A rant/list of issues with Vampire Counts in TWWH3 IE as of Jul 17 2023 + some suggestions

[iffy]

A rant/list of issues with Vampire Counts in TWWH3 IE as of Jul 17 2023 + some suggestions

I just finished a turn 300ish solo vs the AI normal campaign attempt where I tried, in Immortal Empires, to take over the map, and I failed because I didn't feel like dumping in another 20+ hours into a campaign that already was pushing the 30 hour mark on a medium end PC Load times+end turn calcs were not the issue, I have succeeded at taking over every IE settlement within 350 turns using Dark Elves+Chaos Dwarfs+Chaos Warriors so far, and I think Elves+Orcs+Skaven+Lizardmen+Ogres+all human factions are doable. I had some mods installed, but the largest was the supply lines removal, so that every faction could deploy as many armies as they wanted without the exponential supply line cost increase. This is a requirement for the games that I like to play, as I like to have a variety of economically efficient crapstacks+a few doomstacks, a hero training stack, and then I can deploy the trained level 20+ heroes to the various armies so that they win fights they would normally lose. TWWH3 is a sandbox game and I intend to at least attempt to suggest ways to make it better.

Alright here's the list/rant:

Most importantly, because of the autoresolve issues, you HAVE to spend 10+ minutes for practically every battle corner/forest camping, praying that the trees block their usual 30-50% of all ranged attacks, hoping that your zombies/skeletons/crypt horrors are in guard stance, and you can just sit them out. THIS IS INCREDIBLY BORING.

* Autoresolve issues with regeneration+use of skills/abilities+auras+lack of armor piercing+unit numbers. The Vampire Counts are probably the worst faction in the game at autoresolve right now, which is fine when I'm curbstomping them as anyone else, but playing as them is miserable. Vlad the Dad has atrocious autoresolve damage, but meanwhile in the manual battles, even without casting any spells or using any abilities, he's probably able to fight more than half the legendary lords to a standstill or beat them, even with their unique items, and he absolutely eats infantry and can outtank most large creatures that don't have ridiculous single target armor piercing/magic/fire damage. A full stack of 19 Mortis Engines should, on paper, be able to kill just about any melee army, including dragons/Black Guard of Naggarond/Phoenix Guard/Black Orcs, while taking very little net damage by the end of the battle, but their autoresolve causes them to probably lose to a 19 stack of Skavenslaves with spears. I'm familiar with the mods that change the active abilities to passives so that players don't have to micro everything in manual battles all of the time, but AFAIK, most players don't use mods. Combine this with a Vampire Counts unit roster that have few armor piercing damage en masse - Crypt Horrors are 16 entity units, Black Coaches are 1 entity, Hexwraiths have 60 entities and ethereal, but start at 350g upkeep (there's no lord -40% upkeep bonus for them, either) but have 40 leadership, and then there's Grave Guard with Great Weapons. They are fine, on paper, but you're gonna get absolutely smashed by everything under the sun that's Empire+Dwarves+Wood Elves+Orcs+potentially Chaos Dwarfs, so you need bodies+armies. A potential solution might be providing passive versions of all active auras+abilities+spells+regeneration+blood thirst/etc. for the autoresolve. Edit: I'm guessing that explosion radius isn't included in the calcs anywhere, based on Vampire Coast mortars vs cannonades calcs.

* Tech tree needs serious work. The beast related line is a joke in terms of depth, it's all the usual +5 leadership/-10% recruit cost/+5% speed stuff. The Von Carstein line is supposed to work well with bats, but there's only 1 technology that hits Terrorghiests, which are supposed to be the Vampire Counts’ best units, essentially the Vampire Counts Dragon. There’s nothing special about any of the tech tree - it’s basically a copy paste of the boring Dark Elves tech tree, except even they have Black Arks. This tech tree isn’t special and because 7 of the technologies explicitly mention Zombies (and it leaves Skeletons/Grave Guard out of it? WTH?), you’re practically forced to use Zombies to get your technology research time’s worth. I don’t remember what the Grimhammer TWWH2 Vampire Counts tech tree was, but I bet it was awesome in comparison to this.

Some ideas for new/interesting techs might be: +1g for every entity/+1000g for every lord casualty you inflict within reinforcement range of your army/from your hero action from any source (including plague/attrition/battle etc.) per turn (after all, armor/weapons are worth money, soldiers+lords routinely have valuables). Assault garrison/plague deaths/attrition/attacking settlements+armies/assassinating heroes/lords would cause .5% (1/200) chance of creating a zombie unit via raise dead during the turn after some living unit died. If that unit was a spellcaster/had magical attacks/etc., that army in that province would get +5 Winds of Magic the next turn.

* Recruiting/stance issues: No global recruiting, instead you get the usual Chaos warband style random recruiting. This could be fixed by having a +100% on say, zombies, every turn, for every province, which would stack per army in the province. The Vampire Counts should be able, theoretically, to pump out units as fast as the Tomb Kings, but they can't. Even Slaanesh gets a +1 global unit recruit limit rank 5 building standard. The various vampire count lines should get their corresponding Crypt Horrors/Blood Lances/Terrorgheists/etc. at +100% from raise dead chance, at say, level 30. A Ork/Beastmen raiding encamp stance would be great and thematically accurate, AFAIK the Netflix Castlevania necromancer is very close to how the WHFB Vampire lords work, and that dude had thousands of corpses and magically connected bodies protecting him while he slept and went flying/walking throughout the lands. Changing the size of the battlefield bonuses to be settlement/province wide as compared to small circles on the map would be more for player enjoyment than thematic, but would help. A way to thematically get around the raise dead issues is to cause every source of deaths to produce an extra percentage chance for skeletons+zombies, and then you could spend winds of magic on combining those skeletons+zombies into higher level units like grave guard/Terrorgheists/etc., at a rate of say 2 zombie units per skeleton unit, 2 skeletons per grave guard, 2 fell bats per Vargheist unit, 2 Vargheists unit per Terrrorgheist. The player would be forced to choose between increasing winds of magic via channeling or increasing the number of corpses via the raiding encamp stance under this new system.

* Vampire Counts lord specialization bonuses for units are scattershot at best. Von Carstein gets random bonuses for fell bats, which don't carry over to Vargheists, and Terrorgheists, which are supposedly batlike, get nothing? I'd be fine with the unit specialization if the bonuses were actually good, like say +40 armor for Vargheists, +25 bonus anti large and +25 bonus anti infantry, but nope. Even with the -40% upkeep cost, trying to field, say 120(?)g Blood Lances/80g upkeep Grave Guard when you can recruit 10g/0g upkeep Crypt Horrors+Crypt Ghouls on ANY random lord (dunno if this is bugged or not)

* Vampire Counts are inherently defensive in the early+midgame (mainly due to economy+tech tree favoring zombies HEAVILY), but their playstyle rewards offensive actions and hero doomstacking. The Zombies don’t do a whole lot of damage, and only having 160 seems like a computational limit rather than a gameplay or lore limit.

* Blood Kisses lack of uses+cost in acquiring. Conceptually, the idea of a Blood Kiss is what, exactly? Some kind of currency that the Vampire Lords trade amongst themselves because of killing some important person? Either way, to me, you should get 1 BK (Blood Kiss) whenever you kill/wound a lord/hero of any enemy faction, the requirements for the later lords+blood kiss buffs should be increased to compensate, and there should be a generic lategame dump of those resources. Chaos Dwarfs have the ability to spend their influence currency on immediately leveling up their fortress upon taking them to level 5, I think being able to turn Blood Kisses into bonus experience for a lord (drinking their power/memories/magic/skills or something as a lore flavor text kinda thing?) during the after battle option. If you somehow have maxed out your lord's XP, being able to turn them into extra winds of magic (get other vampires to channel magic in your region as flavor text?), free units via raise dead (find an unmarked mass grave!), etc. would be good uses for Blood Kisses, IMO. Using Banshees to kill heroes and ONLY being able to get Blood Kisses from assassination and not wounding is not only limiting, but expensive, at 1000+g a pop, it can be as high as like 3700g. Vampire Counts hero actions in general are currently very expensive relative to the small amount of income you are likely to have because of the Empire+Dwarfs beating your face in.

* Buildings are too broken up - there's the hero buildings+tier 4+5 unit buildings, and then there's the normal unit recruit buildings that are tiers 1-3. Just combine them so that the player has a consistent building chain and fewer options. Combine the Grave Guard+Wight King+Banshee+Vampire building chains together into one building chain, and just stack the bonuses for each tier that would normally overlap into one building. Make the Terrorgheist recruiting building a new tier 5 building on the Vargheist building chain. Combine the Corpse Cart and Mortis Engine building chains together. Take the landmark buildings in Castle Drakenhof and combine them into one building chain, give it a special version of the tier 4 standard Vampire recruitment building in that building chain, and then remove the option for the player to get the standard Vampire recruitment building. If you make all of those changes, you could probably drop Castle Drakenhof to be an 8 slot major settlement as compared to a 10. Vampire Counts kind of struggle with economy relative to their number of armies, especially without the supply lines mods, so a +10% region income on every building or +40% on the income building might be nice.

[Leslian Lexter]

I didnt read the whole wall of text, but one of the strenghts of VC is to be able to pump out many stacks, due to having lots of cheap units being a viable strategy. Therefore if youre using a mod that removes supply lines, youre kinda erasing one of VC's big advantages.

[identity]

What above said, and also that VC is a rush faction, strong early game and mediocre late. IE is not really designed for VC since the games last so long... and in fact, IE was never meant to be balanced. People seem to forget that second part, even though the campaign is so bad in WH3, it would seem like IE was the real way to play the game. It's a sandbox that includes all the races, not a benchmark for what things should and shouldn't be.