As you surmised, the game politely informed me of what was missing, lol. But thanks, the link helped a lot.
Oh, and I found a wonderful little lie while browsing the last 16 pages to get up to speed:
Fifth game here. Each time I play with a different nation, so this is Golem Cult first timer.
And just as all of you, I'm terribly bad at it, oh please don't attack me, I'm no threat, pretty please.
Sure you are, Il Palazzo.
You know what? Someone should really do a Dominions III Let's Play.
Think about it. Just set yourself up in a nice big world with lots of other AI pretenders, and set yeself loose. Name and customize generals and heroes according to your viewers, and have them cut out swathes of land and castles for themselves. Choose where to place fortresses and which spell schools to research.
I've heard some crazy people going on about how 'easy' it is to do away with the AI. Well, doing a Let's Play for an audience generally results in less-than-prime performance, so it should help to even the scales a bit.
And more than that, Dominions III is excellent as a Let's Play. It's turn-based, so snapping shots is easy. And getting shots of the battles is also easy enough as you can replay a battle as many times as you like.
Fun stuff, eh?
I think this would be most interesting with the Survival or Heroes of Agatha mod, as those provide an easy way to make any grunt into a commander. Forumites can chose-their-own-Avatar!
Finally, how many turns did my predecessor not play? Was it the five stalls as per the previous rule, or more?