Author: Naaira

Expansion is a fundamental and often-discussed topic amongst Dominions players, yet few actual guides exist. This is not a guide for the pros, the true masters of the multiverse, the expansermancers.

Rather, it is a tribute to mediocrity, to the enthusiastic amateurs who know somewhere deep down inside that they can become better at expanding.

Put on your expansion shoes, tighten that corset a notch and be prepared to learn a thing or two about expansion. Without further ado. Welcome to the first ever season of:

If you want to become the best expanser you need to practice. Whenever you play a new nation I suggest you set up a test game to test expansion. Even if you are an experienced player, different scales setups will affect the number of units you can make and this makes it worthwhile to do a simple expansion test. I suggest you do the following steps:

1. Create your pretender beforehand: Use the Tools & Manuals menu to Create a Pretender God. This allows you to easily restart if you want to do another expansion test.
2. Create the game: Create a new game and choose a map. If you have the option choose the map you will be playing on in the game. Set up the game with you vs one normal AI. Pick your nation and then pick your pretender. If you forget to pick your nation you will get a random assigned to you. When that happens it is easier to just force-quit Dominions (Alt-F4 in Windows) and start over the process. Remember to test with the same Independents' strength as in the game you are playing (usually 5).
3. Start testing: Do expansion testing. Add 6 PD to all provinces you conquer, and build forts when you have enough money while still recruiting at full capacity in your capital. Once you reach turn 12, i.e. when it becomes spring again, count the number of provinces you have managed to conquer.
4. Repeat: Create more tests games until you feel comfortable expanding with your nation of choice. If you adjust your pretender design, do a new test to see if you get a different province count.

If you are testing expansion as a disciples you should make both your Disciple and the Pretender God using the appropriate options in the Tools & Manuals menu. When launching the game you want to tick the Disciples game box and make sure both you and the Pretender nation are selected as human, and that the right nations and pretender and disciple are picked.. Once inside the game immediately set the Pretender nation to AI and proceed with your Disciples expansion test.

Sometimes you have a lot of gold piling up and you need some extra OUMPH!!. Don't worry, just press "b" and look at all the new friends just waiting to join your cause.

Mercenaries can be a good and inexpensive way of speeding up your expansion for nations that are recruitment-capped but still have gold to spend. It is also a way for land-locked nations to go underwater if the right mercenaries show up. To buy a mercenary do the following three steps:

1. Press "b"
2. Go to the Mod Inspector and search for the mercenary bands currently available by writing their names under the Merc tab.
3. Click on the province you want the mercenaries to appear in and place a reasonable bid on the mercenary bands you want.

The mercenaries differ a lot in strength. Don't expect Bindar's Mighty Markatas to carve a path through Heavy Cavalry - but maybe those monkeys can polster those lances nicely before the Heavy Cavalry hit your main line?

Every now and then you come up against independents that you know will cause you attrition. In those cases it may be a good idea to use a screen. A screen is a group of cheap units that you use as your frontline to take the initial charge. Usually this is combined with using your regular units as flanking units.

• When using screens remember that your army may automatically rout once it loses a lot of its total HP, either from attrition or because your screening units ran away. Your screening units should never make up 50%+ of your total HP. You might also want to place them in several groups.

Once you have a few games under your belt you might want to try your hand with some of the more finicky nations that require more finesse when expanding. Here are some examples of some unusual expansion strategies that might peak your interest.

A sizable number of nations have access to units with Flying. These range from some of the best units in the game (like Ragha's Zhayedans or EA Arcoscephale's Wind Riders) to some of the worst (like Xibalban Warriors). One of the big advantages when using flyers is their ability to fly into the backline. In many independent provinces that is where the commanders are located, and once they are dead the independents will rout.

If your flying expanders can survive archer or crossbow fire you can script them to "Hold and Attack rear". This will often have the effect of dividing the independent troops as faster units get ahead of their slower allies. Just remember to not leave your own commander all alone to take that heavy cavalry charge. To protect your commanders you can either make them jump in with your troops if they can fly (although that can be risky), or you can use bodyguards or a screen of non-flyers to protect them.

If your flying units melt to arrows (I'm looking at you Xibalba), you might want to use a sacrificial group on "Attack closest" with your larger group on "Hold and Attack rear". This is especially valuable when playing EA or LA Xibalba with a sacred offensive bless. The sacrificial group of cheap Zotz will decrease attrition on your sacreds significantly.

Units with Trample such as Elephants and Chariots can be used for expansion. If your nation has a trampler available, you might want to consider expanding with a trampler under two conditions:

1. You went for great income scales instead of a strong bless for expansion.
2. Your other options for expansion take a long time to get out (2-3 turns per expansion party).

Usually Tramplers have a high upfront gold cost. Just look at this War Elephant - 100 gold a piece! If you lose an expansion party of four elephants that is a big setback. Thus you want to test, test, test to make sure you know exactly what your elephants can handle and how to set them up prior to each battle.

Lucid demonstrates how to expand with elephants in this video. Similarly Dartimos and Saquenay discuss how to expand with elephants in this video.

Roman expansion refers the use of the two gladiator units, the Gladiator and the Retiarius. EA Ermor, Sceleria and MA and LA Pythium get access to these unique units. The gladiator units are unique for three reasons:

1. They only cost 1 resource point so they can be amassed very early as long as you have gold and recruitment points available.
2. They have above average stats for a human unit and high damage attacks in the form of a trident and a net or a two-attack flail.
3. They disappear after a fight where they either took a hit or succesfully hit an enemy unit.

Besides giving excellent protection against early rush, the gladiator units can be used to add much needed killing power against tough independents such as Heavy Cavalry, which the Retiarii with their nets are very well suited to deal with.

Against weak independents the gladiators are placed in the backfield on Hold and Attack with five on Guard Commander. Your regular troops are placed in the front on Attack (or Fire in case of javelin infantry). The idea is to kill off the independents before the gladiators make contact.

Against strong independents as many gladiators as you think are needed can be placed up front to participate in the fight. Either place them in front of your regular troops or to the side. The idea is to let the gladiators take the attrition while also guaranteeing the win due to being hardhitting troops.

Some nations have assassins that may help you expand, like Marignon's Assassin, Vaettiheim's Dimvaetti and Ctis' Empoisoner. Assassination expansion works in the following way:

1. You move your assassin to a province controlled by independents
2. Your assassin kills off all commanders during a couple of turns (if all goes well)
3. Once all independent commanders are dead you attack the province. The troops will rout at the beginning of combat since they lack a commander to lead them.

Assassination expansion is an effective way of dealing with hard-to-kill provinces like a lot of Heavy Cavalry or Crossbows. It is a slow process and should only be considered as a complement to regular expansion. However, it is also potentially a big trap! Let us look at why:

• Assassination expansion is much slower than regular expansion, often taking several turns. Ideally you want to ping each province you are trying to assassin to know the exact number of commanders in the province so you know when you are finished.
• If you are unlucky your assassin may die during assassination meaning you will have to bring in another assassin to finish the job.
• If you try to get a province near a neighbour, they could swoop in as you kill off the last commander, getting the province for free. For this reason, it is often best to 'backfill' provinces with assassins.

With all these objections in min there are several nations with access to assassins where their cap recruitment is throttle by something other than gold. In that case assassins can be an effective additional expansion party. Marignon and Vaettiheim are examples of nations that might consider complementing regular expansion with assassins.