How blood sacrifice is supposed to works

[Pocus]

After half a dozen of turns where a level 4 priest is sacrificing slaves, I'm starting to seriously doubt that each slave sacrified act as a temple... Even if the dominion in the province rised rather fast to his maximum, I have not been able to spread it in the neighborhood, 2 being provinces that I control and without enemy temples adjacent.

Its like the sacrifice influence is restricted to the province, and cant expand (kinda like uber priests preaching if you prefer).

I know its a mechanism seldomly used, so perhaps there is something wrong somewhere?

[moodgiesanta]

I've never had a problem. Get some Jade Knifes on them to maximise their efficacy. I've seen some rather impressive dominion gains with blood sacrifices.

[Pocus]

you read me well I suppose. I raise my dominions rapidly in the province, but the dominions dont spread on adjacents provinces.

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Pocus:
you read me well I suppose. I raise my dominions rapidly in the province, but the dominions dont spread on adjacents provinces. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Pocus, I've had the same thing happen to me in SP games as Mictlan, but I am so new to the game...I thought I was just doing something wrong. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif The majority of the time, it seems to work - but sometimes you can sacrifice for months and not have dominion spread at all...with *no* enemy temples nearby. I have no idea how to pin it down to a bug or a "feature"...but I just wanted you to know you're not alone. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[johan osterman]

I got whipped just recently in a MP game as Mictlan, the blood sacrifice, however, worked just splendidly. I would say pocus just have had a spate of bad luck. Also if both you and your enemies dominion enter the same province the same turn it could end up that they negate each other, thus keeping the procvince free from dominion.

fahdiz the times it didn't 'work' chance most likely just had it that way.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
fahdiz the times it didn't 'work' chance most likely just had it that way. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">My one question about blood sacrifice is whether the priest has to have the slaves in his inventory at the end of the turn, or if it doesn't matter if I just hit the pool slaves button when some priests on blood sacrifice orders from previous turns are in provinces with a lab.

[johan osterman]

If you use pool you will have to replace the bloodslaves on the sacrificing priests. The priest will have new bloodslaves on him at the beginning of the next turn, and his order to perform sacrifice will not be cancelled when his slaves are removed, but no sacrifice will be performed.

Pocus: dominions seem to spread to neighbouring provinces just fine, I just tested it again and have not experienced any troubles.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
If you use pool you will have to replace the bloodslaves on the sacrificing priests. The priest will have new bloodslaves on him at the beginning of the next turn, and his order to perform sacrifice will not be cancelled when his slaves are removed, but no sacrifice will be performed.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Are you sure about this? Because in my Mictlan game, I found that my dominion would continue to increase even though I would pool the slaves every turn, because somebody else suggested that as long as the slaves went unspent, they'd automatically be used for sacrifices. I can't imagine what else would be causing that widespread dominion increase other than my mass sacrificing.

However, if this is true, then Mictlan once again goes back to being a horrible micromanagement nightmare: You have to manually gather the slaves off every single hunter, even if you've built a lab for that. Maybe the Pool Slaves global should not reduce anyone set to sacrifice below their sacrifice quantity?

[johan osterman]

Norfleet: Yup, I am sure.

[Arralen]

Looks to me like you ran into the dominion spreading "irregularity".

Do you have savegames available from those turns? You may check if you, instead of rising dominion in the neighbouring provinces, raised it in some far away province with a "neighbouring" number.
This irregular spreading of dominion has been reported by some other players, and I have seen it lately as well. I suspect that this effect may also cause the turn-2 dominion fluctuations other have reported.

If a dev is interested in the save game - I have 2 available ...

[Pocus]

Must be a stroke of bad luck then. An anathemant dragon (for 2 turns) then a high priest (for 4 turns), failed to rise by one candle the dominions of 2 adjacents provinces. If I understand well the rule, I generated the power of 5 or 4 temples (+1 for my own temple).
These 2 provinces were not under the influence of an enemy temple, so it was rather weird.