lategame balance . are my concerns true ?

[archaeolept]

ehh, vampires are over-rated, IMO.

sure, its nice having a couple small hordes available for internal security, but otherwise they definitely seem to lack in punch. or as a takedown squad for a couple SC's, sure.

Devils are tougher, have far higher attack and defense, better MR, and vastly superior morale. Sure, vampires come back if they're fighting in your dominion, and they aren't taken over by undead mastery, but it seems to me a strategy that takes as it's premiss the fact that you are already winning by dominion push is, well, somewhat optimistic.

and the cold susceptibility, while potentially deadly, just doesn't seem to come into play so much; so many things are immune to cold that it is the least used of the battlefield attack magics.

the only time i've encountered vampire hordes I used undead mastery myself. Vamp's usually have a 14 MR or so, undead mastery is usually cast for a base 11, and easy to cast two times in a row. that will generally do a number on the invading horde, especially as it stops to fight amongst itself, all the while taking some sort of battlefield damage hopefully.

using vampire hordes against pythium is especially amusing.

[alexti]

I like the sight of endless hordes of vampires coming on the Ether Lord and Harbringer taking a stand in the corner of the battlefield. The rate of the wither-boning seems to be about equal to the rate of the vampires movement, so it looks that vampires are just coming and coming to get slaughtered until they finally break down and try to flee while getting killed by wrathful skies while they're crossing the field in the opposite direction

[deccan]

I think this is really quite a cool idea. But I agree with the others that it seems like mostly a defensive measure.

Some points:

1) Vampires reincarnate in the capital, which can be a long way from the front in a big map.
2) When vampires route, you need to gather them up from neighbouring provinces again which wastes you time.
3) In theory, it is true that if you continue to whittle down an enemy army while your own vampires reincarnate again and again, even if you lose an indefinite number of battles, you will eventually win. However, in reality, there is no indefinite number of battles. Your enemy only has to win a limited number of battles in order to take your capital, and then your vampires can no longer reincarnate.
4) IIRC, having a vampire lord summon a vampire takes up his action for that turn. Having a devil generated from soul contract is automatic. So you could have the guys will soul contracts travel with the army and it would grow over time.

However, I still like the idea of a vampire army a lot. I'd personally like to see a White Wolf type vampire nation mod.

[Sheap]

Well, for a vampire centric nation, there's already Black Forest Ulm, which has a vampire national summon, and a general Transylvanian feel as opposed to the more Teutonic feel of the other Ulm themes. It's not ALL vampires, but what would an all-vampire nation eat?

[deccan]

Sheap said:
Well, for a vampire centric nation, there's already Black Forest Ulm, which has a vampire national summon, and a general Transylvanian feel as opposed to the more Teutonic feel of the other Ulm themes. It's not ALL vampires, but what would an all-vampire nation eat?

I know about Black Forest Ulm but I'm talking about a really all vampire nation. Maybe something like Ermor, but with no auto-summons, something like Death -3 required, few or no gold recruitables, everything summoned with blood slaves. The ultimate expand or die nation.

You'd have vampire spies able to instill uprising, vampire mages (maybe with ilithid type paralyzation powers), vampire / werewolf gangrels (no etherealness, no flying, berserk, high regen, lots of attacks per round) etc.

Edit: I was mucking about White Wolf's site when I found this. Quite aan interesting read:

Vamps vs Wolves - How Should It Balance?