fraction of your total empire. Losing a bit of population somewhere is easily offset by using your gold to attack him (thus increasing your income even higher). Besides, fluctuating economies are a fact of life in times of war. Why commit so much to temples? And there's a good chance that your opponent will have good scales (only a handful of races use death3/cold3/heat3).

Lastly, having someone kill you by lowering ALL your dominion to 0 seems near impossible. I'm sure it happens, but it hardly justifies spending thousands on temples everywhere. In almost all cases it should be alot easier to wipe you out with military then kill your dominion.

So why does everyone give such high value to dominion? Even in the manual the hard advantages of dominion are minor, yet Dominion is made to sound like the most important part of the game (hence the title). Sure your troops get +1 moral and your Pretender is beefier, but you can't win the game with only your pretender...

I guess I'm saying, as a newbie, the impression I got from the manual and this forum is that Dominion is the key to this game, whereas so far I've only seen it usefull in a few race-specific strategies. I know I'm missing the real picture. Hopefully you can shed some light on this for me.

pushing dominion feels like the strategy in chess to control the centre of the board.. it's not seem obvious, but the pros say its a huge advantage. I dunno if i'm the only newbie who can't see beyond what's written in the manual, but I would love to hear the advantages of dominion discussed in general.

Anyways, its 4am and i'm still drunk.. i'm sure this will all make more sense in the morning.

[Arryn]

1. Pushing your dominion into lands controlled by your enemies reduces the benefits that they get from their scales. Often, this hurts them much more than your dominion helps you directly. And anything that hurts your enemies is usually good for you.

2. The stronger your dominion the greater the effectiveness of very powerful and useful spells such as Gift of Health. There are also spells that can only function in your dominion (such as GoH).

3. If you push your dominion so much that none of an opponent's dominion remains, their pretender goes 'poof'. This can be a much easier victory in some cases than trying to defeat an enemy that is strongly-entrenched in their capital castle if that is that enemy's Last remaining province.

4. Dominion spreads TWO provinces out from temples, not just one, so when the enemy builds a temple in their province directly across the "border" from you (which the AI does a lot), they are pushing their dominion deeper into your turf than you may think.

5. You need temples to recruit priests (and sacred troops).

Building temples not only helps you to accomplish what I've said above, but it counters the enemy doing the same to you. And they will. Count on it.

[Arralen]

I'm very shure you don't benefit from your neigbours luck scale, but you suffer from his turmoil if it encroaches upon your provinces.

Wrong temperature scale hurts your economy and the fighting skills of you troops. Keep in mind, though, that there are seasons in the game, which adjust the temp scale as well. Generally, though, the chance for ideal temp is much better with higher dominion.

Dominion gives you -poor- scrying ability.

Every 5 temples your maximum dominions strenght gets +1. That does not only make it harder for the enemy to repell it, it makes dominion-depending effects stronger (spells etc.) and it lets you recruit more holy troops per turn and province (up to the max dom number)

So always remember:
Dominion is a pretenders best friend !

[Arryn]

Ermor is going to have a very tough time recruiting undead in provinces with *your* dominion ...

[Boron]

Arryn said:
Ermor is going to have a very tough time recruiting undead in provinces with *your* dominion ...

you need dominion as a lot of nations :
- ae/sg ermor / pan cw / ctis miasma : if you play these nations and can spread your dominion in the territory of other pretenders you hurt them really A LOT and as arryn said as ermor you get lots of better freespawns with this , as ctis miasma higher income
- if you have good positive dominion scales ( growth , luck , order , productivity ) they help yourself great
- if you bloodhunt : negative dominion increases unrest so it makes bloodhunting a bit harder
- playing a heat / cold nation and these are a lot :
pan cw , ae/sg ermor , atlantis , r'leh , jotunheim , caelum , vanheim , abysia , mictlan , machaka , some themes like marignon df . so about 1/2 of the nations in the game .
here fighting under your heat / cold aura helps you alot :
e.g. caelum : better BoW damage shield , higher protection from your ice armors , a lot higher fatigue for your enemies

- many mages are priests too so they need a temple to recruit (MICTLAN!,abysia) or the priests themselves are good (e.g. caelum , man )

so temples are really good

ulm can bring drain to the enemies this way


i personally have this Build Order :
bloodnation :
lab , start hunting , castle , temple
nonbloodnation : castle , temple , strategic important provinces : lab

unless you guard it well NEVER build the temple before the castle , especially lategame ( ghost riders ) .


against ermor temples + lots of priests are almost a must earlygame .


conclusion : about 1/2 of the nations profit extremely from spreading their hostile dominions to the enemy .
the other 1/2 of nations has to build temples to counter this .

[Cainehill]

Also, spending 200 on troops gives me an ongoing drain on my economy. If those troops aren't needed or useful for even 10 turns, that's about ... 180 additional gold they've cost me. The temple, like PD, is a one time cost that gives an ongoing benefit.

I've got some MP games going where I have over 30 temples. And I still have provinces I've owned for 20 or more turns where it's been enemy dominion for all that time.

If I didn't have the temples, I'd be up the creek without a paddle; if I'd bought troops, I'd probably have a negative income.

On some maps, the troops might well have been more cost effective, allowing me to raze enemy temples. But between having non-aggression treaties (which allows me to focus my military efforts on other borders) and maps that have chokepoints that make it harder to bring huge amounts of troops to bear, the temples are, imo, more worthwhile.

If it had been Karan or Inland, something where every province has 4-6 neighbors, things might be different. But even then, razing my peaceful neighbor's temples would lead to my having a war on all fronts, and rapidly losing my conquests.

[magnate]

I disagree with Pickles - I always choose Dom 9 or 10 in SP if I can afford it. It makes a big difference to a lot of little things - you'd be amazed at the number of spells or effects that are bigger and better in your dominion (or don't work at all outside it). I need hardly any scouts when my dom is so strong that I get very accurate reports of neighbouring provs. Unrest goes away faster, so income comes quicker. All my summoned commanders have 2x hp. It's particularly useful at the moment where I'm up against Ermor, who also has strong dominion, and his gets him free troops.

What interests me is how many castles MP players seem to build - in SP I hardly ever need to build castles because there's always an AI capital to take when I need one! If I ever get into MP I'll have to read up on castling ....

CC

[Borg]

Lex said:
Sure your troops get +1 moral and your Pretender is beefier, but you can't win the game with only your pretender...

Dominion does more than just give you a +1 morale bonus and more hit points.
Think of Dominion as giving yourself "home field advantage" and every battle as a play-off game.
Would you rather fight under your Magic3 scale or your opponents Drain3. Do you want your Heat2/3 or that cold2/3 scale and all the disadvantages that come with it ?

If you don't worry about pushing your Dominion that means you'll have to fight every new battle "on the road" once you have reached your dominion borders and want to continue expanding.

[Pickles]

Those were my initital thoughts & I have not yet overcome them completely. Certainly in SP it is pretty irrelevant.
I would rather invest in field forces than forts or temples (this is me in games not just Dom2).

However most people play relatively conservatively & do not fight until they have to so you do not need the defences (army!) early. If you do invest in one you should probably use it on someone who just spent a couple of thousand on temples.


In MP you will get to experience joys such as defending you dom -3 capital against 400 vampires every turn.
Also as immortals are only immortal in friendly dominion so people are reluctant to use them outside of it - scare away that VQ. This is can undermine peoples ability to play optimally.
Plus as mentioned you do not get the benefits of opponent's +ve scales but suffer from their negatives so replacing their order 3 with your order 3 can hurt them.
Swapping cold 3 for hot 3 can screw giants.

I think people do build too many temples but they are presumably not punished for it enough by aggressive play. There must be a balance & knowing it is something that will only come with MP experience (I hope).

Pickles

[Lex]

wow, thanks!! that definitly builds a new paradigm for playing in MP! Gonna have to develop some patience, since it looks like it might be months before I gain this kind of experience..