Influence of malign dominions will reduce your dominion.
Nope some of these temples are within huge swaths of lands of 0 dominion ( players have recently died ).
There is another possibility. One of the other players just told me that he is having problems getting scouting reports yet he is a somewhat smaller nation. Perhaps there is a global limit as well as a per country limit on messages?
Message limit will not afect dominion spread. But, there are limits to message numbers. There is also some kind of message limit per nation, but scout messages should not add to this one more than once every turn.
Checked the dominion spread: The chance of a temple generating a possible increase is dependent on the initial dominion of the god. The chances of an increase from the god himself or his prophet is dependent on number of temples though.
Thus the effectivity of temples are determined by the godly power of the pretender and the effectivity of the pretender is dependent on his number of adherents.
This applies to blood sacrifices as well. Make sure you have high dominion if you are Mictlan. Later temples will not have much effect apart from a higher max lvl.
The max dominion and the ability to lower enemy dominion is dependent on temple numbers.
Does this mean a nation with starting dominion level of e.g. 8 which builds 20 temples has a stronger dominion then a nation with 6 starting dominion which also builds 20 temples ?
Both have then the maximum dominion of 10 with 20 temples . So from my understanding they should be equal strong .
For all other intents and purposes they have the same dominion strength. Apparently it is just the chance of temples spreading that is based solely on the starting dominion.
So 20 starting dominion 10 temples are as powerful regarding dominionspreading as 40 starting dominion 5 temples .
Thats probably the reason for the "never take <6 starting dominion in a mp game hint . It was implicitly feeled by the communion when making this "rule" or hint though not explicitly known .
If you have 20 temples with starting dominion 10, then every turn you will get 20 successful temple checks. (I currently think that this means you will get 20 increases *somewhere*, although I could be wrong about that.)
If you have 40 temples with starting dominion 5, then every turn you will get 40 coin flips, and for every "heads" you get one successful temple check. So it will be much more random. Not only could you get lucky or unlucky and get greater or less than 20 successful checks per turn, but also consider that temples exist at different spots on the map -- for example, if there is one particular temple that needs to spread some dominion for you that one temple could easily go for turn after turn after turn without getting a successful temple check.