Hmmm ? Mysterious death ?

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by tkobo:
I dont understand the whole "Dominion " thing.

Your dominion is your religious power, or if you prefer, the sum of the faiths of your believers. This is represented by candles on the map, white candles for you and red candles for your competitors. Want to know more about your dominion strength in a given province? Just look at the lower left corner of the info pane, you'll read something like "Dominion: 7". The strength of your dominion in a given province can range from 1 to 10. A province that read "Dominion: 0" is a province where noone believes in you. A negative value means some of the people here believe in another deity. If there isn't at least one province on the map where you have a positive dominion (IOW, a province with a white candle), your god fades away and you've lost the game.

So my god died because my dominion in the province he was in got too low right ?

Right.

So why didnt he just respawn in another province in which the dominion was good ?

If there was such a province, your god wouldn't have died.

Also, a message explaining the cause of his death wouldve been nice.

Once you understand the concept of dominion, the message is actually quite clear.

[Gandalf Parker]

You also apparently had no priests? And no way to make priests? Something like that. Because prists can pray to return a god who has been killed

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
You also apparently had no priests? And no way to make priests? Something like that. Because prists can pray to return a god who has been killed

No - his dominion went to zero everywhere. In that case, the presence or absence of priests is irrelevant.

I assume that he never built a temple, chose a pretender with 1 or 2 dominion, and never did any preaching, because if you don't know what dominion is for, all those actions are pretty pointless=)

I lost a game from dominion playing against Marginon, though, and I had several temples and priests and a fairly large empire.

[PvK]

A couple of incorrect answers were given below, unless things changed from Doms I:

1) A pretender can exist in a province with zero or negative dominion. They get penalties if they have to fight there, but they don't evaporate just from visiting a hostile dominion province. They just cannot exist is a world with none of their dominion anywhere in the world.

2) You can keep playing even if your god is dead and you have no priests or prophets or temples, nor your capital, as long as you have dominion. After all, your surviving followers might be able to recruit someone who could pray for the gods return, and recapture your capital. This actually happened to me in my first Doms I game - I tried to fight on for many turns without any of the above items (and no magic Users, either). I lost, but it let me squirm around for many turns after that happened.

PvK

[PvK]

By the way, this is a classic game story - I love it! Good thing for the AI that it had faith in the power of prayer!

What a spiffy game!

PvK

[Taqwus]

More info:

(Disclaimer: Mictlan is a BIG exception. I'm not quite sure how it works or how to play it well.)

Every pretender type has a base dominion rating -- frequently 1 for the archmage types, 3 or 4 for the more powerful dominion spreaders. In addition, you can spend additional design points to increase the dominion effect of your pretender. This value becomes the initial maximum per-province dominion strength, and can be increased by building more temples (+1 per five temples up to the max of 10).

As for how you get up to that maximum, well... Your pretender, his prophet if any, temples, Juggernauts (available through astral magic) and a certain artifact (the Ark) all spread dominion. They affect the province they're in, and potentially nearby ones as well. In addition, priests can preach to increase the dominion in provinces they're in, but this effect doesn't extend to neighboring provinces. So priests can convert people locally (and can thus be useful in fighting the spread of enemy dominion into your lands; stealthy priests can try to spread your dominion into somebody else's land), but temples provide more effect spreading the word to the rest of the world. The 'Restless worshippers' type also spreads dominion to your neighbors I believe, but taking that requires at least 1 level of Turmoil.

Dominion is extremely important because as you've noticed, if you have none left your entire nation dies. If it happens to an AI, all their provinces become independent and undefended. If it happens to everybody but you, you win.

In addition, it's the stronger dominion whose effects alter productivity, growth et al. Fighting in a friendly dominion works better than hostile (+/- 1 morale point), pretenders and prophets have fewer hit points in hostile dominions and more elsewhere, and certain types of magic cease to work in hostile dominions (for instance, kill an immortal outside his dominion and he stays dead; nor does Gift of Health provide any benefit outside; nor can sacred units take advantage of Water Cult amphibiousness outside their dominion).

As Ermor -- well, at least either variety of dead Ermor; I haven't yet tried living Ermor -- dominion also affects the auto-generation of undead you get. It also affects the reanimation used by "Carrion Woods" Pangaea, according to the manual. And so forth.

It's all in all rather important. Building and protecting those temples is therefore important, and it also is good to have a prophet as much of the time as possible (even if your current one dies, you can name a new one six months later), and to take action as necessary to defend against significant incursions by enemy dominion. An attack that successfully conquers a province, for instance, always destroys an offending temple if present even if there's no chance of holding the province another turn.

Mictlan is different. I haven't experimented with it much, but apparently your temples, pretender and prophet do NOT automatically exude dominion; nor can your priests preach. Instead, every single Mictlan priest type is a blood mage, and to spread your dominion requires blood sacrifice. Such sacrifices must take place at temples, so you do need those structures still (not to mention that without them, you can't hire any of your mages anyway even with a lab since they're all mage-priests; plus, your sacred troops are better than your ordinary ones).


(Addendum:

Your prophet does not have to have been a priest first. Priest power is increased by 1 or to 3, whichever is higher. Thus, given at most six months (after your Last prophet's death), you should be able to get a priest. A problem might arise if your prophet's feebleminded; might have to send him off to die first if you absolutely need a new priest. I also haven't experimented with weirdness like making a mercenary your prophet, then not renewing his contract.

If your pretender gets killed, but your nation is still alive, your priests can Call God -- but he will appear in the home province. His return visit will probably be pretty short if that's strongly held by an enemy.
)

[ November 25, 2003, 02:13: Message edited by: Taqwus ]

[NTJedi]

Maybe he just died from old_age.
just teasin.... seriously I have no idea... I guess my pretender will be carrying a luck charm and anti-magic charm around from now on.

[ November 25, 2003, 03:56: Message edited by: NTJedi ]

[tkobo]

Okay, can a leader and/or his men die/dissappear while patroling the province ?

If so does this give a message ?

[PvK]

Not _because_ they were patrolling, though of course they can still be killed in all of the other ways while they are patrolling.

In your case though, the message you got tells you that you died due to losing all of your dominion in the world.

PvK

[tkobo]

Yea, I understand that now.I was curious about patrolling though.