Enemy dominion too high for me?

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by kasnavada

(if I understand the rulebook correctly )

Blood sacrifice makes a huge difference because it makes temple checks. Again, assuming that you've got a dominion of 6, for each sacrificed blood slave you get 60% chance of raising dominion, no matter what dominion the province has.

If I understand the rulebook correctly , it's not quite as you say.

I have a starting dom level of 5, and a God with blood #6. It is true that that would give me 6 lots of 50% chance. But where you say " chance of raising dominion, no matter what dominion the province has", not as I read it. What I get is 6 lots of a 50% chance of a temple check succeeding. But that is not the same as a dom increase. As per top of page 94, the temple check success in the province which has level #9 enemy dom is 50% + (5 * 5%) - (9 * 5%) == 30%. So on average I will get 3 chances of a 30% increase overall. Which is a long way from your 6 chances of a 50% increase!

[kasnavada]

Hum, true, missed a chapter. Sorry !

Still, with a jade knife on 4 different priests, how many sacrifice can you make ? 12 ? I don't know if the jade knife offsets the maximum number of sacrifices. It should be enough. So, I was wrong on some part, but it still multiplies the number of possible checks by "a lot" compared to standard preaching.

[JonBrave]

Absolutely. No need to apologise, I'm just learning (or waiting for someone to jump in and correct me) like you.

Thanks for the "jade knife". I had not looked up what that did/cost, for some reason I had associated it with assassination. I've ordered one now, though I have no Nature (or Astral) income!

I think it just reduced from -9# dom to -8# dom, way hay!

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by kasnavada

Still, with a jade knife on 4 different priests, how many sacrifice can you make ? 12 ? I don't know if the jade knife offsets the maximum number of sacrifices.

Hang on! That doesn't work? You can only have one blood sacrifice in a province per turn, so I can only make one jade knife for my best sacrificer? According to me....

[Nightfall]

Just a note, Blood Sacrifice ability is based on H not B, your god is not a good choice to blood sacrifice.

And Blood Sacrifice with a jade knife equipped H3+ priest is about as good as it gets.

[brxbrx]

uh only priests can sacrifice. not gods...

[Soyweiser]

didn't blood sac give 2 temple checks for each slave?

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

didn't blood sac give 2 temple checks for each slave?

Manual states 1 per 1.

[Hrum]

I believe it's 1 temple check per slave sacrificed, but a given priest sacrifices a number of slaves equal to his holy level (+2 if he's wielding a jade knife). If you don't give the priest the number of slaves he wants (at a minimum, he's cool with holding on to extras), he will refuse to sacrifice any slaves (I don't think an H3 priest will sacrifice only 1 slave - it must be beneath him).

So an H3 with no knife sacrifices 3 blood slaves causing 3 temple checks in the province he's in, and the same H3 priest with a jade knife sacrifices 5 slaves causing 5 checks. Priests can only sacrifice in a temple, and only a single priest can sacrifice in a given temple, so if you go nuts with sacrificing you max out at an H3 priest with jade knife sacrificing in each province costing you 5 slaves * # of provinces in your empire per turn (for a 20 province empire that would be 100 slaves sacrificed a turn - you better be doing some major bloodhunting!).

All those added temples also increase your effective dominion from whatever the base dominion level was that you designed for your pretender. So in the example with 20 provinces, if you had a base dominion of 6 you now have an effective dominion (20 temples/5 = +4 to base dominion) of 10. Which makes those temple checks 100% likely (effective dom * 10% = chance of candle produced?) of producing +1 candle each not counting resistance from any dominion on your borders. Use an H3 w/ a jade knife to sacrifice from every province you own and your dominion will spread rapidly. Unless you just don't own enough territory; resolve that with military might or fail in your bid to rule the world.

[Amhazair]

Originally Posted by Hrum

All those added temples also increase your effective dominion from whatever the base dominion level was that you designed for your pretender. So in the example with 20 provinces, if you had a base dominion of 6 you now have an effective dominion (20 temples/5 = +4 to base dominion) of 10. Which makes those temple checks 100% likely (effective dom * 10% = chance of candle produced?) of producing +1 candle each not counting resistance from any dominion on your borders.

This is indeed what the manual says, but in fact doesn't work like this. Testing has shown that temple checks only take starting dominion into acount to calculate their chance to produce a candle, so if you've started with a very low base dominion there's often little you can do besides learning to live inside enemy dominion.

As for this particular situation, I'm not very fond of trying to tackle big enemy dominions with preaching, it just requires a massive amount of effort for mediocre gain. (Unless your research force consists of strong mage-priests and your research is finished already.) I would look first not at the province in question, but the adjacent provinces in your empire, (What is the dominion there like now? Also in (lower) enemy dominion?) and get dominion there as high as possible, so all the dominion spreading outward from your lands has a good chance to spread further into the offending province.

More in general, blood sacrificing is indeed the king when it comes to pushing your dominion, nothing else gets you nearly as much bang for your buck.