I'm just curious what everyone thinks are the least to most difficult factions in the single player.
I usually play on Normal/Normal for reference.
Here's mine ...
1) Orc
The Orc campaign was such a straight steamroll for me. Once you start getting continuous, multiple Waaagh armies it just becomes very easy to beat any army the AI throws at you using shear numbers (maybe too easy?). Orc has an excellent, diversified lineup so you can adjust your armies depending on what you are fighting. I probably had 6+ armies going by the end of this campaign not even counting the Waaagh armies. So, yeah, to me Orc = easy mode.
2) Beastmen
I felt like the heroes in this faction when specialized into melee are so incredibly strong that they can destroy entire armies by themselves. In fact, I had several siege battles where basically only my heroes won the entire battle by fighting the entirety of the enemy army at the gate! The ambush mechanic is also pretty seriously overpowered for destroying enemy armies without taking many casualties. Then you have the Brayherd mechanic which generally allows you to outnumber the enemy and gives you a disposable army for cannon fodder (or beast fodder?).
3) Dwarf
Dwarf feels like a strong faction in single player due to the units having especially high armor. This means your front line can last a long time while you maneuver your ranged units in for flanking attacks, which the AI is not very smart about preventing. Dwarf artillery is also excellent and plentiful. The lack of fast units for chasing down fleeing units means they are somewhat more difficult than other factions, though a few gyrocopters can help in this regard.
4) Chaos
It seems with Chaos you just need to wait around long enough for the Empire to get destroyed by Beastmen and the northern tribes, but this faction I definitely found to be a step up in difficulty. The attrition mechanic when you are within range of another Chaos army can make it tricky to bring reinforcements to battles, and your early units are pretty weak. So early game for Chaos can be very touch and go. You are basically doing hit and run until human factions get ground down a bit. Once you get an army of Chosen though it seems like you outclass the other factions pretty significantly, and upgraded Archaon is a beast.
5) Vampire Counts
This is my second most difficult faction, basically because everyone hates you and your basic starting units of skeletons and zombies are very weak. Even when you outnumber the other side numerically in a battle, you have to be very careful or your entire army can crumble in 30 seconds. I have not managed to complete a campaign with this faction, though I feel it is *not* the most difficult one because of the vampiric corruption mechanic which means you can turtle a bit. And you have really good late game units, but I usually don't get that far! To me, the Long Campaign objectives of this faction also feel pretty tedious.
6) Empire
I find this faction the hardest in the current single player game. There are four "evil" factions which are against you from the beginning (Vampire Counts, Chaos, Beastmen and Orcs). Then, as if that isn't enough, you get the annoying northern tribes of Skaeling and Varg raiding your settlements. My campaigns with Empire usually go like this. I attack one or more of the human factions to gain some territory, so all the other ones turn against me. I don't see a great alternative to *not* attacking at least one or two of them to gain at least some additional territory. Then because of this, the dwarfs eventually turn against you and invade. All the while, the Beastmen are annoying you by razing your settlements which are expensive to rebuild. Finally, there is a tide of northern tribes like Skaeling and Varg that wreck all your settlements, and then Chaos invades to top it all off. At this point, I usually just rage quit. Playing empire to me is far too much like "wack a mole" right now. You might deal with an invasion by one enemy faction, but then a few turns later another one attacks you, usually on the other side of the map. Do I sound frustrated with this faction? Well, maybe I am a little. I just can't complete a game with Empire, sadly. I generally just give up. And hey, maybe that's working as intended, because the Empire gets wrecked pretty hard in the End Times.
Anyways, I'd be curious to hear which factions others feel are more or less difficult.