Disciple games

How team games work: one pretender per team, disciples who serve it, one shared dominion, and the questions the manual leaves open.

verified 6.37updated 2026-10-02 · Jake6 min read

A disciple game is the game’s way of letting players share a side without giving up the idea that only one god can win. Each team has a single pretender. Every other player on the team is a disciple who serves that god. This page collects what the manual says about how that changes setup, dominion, blessings and income, and where it falls silent.

The manual’s rules are restated here and nothing is measured. The last section lists what we could not find.

Setting up teams

On the participants screen of game setup there is a checkbox for a disciple game. Ticking it adds a team column and a pretender-or-disciple column. You change a player’s team, or switch the role, by clicking the team number or the role word.

The screen will not let you confirm until each team holds exactly one pretender. Any number of disciples may stand beside that pretender, including none. The manual says plainly that teams need not be balanced and need not have equal numbers of disciples.

Hosts who start games from the command line have matching options: one assigns a nation to a team with a role (1 for pretender, 2 for disciple), one turns on the team game, and two others choose clustered or edge start positions for a team game.

Making a disciple

A disciple is not built like a pretender. The manual gives these differences.

• Fewer points. A disciple has 400 points to spend, where a pretender has 450. See Pretender design for what the points buy.
• Only form and magic. A disciple chooses a physical form and magic paths. It has no dominion strength and no scales.
• No awakening choice. The disciple cannot choose whether it starts awake. It awakens in about half the time its pretender takes, so only an awake god begins the game with awake disciples. The manual’s reason is that the disciples herald the god.

One dominion for the team

A team has a single dominion, the pretender’s. The manual lists what disciples add to it.

• A disciple’s temple spreads the pretender’s dominion, not a dominion of its own.
• A disciple unit also spreads it, counted as a prophet would be: one temple check. In the manual’s list of dominion sources a disciple is worth one check.
• Disciple units gain strength, hit points and magic resistance inside their god’s dominion, as a prophet does.

Team size also sets the top of the dominion scale. Your cap in any province is the pretender’s starting dominion score, plus one more for each block of temples you own, a block being five temples per teammate. The manual works one case: two to a team, twelve temples, starting dominion 3, giving a cap of 4. Dominion covers the rest of how spread and contest work.

Prophets are handled differently. In a disciple game no one appoints a prophet, because the disciples take that role. Only a pretender with no disciples can appoint one.

Blessings

Pretenders and disciples are sacred and are blessed automatically inside their own dominion. They are not blessed outside it, and cannot be blessed there.

A blessed sacred unit gets every bless effect from each throne claimed by its own nation or by disciple nations. So a throne a disciple claims helps the whole team’s sacred troops. See Thrones of Ascension.

Income, allies and provinces

• Taxation. Income needs a chain of friendly provinces leading to a friendly fort, or the province pays nothing that turn. Allied territory can form part of that chain in disciple games.
• Forts and provinces. In team games a fort and the province it stands in may have different owners from the same team. In step 53 of the turn sequence such a fort takes the province, so the fort’s owner wins.
• Relinquishing. A commander with the Relinquish Province order hands the province to a non-stealthed allied commander already there (step 21). The manual lists this for disciple games and says it reduces provincial defence by 25 per cent. See Province defence.
• Gift of Health. The manual says this global enchantment also reaches allied nations in disciple games, curing afflictions for them while their dominion stays positive.

Losing the god

If a pretender dies, calling the dead god back needs 50 per cent more points in a disciple game. The manual gives no other change to the call, and does not say what becomes of the disciples while the god is dead.

Nations that behave differently

Several nation entries say what a disciple gets. They are the manual’s wording, summarised.

• Arcoscephale: its scrying information is shared with disciple players.
• Mictlan: its dying dominion applies to it whether it is god or disciple.
• Yomi: disciples do not get its special dominion feature for Oni.
• R’lyeh, Ermor, Asphodel, C’tis: the world effects of the god’s dominion hit disciple lands too. The manual warns that serving such a god will not be easy. Underwater disciples of C’tis avoid the effect, and a disciple’s sacred troops are immune to it.
• Agartha: constructs get more hit points in its dominion, and that helps disciples who have any.
• Phlegra: the unrest effect matters only when the god is the Phlegra player, and then it affects the disciples too.
• Therodos: the effect on population and the ghosts from forts apply to disciples as well.
• Phaeacia: disciples do not gain Dark Vessels, though a Phaeacian disciple can use them in the lands of its pretender’s dominion.
• Blood-sacrifice nations: the ability is not passed to disciples, but a disciple whose own nation has it can still use it.
• Nations that hide province ownership: disciples of such a pretender benefit too.

What the manual leaves out

• Who wins. The manual says one god can win in the end, and a game ends when a victory condition is met (step 57 of the turn sequence). It does not say how ascension points are counted for a team, whether teammates share a win, or whether a pretender’s elimination ends the disciples’ game.
• Elimination. A pretender with no friendly dominion anywhere is eliminated. The manual does not say how that applies to a disciple.
• Disciple death. There is no rule given for what happens when a disciple’s commander dies, or whether it can be called back.
• Teams without disciples. A team of one pretender is allowed. The manual does not list how that differs from an ordinary game apart from the prophet rule above.