fahbs: My memory of this game back in the day was that the vampire was the undisputed king of combat. You could often kill any other unit in the game. Not only could you do it without taking a single hit, but you'd end the fight with MORE health than you started.
Paralyze the enemy with your ranged attack, get 1 life drain tic off of your bite attack, repeat endlessly.
It made pretty much any other unit in the game pointless, ESPECIALLY the demons, who were the most expensive and supposed to be the strongest in combat. But vampires could defeat them with no damage just as much as a lowly berserker.
The only value in other units were the illusionists or summoners, simply for creating more vampires.
Seers for dispelling illusionary vampires.
Maybe a Templar or two for healing summoners/vampires, so you wouldn't run low on vampires.
Basically the only value that mattered was how much a unit could support vampires.
That's what my nearly 30 year old memory remembers, anyway. Was I wrong?
I seem to remember being able to take down vampires easily with fire elementals. Vampire have long wings in combat which makes them easier to hit with the fireballs.
Otherwise, my favourite play was to go solo wizard surrounded by templars, with a seer and thief to accompany. Just freeze everything that appears on the map, and heal back the HP loss with templars.Didn't need to go into combat.