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00:32So here we are, 112 turns into a campaign, and we've had some real commotion so far.
00:37After planting our flag firmly in Sylvania and dominating the surrounding vamp factions of Tempelhof and Schwarzenhafen,
00:43we sort of accidentally went to war with the Greenskins.
00:47Pretty much every resource we had was poured into beating back the four Greenskin Doomstacks and assorted heroes that attacked
00:53Sylvania,
00:54and war-making the strangest of bedfellows, we actually managed to tie up a defensive alliance with the Dwarfs,
00:59as we had a major, highly aggressive mutual enemy.
01:02During that period, the Dwarfs also confederated with Zufbar, nearly doubling their settlement and army count.
01:08And despite the fact that our corrupted lands were causing the Dwarfs' attrition,
01:11they chose to sally an army out of Zufbar to help us out in the defence of Waldenhof here.
01:16As you can see, the Dwarfs now form a solid buffer between us and the Greenskins,
01:20and they've been steadily rolling them south since,
01:23leaving us a period of relative calm in which to focus on expanding northward.
01:27We've taken the town of Essen from Ostermark, and we're now gearing up for an assault on Beckhafen.
01:33Now, it feels pretty crucial that we capture Beckhafen,
01:36as north of that point, the Warriors of Chaos and the Norskans have been unleashing all hell,
01:41with armies of the Damned pouring out of the Chaos Wastes.
01:43They're putting the northern part of the Old World to the torch, and ceding the land with Chaos Corruption.
01:50So, they're hidden by the Shroud at the moment, but there's Chaos Warrior and Norskans armies here,
01:55seething westward, threatening the lands of the Empire.
01:57So, we need to exploit this period of calm at our end of the map,
02:00in preparation for the coming of this guy, Archeon the Everchosen.
02:04Now, his army is currently encamped, as is the one next to him, probably recruiting,
02:08and, actually, this one seems to be exuding some kind of tentacular effect,
02:13so whatever is in that army is likely to be very nasty.
02:18So, yes, Beckhafen is the point at which we're aiming to draw our line in the sand
02:22and mount the stoutest defence we can muster.
02:24After that, hopefully, we can beat the Warriors of Chaos back from whence they came.
02:28Now, if we look at our objectives, one of our key victory conditions
02:31is to bottle the hordes back up in the Chaos Wastes,
02:33and ensure that Archeon himself is at least wounded.
02:36Now, that's going to take some work, some powerful armies,
02:39and some clever military manoeuvring.
02:41Our short campaign objectives also require us to knock out the Empire,
02:45which is no mean feat in itself.
02:46If we wanted to play for the long objectives, however,
02:49we'd also have to take care of Bretonnia
02:50and tackle that increasingly vast dwarf empire.
02:55In terms of military might, we have a few armies in the mix,
02:58but less than we did have.
02:59After a recent and rather costly drive to max out our city development,
03:03we now have access to some of the highest tier units in the vampire roster.
03:08Checking the building browser in our home city of Castle Drakenhof,
03:11you can see that we're now capable of recruiting Terrorgeist,
03:13Spargolfs, and Hexwraiths.
03:15We're currently in the process of replacing our skeleton hordes
03:18with these much more powerful units provided by higher tier recruitment buildings,
03:22in effect trading quantity for quality.
03:25And as you might expect, our turn-by-turn army upkeep costs
03:28are therefore beginning to spiral.
03:29We're now in a situation where we really, really need to make some land grabs,
03:33and these north-eastern human territories are our best hope for that.
03:39Recruitment for the vamps is done in two ways.
03:41Like any race, you can, of course, recruit units from buildings
03:44that you've built in certain provinces.
03:47The second way is to raise the dead,
03:49and this is done instantly.
03:50You get them the turn that you raise them.
03:52Now, corpses are plentiful in the old world,
03:54and wherever your lords are,
03:55they'll be able to raise from a limited pool
03:57of low-tier zombies and skeletons,
03:59which will replenish over time.
04:02However, large battles with high death tallies
04:05tend to seed the ground with a surfeit of corpses,
04:08increasing the odds of higher-level undead appearing in the pool,
04:11and once the dust of the conflict has settled,
04:13you'll get an epic battle site marker like this one.
04:16Assuming you've already unlocked access
04:18to higher-tier unit types through your buildings already,
04:20and if the sheer number of corpses
04:22resulting from such a huge battle is high enough,
04:24you may be able to raise those elite units from the ground.
04:28Manfred here is next to one such battle site,
04:30and you can see that the number of dead generated
04:31in this battle must have been pretty high
04:33because he has access to a much wider range of units,
04:36including Crypt Ghouls and Black Knights.
04:39Now, this isn't just a convenient way
04:41to bolster your armies with better-quality troops
04:43when you're far from home.
04:44It also gets you thinking about how to generate
04:46rich, non-civic recruitment zones on the map.
04:49Maneuver two powerful enemies into war with each other
04:51through some Machiavellian diplomacy.
04:53Draw them into mass conflicts like this,
04:55and your armies can benefit from the plentiful dead.
04:59Heinrich Kemmler was the legendary lord
05:01we chose to begin this campaign with,
05:02Manfred only came on the scene recently,
05:04and here he is besieging Beckhafen.
05:07He's up to level 12 now,
05:09and we've put a lot of points
05:10into his Lore of Vampires spell chain.
05:13If we want to see how those spells look in combat,
05:15we can simply right-click them
05:16and get an animated view of the spell at work
05:18in the spell browser.
05:34On the character details panel here,
05:36you can manage the various magic items
05:38wielded by your lords and heroes.
05:39You can assign any items you've won
05:41to the currently selected character,
05:43though if an item is already assigned to someone else,
05:44you'll of course get a warning to inform you.
05:47Technology-wise, we're making good progress
05:49researching the four vampiric tomes.
05:51The Book of Arken here brings buffs
05:53to zombie and skeleton units,
05:55along with Graveguard and Black Knights.
05:57De Noiro's blasphemous bestiary
05:59brings improvements to various bestial units,
06:01such as felbats, direwolves, and vargists.
06:04Master of the Swarm is actually an excellent early win,
06:06as it brings some much-needed survivability
06:08to your otherwise unarmored and slightly brittle felbats.
06:12The Lahmian Book of Blood improves many campaign game aspects,
06:15such as growth, diplomacy,
06:16and the spread of vampiric corruption.
06:18Now, corruption is obviously a really important part
06:20of the Vampire Counts gameplay,
06:22and you can find plenty of detail on that
06:23in our recent Rally Point video.
06:25And finally, we're just beginning to make headway
06:28into the Lieber Necronomica,
06:29which improves cryptgulls and horrors,
06:31cairnwraiths, hexwraiths,
06:32and reduces army attrition damage,
06:34which is super helpful when your armies are marching
06:37on uncorrupted or chaos-corrupted ground.
06:40We're currently researching Soulbinder
06:41in order to reduce the recruitment and upkeep costs
06:44of our newly available hexwraith cavalry,
06:46as they are expensive units,
06:47but as we'll see,
06:48there are some very good reasons for that.
06:51Among other fearsome high-tier undead units,
06:54Manfred is marching with some hexwraiths in tow,
06:56so let's take a closer look at them.
06:58While the physical stats of the hexwraiths
07:00don't look all that meaty in terms of raw numbers,
07:03it's their various traits which make them uniquely powerful.
07:06First off, they have super high physical resistance,
07:08making them all but immune to regular or non-magical damage.
07:12They also cause terror,
07:13which brings a major morality buff to whoever they're fighting.
07:16But it's their attacks which are perhaps
07:18their most impressive aspect,
07:20as they do a combination of armor-piercing,
07:22flaming, and magical damage,
07:24the latter ignoring the majority of regular armor
07:26and enabling hexwraiths to literally scythe their way
07:28through most unit types.
07:30In short, these are some of the best cavalry in the game,
07:32and that is reflected in their high upkeep cost.
07:36Manfred is also fielding a terrorgeist,
07:38and this really is the pinnacle of the Vampire Count's roster.
07:41A winged, terror-causing behemoth,
07:43it has poison attacks
07:44and does a staggering 280 points of armor-piercing damage.
07:48And as if that wasn't enough,
07:49it's also capable of regenerating hit points
07:52during the course of a battle.
07:54Being a desiccated bag of magically-bound bones, however,
07:57it is somewhat susceptible to fire damage.
07:59So, if you're facing one in battle,
08:01your flame spells will definitely have a priority target.
08:06Okay, we're going to leave Heinrich and the Vampire Counts there for now.
08:10Tune in again soon,
08:10and we'll be taking a closer look
08:12at these terrifying high-tier undead units in battle.
08:21We'll be safe now.
08:31Grazie a tutti.
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