Mictlan dominion spread: Did I get it right?

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
There is also some mechanism that is not yet understood that causes the dominion spread that occurs in the early game before any individual province is maximized.

My theory on this is that the dominion strength may also be limited by the turn number, so that early in the game, this "maxes out" and forces it to spread, which drastically reduces the possibility of a player being dominion-killed instantly by one of the random "false prophet" or "faith is falling" events.