Could some explain dominion and candles

[Stars-N-Stripes]

Specific to a single player game, you start out and conquer as many territories as possible, currently I held around 20 on the center of the map, then I start getting attacked randomly and losing territory which I fight to regain at the same time that is going on my yellow border keeps sharing despite me sending out prophets to preach.

I seem to be stuck in a loop now of constantly have to fight to keep my land but all my dominion is shrinking. Unless I put 75 defense in almost every area I simply can't keep things going and that in turn kills my resources.

I'm sure I'm stuck in a newb loop but anyone offer any advice on how to manage all of this?

[Mormacil]

Dominion has nothing to do with your territory. Your dominion is the level of influence your pretender has on the world. This is represented ingame by the scales and bless you choose before the game modified by certain things like Thrones of Ascension.

When your dominion reaches zero and not a single place in the world believes in your pretender as a god you automatically lose the game. Dominion can be measured from 1 to 10 candles. Every temple, preaching priest and blood sacrificing priest spreads your dominion to the maximum amount you're allowed to have.

That is your starting dominion + the number of temples divided by 5 I think. So you can increase your maximum up to 10 even if you don't start with it. But it beyond economical unless you have cheaper than average temples generally.

When to dominions meet the level of candles matter. The larger the difference the harder the rolls needed to resist the enemy dominion get. This again can be modified to an extent. Certain factions have a bonus and thrones and ascension can also add modifiers.

The AI really liked building a lot of temples and preaching with a lot of priests. You can't just select 5 candles as your maximum and then build a temple in the handful of forts you control. You will be preached to death. You will need to match the temples of your enemy or match that with blood sacrificing.

Honorable mention to Mictlan which has a special mechanic where their dominion both dwindles and their priests can't actually preach.

[Draken]

Mormacil already covered most of the stuff.

Some additions: All your units get +1 morale for fights in your own dominion. And -1 for fights in enemy dominion. So fighting in your own dominion can be quite a boon, especially if you have a lot of low morale units. Or the enemy is causing a lot of morale checks.

Your prophet and pretender also get a hp bonus in friendly and a malus in enemy territory. So be careful where you fight with them.

Also while the amount of candles you can have in a province is capt at 10, the actual dominion score isn't. So with a starting dominion of 10 and 25 temples you can get a dominion of 15. This should give you more holy points, allowing you to recruit more sacred units. I think a higher dominion also gives you an edge in trying to get rid of enemy candles.

Last about preaching, there is a limit how much a priest can increase your candles depending on their priest level. A holy 1 priest preaching in a 9 candle province will not accomplish anything. Temples are far better at spreading dominion, and you should probably put one in every fort you have if you can afford it.

[onomastikon]

What they said, I'll just add:
The manual and the wiki both have some more details about this.
Your Prophet and your pretender (as long as it is awake) also both spread dominion.
Mictlan is unique amongst all nations in that its dominion cannot be spread normally by preaching or temple checks, it can ONLY be spread by sacrificing (although I think pretender and prophet still spread normally?). I don't have any experience with mictlan.
Generally you don't want to have your dominion (and thus your candles) drop too low. If your scales are bad it won't matter as much, but otherwise as was said above it can make things difficult for you and could potentially cause a loss.

Originally posted by Draken:

Also while the amount of candles you can have in a province is capt at 10, the actual dominion score isn't. So with a starting dominion of 10 and 25 temples you can get a dominion of 15.

Are you sure about this?

[Draken]

Originally posted by onomastikon:

Are you sure about this?

Just checked:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3011887152
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3011887060

The maximum number of candles is still only 10. So a Pretender/Prophet will only get +5 MR, +10 Strenght and +100% Hitpoints.

Edit: But it will help with something like trying to push into enemy dominion as that formula uses the maximum dominion:

If the province contains enemy dominion, the chance for you to reduce it by one is 50% plus (your maximum dominion strength times 5%) minus (current enemy dominion in the province times 5%).

So with a maximum dominion of 20, you would always succeed with spreading into enemy dominion, even if they had 10 candles.