Dominion scales are the representation of the effect that the belief in one’s pretender god affects not only the populace but the very fabric of a province. When creating a pretender, you choose the way in which your religious belief changes the cosmic forces in provinces where your dominion holds sway.

Each scale has a favorable side and an unfavorable side. For example, Growth is the favorable side of the Growth/Death scale. You can guess which side Death is. For each tip of the scale, bonuses or penalties accrue to the province under the sway of that dominion.

You can gain extra points for pretender creation by choosing unfavorable scales. Scales tip both ways, which is why they're called scales.

Scales are influenced by magic sites in a province, even if the site has not been discovered. Random events can often cause temporary changes in scales, as well as some events requiring certain scales to occur.

The Event system interacts a lot with the scales. The following interactions have been observed so far:

• The scales in a province determine which events can fire in said province. Once the game has determined that a province will experience an event, all events that meet minimum scales requirements (if any) will be added to a pool of events that the game then selects from.
• The amount of random events a nation gets (disregarding Bringers of Fortune/Misfortune) is affected only by the scales in their capital. These events are then doled out to random provinces the nation has, and the event that occurs is then determined by the scales in the province selected. More research has to be done to determine if this stays true while the capital is held by another nation.
• Luck from enemy dominion in one of your provinces does not increase your chance of getting positive events (just like most other positive scales). However enemy scales in your provinces do change the event pool available to you.
• E.g. you took Misfortune 2 and conquer an enemy province with Luck 3 Magic 3. Because of your scales you get 10% more events and those events are 20% less likely to be good. If an event fires in your newly conquered province the event pool will include the events that have Luck 3 Magic 3 as requirement, and it will remove the events requiring Misfortune 2 or worse. However the chance of having a good event vs a bad event will remain the same in that province as in your other provinces since that chance is determined by your capital's scales.

Your opponents' dominion spread their hostile scales, just as your dominion spreads yours. No difference is made in how scales came to be, be it from friendly dominion, hostile dominion, random events, magic sites, etc. However, scales affect a province differently depending on whether the current dominion is friendly or hostile, i.e. if the candles are white or black.

A general rule of thumb is that you only get negative effects from scales in hostile dominion. The growth scale is the exception to this rule.

Temperature fluctuates according to the season. In general winter will reduce temperature by 1 and summer will increase it by 1. In midwinter and midsummer temperature will decrease/increase by an additional scale. Because of these fluctuations temperature does not consistently cause its income loss effects of 5% per scale. Over a period of 12 months, you will suffer the following income loss if you are at your preferred tempature.

Nation preference	3	2	1	0	1	2	3
Base income loss	1.67%	2.92%	3.33%	3.33%	3.33%	2.92%	1.67%

These seasonal changes also causes the amount of income you lose per scale taken to be inconsistent. You can find the approximate amount of income you lose by inspecting the table below. If you choose the column that corresponds to your nation's heat preference you can see the income you lose from going up or down a single scale. For example, a nation with a 1 preference going from 1 to 2 will lose about 2.08% income, and an additional 2.92% for going from 2 to 3

		Nation Preference
		3	2	1	0	1	2	3
Scale	3	Base	-1.25%	-2.92%	-3.75%	-4.50%	-3.75%	-3.75%
	2	-3.75%	Base	-2.08%	-3.75%	-4.58%	-4.58%	-4.58%
	1	-4.58%	-2.92%	Base	-2.50%	-4.17%	-5.00%	-5.00%
	0	-5.00%	-4.17%	-2.50%	Base	-2.50%	-4.17%	-5.00%
	1	-5.00%	-5.00%	-4.17%	-2.50%	Base	-2.92%	-4.58%
	2	-4.58%	-4.58%	-4.58%	-3.75%	-2.08%	Base	-3.75%
	3	-3.75%	-3.75%	-4.50%	-3.75%	-2.92%	-1.25%	Base

Note that because scales are multiplicative, not additive, this table is just an approximation(See the FAQ below for more details)

The chosen scales also affect the game in a few other ways:

• The local scales in a province govern which random events are available.
• The local temperature governs whether rivers and mountain passes can be crossed. Provinces with cold scales suffer snow, which increases movement costs.
• Some blesses require certain scale choices.
• The chosen Luck/Misfortune scale governs the chances of heroes showing up at your capital.
• Some units have abilities that mean they are stronger and fight better in provinces with certain scales, and possibly weaker and fight worse in provinces with opposite scales. Some nations have many units that prefer, for example cold, turmoil or magic scales.

The scales in a province under your dominion will likely not initially exactly correspond to the scales you’ve chosen. This is because the dominion scales in a province change more slowly than the level of dominion. It may take several turns of strong dominion over a province to tip the scales to the settings you chose at the outset. If you have low dominion over a province, your scales will likely never ramp up to full value.

When you create your pretender, the dominion scales you choose will spread with your dominion. This does not all occur at once – if you have Order 3, provinces with low friendly dominion may only gain Order 1 or 2. Over time, they will reflect your chosen scales. Each turn a province has your dominion in it there will be a small chance for each scale to tip one step towards your chosen dominion. The chance for this to happen is (5% multiplied by the dominion level in the province) plus (10% multiplied by the difference between the actual scale and your nation's scale).

Thus, a big difference between your scales and the scales in a province makes the provincial scales react more quickly. Once the difference has become small, the chance of tipping the scales is reduced. Likewise, having a strong dominion in a province makes the provincial scales change faster (but this is only half as important as the difference in scales is).

• Do you get the income boost from Growth if there are black candles in your province?
  • Yes! You don't get the income boosts from Order or Productivity scales, though.

• How do multiple scales interact? The Pretender Screen adds them together
  • This is false. Scales are actually multiplied in the following way : Base Value*(1+Order/Turmoil mod)*(1+Prod/Sloth mod)…etc. (See for example the income calculation formula). Thus, taking Order 1 and Production 1 doesn't give a 6% bonus to income as shown, but instead, it's a 6.09% boost. When Sloth and Order interact, it doesn't zero out, but instead you gain 99.9% of the income you excepted. The end result is that multiplying negative scales won't be a drastic as it appears while multiplying positive scales will be slightly better than it seems. The biggest change is that that negative and positive scales will result in slightly worse income (or Production) than it appears.