You wouldn't be able to learn good tactics on beginner, because 45% hp penalty to neutrals makes so it is hard to notice obscure things like morale and stamina penalties/bonuses, harder to get medals, ranged units can win almost every battle, direct damage spells way ahead of buffs/debuffs and so on.

Key to easy game - healer unit. He improves regeneration on global map and, obviously, heals your troops during battle.

You can look for examples of starts on expert:

http://www.gog.com/forum/eador_series/wizard_start_expert_difficulty_alignment_strict_good/post7
http://www.gog.com/forum/eador_series/scg_i

You can download this map and try these same battles. Eventually you will see working tactics.

You can learn the game, figure out strategies and such. I played on beginner for a few days, the on skilled for a week and then competent for a month, lost my campaign, and since then I can play on expert, have only lost one shard about 40 turns into the second campaign. Just to let you know that it is doable. I do play this extreme amounts of time,though.

Sadly Grem pointed out the main reason why you really don't want to play anything but Expert or above. And this is because you would basically be playing a completely different game because pretty much nothing that worked before will work now.

Here below is a link that shows you the HP % that enemies have when playing the different difficulties. As you can see in Beginner mode the guys have like half the health and you get monster exp bonus so that you would be leveld up in no time.

http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?act=url&depth=2&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http://eador.com/en/page3.html&usg=ALkJrhiPujWYY-O7RY0KPdWvVD0TG9nt8w

Well noone wants to play for few hours and loose a lot.. :) But i will check things for eador:sequel..

Okay, guess I'll keep getting slapped around on skilled for a while (expert is so not happening, that would be masochism at this point).

thanks for the advice :)

What happens to the AI? Do they expand as if they had all the same bonuses and penalties as you do?

It's really not that bad. I started on Beginner for a few days, moved to Skilled for another week or so, then on to Expert and now moving between Expert and Master. Sure you have to unlearn some things (like Gremlion says in particular the OP of ranged units at low difficulties), but anything that's good at Expert is ALSO good at lower difficulties, so chances are you've picked up SOME useful tactics and skills while playing.

Not to mention getting to understand Karma, corruption and hero-leveling (and other parts of the game mechanics). Whereas if you jump in at too hard a difficulty it'll be much longer before you get to understand some of those connections as you never reach high level heroes, never explore as much so fewer events and locations, etc.

Also the problem is really the same when moving above Expert. Ranged units for example get noticably weaker at Master in my experience. So unless you just pick one difficulty and stay at that forever (in which case it could as well be Beginner if that's where you have fun) it's really an unavoidable fact that you'll be unlearning and relearning strategies and tactics all the time. IIRC their bonuses and penalties are reversed from yours. So if the neutrals have -45% HP for you on Beginner they have +45% HP for the AI on Beginner.

So then difference in choosing difficulties is in mobs HP?

So that basically meants warrior will be weaker, and so is ranger(even more) and i dont know anything about commanders and mages..

Can someone shortly sum up a bit? I know i can try playing skirmish on expert difficulty but i want to hear out some real experience. Does that makes games longer - more economy based?

Neutral monster stats and starting resources are all I think. It makes the start a bit harder because you dont have gold for everything. Then buffs and debuffs get more important. It gets better to defeat strong monsters like Ogres or Hydra (with low resistance) with debuffs like fear,disease and fatigue.
I can't say it makes the game longer, I play expert now but my games are much shorter than on "skilled", now that I know what I am doing.

"Begginer" difficulty is already for experienced players, so yes you should 'just' play on Beginner, until you master it (you would have to start between 5 and 10 campaigns).

Well I stuck to skilled and am now winning about 90% of the shards I play-- basic strategy is to use a warrior with decent armor and an army of cannon fodder (slinger/shaman/ spearman). The main difference in my play is that I'm a little choosier about which battles to engage in, so I'm not having to resurrect nearly as much.

This probably won't work on higher difficulty levels but I don't mind-- having to change strategies at higher difficulty levels makes the game more replayable IMO.

Goh-Dor (or whatever his name is :) ) just invaded my home world though, so we'll see if I can keep the campaign going.

Love this game!!

Remember the "Return to Astral" option if you should get close to losing your home-shard :) Much better than losing the entire Campaign, although I haven't found Doh-Gor's (I think?) invasion a problem at various difficulties. You get some massive bonuses from defending so unless you are very unlucky with starting position it shouldn't be too hard compared to normal shards.

Doh-Gor's invasion wasn't a problem. The next one came from L'Anshar, and while it wasn't difficult, per se, it was a painfully slow slog because the whole world had apparently turned to swamp in the meantime. Ugh.

These barbarians covered whole world with dirt. True barbarians, lol.