This was definetly a good game. I was sure that Argitoth was going to attack me early on, while I had the territorial advantage, but he had the magic advantage. I had spent my first ten turns building wolfherders to use as patrollers, and it took a very long time to catch up in the research race. My capitol also got hit with the plague event around turn 50, but since I wasn't relying on it for troops I didn't worry too much about it. It finished off with 9000 population.
I was also very worried when he made it to level 9 conjuration, cast well of misery, then proceded to drop a lot of ghost riders and arouse hunger all over my territory. Thankfully, my blood slave income was good enough to cast hordes from hell on every turn to retake the provinces. I also reached level 9 conjuration just shortly thereafter, and was able to also cast ghost riders. I chose to cast in on the same provinces every turn however, to drive unrest up as quickly as possible. Once I had enchantment 9 also researched, I took my entire group of 20 illuminated ones and sent them into Argitoth's home provinces to cause unrest. The plan was originally to have them wait there until my nether bolters arrived and then to use them as communion slaves, but they worked well just by themselves.
I eventually had to cast dispel twice on his Well of Misery, and burnt up over 100 nature gems and 40 death gems to make sure it went away.
Manifestation is a decent assasination spell for BF Ulm, as the vampire counts are often tough enough to deal with the ashen angel.
Anyways, the links below are to some pictures describing various parts of the end game.
My Pretender: Desmerelda the Vampire Queen
The Army Graph
Most of those troops were Wolves
The Home Guard
Vampire Counts: Decent Mages, Great Harassers
This province will be down to 5K population in few turns from now.
Dominion Graph
Forts Graph: How I managed to eventually catch up in research.
Gem Income Graph
My leftover gems
Ghouls: The Ultimate Castle Defense
The Hall of Fame
Bifrons: The ultimate rapid attack unit.
Gaap: Rapid Attack unit Two
Nycator also arrived, but didn't survive a run -in with several skeleton raising Sauromancers as I hadn't yet made him a regen ring.
The Income Graph: Well of Misery's effect is clearly visible here.
Magical Resources Left after Two Dispels
The Overall Research Graph
My Overall Research at the end.
And finally, the strategy that won me the game.
Spies
More Spies
Even More Spies
And an overview of the final strategic situation:
Overview
As a final word, give Argitoth a break people. he plays very well, and runs several hosted games without any major problems.