Vampire Counts: drown the world in zombies strategy (WIP)

Zombies! Lots of them! Losses so big that even Chenkov (from 40k) would get uncomfortable! Outnumber anyone and anything, including the orcs! Suffer exceptionally brutal losses against charging cavalry! Conquer the world by throwing zombies at it!

Introduction

This is not meant as a serious way of playing the Vampire Counts. The purpose of this guide is mostly to give me a place to write this down where I wont lose or forget it, and get it peerreviewed. It will contain mistakes and errors.

Technically, it's a guide on trying to use raise death to it's full potential, I personally just prefer to throw zombies forwards. They're such a wonderful combination of cheap and durable. They might not be the best choice for all situations though.

Raise dead & dead markers

This is what sets the vampire counts apart from the other factions. I dont understand why the other guides sort of skip over it. This is the core of everything. It allows you to completely skip all the unit related buildings and focus full force on economy (in a selected few cities).

Every zone has a pool of dead. At it's most basic it's one unit of skeleton spearmen, two units of skeleton warriors and three units of zombies. This recharges over time and is a bit difficult to keep track of. If you conquer a bit you dont even see the zone borders anymore, only the region borders.

Now, you might be thinking that three zombies isnt going to do that much. The thing is, it's per region AND per faction, so if you control one zone and the enemy controls the rest of the region, you've got two pools to draw from if you move around. Do note, this means that a zone can have undead to raise, then you capture it and suddenly it's empty because you already drained that region's pool for your faction.

There is no limit on how many times you can raise per turn. If you walk through three zones that are fully recharged, that's 9 units of zombies. (and a bunch of skeletons if you're into that). And that's just the base dead pool. No other army can match this ability to recruit so fast, on the move, regardless of who owns the territory you're in.

This makes the vampire counts very mobile on the world map. You can raise whole armies while you walk to whereever you want to be. Recruitment in cities is an optional bonus on top. However, it does take a few turns for the pool of dead to replenish and three zombies (and some skeletons) per region (per faction that owns a portion) is nice but not worlddrowning.

Enter the dead marker. his is where the fun begins. I'm not entirely sure how it exactly works, but after a battle, if it was worthy, a dead marker appears in that region. Additional worthy battles add to that marker. The dead marker increases the amount of unit's you can raise and adds more types. I'm not sure what makes a battle 'worthy'. It's not just pure numbers. A reliable way to get death markers seems to fight at least two enemy armies at the same time. A city garrison and a defending army count, if the garrison is near complete. A single dead marker in a zone is usually sufficient to raise the number of zombies in the pool to 6 or 9, making it easy and fast to replenish armies or raise new ones.

Bonus fun, a death marker has nothing to do with vampiric corruption. If say two brettonians duke it out and enough of them die, a death marker appears in that zone. This is quite handy when invading your enemies. There's literally armies of zombies (and skeletons and other units if you're into that) waiting for you to come over and wake them up. Vampiric corruption might help it recharge though, I have no idea.

So yes, you need to use two armies, or three, (or seven, Chaos Warriors are tough) where other other factions can do the job with one. But raise dead makes it so much easier for you to get your three armies up than it is for them to get their army up. You dont need buildings. You dont even need to own the zone. All you need is money (dark magic) and a lord with space in his army. If they dont defend, you can raid and pillage freely, if they do defend it's likely to spawn a death marker (or add to an existing one). It's a win win situation.

You can raise dead at almost any time, except when garrisoned in a city that's under siege and probably not when at sea. Zone ownership or corruption doesnt matter. You can raise dead, do battle and then raise again to replace a lost unit. You can check the available raise dead pool and decide wether you want to combine some and raise new ones or just let your army replenishment handle it. You can lose half your army in an attack and have it replaced within the same turn if there's enough dead in the pool, while moving freely. No other faction, to my knowledge, can match that. It is a very powerful ability.

Armies on the worldmap

Obviously, I prefere going with mainly zombies for army composition. If you're going with autoresolve, three full armies, maybe four should be enough for most situations.

One army on it's own cant do much besides undefended towns and rebels and even there it's not always certain. Group up. Make sure your armies are in range of each other. Check the movement of all group members and move the one with the lowest movement first. If you cant handle something, just run away.

Have several army groups of three to four armies that stay together. If there is a tough nut to crack, send two army groups or raise a few extra armies and send them to help while the army group stays at a safe distance.

In your own zones you can use the replenishment stance to have a bit more army replenishment (and magic), in enemy zones that are conquerable, either move normally and just eat the attrition or stay in raiding stance the whole time. Swapping to raiding or replenishment takes a lot of movement, but once you're in that stance it's fairly comfortable. In zones with harsh attrition where you're not allowed to take over the towns the raiding stance seems best. Your armies dont replenish at all there, so avoid unnecessary attrition losses or you'll exhaust the dead pools.

If one of your groups has a bad encounter, switch the survivors to the march stance and just run away for one or two turns while you raise new lords and new armies in the nearest suitable zones. Then you can move your new armies towards the retreating survivors while both new and surviving armies raise dead along the way.

Your aim is to either outnumber the enemy or avoid the enemy. But your armies are expendable (including any lords or heroes) so if avoiding isnt an option, just take the best odds you can get and splaf your armies against them. If you're on a roll, then no amount of losses hurts you. It just takes time to walk all the way over there again, that's all.

Dont be afraid to send an army group on a one way mission deep into the nord or south. They're death, it's not like they'll miss home. Pillage one turn and raze on the next, then move on. You can earn a lot of dark magic by doing this. Keep pillaging and capturing or razing, the income greatly strengthens you and it weakens them.

The mountains and the forest are treacherous. It's difficult to get your whole army group engaged on those narrow pathways, making it difficult to gang up on the enemy armies. If they get an army in front and behind you, your army group is trapped. Both orcs and dwarves can easily do that by going through the mountain. It's not worth the risk early in the campaign. Stick to the open plains till you've got enough army groups up that losing one or two groups (each consisting of 3 to 4 full armies) doesnt matter anymore or everything else in sight has already been pillaged.

Army composition and fighting battles

In a group of four armies, if you're going to fight manually, sprinkle in some vampire and necromancer heroes. It's too expensive to put heroes in all your armies and if you're autoresolving the heroes dont matter.

In a manual battle it is vital that the zombies stay in a leadership aura. Keep your lords alive. You should have enough zombies to try to encircle the enemy. Cavalry and archers are a problem, but you can try to ruin their day with the summon zombies spell. If they have cavalry, try to have unengaged zombie units at a distance away from the actual fight so they can get trampled by the charge and not your fighting blob. Then summon zombies behind the horses to try and keep them in place. This doesnt really work but it does annoy them a bit.

Archers arent happy if you summon zombies on top of them, but one unit of zombies isnt going to do the trick on their own. They do anchor the archers a bit so some of your blob zombies can peel off and walk over there and help. The problem is the range of summon zombies, you do want your characters to stay alive.

It's possible to have your blob fight with their melee, lose that fight and then win the battle with your reinforcements. Zombies are slow, your reinforcements are pretty much a seperate battle. I've had my legendary lord eat artillery and die, with his whole army dieing fairly fast, but the reinforcing army won the day.

You're not trying to win really, you're trying to draw out the losing while destroying as many enemy units as you can. This leads to victory, if not in this battle, then in the next.

Put the characters on a horse, it helps them survive. Your lord might be good in melee but overal, it's too risky. Just keep the lord and the necromancer hero safe. Dont forget to cast your necromancer spells.

The vampire hero is our back up aura and unit finisher. Especially on a flying mount, but they're unlikely to survive to level 17. The zombies fighting against their ranged or their reinforcements are likely to be out of your aura range, this is where the vampire hero comes in. If the vampire hero falls, it's ok. If your lord falls all your zombies get sad. If one of the enemy units breaks and runs off, your vampire hero (mounted) can chase after them and try to finish them off. Your zombies cant chase anything. The vampire hero gets to play the hero and chase down enemies, kill the artillery,... Your lord, whoever it is, is too valuable to risk.

If your necromancer hero and vampire hero limit can keep up with your amount of armies, then you're not fielding enough armies. They do cost a fair amount of upkeep as well, compared to zombies. Again, you cannot afford to put a hero in every army. We're all about spamming armies of zombies, the heroes are just the sprinkles on the zombie icecream.

It might be necessary to hide the lord in a forest, away from the army. The enemy's initial charge can be brutal and it's absolutely vital that the army doesnt start getting sad and falling apart for no reason. A living lord that's not with the army is much much better than a dead lord.

As for levelling options:
The vampire hero it's most important ability is that healing thingie it can do on itself every 13 seconds. I like to take the armour 3 times and 1 time the leadership to get there. And a mount of course, as soon as possible. It's possible that 3 times the leadership is the better choice.

The necromancer hero is mainly there to be a leadership aura and spellcaster.

I like to start my lord off with the movement range increase. Get a horse mount when you can. Interesting options are leadership aura, zombie damage boost, replenishment rate, survivability,... I dont know what's best.

Most of them dont live that long so it really only matters on the legendary lords because those come back. Just make your mind up about your favorite way to spec them and just do that on all of that specific type. Dont get attached to any of them.

Managing cities

The only thing that matters is dark magic. Everything else you can manage without, though some things do make life easier.

By extension, the city is the most relevant one, because it can build the tier IV and V dark magic buildings. Those are expensive, so it's best to try and protect those. The towns dont really matter. Keep them at level 1 unless you have nothing else to with your dark magic. It's tempting to build up the towns to tier 2 and 3 and it does give dark magic and allow for more dark magic buildings but here's the thing: vampire counts suck at defending.

If it doesnt start with a wall, it's not a priority to build up. Your garrisons are weak. Your best option for defense is using armies. This means that your towns will get sacked and razed. C'est la vie. Generally speaking it's better to have your army groups sacking and conquering enemy terrority than having them twiddle their thumbs in your empire, waiting for an attack that might not come from the direction they're guarding. Remember, one army wont do, so you cant spread them out. Your armies are replaceable and so are your towns and non built up cities. You mostly settle them to deny them to the enemy and to use them as early warning beacons.

The only thing worth defending are cities with the tier IV and V vampire and necromancer dark magic buildings and cities with a goldmine or other dark magic special buildings. Try to have a wide field of towns that you own but dont mind losing around those as early warning beacons and places to raise armies to defend the important cities.

The wall building chain competes with too many things and a walled town still falls very quickly. Your best chance is to raise a bunch of armies to defend the threatened built up cities before they reach them. It helps a lot to have a good death marker on the city or nearby zones. Luckily, there's rebellions to help with that.

Rebellions are good, overal. Yes, rebels spawn. Let them take a town or city, wait till the garrison has healed enough and crush them. This will likely create or add to a dead marker. Vampire counts dont care at all about public order. In fact, sometimes I raid my own zones just to make rebels spawn. Ideally you want at least a one battle death marker in all your regions.

Vampiric corruption is nice to have, but not having it isnt so bad. The public order is irrelevant and the attrition you take from moving through zones that arent corrupted isnt that bad. And even if you do take attrition, they're zombies. Dieing is their job. Take your losses, plow forwards and capture everything in sight. Yes, they'll rebel, that's good, just recapture with the next group that passes and watch that death marker grow. Each turn that you own a town or city, it gets a little bit more corrupted. Vampiric corruption (and public order) will sort itself out eventually. You dont have to build anything for either. Dark magic is the only thing that matters. If it doesnt give dark magic, you dont need it.

Do watch out for regions that you cant settle that have harsh attrition.

One level 1 recruitment building in a region (not a zone, a region) is acceptable. Especially early in the campaign when you havent got that many death markers yet. It's a nice supplement to the all the raising and it's cheap and quickly built.

Your starting city (as vampire counts, not carstein) is a problem. It's at the edge of the habitable zone, so you have no expendable towns or cities to give you an early warning and you're unlikely to have a death marker in it. It is likely to be your first entirely built up city though. So you'll want to defend it but you have no buffer. Besides that, it's a good city, with a gold mine and nice starting level and an income bonus.

Incidently, Altdorf has a unique version of the library necromancer building, making it a poor city choice. There are better cities out there. Check for gold mines and harbours.

Dark magic (your currency)

Dark magic is important. I do spend a lot of it each turn raising new zombies and lords and heroes.

Your army upkeep is roughly 2000 per army. It depends mostly on the attached heroes and the lord and their level. Zombies are delightfully cheap in upkeep.

In general, you want to avoid going negative. It can work, but it's a bit risky. I take the dark magic option in nearly every situation. Killing captives lowers your replenishment rate a tiny bit but not enough to matter. There might be a specific expection at some point, but in general, always the dark magic option. Chaos corruption doesnt matter much. Accept peace and declare war again as soon as you can (unless you're on the brink of pillaging a bunch of cities).

Sacking is a very good source of income. Cities are unlikely to have buildings you want, so might as well take the dark magic option. It's likely to rebel anyway and your army group wont be around to defend in most cases, they're off sacking the next city. Just sack and let them rebel or the enemy retake em. Retake them with the army group that passes by. Give them time to recharge the garrison for the death marker and the buildings so sacking the city is worth something.

Research

There's three things you want:
1) The cheaper zombie upkeep tech. (top left book, middle column)
2) The raise dead is cheaper tech. (bottom left book, top of the right most column)
3) A bunch of general city stuff in the bottom right book, especially the income boosting techs.

That's it.

Things like more levels for melee units dont matter, raised units arent recruited and they dont get any of the level bonuses that recruited units get. Heck I dont even know for sure if they get the armour and such from the tech. I'll have to look into it.

The cattle

Try to stop the Chaos Warriors early, they raze settlements and it costs dark magic to resettle them. They're tough bastards though so make sure to send enough armies. It's a bit costly but it's possible to keep them busy by continualy resettling behind so there's a chance they come back to raze it again. It helps keep them away from your important cities and that's all you need.

Humans tend to take over your stuff, that's annoying, but no problem. Just move over with a few armies and retake or take their important cities while their army celebrates the capture of one of your empty level 1 towns.

The dwarves and greenskins seem to be occupied by fighting with eachother most of the time. They tend to sack when they do attack. No problem at all on your level 1 empty settlements, avoid it happening to a built up city.

Beastmen are annoying. They can do their wildpath thingie to walk through terrain you cant. They're difficult to corner and they can attack-ambush.

The Wood Elves are meanies.

The Northern Tribes will sail over for a bit of rape and pillage, I'm still testing but it seems that the best way to counter is to sail over yourself (from a captured city with an harbour) and exterminate them. Dont resettle towns while there's Northmen nearby. It's a waste of dark souls, unless you want to keep them away from something or in a specific zone till your army group shows up.

[Azrael]

Spaming zombies great way to get op units

[Azrael]

How to win vc (works better wh2) SPAM FUKING GRAVE GUARD then u win

[Azrael]

me too MR murlock

[MrMurLock]

My vampire strategy is quite similar to this one! I do give my legendary lords "Proper" armies, but I only send them in at the end after my endless hordes of zombies with necromancers have sufficiently battered the enemy armies down.

[faalbeer]

Personally, I dont give a hoot about the legendary lords. Most of their stuff only applies to them or their army and they're a drop in an ocean of zombies.

There is no way your garrisons will hold anything without help, they might be the weakest garrisons in the game. Having a wall might delay an attack while they build siege equipment, but it's not worth the building slot usually.

[elcoeilers]

so what do u reccommend? using helman for poison attack on ur zombies or ussing vlad for xp bonus (this also beefs up ur garrissons)?
btw this seems 2 be a nice gimmick for early game xpansion especialy faraway from home but once i get my econnomy going it still seems wiser 2 go for a "proper" army.

[JS93]

Also remember Helman Ghrost gives his units poison attack ;)

[Evil_Fishy]

Oh, that's an interesting idea. Because vampire corruption makes it difficult to have lower happiness, you might be able to keep an army or two of zombies in the region in raiding stance near the garrison. That would result in a lot of deaths, but hopefully still victory.

[faalbeer]

Yeah, I should the update and prettify guide, been distracted by other games. Attacking a city with an army in it seems to be a good way to get a death marker too, can use local rebellions to continually 'refill' a city with an enemy army. Have to wait a bit for the city defenses to recharge though. There seems to be a criteria that it has to be at least two armies on the enemy side, though I did get a battle marker once from fighting one enemy army, so entirely sure what's going on yet.

[Evil_Fishy]

As Mannfred, I can reliably get a 4k+ body count battlesite marker in my capital by turn 8. My method contradicts your statement that "If enough non-undead die in a zone, they're added to that zone's tally." Undead deaths count towards battle site markers. I basically bait the starting vampire enemies into my 20 stack (mostly made of skeletons) once they have two stacks larger than 14.

I have a save file with a 4471 battle site marker in drakenhof territory (turn 8, very hard difficulty). After a few turns of letting it build up, even a mortis engine pops up.