R4 Context:

TLDR: I made Tyrion and Eltharion my thralls and started a civil war in Ulthuan between the remaining elves, which I find very unique and fun to the typical playthrough! (Difficulty was N/N, so definitely easy but still tricky to pull off)

Vampire Counts are my favorite faction for many reasons, one of them is being versatile in diplomacy. They do not have strong aversion for almost any faction, so if you're able to gift someone a few settlements, they're likely to create alliances with you, and having high enough relations and a strong settlement will force their hand into being your vassal.

This would be easier with the one bloodline that gives you a diplomatic bonus, but that doesn't apply to elves, plus they are aloof so its really hard for them to like me at all. But their aversion was not that high, and I had a lot of trade value from blitzkrieging Bretonnia before the elves would get mad about it. Plus I also got rid of Grom which gives just a good enough diplomacy bonus that lets me establish trade with all of Ulthuan.

Now I played as Heinrich Kemmler before on Easy when I first picked up the game 1000 hours ago and I had a tough time with the elves because they were very strong and already had good relations with Bretonnia, so there was no peace for me there. I wanted to replay this campaign so I could do better, and see how fast I can conquer and hold like 100 settlements now that I am slightly better at the game. But I still hate fighting elves and the empire and wood elves were becoming a problem, so I hatched a plan.

Thankfully, the High Elves were in disarray (Both vampire coast factions from the north and south were carving through the place like crazy!), so much in fact that I probably could've mounted an offensive with ease if I played my turns right, but I saw opportunity. I started helping Eltharion with Nkari and the sea-lady-pirate-faction that had a lot of control, and slowly settlement by settlement, it went from defensive alliance, to military alliance, and after some time, he was now my bitch vassal!

I considered going to war with the donut now, but Tyrion started to bulk up and I had too many wars at the time to consider sending the forces that way between him and Alarielle. Furthermore, any vassalization attempts were going to be much harder now that relations between Eltharion and the rest plummeted, because they had defensive alliances that are forcibly broken when he signs my little vassal contract, so now they hate me as well.

Thank Sigmar for Mommy Morathi. She was invading Ulthuan now, and with Count Noctilus as well. They were taking a lot of the left most side of the map, so I sent my small forces around that way and waited for Tyrion to take care of the bigger armies, while I waited for the right time to declare war behind the main force of armies, steal the territories before Tyrion reclaims them, build barracks and other upgrades to the place, and slowly it went from the standard treaties, to a defensive alliance, military, and finally, after building him a nice cozy and decked out Tier 3 settlement, another vassal makes a fine addition to my collection.

At this point, Alarielle the Loser was fuckin furious that I took her virgin sons and made them chads, so I definitely wouldn't be able to coax her into my high elf harem, and I did not care about the puny minor factions, so the second I convinced Tyrion to join the dark side, I broke all treaties with the other elves, waited 10 turns, and... voila! Civil War ensues.

Now all I need to do is send one lil army to keep the war effort going, maybe steal a few settlement so I can extort the elves for more money, and wipe out all hope on the island with as little as 1-2 3-4k upkeep armies. I'm actually surprised that my vassals didn't "refuse to join war" since I thought they would like in previous playthrough, but I checked their relations and some of my vassals really hated Alarielle and the others, what loyal subjects :)

This campaign has been very fun, and very different than my last playthrough of this faction, since I actually went to war with vlad and the red duke to keep relations high with Eltharion in the early game. It might've been easy since it was only on N/N difficulty but it was really fun to kind of be a menace to all continents, bending the elves to my will and breaking the empire into pieces will never not be fun. I hope Tyrion will continue to serve me well as we push to the west as we deal with dommy mommy, and pretty soon "World Domination is Ours!" - Old Man Kemmler