Looks like I got dominion killed. I'm still not sure how dominion works, a temple and three priests preaching wasn't enough to even keep one province alive?
Each temple has a chance of creating a candle each turn, dependent on your pretender's dominion strenght(dom x 10 = percentile chance; you can check these by clicking on your temple icon on the side of the screen). A living pretender creates one candle at 100%, plus two temple-like chances. Your prophet creates one temple-like chance.
Additionally, every five temples built increase your pretender's dominion strenght by one, meaning a 10% increase in the probability of candle creation for all your existing temples etc.
A candle can either settle in the province it was created in, or travel to neighbouring provinces.
I'm not sure how preaching works - if it creates a candle at 100% or just as if you had an additional temple?
Anway, all you had there, dominion spreading-wise, was one temple at probably around 50%, plus four priests creating max four candles, but maybe less. All together you could get 5 candles with some luck.
Now, each of your neighbours "invaded" your provinces with their dominion. Myself, having 15 temples, a prophet and my pretender, with temples spreading currently at 90% had around 20 near-certain candles created each turn. Even if half of them went to combat Jomon's dominion, you can see how what you've had there was not enough.
And that's not even taking into account Arco's dominion spread.
Anyway, thanks for playing and sticking with us till the end.