Glad you are having fun with this game. I had a similar experience, in where I bounced off from Dominions 3 but I eventually tried again in Dom4 and it was then when I finally ‘got it’.
Some comments on your games
First game. Look at what types of troops there are in the indie provinces. Avoid heavy cavalry, they can kill Pretenders, or hurt them badly.
Third game. Don’t let overflow your resources so much. This isn’t even a hint for Dom5, but a general strategy thing. Build temples on your territory and hire priests and let them spread your dominion with that money to avoid being dominion-invaded.
Fourth game. Don’t attack AI factions nilly-willy. The game don’t have a proper diplomacy screen but internally the AI can be at ‘peace’ or at ‘war’ with you. In other words, try to attack them one by one. Also don’t pick random AI, pick normal AI in the setup screen.
Fifth game. Yeah Ys is pretty much a one-trick-pony, focused on their excellent sacred troops and sacred leaders (thugs).
Sixth game. Ulm don’t have sacred troops, they are special like that. But they still can do a good amount of magic, you just have to know good combos. In fact, surely you still have to learn all that magic can do, with communions, item boosting, etc.
Your questions.
-
There is no hard rule, but yeah, temples should be built on provinces you think it will be hard to attack, at least. How many? Well, my friend, that depends on how many temples the opposition build, too, so it’s hard to say. Just start building more if you see your dominion start to shrink a bit. It also depends of yours and his Dominion score, so yeah hard to say.
-
Build more fortress to have more places where you can recruit good quality troops and mages. The recruitment limit is per province, so just have more provinces with castles. In special recruit mages. Number of fortresses is the ‘cap’ to your mage recruitment per turn, that’s the true reason veteran players build them.
-
I would say most people play on the default settings.
-
While there are a pair of high level teleport spells, they aren’t common or cheap enough to use them just to avoid micro. Fiddly micromanagement is 80% Dominions, to be honest. You can only try to learn all the key shortcuts to try to reduce the amount of micro per turn, but even then, Dominions is a micro heavy game, it’s the reason after my first 200 hours, I play it much more infrequently, even if there are still lots of nations I haven’t played.
Armies at least can remember their destination province from turn to turn, in Dominions 4 you had move them again each turn!