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 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.....

[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

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.

[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.