how to defeat vampires?

[Bad Player]

^ I can see the reversal of fortunes spell working really well against a civ that concentrates on a few highly promoted units.

 

[jwin]

If you want to wait until endgame to fight, another option is to eliminate the food source. When he is on the offensive, send some mounted units in to pillage his farms. Even if he has some vampires back to slaughter your horses, it will take him a long time to recover his food production.

 

[onedreamer]

as for the cities: you don't have to sacrifice production at all. you can use slavery (a lot). and you only need two or three very large food-cities to level your vampires. you can even just remove the "no growth" cap in the city screens and eat away any unhappiness with a few patrolling vampires.

You are slipping to non-objectiveness. If he uses the whip to hurry 180 hammers, then he won't have much left to eat. And if he eats, as well as if he whips, he creates more unhappiness... if you REALLY using a tactic to eat citizens as soon as they are unhappy, then this threshold will be quite low, and when you will eat you will gain less exp... certainly not the amounts you said above (200+ in a round).

i don't see crowssbowmen as a counter. look what a freshly produced rider with 2xp for cover2 can do to a crossbowman.

Weren't we talking of a counter for vampires ? Why Riders suddenly come in ? We should stick to vampires and their counters, or I will move to pikemen, and you will move to macemen, etc etc... besides if there's a stack with a 300xp Vampire and a 2xp Rider, the Crossbowman will attack the Vampire.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Try using some pairs of cheap horsemen to pillage every farm and health resource. Then bring in some adepts with entropy 1 and mobility and hasted to get onto his most fertile areas and defile them. He probably won't have life mana, and pillage that when he builds it. That will dramatically slow city growth, if you can do it.

edit--really slow post if I didn't see jwin beat me to the pillaging.

 

[Bringa]

Quickly to the OP's argument that the calabim are strong in early game too: the Agg trait alone doesn't make a civ strong early on, but leaving that aside: there are TOO many variables to consider here. The only way you can get a feeling for how weak or strong they are is to actually PLAY against another human and attack him early on. This theorizing has its use for certain factors, but you cannot ever consider all variables. Just play and get a feel for it

 

[vorshlumpf]

Don't underestimate numbers. Just remember how many times your units get injured when fighting with really high odds. Every small injury increases the next unit's combat chances. Of course, you really need to kill that unit this round, otherwise you're just giving him free XP (then again, according to the originally stated problem, free XP doesn't really make a difference).

Kael mentioned poison. There's also disease (contagion or diseased corpses). A bunch of pyre zombies may be enough to weaken one uber unit.

- Niilo

 

[Gamestation]

Don't underestimate numbers. Just remember how many times your units get injured when fighting with really high odds. Every small injury increases the next unit's combat chances. Of course, you really need to kill that unit this round, otherwise you're just giving him free XP (then again, according to the originally stated problem, free XP doesn't really make a difference).

Kael mentioned poison. There's also disease (contagion or diseased corpses). A bunch of pyre zombies may be enough to weaken one uber unit.

- Niilo

One thing I wonder though is what happens when a Calabim player also takes advantage of their body mana and use stoneskin. One small scratch is just not going to do anything to a vampire then since stoneskin won't simply disappears unless it somehow gets hit three times. I think someone would need to have at least five times as many units then to kill off a stack of vampires.

 

[eerr]

One thing I wonder though is what happens when a Calabim player also takes advantage of their body mana and use stoneskin. One small scratch is just not going to do anything to a vampire then since stoneskin won't simply disappears unless it somehow gets hit three times. I think someone would need to have at least five times as many units then to kill off a stack of vampires.

then catapaults or horsies are in order,
as well, horsies and recon units get first strikes
-If you're gonna lose, don't forget to retreat!

are vampires are the reason blitz practically requires future tech?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I personally think that vampires should have a big weakness to Sun sphere spells when they are implemented (and the Lugus religions if implemented). It might also be interesting to give the clan some powerful troll units that have a big sun weakness too.

 

[attackdrone]

The failing I have seen players make when playing as the Calabim is that of arrogance and over-confidence. Because he has the capacity to create extremely experienced elite units the Calabim player feels he need not create as many units as he otherwise would. When fighting the AI, a very experienced elite force of units is almost always sufficient. However when fighting another player, they can be easily overwhelmed by a concentrated counter-attack of massed units.

I- The -ideal- strategy for this is to be the Bannor, and switch to Crusade and The Order. The combination of very cheap "macemen" and priests with Fire Magic is a powerful one. Any civilization will work for this really, all that is lost out on is the ability to switch to Crusade and get cheaper macemen. Seeing as you'll be a good civilization - you'd have built the Altar of the Luonnotar, and gain extra production from priests. The Order also gives you significant boosts to your military production. This should let you significantly out-produce your foe. Your goal should be to get each new unit with at least 5 xp - Combat II should be enough to drastically increase their effectiveness as shock troops. Supporting your macemen should be Priests, Crusaders, or Paladins, built wherever you have the Altar of the Luonnotar.

II- Another strategy, much simpler, is to get an archmage with domination. Dominate a vampire. Fight his vampires with your vampires.

 

[Gamestation]

II- Another strategy, much simpler, is to get an archmage with domination. Dominate a vampire. Fight his vampires with your vampires.

This is just a warning but domination has a significantly higher chance of failing when the unit you are trying to dominate is actually a higher level than your archmage.

 

[xAlephx]

Short answer - When playing Vamps I'm more likely to buy them from Bloodpets than build them.

I play Flauros more than Alexis. I like to have my cities be fairly productive even with getting eaten, Asylum, Dungeon, etc. (Dungeon / Asylum / Governor's Manor = -100% War Weariness, -110% with Calabim Palace), and therefore usually run 30-40% gold collection and gambling halls. This nets me a lot of gold. Running Slavery, I can't use that gold to rush production. I can, however, spam Bloodpets and either a. Convert them to Vampires for 315 or b. Drown them for 60, upgrade Drown to Stygians for another 60. Fast army and navy, usually for 1-2 rounds building + 1-2 converting apiece.

Vampires and their ilk are the most overpowered unit in the game - I think at bare minimum the Feast ability needs to be limited in a manner similar to spells, and therefore only be usable once/round. This would at least slow them down, and also tempt the vampire gamer into gathering numerous vampires into a conquered city (and therefore being ripe targets for contagion/crush/meteor).

I'd probably use Tasunke and go on an early Pillage rush... Raiders under a Raider leader are incredibly fast. I suppose you could also play the Dov, scout for your opponent quickly, and either eliminate him early with your large starting stack or at least critically slow his advance by forcing him to guard every improvement/worker. But, as others have said, this isn't a true counter since it's not available to all.

Finally, it will come up much too late for it to be helpful to you, but it is possible for Balseraph or Amurite Druids to use Reversal of Fortune.

 

[eerr]

They aren't front loaded in comparison to civs like the Doviello or the Clan. They will usually get beat in speed by the Amurites (rushing mages or firebows) or the Hippus if either of those strike before vampires are created.



Absolutly, welcome to the Calabim empire.

Another thought, vampires are alive in Erebus. So armageddon hits them a lot harder than the Luchuirp, Mercurians or Infernal. Rushing a Calabim player right after Armageddon is mean mean mean.

Last of all check out the Reversal of Fortune spell. Its only available to overlords high priests but it ensures that every fight is 50/50 odds. The vampires levels and promotions are meaningless against a reversal of fortuned unit.

it's a level 3 spell, so it's not that great, for a spell that only increases the odds of one unit winning a battle(in some cases) which also happens to be a national unit, that you still have lose 50% of the time, which is not easily replaceable
now that armageddon thing is a good idea tho...

 

[Alex Encandar]

I always play Flauros. On the hardest difficulty I usually am #1 in food and production and USUALLY in gold however not always. Calabim are definatly a major power house, my guess as to the best wayt to beat them is just to try and catch their vampires offguard, either with casters or build up a giant army to retake whichever city they take of your's first, never strike first, Calabim can be great at making wars short but from what I can tell, they have trouble keeping it up when all their cities are under 5 population.

 

[Grey Fox]

I'm subscribing to this thread just to learn more about how to counter the counter-strategies against Vampires for when I start playing MP again in the future.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

It's countering the counter-counter strategies that's tough.

 

[Grey Fox]

It's countering the counter-counter strategies that's tough.

Yeah, but I got that covered. Alexis sleeps with my enemy's enemy's enemies.

 

[Gamestation]

Seems like iron golems can be really painful for vampires. I'm playing a Calabim game right now and I came across a Luchuirp iron golem with no promotions at all. As soon as that golem got on a hill my attack odds against it lowered to about 50% with my vampire that had all the combat promotions and had been mutated to become stronger (although I did also get the shaft when I couldn't find iron anywhere in my lands and lo and behold, the Luchuirp somehow got it all). Imagine if that was not the AI controlling the golem but a player who actually leveled up Barnaxus.

 

[onedreamer]

Consider also that given their sinergy with Arcane (Garrim Gyr) and earth mana, it's easy for Luchuirp to have mages that cast Rust, which destroys weapon promotions and puts the base strength of a Vampire to a mere 4.

 

[kenken244]

also since they usually have huge uber cities that makes them much more nernable top ritcheous cause sure sacrificing a level 6 preist is costly but when you get around 50 or so crusaders adjacent to the city can easily kill a few vampires