Warhammer: Total War: Chaos keeps wrecking me! HELP!

Title says it all, but I will give you the basics:

So it goes like this, I play as the Vampire Counts, awesome faction by the way. I generally start off pretty strong, I wipe out my Vampire competitors and take over the East, then I go after the Dwarves to the south and generally by the time I've waged a campaign or two (I scorch earth, I don't occupy, as they are dwarven settlements I can't occupy them) I have my two modest provinces and two full, well-experienced armies.

At this point Chaos usually rears its ugly head to the north and starts waging war. The Vampire Counts are in the middle and are safe for a while, but I generally find myself being targeted eventually and I just find myself not being able to sustain my faction's ability to wage war against Chaos!

Should I forego my war with the dwarves in favor of invading the lands of enemies with lands I can actually occupy, and thus profit from?

Or is there a way to have my finely-tuned, albeit small, two-province kingdom with awesome two-army and still kick ass?

Or am I missing the point? Is the goal to just invade as much as possible?

Any help appreciated! This game is amazing!

IMO I think you are hurting yourself focusing so much on the dwarves. The key to this game is income- you can't resist chaos with only your starting territories. If you don't want to plow north and have a border with chaos just yet, one option is to go south through the pass and swallow up the border princes. Once you have more territories and greater income - either by heading north or south or both, then you will be able to field many powerful armies and take on the empire and chaos with more comfort.

One benefit of more armies is you can try to engage single powerful armies from chaos with 3 or more of your armies. It's surprisingly hard to catch the enemy out like this, but sometimes it's the only way to overwhelm a particularly demonic horde without crippling loss.

Also, don't underestimate the power of friendship, either. Personally, I'm willing to spend a bit and suck up to a neighbor like empire just to keep them off my back (and on chaos's back) while I build my strength

@xantufrog: Ill give that a shot, thanks!

I often find myself moving north, anyway, taking over the towns Chaos forces have razed and building them back up. Maybe if I did this preemptively I would have a bit more success.

@mrbojangles25: no problem! My biggest fear is - if I'm reading correctly - you are trying to field only a couple of armies. And that can't hold out long. That's where growing your territory to grow your army count is helpful. Because as I'm sure you've noticed, even if you win a battle you might lose a lot of your army and if you don't have more armies in the wings then you're ripe for defeat the next battle.

I love the game too - I am waiting until I have more time to play again and then I'll probably look into buying the Wood Elf expansion.

haha yeah I am loving trying to master one race/faction at the moment, but I am totally going to get the Wood Elf, Chaos, and Beast Men DLC at some point.

I've been doing what your suggested on this play through; I basically "rushed" north to conquer East Sylvania then West Sylvania so I could unlock most of my Vampire lords and then I just proceeded to march West some more (I had missions in that area, and figured why not, plus I thought maybe it'd be easier to defend against the Chaos as they tend to come straight down at me).

I had some good income as a result and just built up three armies then four, leaving two to defend my territories (I sent them both to the north when I was warned of the Chaos since when this happens, all the other factions don't attack me it seems) while using my other two armies offensively. So far it seems to be working but I still don't think it will be enough.

I'm enjoying this Total War more than any other, and I'm failing at it more than any other. Hmmmmmmmmm...

Gah, I just played for like 5 hours. It really is crack. I am doing SO well (Dwarfs)... and I think I'm about to collapse (noticed some very nasty hordes appear off my coast with none of my armies remotely nearby to do anything about it). It's a brutal and fun game