[chrispedersen]

To me, the interesting things about this nation has always been the undead recruitable troops and the vampire counts.

Secondarily, I suppose the communionable priests, and rangers.

Immortal vampire counts suggests:
a high dominion
a thriving blood economy.

To me this suggests a high (minimum Dom8) dominion, with an awake pretender.

Since your undead troops dont eat, I would be looking at a death dominion. The idea of enemy troops having to fight immortals - all the while.. starving ... sounds delicious. Additionally, enemy priests banish ability is strongly affected by your positive dominion. So you get a two-fer with your immortal benefit. Or a three-fer if you count enemy population dying.

Either I would go with a rainbow pretender to get research going quickly.. or I would go with an awake pretender, with a +Magic scale.

Either way my preference would be for not as much order as you think, nor as much resources - I'd be trying to get to counts asap... Priorities: +Magic; Awake Pretender; Awe; Wolfherds for the free spawns.

So your army would be wolves, and priests, and vampires, and ghouls.. very goth, very theme. I can almost hear the organ music.

You only need cash at the start.. once your immortals are spawned....

Additionally, I love the idea of Immortal Vampire mind hunters.

So with Sanguine Heritage researched, I believe my priorities would be conj for lamashtas; evocation for arcane probing, and construction. Not so much for trinkets for the vampire counts so much as trinkets for the mind hunting immortal vampire counts- eg skullcaps, coins.. etc. Lastly I would be going for the gateway/teleport spells for rapid response teams of your ghoul guardians.