How to successfully utilize your "Dominion Wall"?

[Graeme Dice]

KissBlade said:
And 20 temples = 4000 gold, if you spent 4000 gold on temples, not only is your dominion going to be higher than six, you'll be massively underfunded in battle mages of which I will use to raze all 20 of those temples to the ground.

The number of temples you have only affects your maximum dominion strength and the number of holy troops you can recruit. The probability that dominion will spread from a temple is set at pretender creation and never changes. You also seriously underestimated the amount of gold I'd spend, since every temple would also have a castle built before the temple goes up. Which is why I wouldn't be particularly worried about raiding parties killing temples.

Furthermore I attempted to make the Ghost King you mentioned and came up several points short.

Then you had better turn off your mods. Or get rid of a couple of levels of magic, since he's got way more than he would need anyways.

I'm still waiting to see how you would spend an extra 80 points in a manner that would completely crush such a pretender, which already has the optimum scales for C'Tis in the unmodded game.