Best campaign for (almost) complete newbie?

[Sam]

I just finished the tutorial (after realizing the key was to upgrade the training center to produce Praetorians on turn 1...not obvious considering it was a tutorial!). Now, I am wondering which campaign to tackle? (Or are they all roughly equal difficulty?) I have almost no HoMM experience, other than a brief (incomplete) play of one scenario of HoMM3 at a friend's house awhile back.

With that said, are any of the main scenarios more newbie-friendly in your opinion?

[Endless Galactica]

I found inferno is the easiest. However that may reflect the fact that I played campaign from the left (necro) to the right. Just my two cents

[Les Grossman]

They are roughly equal difficulty, for newbie anyway, unless you are more experienced and can exploit some cheesy ablities of some races. As for total balance it's more like Necropollis > Heaven > Sanctuary > Stronghold > Inferno. I won't describe pros and cons of every race but it's quite obvious that Necropolis is strongest and Inferno is weakest (still my favorite).

Though I strongly recommend you to play campaign as they presented in the list, that way you will have better understanding of story, but you won't feel big difficulty difference since all campaigns are pretty well balanced. If you have no experience and will struggle too much, I advice you to set easy difficulty, that way you will probably get less frustrated and will learn faster.

One last pro tip: never sit and accumulate army, always rush and crush enemy as soon as you can. If you will wait too long enemy has more castles and resources than you, so at some point he will just crush you with numbers.

[Miklotov]

Campaigns are pretty balanced, but whatever you do DO NOT start with Inferno campaign. Even though the campaign itself is not very hard, there is 1 battle at the end of first map that will be too much for a newbie to handle, it's better to get used to the game before you try that one. I suggest starting with Necropolis, not very hard to play as, strong faction and they have a structure that lets you ressurect all your dead units, making your life easier and being more newb friendly.

[Aoi Eir]

0.0

[DenjinAkira]

Varg has it on the money there. If you turtle too much the AI will overwhelm you with its cheating (resource and income is increased to compensate for terrible AI, just like the games before it) so rush as much as you can.

Read some guides on fighting with said faction on the early stages to minimise losses (Best part of each map for me! :D) Less losses early on, the easier it will be to rush when you start to build your army into the middle stages of the map.

[Sam]

Thanks all!

I found a suggestion to play Orcs 1, Stronghold 1, Haven 1, Inferno 1, and Necropolis 1 in that order...that way you know what is going on story-wise, and you have tried out each faction. After that, either continue in story order or play through whichever faction you had the most fun with.

I just finished Orcs 1, and it wasn't that bad at all...at least not on Easy. Tempted to do Stronghold 1 next, etc. as per above (except I may do Inferno 1 last instead since it sounds like Inferno 1 has a tough end-battle on the first map). After that, TBD based on my enjoyment of each faction.

Does that sound like a reasonable approach?

[Les Grossman]

Orcs and Stronghold is the same faction... lol

[Sam]

lol Fair enough -- Orcs/Stronghold 1 I did...Sanctuary 1 is what I meant by "Stronghold"!

[Arrrtyom]

I found the necromancer campaign for anastasya (spelling) to be pretty easy. I havent played through all the campaigns though, but for her campaign i went for the path of blood, and i pretty much chain lightning-ed my way through many of the neutrals and the early enemy heroes. With that i could stock up on my Fate Weavers, and since your hero's a magic affinity one, they deal quite the damage later on when your spells arent doing that much damage.