How do Dominions work?

[Jagothegamer]

Hi all, I am new to the game and I think I have the basics down but I had a question about how your Dominions work. So, from my understanding, you get all the bonuses and debuffs that you had applied to your dominion at the start of the game, I'm assuming that it effects each settlement individually, and then enemies only suffer the debuffs without the buffs, but I also see that in some areas that have my dominion, that they have additional negative effects that I do not have in my dominion as I had originally made it? Can someone kind of explain them to me? I am playing in the middle ages as Assyria(?) (The fire and half demon people)

[Draken]

You dominion is like the sphere of influence of your faith.
All the positive and negative effects will spread to everywhere it spreads.

Some other effects can overwrite your dominion scales. Like there are some pretty famous death sites that cause a province to always have the maximum death, no matter what dominion is on it. Spells can also alter scales. As can some events.

[Murmur]

At the start of the game you choose the maximum strength of your dominion (shown as white candles) and the effects it has (known as scales) You get all the positive and negative effects of your dominion, choosing a negative is a trade-off for getting more points to spend after all. However, there are other bonuses to having a Dominion. Your troops get a morale bonus while enemy troops take a hit to morale for fighting in it. Your pretender god and Prophet also get buffs for fighting in your Dominion and debuffs for fighting in hostile Dominion. If your Dominion gets pushed out of existence, then your god dies and you lose.

So you'll want to spread it as far as you can. Your Pretender and Prophet spread it, as well as any thrones you claimed. Having temples also spreads it, and building more temples adds to the maximum Dominion strength you have. You can have priests preach to help push you Dominion is needed.

If there's effects in your Dominion that you can't account for, there's a few things that can be blamed. There's events that can change the scales of a province, some magic sights also affect the scales. There's also spells that change scales. Or it could be that the scales from your enemy are clinging on, but time should deal with that if you're pushing them back.

[anaris]

You will actually see scales lag a little behind - a dominion seems to push scales in proportion to the number of candles present, and natural seasonal temperatures and climates push back a little, so at low scores you might see your capital province having an incomplete set of bonuses turn one for example.

I'd also note the most common cause of changing scales - you get +1 cold in winter and +2 cold in midwinter, and +1 heat in summer and +2 in highsun. seasons are three turns, so that's +2 during the middle turn.

[SaD-82]

Originally posted by Jagothegamer:

but I also see that in some areas that have my dominion, that they have additional negative effects that I do not have in my dominion as I had originally made it?

Such as?
Keep in mind that you just see the scales in a province - those scales can be influenced via magical sites, or former dominions of either other nations or that nation in particular (scales only slowly change over time) or events.

If you see a province in your sphere of dominion having a massive difference in a certain scale - chances are pretty high that there is a magical site which is responsible for that.

[junkmail4mjd]

Originally posted by anaris:

You will actually see scales lag a little behind - a dominion seems to push scales in proportion to the number of candles present, and natural seasonal temperatures and climates push back a little, so at low scores you might see your capital province having an incomplete set of bonuses turn one for example.

I'd also note the most common cause of changing scales - you get +1 cold in winter and +2 cold in midwinter, and +1 heat in summer and +2 in highsun. seasons are three turns, so that's +2 during the middle turn.

no longer the case its now just + or - 1

[anaris]

it is? wait why is my capital heat 5 then

[Mormacil]

Originally posted by anaris:

it is? wait why is my capital heat 5 then

Playing muspelheim?

[anaris]

Originally posted by Mormacil:

Originally posted by anaris:

it is? wait why is my capital heat 5 then

Playing muspelheim?

Not yet, and I've seen temp 5 provinces several times in several different games

[anaris]

My best guess is I've been getting "lucky" with warm and cold provinces, which are a map thing now

[ulzgoroth]

Not a hot summer event? Those happen quite a bit.

There are also various +heat phenomena, but AFAIK all of them should be either visible to you or not present in your capitol.

[anaris]

There's a "warmer than normal province" modifier, and another for cold, that can be randomly generated or encoded at map level. I thiiiink capitals could generate in those, they're not excluded by any mod command for nations. Unless I see this more consistently I'm gonna assume it's something like that.