Vampires. Discussion.

Sorry, of course Lord Vampire, but I'm telling you that the Necropolis race is not yours at all!!! Only your clan is. And with Lucrezia, by leveling up Chaos, you'll be very disappointed. There's already no room to squeeze in the necessary skill! With elves, you can level up Quick Mind and cast antimagic on archers, and you won't be able to do anything to them with your chaos... Well, do you have any suggestions against that?

1. Lightning and Stone Golem hit very hard; unlike antimagic, these are only level 2 spells. They are easily learned in shrines, guilds, and from Chaos Secrets. Or are you planning to drag out the game, letting the necromancer get secondaries and use a converter to increase their army 2-3 times?
2. Archers can also be worn down by Plague, which Zoltan learns instantly, as well as from neutral (for such purposes, you can grab a living stack of meat from a left hero) archliches, and your own. There is no need to return to the castle.
3. Antimagic takes a full turn, while the necromancer will cast twice in that time, which is very unpleasant.
4. No one has forgotten about skeletons and liches, and the elf has no units with Big Shields.
We could continue, but it's already clear that there are more than enough ways besides Chaos.

And vamps aren't the center of the universe either. At least, when playing against me, vampires manage to do very little (except die)....

Vampires in small numbers are not very strong. 5 vamps are much weaker than 5 mages, 5 shamans, 4 druids and no stronger than the growth of others. But their plus is that there are rarely few of them, and by day 8-9 there can easily be 30 vamps. They preserve themselves perfectly in battles against neutrals, and when there are more than 50 (week 3), they definitely surpass any fellow unit in level.
You start to especially appreciate vampires after taking Dragon Utopias. I remember while playing on Former Friends, 26 lords (without skeletons) took the max Dragon Utopia in week 2 without Fire Arrows and even without Protection (there was expert Attack).