am i wasting money? - temples

[318]

New to the series. All of my games (in attempt to learn along with videos) ive been placing temples in every province. Am i wasting money? Do i need to place temples only on frontier borders around enemy factions?

Or is it more complex and it depends on who you are playing and your scales?

Thanks guys

[SaD-82]

Placing temples everywhere is a good idea, as long as you don't neglect recruiting mages and troops.
The more temples you have, the more holy points you will create for recruiting sacreds.
It will bolster your dominion as well, which will prevent being dom-killed.

[Ddraig Lleuad]

Making some temples is a good idea, but putting temples EVERYWHERE is excessive except in very small games where you end up with two or three players who can focus their dominion push.

In larger games it's generally fine just to put temples in your forts, and maybe a couple extras - avoid putting them on the frontier, as they may end up razed by enemy raiders, and temple location only has a limited effect on where candles are generated. More temples does get you more holy points for recruiting sacreds, but at 5 temples per 1 point, it's an expensive way to boost production.

[LDiCesare]

In SP the AI is usually forgiving enough that you can spend money on temples everywhere.
In MP, you'll lose if you do that.
Building a temple in a non-forted province on or near the border is inviting the enemy to raid you and instantly destroy 600 gold of infrastructure you could have spent on a fort that would have defended the temple, or built good mages or troops.
Although early on you usually swim in gold, the upkeep of your troops will soon catch up with you.

Some nations have an interest in putting temples outside forts, if they have special troops they can recruit there, but you should make sure to protect these provinces, and I mean not just province defense (although again, high PD is probably sufficient against the ai)

[Bobit]

Temples have two effects:

1) Minor dominion impact, which can improve morale or economy depending on scales, or maybe you want someone else's scales

2) Sacreds recruiting, which is far more important for every castle that can use them

Generally, border temples are prime raiding targets since they are instantly destroyed when captured.

[Toblm]

Originally posted by 318:

Or is it more complex and it depends on who you are playing and your scales?

In addition to what others have mentioned their ARE nations where spamming temples are valuable.
Ind for example which gets +1 sacred recruit per temple is a good example for temple spam until you max the recruitment/resource point in your capital.
Other nations where you get free spawns from temples. Should also be building an above average number of temples.
And anytime you are getting you dominion pushed by another faction, temples are the solution.

[LORDzEMPEROR]

In general, temples don't hurt, but you must consider temples costs gold which could go to: 1) general security of your dominion (aka military power) and 2) the needs defence of the temple itself (religious power).

Ultimately, some nations benefit more from temples/religious expansion than others, but immediate survival is always the greater concern hence the army needs to be prioritised so you don't lose investments. Temples tend to get burned down quite easily but pay off in the long run by expanding dominion and thus making your army have an easier time. Efficient strategies tend to favour a balance which slightly favours the army, since you can always use armies to burn down enemy temples too. Just investing in temples won't allow you to burn enemy temples. Moreover, you can have priests move about to expand religion, so sometimes you only need a few to keep your dominion healthy and to allow sacred recruitments.

Temples, however, do raise the base dominion capacity overall of your faith, so eventually you will want to achieve a minimum number of temples to increase how many candles each province can potentially hold. You can check this by inspecting any temple to see how many you need.

The rule is to avoid setting up temples you can't defend on a regular basis with PD or forts, but more temples is better only if you can afford the cost of keeping the army conquering (and thus expanding your economic capacity to fuel more infrastructure spending).

Good luck!

[Sombre]

If you are doing anything that costs without considering why you are doing it, the pros and cons, it is likely you are at least being inefficient with money or time.

Generally speaking I don't build a temple in every province because that gold could be more useful put to a different purpose, but I might end up building them in something like a third or even half eventually.

[Kref]

Always putting temple in every province is obviously loss of money.
Also you should consider that if you'll temporaly loose province your temple would be raised.
You should build temple only to achive one or more specific purpose.
Generally they may be:
avoiding your domkill;
temple needed to recruit sacred troops/comanders in this province;
increase max domstrength because your recruitment of sacred troops now is limited not by money or resources but with candles;
you need spread dominion in some provinces to get morale or sometimes other advantage while fighting in them;
you want to domkill someone;
enemy dominion is harmfull and you want to prevent it to influence your economy in some provinces;
your dominion is harmfull and you want it to influence economy in enemy provinces.

As far as I know, luck/misfortune is opposite between you and your opponents, so if you have lucky dominion it would bring misfortune to your enemy provinces and vise versa.

[318]

Thanks everyone for your responses!

[Chronia]

One other thing I didn't see mentioned: if you build labs or temples outside of forts, they are extremely vulnerable to being destroyed. They're razed immediately if you lose the provence. The AI isn't great at it, but other players will happily raid deep into your territory with a small or stralthy force just to burn down your investment (even if they can't hold the province long term).

[1337Dude]

Pangaea, and perhaps some other nations I'm unaware of, can built temples in forests at half cost. So someone play Pangaea might target forest provinces for cheap temples (and cheap fortresses later on).

[Draken]

Originally posted by Chronia:

One other thing I didn't see mentioned: if you build labs or temples outside of forts, they are extremely vulnerable to being destroyed. They're razed immediately if you lose the provence. The AI isn't great at it, but other players will happily raid deep into your territory with a small or stralthy force just to burn down your investment (even if they can't hold the province long term).

Temples are razed immediately, yes. Labs just switch owner and you can take them back.

[timlagor]

Originally posted by Kref:

As far as I know, luck/misfortune is opposite between you and your opponents, so if you have lucky dominion it would bring misfortune to your enemy provinces and vice versa.

That's a really important thing to know.

[Draken]

Originally posted by timlagor:

Originally posted by Kref:

As far as I know, luck/misfortune is opposite between you and your opponents, so if you have lucky dominion it would bring misfortune to your enemy provinces and vice versa.

That's a really important thing to know.

Wait what? That is something that I have never heard before. I also can't find anything about it in the manual. That would make luck/misfortune scales quite a bit stronger.

Anyone got any definite information or sources about that?

[berandro]

Originally posted by Draken:

Originally posted by timlagor:

That's a really important thing to know.

Wait what? That is something that I have never heard before. I also can't find anything about it in the manual. That would make luck/misfortune scales quite a bit stronger.

Anyone got any definite information or sources about that?

Yeah I don't think thats true?