bjgamer: You are very welcome! You are right that Nox is a classic, and one of my old favorites. I truly hope you enjoy it! :)
You're also very welcome. Warlords Battlecry 2 is another old favorite, and I recommend at least once as the Dark Elves. Have fun! :)
Makotolia: Hi bjgamer, did you also play WB3? I wonder which one in the series is the best.
I think I can answer this question:
- Warlords Battlecry 1 is the most simple one but I usually recommend it for its evil campaign. I won't spoil anything but it's significantly different then in other games where evil = kill everybody who stand agains you and kill some of those who don't just for a good measure.
- Warlords Battlecry 2 is great for developing your hero. You pick a race, start with a single province and it's your task to conquer everything. Not much story but watching your hero growing in power is amazing. There are so many different options and ways how to develop him/her that I have replayed the game no less than ten times just to try something different. And there are still some things I haven't tried yet! Different kind of mages are particularly interesting but a bit hard at the beginning when your hero is weak. But after leveling him/her up you get an access to so many cool and deadly spells that you can kill a decent army on your own. Trust me this is absolutely amazing feature of this game.
- Warlords Battlecry 3 is story oriented. On the world map you pick where to go and then you play a mission. In some cases, depending on your race, you can even pick which side would be your friend and which an enemy. After finishing a few missions the main quest starts to be slowly revealed so you start to visit some places on purpose to learn more about what's happening. It is quite interesting and non typical for RTS so it's good to check the game too. The only problem is that the complexity of hero leveling system is gone and while you can still upgrade your hero it's not even nearly as satisfing as it is in Warlords Battlecry 2 and I'm still mad for the devs for that.
My personal favorite is definitely WB2 but WB3 is good if you like story and unconvential way to tell it. I usually advise to get them both. You can still pick WB1 if you are a completionist but apart from aforementioned evil campaign nothing else stands out so it's still safe to skip.
I hope that helped ;)