Game in Question: Eador: Genesis

I will soon set off some time to play this very promising game. I saw that there was a wide range of difficulty levels to choose from and since this will be played as a campaign, my choice of difficulty level will be somewhat important. Too easy and it takes away a lot of the fun, too hard and the frustration may entice me to play something else instead.

Of course it would be hard for any of you to pick the most appropriate difficulty level for me but here are some information about me to give you an idea of what could be suitable:

* I have neither played the game or it's sequel before.
* I don't mind losing the campaign on my first try.
* I prefer to play strategy games taking the consequences of my actions and not pressing the "load game" button in the face of adversity.
* I normally play on the highest difficulty levels in HoMM and Age of Wonders, but I have years of years of experience in those games.
* I like to spend a lot of time planning my actions and analyzing the game in strategy games.

I'm fairly new to eador but that might be for the best in this case.

I know Heroes 3 quiet well but i'm really no expert and i exploited loading a lot so you're probably better than i am. I enjoy a more or less high difficulty but i also read that Eador is relentless so i went for "Skilled". I've lost one shard(basicly mission) out of about 15 and it was because of a very stupid mistake.
I haven't read too much about how Eador works besides you shouldn't try to expand your territory too fast.

Right now it's a bit too easy for me. I'd probably go for competent or even expert BUT without some experience anything above skilled isn't a very good idea in my opinion. at beginner/skilled your heroes tell you wether they think they are able to win a battle. that's extremely helpful in the beginning when you have no idea at all wether some enemy is strong or not.

By the way there is no save feature. You can step one turn back wich will give you a malus in the final score and is actually reflected in the story.

I'd say play on the begginer and see how it goes. Expert is the most balanced difficulty out there but I'm not sure if you can keep up with it right from the start.

You can change difficulty of campaign between missions (for highscore game would count lowest chosen), so you can start on beginner, and increase it when needed. Though with each increase in difficulty more and more tactics become obsolete.
There is a trap, difficulty gives heavy penalty to neutral's HP, but doesn't penalize AI opponent. "Pft, guard with 5 skeletons and 6 zombies" - corresponding neutrals on beginner have 4 and 12 hp, in opponent's guard - 8 and 24. Probably every novice would be unpleasantly surprised by "Minotaurs" guard - 6 tanks with 70-80 hp(really high level ones), while common minotaur on beginner would have 30 hp.

I suggest to start hotseat game for 2 players, skip turns for second player.
You would be able to learn building tree, strengths and weaknesses of the neutrals without any pressure from the AI.

Game is balanced around expert difficulty, it is harder to earn medals on lower difficulty settings. Also, stamina and morale have bigger impact on gameplay on higher difficulty settings.

Since you are experienced in these games you can start on the second level. As was said you can always change the difficulty and turn back time saves you from big losses.Although if you do not want to use this renamed reload function, then it will be pretty hard as long as you do not know the enemies strengths. Only on the lower 2 difficulties will your hero estimate that strength. The campaign tutorial is pretty good.

I started a campaign on beginner, pretty soon changed to skilled, then much later to competent, and only after I lost the campaign on shard 31 or so I started a new one on expert. Now in my third campaign I changed to master. So overall I spent most of the time on competent and expert.

Actually, it is possible to edit difficulty.var and set hero_advice to 1 on any difficulty level.
So, you can modify this with simple notepad, and try expert.

Ah excellent, might turn that on for a laugh!