Dominion Spread

[Jazzepi]

So I had a question. I'm playing Ti'en chi, and my army is large, but I think it could be about 150% larger if I had gone down a different route. Basically what I did was engorge myself on a large swath of territory. Then I erected a great deal of temples. I just hit 10, so I can produce two extra sacred units in my capital. I have a nice strong W9 bless which I like a lot.

My real question is, then, since I feel like I've sacrificed building more forts in lue of building these temples, how do you all spread dominion? Is there anything in particular you do? How important is it to you to spread your own beneficial dominion?

I have pretty good scales in these games, and I saw the income in the provinces where my scales took full effect about double. Now I'm struggling to get up enough forts to use the rather massive income I have!

Jazzepi

[KainWeylin]

There are two ways to increase your dominion spread:

Each temple automatically has a chance of causing a 1-pt dominion increase each turn. This increase can occur in the province with a temple or a nearby province. Provinces closer to the temple and provinces with lower friendly dominion are more likely to receive the spread.

Each preaching priest has a chance of raising dominion, but only in his province. Note that this can still raise dominion in nearby provinces, as increasing dominion in the priest's province increases the chance that a temple spread that would otherwise have occurred there occurs in a neighboring province instead.

Also, the higher your max dominion, the faster your dominion spreads, and every five temples (round down) increase your max dominion by 1 (to a limit of 10), so your current max dominion is now two higher than the level you selected in Pretender Creation (unless you originally set it to 9 or 10, in which case it's now 10).

[Sombre]

I think he knows /how/ dominion spreads, he's just wondering what other players do to make it spread. As in, what are their tactics in regard to dominion.

[Jazzepi]

Sombre said:
I think he knows /how/ dominion spreads, he's just wondering what other players do to make it spread. As in, what are their tactics in regard to dominion.

Exactly. And how important people think it is from a tactical standpoint to spread dominion. IE, how high a priority is it for people to get temples up and going? Or do they just rely on preachers to shore up dominion once they've conquered an area and use them like mobile temples?

Jazzepi

[TirAsleen]

Try stealthy preachers once.

I usually play with a very high dominion and only pay for a few temples, mainly to build more priests that preach other dominions away. I buld more temples with man or panagea or if the temples give special benefits, like with ashen empire + soul gate.

[Hellboy]

Stealthy preachers could be fun, though I haven't had a chance to try them out yet (I'm expecting to soon, however). I've been thinking it would be helpful to lower the enemy dominion in advance of my troops arriving.

I'm mostly focused on MP, but relatively new to it. One thing I can say is that my initial SP practice led me astray by undervaluing dominion on my pretender. For example, I like to play T'ien Ch'i with max luck, but in a recent game with only 3 dom on my pretender, I was very much at the mercy of everyone elses dominion in the early game.

That said, I still hate the idea of paying the pretender points for very high level of dominion (like 8-10). I feel that if I do that, then I'm weaking my end game since eventually I will get my dominion up to 10 anyhow, by buying temples. There are numerous exceptions to this "wisdom" (e.g. LA Ermor), but still I think the end game is strengthened by spending less on dominion and more on scales or magic for the pretender.

So, as a player that prefers low-ish dominion (and I'd never go as low as 3 again, I guess I'll favor dominion in the 5-7 range, going forward), I like to build temples and recruit preachers. I make it a priority to put the temples and the preachers on borders of nations that have very destructive scales, and then after that I try to put temples in my rear areas, where they are (hopefully) less vulnerable to attack.

Once I have a temple, I try to preach up to dominion 3 with one or more preachers and then move the preacher(s) on to some other province. If the hostile dominion is very strong and/or my dominion is still weak, I do sometimes leave a single preacher (but never more than one) in a dominion 3 province.

If you are using this kind of method in MP play, you have to expect that you're going to lose some of your temples to a skilled opponent. As such, I always build temples in forts, and as the game goes on I try to get an ever increasing number of forts. Personally, I like playing long term games on big, spacious maps, so I'm sure that affects my priorities. In this kind of game, cash has always been plentiful in the end game and its gems that are the critical resource. As such, I never feel too bad if I lose some temples to Ghost Riders, or whatever other attacks the opponent cooks up, and I usually find it easy to rebuild temples as I need them (preferably in newly conquered enemy territory!).