Gods kicking the bucket in scores?!

[Innocence]

Hey

Playing the walkthru "tutorial" (excellent one btw.) and finally got enough forces to lay siege to Ulm's home province, which is also his Last. After 3-4 turns I get the message that the wall has been breached and that I may storm the castle. Not being absolutely sure how strong a breached castle containing the God of Ulm is, I delay storming and move in more forces.
Next turn I get the message that the God of Ulm is dead (something like "in the end he had no land etc."), without any battle? Next turn I storm the castle and get a note that it was empty and taken without a fight.
During the following three turns two more Gods go belly up - one is south of my position (Melk-something) and when I send in a scout it turns out that all his land (he had 5 provinces left IIRC) have become independant - not a trace of the God and he was there in force only a few turns earlier!?
So what's going on here? I mean, I sometimes quit games when things are hopeless, but I've never seen an AI do the same thing. What's next? Will the AI reload Last turn if things are not going their way?
Oh while I'm at it: This is the most addictive game I've played since Stars!, Civ1 and Master of Magic

[DeathDaemon]

Short answer: If a god has no more dominion, ie. (noone believes in the god), the nation will cease to exist - all the followers of the god give up. This is represented by the white/black candles for each province. No white candles = game over.

Long answer - can someone provide a link to more complete dominion info? I've read a good .pdf on how dominion works, spreads, fights others, etc.

[rabelais]

http://www.bl23c.com/arryn/files.htm

[Innocence]

I see, interresting... So in theory I could kill off every player without a fight, simply by using my temples, priests, prophet and pretender? Or they could do the same to me (*gasp*) Funny, the effect of dominion in this game is in fact very similar to the culture flip in Civ3 (although Dom2's metod) is better since it's not all-or-nothing

Thanks for the PDF link - very very helpful. Granted I'm a little lost at times since I'm still running the demo (=no manual) But the more turns I play the more I'm certain that it's the right game for me

[LintMan]

Originally posted by Innocence:
I see, interresting... So in theory I could kill off every player without a fight, simply by using my temples, priests, prophet and pretender? Or they could do the same to me (*gasp*)

Yes, but it's pretty hard to normally defeat opponents that way, because (if they're smart) they can build their own temples and preachers to keep their dominion up. So then you have to send your armies in to eliminate those temples and preachers...

In my (limited) experience, I've found that generally even if you've beaten an AI down to a single province that you're seiging, it's usually easier and quicker to just storm the keep and eliminate them via battle than it is to "preach 'em out".*

But occasionally, I have seen a nation "sputter out" and die, without being in otherwise desperate straits. Mictlan in particular seems vulnerable to this (for the AI at least), since they have to do sacrifices to spread/maintain their dominion, and it seems it doesn't do it as much as it should.

-LintMan

* In my current game, I'm working on building a "preacher power" armada of juggernauts and priests to stomp out enemy domain. I'm thinking this will make defeating my enemies via dominion a good bit easier.

[PvK]

The dominion strength (determined at god scales creation, and by number of temples) is very important for determining how hard it is to preach away a dominion. In a recent war in a PBEM game, a player with a very weak dominion was fighting and more or less winning or breaking even against a player with a very strong dominion. I warned the player about their low dominion and they did what they could to preach, but they were unable to keep their dominion alive even though the battle line was several provinces away from their opponent.

PvK