Minimum dominion?

[Tyrant]

What's the minimum start dominion you would use in a "normal" MP game?

For me it's 7 with an awake or napping pretender and 8 for a sleeping one. This seems to be generally ok, but I have been candle killed once and once a barely managed to stave it off and die a proper death in battle another time.

I suspect that are some who go lower, but i'm not sure.

[DonCorazon]

I go as low as 5, never have come close to having issues.

[Micah]

I took 5 with an imprisoned bless chassis in RAND, it was pretty tight and took a lot of priest MM (I built a fortless temple to buy indie priests from to preach for scales) but it worked out. A nice benefit from the priest building was being able to dom-kill mictlan when his last army of nasty double blessed jags was running amok around my provinces, since I had a lot of targeted dominion spread. I'd probably try to find some points elsewhere to have a bit more if I did it again, and wouldn't go under it, but I'd say it proves that 5 isn't under a minimum.

[Cerlin]

6 is my personal minimum in MP, Especially I will go this low If I have cheap temples and/or Preachers. Unless Im losing a war and my enemy has high dominion. I have never ran into both those factors.

[Atreidi]

I think 5 is low http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif However, I've never played MP so I dont know any better. I usually play with 10. I rarely use bless strats. I tend to stick to the basics and win by dominion. This works great on HUGE maps.

[JimMorrison]

Anything below 6 is "low". Can you be successful with what you might consider low starting dominion? Of course you can, but at 6 is the point that I notice that building and managing your dominion simplifies itself a bit. Around 8+ is where it gets quite easy. Easy domain spread is nice, but for example if you are using a rainbow mage or other Dom1 base pretender, getting above 6 costs a LOT of points for what you get. Also, high dom isn't always needed for a bless nation, taking Hinnom as an extreme example, it's hard to get the right bless with Hinnom, and get everything else the way you want it, and still put out more than 5 sacreds a turn - ever.

Generally, 99.9% of the time, if you are in any danger of a dom kill you are already being crushed. Say you own just 10 provinces, and only have 5 temples, clustered around your capital..... With a prophet and your pretender out, you are at an infinitesimally low risk of dom death. The game is engineered that way for a reason.....

[Hadrian_II]

I played lots of games with a dominion of 4 or 5, and i never ever had problems with being dom killed.

[Lingchih]

Hadrian_II said:
I played lots of games with a dominion of 4 or 5, and i never ever had problems with being dom killed.



LOL

[Folket]

Any dominion scale works for me. Unless I need dominion for something else I only drop the last point in it. I have played with dominion 1 and did not have problem to keep my dominion up.

[llamabeast]

I played lots of games with a dominion of 4 or 5, and i never ever had problems with being dom killed.



Think I've gone that low before as well, and never had any issues.

[Sombre]

I've used 5 quite a lot and never had problems from it.

4 really is low though.

[Edratman]

I've gone as low as 3 with Shinyama in SP because they don't have sacreds. With sacreds 5 is the lowest I'll go.

I always build a lot of temples to boost sacred builds and dominion. From what I read, that is not a workable MP tactic, but it works in SP.

[Saxon]

Mildly off the topic, any suggestions on how to quickly kill off someone who has a low dominion? Sure, build temples, but what else can you do to up the pressure on them?

[Sombre]

The best way to quickly domkill someone is with massed H3 blood saccing. That's something LA Marig can do better than anyone else, more or less.

Other than that, burn down their temples, kill their prophet and god, kill their priests with remote spells,.. all the obvious stuff.

[Saxon]

So nations that can blood saccing can pursue a pure dominion strategy, but everyone else has to do the military/build strategy. The military solution is also easier to defend against. If you know there are no blood sacc nations in your game, would it then suggest you could then risk a lower dominion in your pretender design?

[Twan]

I think the size / start positions of the map decides it.

On big maps or maps with spaced fixed positions I'd use even dom 3 or 4.

On typical random 15 or less prov/player maps where capitols may be only 3 provinces away I'd rather take 5 minimum, and usually 6-8 if my pretender isn't awake.

Also scales are a thing to consider. Taking good scales is a waste when your dominion is too low.

[PvK]

Yeah, it depends a LOT on the competition: How strong their dominion is, whether they are pushing it and how, how many of them there are, and how much space there is on the map.

IIRC, a couple of my edge cases:
I've succeeded in MP with a rainbow mage with dominion strength 4 at least once, on a medium map with about eight players. I got dominion-killed by surprise with dominion strength 6 once, on a small map with about three close neighbors and about four distant neighbors.

[Sombre]

I'd say dominion kill, if you see it coming, is extremely easy to defend against. Unless they own so much of the map that you can't build enough priests to preach in your home province and stay alive. In which case they could probably have outmuscled you more easily militarily.

As far as I'm concerned there is no 'pure dominion strategy'. If you pursue one you will lose horribly.

[Saxon]

When I say “pure” dominion strategy, I am thinking along the lines of an opportunistic quick kill in the early stages of the game. If you were lucky, a neighbor might have low dominion and you could try to take them out primarily via dominion. This links to “how low can you go with starting dominion.”

It seems to me that except for the blood sacrifice nations, it really isn’t an option. If you are going after their temples to do it, you are essentially rushing them in the conventional sense. That said, if you are trying to take them out with dominion, you will still want to rush them conventionally to some degree, to make sure you take over their territory.

All of which brings us back to the question, how low is safe? Alternatively stated, at what level does your neighbor’s low dominion look like a tasty opportunity…

[QXel]

Off topic because SP only, but ...

It depends on sacred units, national priests level, and factors like possiblity of expanding and money availability (to build temples), but usually, I take 5-6.

Sometimes more, and in these cases, I go 9-10 for sacred blessed strategies, or to really benefit from my chosen scales if I found it strategic.
Sometimes again, if I can really count on my priests and my money, I go lower, but I never tried lower than 4 ... except perhaps in my really early days of Dom2 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I usually don't care about dominion until I have securised a base of provinces and have money running to build priests and temples. Then, at this moment, I attack this part and build maximum temples I can afford to rise my domminion at maximum level.
Two reasons (not exclusive): rise maximum recrutability of sacred, and/or benefit from my scales (say heat for Abysia or cold blooded nations, cold for Niefel, and so).

Of course, if I am too low in dominion and near a possible domkill, I react before.

[CUnknown]

I agree, 3 is actually doable although you have to be really careful and it's probably not worth the stress. 4 is not bad, actually. 6 to me is a very decent dominion, not any kind of minimum.

[MaxWilson]

I usually take whatever comes with my pretender chassis +2 or +3. Dom 3 would seem low in my eyes and kind of stressful (not so much because of dominion kill but because I'd have to work to benefit from my good scales) but 7 or 8 would seem like a waste of points.

-Max

[thejeff]

Even beyond dominion kill, there's the problem of keeping enemy dominion out of your borders.

This is more of a problem with the truly nasty dominions (LA R'yleh's insanity, LA Ermor's death and MA C'tis's miasma), but being encroached on by very cold or hot dominions cane be a problem too. And since good scales don't help in enemy dominion things like turmoil/luck or order/misfortune can be very painful.

[Ironhawk]

My personal minimum is 4 dom. It depends on the size of the map tho: smaller maps need higher dom, bigger ones less.

Really, getting dom-killed while your nation is still functional is an extremely rare event - assuming you are paying attention.

[Tyrant]

Well this thread's been a surprise, i was thinking maybe some players went down to 5.

[Endoperez]

I'll take 5 if I have to, but I'm bit uncomfortable with it.

[Xietor]

Depends on many things.

The era. In the middle era, 5-6 is usually fine as there are not many good nations that can push dominion on you with blood sacrifice.

If I am playing a race like Pangaea with cheap temples, 5 is plenty.

But if I am playing MA Ctis where dominion is gold and also lethal to my enemies, foolish to start with less than 8 or 9.

If I am playing a race where i need lots of cheap sacreds, i may need a high dominion so i can recruit the sacreds(jag warriors etc).

If my pretender is immortal, and also an sc, I like at least 6 so he can be used safely in a decent amount of provinces around my capital.

[Darkstone]

I'm playing with 4 dom in some novice mp games, and it seems ok. Had to spend a couple turns early on preaching with a prophet, and then later build some extra temples, but I was never afraid of dom-death.

[Lingchih]

Sombre said:
The best way to quickly domkill someone is with massed H3 blood saccing. That's something LA Marig can do better than anyone else, more or less.

Other than that, burn down their temples, kill their prophet and god, kill their priests with remote spells,.. all the obvious stuff.



With Pan, you can also mass stealthy, fairly inexpensive dryad preachers in key spots. Dom killed Nief early with that tactic once.