A game worth playing at the time it was released, but not so much worth trying anymore.
There are 6 units you can choose to train once you have the required "technology" to recruit them (this takes up resources which you will gain at each turn. They are: crossbowmen, swordsmen, cannons, catapults, knights, and juggernauts. The technology interface is separated into two columns: Unit technology, and construction technology. Unit technology allows you to recruit more units (you start off only being able to recruit crossbowmen, swordsmen, and juggernauts.) Construction technology allows you to build more and better buildings such as towers,castles, and bridges.
The problem with the units is that they are quite flawed. The knights are quite useless, as they are basically swordsmen that move twice as fast and have two times the health bar, but they die extremely fast before they can even get to the enemy. Many times, the enemy uses the knights, swordsmen, and juggernauts as cannon foddler. Also, when it comes to siege battles, many times you or the computer will have swordsmen stationed in the castles which do nothing at all but act as fodder. You will have no choice when it comes to you defending as to if you want these units to fight or not, as they will always be deployed in your castle. If there is no room, they'll simple be placed outside of your castle, setting you up for suicide. Also, if you were to invade a county without a cannon, catapult or juggernaut, and found out that they had a castle with units at the very center, you'll be screwed and be forced to flee just because your units can't reach the enemy, whom will do nothing but stand around the exact same place until they are attacked.
The enemy AI is quite stupid, as they will just be camped at certain places around the map indefinitely until you attack one of them. This makes the invasions incredible linear and repetitive. A lot of the times the game will get bugged and a handful of your troops will be "stuck" outside the map, without you being able to move them at all. This is because your units will always be deployed as a rectangle formation at the side of the map you are attacking from. Also, there is a bug where you enter an invasion and your siege units (cannon and catapult) will attack your own units. Although these bugs are annoying, there is one major problem with the enemy AI. Although they will periodically attack you, they will never lose the troops from the counties they are attacking you from, yet their numbers will always gradually increase. This will make the game more challenging, but the problem is that by the time you get to and surround the last county, the AI will have a seemly unstoppable amount of units, yet they will be constantly attacking you with a fraction of that force about every 3 turns, making the game nearly, if not impossible to complete.
Another thing is if you choose to flee from an invasion, there is no penalty at all. You'll see a cut scene where a few men are being hanged, but you won't actually lose any troops, aside from those that had already died. Also, for some reason when the AI is invading you and is losing to the point where they have almost no troops, they will sometimes "suicide", where the red units (the enemy) which decided to be inactive, will die from nothing.
In the empire management screens, you are able to build improvements to the counties that you own, such as bridges, towers, and castles (and castle upgrades). The problem is that many of the improvements are useless, such as the bridge upgrades and towers. The bridge upgrades will actually make it easier for the enemy AI to rush your castle with larger numbers. Also, when you decide to build a new castle, all the units which you recruit from then on will appear in the new castle, with no option to pick the previous castle instead. This will prove to be extremely frustrating as sometimes the enemy horde may attack you the turn right after you build the castle, and you will be forced to defend the newly built and unfortunately, poorly defended castle.
In the tactical battle screens, there are options you can choose for the units such as defend, guard, and battle modes, although these are quite useless and the game does not really tell you what the different battle modes do, although choosing the "coward/cautious" battle mode seems to make it so that your troops will never attack the enemy AI and will run the second they get attacked and repeating it so until they die (O_o).
All in all, Vlad Tepes Dracula was probably a game under appreciated at the time, but now should be avoided due to the number or flaws, repetitiveness, and numerous bugs in the game. Although I believe the game is now abandon-ware so you can probably download it for free off a site...