i'm launching bitcoind different ways; either directly in CLI with "bitcoind" first, then launching Armory or launching bitcoind via letting Armory do it. either way Node Offline. bitcoind by itself will update when launched alone as assessed by "bitcoin-cli getblockcount". like i said, my other instance of a VM based BTC blockchain works just fine on my other computer that doesn't have another blockchain on the host. so i know this setup runs inside a VM just fine. that setup also does NOT have a bitcoin.conf file. i also read somewhere that bitcoin.conf is not necessary.
It's not strictly necessary to have a bitcoin.conf file... but it's possible that things are not working correctly without the appropriate runtime arguments being passed to the daemon (like "server").Quote
as an aside, when i start up Armory with either bitcoind started by itself first or by letting Armory control it, the block count at bottom right in Armory shows the updated correct number. it just won't advance beyond that both in the GUI and in the terminal (stuck at "BDM ready!").
That's very similar to the issue I have on Windows 10 when I don't user -server and -listen parameters... it will sync up to whatever block bitcoind has at the time it starts, but doesn't seem to get new blocks 
would you be willing to share the entire contents of your bitcoin.conf? like i said, i tried listing both server=1 and listen=1 as well as dummy rpcuser and rpcpassword parameters without success.