Sylvania campain is HARD

[Zetoc]

So ive tried two times to play as sylvania in Imortal impires.
And i run into the same problems. most of the impire declares war on me and attack just after i unite sylvania. same with Zufbar. I cant afford more than 1 and ½ army. cant hold all of at ones. any tips?

[Jukelo]

Played a VH Isabella campaign recently, start was a walk in the park. Vlad on his own is unkillable and can easily keep at least half of a full stack occupied.
Don't worry too much about upgrading settlements, recruitment is done by raising the dead. You don't need fancy units, just enough zombies to tarpit the enemy while you spam wind of death with your vampires. Ambushes are your friend as is usual for rush factions.
Isabella also has the advantage of having diplo upgrades to make life a bit easier in the empire (I actually allied with the order factions around me against the chaos tide).

[Zetoc]

Messaggio originale di gg:

As VC you will never have a lvl 2-3 minor settlement , until every faction on the map is gone.
As others have said just upgrade Drakenhof and other province capitols .
Or just go play something that is fun , raising dead on every front with chaff is boring after the 100 time .

yeah i guess its becouse i tried to play them as other races. oh well

[Lady MacBeth]

Bear in mind too alot of us have been playing vampires off and on for like 6 years. They haven't changed must really as far as play style in that time overall. Sure theres the bloodlines and stuff we didn't have in wh1. But at the end of the day they still play basically the same just without infinite regen since they capped healing back in the day.

[kilen]

The key with VCounts is to level up fast and win many times while killing many units to get plenty of xp for the characters (lord&hero) in the first 50to80 turns.
Just recruiting garbage (zombie spam) and blobbing them to spread the dmg taken.
Just like LoTW was doing in wh2 with his skeleton spams except now it’s with zombies that you can get the better of it, specially with Ghorst (but any VC LL really).

And mostly to level up as many heroes and lords as you can.
Doing like 3-4-5 battles avrg per turn, every turn.
Not necessarily expand, it’s nice if you can, but mostly unlock heroes, winning battles and push your heroes up to lvl15-25 asap.
And the rest only garbage units, reducing the upkeep as much as you can to get as many armies as you can and make them fight by pairs or even in triades per front, etc.
The trick is to not see the enemy armies constantly coming as threats but as opportunities to farm xp.
As long as your major settlements are safe, it’s fine. Don’t mind the others.
Building up settlements cost a fortune with VCounts anyway, that can wait.
Just developed major settlements to get many heroes as soon as possible and don’t be lazy, you must do as many battles as possible even if it’s quite repetitive and can be a bit long and boring with time to always do the same trick (blobbing garbage units and grind the enemy down).
But it works well and allow you many armies, which is coherent lorewise. You can always go more thematic armies in late to very late game, after you pushed the core of your forces (your heroes) to maximal potential and levelled them up as often as possible, surrounded by canon fodder…
You must go quantity over quality with VCounts, it’s the philosophy behind it, or it cost too much and you can easily get overwhelmed on multiple fronts.

[Lamp]

The simplest and best advice I can give you for Sylvania is to manually fight every battle and utilize tf out of Vlad the Chad.

Unless you're specifically cultivating a graveyard, that is. In my last Vlad game recently I just went landgrabbing and building the 250 gold buildings like others have said and nothing can stop the momentum. You have a pyrrhic victory? Good. Fresh bodies and elite units for next turn, and the march goes on.

[Basarab Laiota]

Messaggio originale di Kalvix:

My solution was don't upgrade any town, purely get the gibbet for +250 gold and leave em at level 1, funnelling all your money into more and more armies, and use raise dead a lot.

this is pretty much what i was gonna say; just get a strong OP army rolling and destroy hostile factions around you. leave towns undeveloped, you can come back later to build them up. Growth is really quick in this game so you can still develop them quite rapidly later on, when you don't have everyone trying to murder you

[Greldinart]

vampire are extremly strong faction, you need to know the tricks,
1/WIND OF DEATH spell, masterize it, make blob ennemies, terrorize them and easy victory,
2/build only economic building, all your armies can come from rise the dead, for optimize it, arrange biggest casualties battle.

[B Rad Mojad]

Last time I played as them on Hard/Hard, I mostly focused on attacking and sacking my enemies to weaken them and pouring that money into upgrading Drakenhof and Templehof. Vampire buildings are expensive and I didn't have much passive income since I was fielding as many armies as I could afford without actually losing money each turn. Once I had those provinces upgraded I would focus on my next most secure ones as my armies pushed into new frontiers.

My initial armies recruited most of their elite units from "raise dead," as high tier units were available there long before I could afford to build the required buildings. New armies would eventually be recruited in Drakenhof to save the raise dead units for emergency recruitment.

[FrozenVagabond]

That's one of easiest factions for me. Replace a part of your armies with zombies, try not to build military buildings everywhere, make use of raise dead, you should be good.

Or, another way you can do is to try out the dwarfs or Imrik, see how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up they are, then when you go back for vampires you will find them easy :-P

[Lady MacBeth]

Messaggio originale di FrozenVagabond:

Or, another way you can do is to try out the dwarfs or Imrik, see how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up they are, then when you go back for vampires you will find them easy :-P

Thorgrim is super easy imo. I haven't played any of the others since wh1. But ever since they moved grimgor Thorgrim became alot easier. No need to rush grimgor down to stop a greentide from becoming too much.

[Cynical Jester]

I never had a problem with the vampires, I think drakenhoff? is the main city you want to build up for its gold output. Of course I play them quite differently when conquering territory in the sense that when I'm at war, specifically with the Empire, I'll either draw them out with a weaker army, crush their army then immediately move to their cities and raze them one by one. Repopulating only once the war is over.

It's incredibly important to use raise dead to maintain your armies. Merge units who are weakened by battle and raise dead. If you fight enough you will get more powerful monsters to raise.

[FrozenVagabond]

Messaggio originale di Ming:

Messaggio originale di FrozenVagabond:

Or, another way you can do is to try out the dwarfs or Imrik, see how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up they are, then when you go back for vampires you will find them easy :-P

Thorgrim is super easy imo. I haven't played any of the others since wh1. But ever since they moved grimgor Thorgrim became alot easier. No need to rush grimgor down to stop a greentide from becoming too much.

Idk, probably they just don't fit my style.

[EvilVictor]

The fun part about the VC is that your units in your armies are 100% expendable so you don't have to worry about preserving anything except your lords & heroes. There's also a nice little health boost trait for your lord when you win battles with high casualties in your army. Once you get used to that, it's a nice change of pace from all the other factions. Your lords & heroes should be leveling up fast if they're the ones doing all of the killing.

Your choice of Vlad or Izzy for faction leader will boil down to preference. I prefer Vlad as the lord as having vanguard deployment for your entire army is crazy good when you have all melee armies. Vampires heroes are a little better with Izzy, but they're already quite good without her buff.

I never really want or need allies, I prefer to be able to raze/sack everything without worry about who gives a crap if I'm at war with somebody else. It's that whole, "the world will drown in blood" thing.

For settlements I will build up a few, I think the magic number of level 3 growth buildings is 6 to get you fresh necromancer heroes with overcast wind of death and the other good skills you'll want. And I think at 8 of those buildings you can start them with the corpse cart (unholy lodestone) mount which is way better than the unit version and just as expendable if you can get them that way when recruited.

As an added bonus, they're one of the few factions that can be fun to play on the offensive side of a siege battle if you have a good number of bats, varghiests and vampires on hellsteeds. Vlad will spend most of the fight pounding on the front door but the units can clear the walls while the heroes kill everything else and you don't need any siege engines or artillery, those are for kids.

[Rhingeim]

It's not that hard once you understand few things about your legendary lords:

Isabella as leader and Vlad as hero make a decent combo to farm up a lot of blood kisses for quick bloodlines unlock. Pairing Lahmia bloodlines + Vlad perk + tech can make you Empire's best buddy. Making dwarfs vassals will give boost to relationships with dwarfs. Vlad at some point can solo full stacks of units. And even if your unit is wiped in combat, high vampire corruption can make it back after fight. Also, Mortis Engine.

Also, you can save a lot of money by not building military buildings. Raising dead can be very useful in the very long run.

[Ashley]

Messaggio originale di gg:

As VC you will never have a lvl 2-3 minor settlement , until every faction on the map is gone.
As others have said just upgrade Drakenhof and other province capitols .
Or just go play something that is fun , raising dead on every front with chaff is boring after the 100 time .

Wrong and incorrect

Sounds like a skill issue. Generally yes I won't bother building minor settlements if I don't think they are are safe. Because you need to rush up to tier 4-5 anyway. But it's not hard as VC to pick a direction, conquer it and build up that region while you pick another direction