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Vampire Count Tune Up

Being quite blunt, I believe it's not that crazy to say this faction is a bit polarizing. Whether you talk about cheese tactics being the best they can do, the lack of an economy, the reliance on heroes, there's a ton of takes that will see people take both sides in the complete opposite corner of the room. Still, I have my own issues with the faction that probably aren't the most often discussed, and this mod attempts to fix them up.

At its core, this means looking what I find to be a painful tech tree, and sprucing it up with worthwhile core unit stat buffs in order to reinforce the faction's late game. This is also done with a new buff to the armory/reliquary. On top of this, I have tweaked a handful of units with bad/inconsistent stats, gave movement ancillaries a small increase in value, smoothed out the Spirit Well building tree's cost/income values, and may have had to touch up an issue I ran into with Kemmler. I must say that the result is... okay. Compared to my other mods, I do not, in the end, feel like this did what I set out to do. I won't blather on about the specifics unless someone wants me to, but the mod was some fun, and therefore I'm releasing it, as imperfect as it is in my eyes.

As always, the exact changes are in the change notes section.

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>>> Version 1

First up, the easiest changes- unit changes. Cairn Wraiths. So, were you aware they had splash? Probably not, but it's one of the main reasons why their kill power was, shall we say, intolerably bad? A quick glance at their damage and a simple calculation means they need three hits to kill a goblin at an attack interval of 4.3. Hence, a superbly amplified vanilla Hammerer or Krimson Killerz effect. So, remove the splash, and the unit gets a stamp of approval. Now, Hexwraiths and Chillgheists were a case I decided to take a note from Warhammer 3 and remove the base version's flaming attacks (which was not only confusing, but generally a downside) and grant both versions frostbite. Not only is it fitting, but it allows these late game units the ability to stick to fast movers, and be a true nuisance with solid utility, especially with the RoR version. Also, Hexwraiths had their stats equalized in respects to the RoR. They were the only unit in the entire roster with this disparity, and my lord did it make my brain itch in a bad way. Anyways, the spectral forces of the faction are now set up with pretty significant buffs and should both be worthwhile, especially in Kemmler's forces. And so Blood Knights didn't feel too bad in that respect, their cost and upkeep was reduced. Already quite expensive and just alright, the faction's poor economy and powerful enemies did not exactly make them a very appetizing unit. Short, sweet, and simple, they're just now slightly more expensive than Hexwraiths. Is it enough? Debatable.

Now, technology changes. I tried to keep it simple and consistent. If a tech node gave nothing but +2 recruit rank or upkeep/recruit cost reduction, I gave it melee attack/melee defense for that same group of units. Why? Because a ten turn tech down the tree gave me something of next to no value when a seven turn empire tech with one pre-requisite gives every melee unit in my armies four melee defense and eight percent charge bonus. Put simply: these techs were not created equal, and that's not even considering how some factions can more easily achieve student spam than others, or have easier sources of research rates. I know it can be boring just seeing +melee attack everywhere, but as many factions get these core buffs, I feel it's necessary for the Vampire Counts to stand up a bit more in long campaigns. There's only one special change, which is that Dread Animator gives Grave Guard charge defense against large. Everyone knows there's Grave Guard Halberds in 3, and for good reason, but I only add units as a last resort. This compounds with the changes below, letting Grave Guard be your core infantry if you focus their production, generally strong and slow like the dwarfs. More on this later.

Building changes next. Quite easy to explain, in fact. I see the spirit, vampire, and necromancer "advanced" buildings as a part of a set of three. And two of them cost the exact same at both tiers. Meanwhile the spirit building was dirt cheap and basically didn't do anything for you, since in vanilla the units were mediocre and often raised from the dead, anyways. I can't speak for everyone as well, but banshees never seemed to be the most popular hero, either. But rather than give it something special or crazy, I just made it give the same income, and scaled the cost to be 20% cheaper than the other options as compensation for the lack of extra effects, like control or research rate. If nothing else, slap it in a T5 city and inject more money into your horrible economy late game. Now, the most controversial change- Grave Guard get stacking global upkeep reduction from the Ancient Armory and Reliquary. It is 3% and 6% respectively, which is not much in one province, but even with multiple armies later, this is designed to give you your new core unit. This doesn't mean "immediately free" like it does with your skeletons, but you can get them down to 100-200 upkeep per card if you control a land mass the size of the Empire. Why do this, though? Because skeletons can only get you so far, even if they're free, unless you cheese difficult battles and sieges. Grave Guard now have access to five more melee attack than before, charge defense against large, and upkeep reduction- they can now replace skeletons, or just look appetizing now that core complaints about them should be rendered null.

Ancillary changes now. There's two, for the Flesh Golem and Manservant. Two lines of thought here. One, the Vampire Counts don't get an obscene amount of movement- the usual blue line, 10% from tech, banshees when imbedded, and 10% if you're a part of one of two subfactions. Not terrible, but yeah... other ancillaries. I can't recall one as small as the Flesh Golem's 4%. It's... something, I guess? And the Manservant is generally uncommon, as you specifically have to loot an Empire settlement, but yet... 5%. You can sit here and debate me that I'm complaining about 4% campaign movement, and then I only increase it to 6%, a 2% increase. And yeah, I'll say it probably doesn't matter much. But it makes them a bit more palatable and almost normalized with drops like the Kislevite Kossar and Messenger.

And the final, weird change. I kind of had to change Kemmler's Wightblades skill. See, nothing can apply more than one contact effect. And frostbite attacks are a contact effect. So... frostbite attacks got deleted with the default weakened effect. And I didn't like that at all. But it also left me with the problem that I couldn't just throw frostbite on it, since that'd be good for Cairn Wraiths, but useless for Hexwraiths. And making frostbite Kemmler-only would just be weird. So I... experimented. The effect kept the slow from frostbite, making it an upgrade and not a sidegrade. And while weakened was okay, it would also make the effect just a weird poison if it was a slow and damage debuff. So I leaned into the idea of making Wraiths- especially empowered ones- debilitating spirits. Wightblades now gives Atrophy as a contact effect- a new effect with -35% movespeed and -8 melee attack and defense. And I quite like it. Kemmler's spiritual army might not have the most impressive stats for a doomstack- but when they take away the enemy's, the results are spectacular. I was able to solo kill very hard chaos invasion armies, even Kholek's- with zero casualties. I had to resurrect some before the battle ended, of course.