Thrones of Ascension

The default victory condition: how thrones are set up, who can claim one, what a claimed throne gives, and what the manual does not say.

verified 6.37updated 2026-10-02 · Jake7 min read

A Throne of Ascension is a province that holds a seat of divine power. In the default game, owning enough of them is how a pretender becomes the one true god and ends the game. The thrones also spread your dominion and bless your sacred troops, so they matter well before the victory arrives.

Everything here is the manual’s own account, plus counts taken from the Inspector’s site records. We have not re-measured any of it, and the last section lists what neither source tells us.

The victory condition

The host picks the victory rule on the Thrones tab of game setup. Holding enough thrones is the default and the manual’s suggestion. The alternative is a pure conquest game, where the only way to win is to eliminate every other player and thrones play no part.

The thrones only come into play if the throne victory condition is selected. Pick the conquest rule and the thrones are not part of the game. The in-game thrones screen, reached with F9, shows the thrones active in your game, if there are any.

After each turn is resolved, the game looks for a fulfilled victory condition and, if it finds one, names the winner and closes the game. That is step 57 of the turn sequence.

What you choose when you set up a game

Two things are set by the host.

• How many thrones. For each of the three levels the host enters a count, and the map gets that many. A level 1 throne gives 1 ascension points and is guarded barely better than a normal province. A level 3 throne gives 3 and is expected to be hard to conquer. Level 2 sits between them; the manual describes it no further.
• How many points win. The host also sets the total a player needs in order to ascend and take the game. The command-line help lists a required-points option whose default is one less than the sum of all thrones. The setup text does not repeat that default, so confirm it on your own setup screen.

The same help text shows the thrones option taking three numbers, one for each level, and a separate option for the Cataclysm turn.

Claiming a throne

A throne does nothing for you until you claim it, and claiming takes an order. The manual calls it the Claim Throne of Ascension order. It names three kinds of unit that can claim a throne: a pretender, a prophet, or a priest of level 3. Any other commander cannot.

The claim is settled in step 8 of the turn sequence, called Claim thrones. That comes after recruitment, empowerment, forging, preaching and heretic preaching, and before magic rituals and every battle of the turn. So the claim is resolved ahead of this turn’s fighting. This is a statement about the order of steps, not a tested result.

The manual does not say where the claimant must stand. We have not tested it.

What a claimed throne gives you

A claimed throne has three uses.

• Ascension points. It counts toward the total you need to win. A level 1 throne is worth 1 point, a level 3 throne 3.
• Dominion. A province holding a claimed throne spreads its owner’s dominion in the way a temple does. The manual puts the number of temple checks (see temple check) from one throne at 1 to 7, differing between thrones. An unclaimed throne spreads nothing. Dominion explains what each check does.
• Blessings. Only sacred units can be blessed, and a blessed unit gets every bless effect of each throne claimed by its nation or by disciple nations. This is on top of the effects bought for the pretender. The bless effects are different for each throne. See Pretender design for how the pretender’s own blessings are bought.

Elsewhere the manual names two thrones, in its forging rules. If the Throne of Creation has been claimed, or the Throne of the Artificer has, artifacts become more likely to start yearning for their creation, with 50 per cent added to the rate for each such claim. It describes no other throne.

The Inspector’s throne records

The Dom6 Inspector keeps one record per magic site. Seventy-four of those records carry throne names, among them the Throne of Creation, the White Throne and the Black Throne. All 74 belong to the holy path with a rarity of 11, 12 or 13, split 36, 26 and 12. Those counts are the Inspector’s, not the manual’s.

Each of the 74 records has a spreads-dominion value. Tallied:

• 34 have a value of 1.
• 24 have a value of 2.
• 13 have a value of 3.
• 2 have a value of 5.
• 1 has a value of 7. It is the only record that also carries a dominion conflict bonus of 2 and a bonus to the Call God order.

This agrees with the manual’s statement that a throne spreads dominion with from 1 to 7 checks. Fifteen of the records also carry a throne clustering value, from 1 to 5. Other effects vary: some add gold or resources, some change a scale, and several bring evil or wild defenders. The full records are in the magic sites table.

What we cannot tell from the data is which of the 74 sites are placed as Thrones of Ascension in a given game, or whether a site’s rarity is the same thing as its level. The Inspector shows rarity, not level, and the numbers do not line up neatly with the counts of dominion value, so we do not treat them as the same.

Guardians

The manual says only that a level 1 throne is marginally better defended than an ordinary province and a level 3 throne is very hard to take. It names no guard units and gives no numbers. Some of the Inspector’s throne records list defenders of their own, evil or wild ones, which we take to mean that those sites bring their own guards, but the data does not say how that combines with the province’s ordinary defence.

The Cataclysm

The Cataclysm is an optional setting that ends the game at a chosen turn. Horrors then appear and begin destroying thrones. Each throne destroyed lowers the number of ascension points needed, so someone should reach it soon after it begins. If nobody owns a throne when the last of them is destroyed, the horrors win. The manual calls these horrors very powerful. While it runs, the world’s magic scale rises, and rituals, forging and empowerment can draw them to the casting mage.

What the manual leaves out

• Losing a claimed throne. The manual does not say what happens to a claim when an enemy takes the province, when the claiming commander dies, or when the throne holder is wiped out. We do not know whether a conqueror must claim it again. The claim step comes before the battles that movement causes, but the manual does not connect that to what happens after a capture.
• Level 2. The setup text describes level 1 and level 3 only. It gives no point value for level 2, though the range of 1 to 3 implies 2.
• Guards. There are no numbers for what defends a throne.
• Disciple games. The manual says disciple nations share the bless effects of a claimed throne, but not how ascension points are counted for a team.