Very Hard/Very Hard Strategic Genius Guide

In this guide I explain how I unlocked the strategic genius achievement, which only 1.1% of players have achieved. You need to win a world domination campaign on very hard campaign and very hard battle difficulty.

Tips to Win

1. I played as Poland Lithuania, a weak faction with hardly any special units. My first tip is, you need to get allies somehow and keep them. Secure your borders somewhere. It helps if you are on the edge of the map - Russia had my entire Eastern border secured, so I allied with them. I also allied with Austria early as a Western counterbalance to Prussia.

2. For me, the first 45 years were a real struggle. The way I was able to win, was not fighting on too many fronts. Even if a country hates you and is at war - if you satisfy a condition of either A) taking one of their cities B) re-taking a city they conquered from you or C) defeating 1-2 of their armies - they might accept peace if you bribe them. Give them whatever they want - technology, money etc. You want temporary peace because you cannot fight all your enemies at once. You ideally want to deal with 1-2 enemies at a time ONLY. But you won't have enough money to fight wars in two areas due to the ridiculous AI money bonuses. So you will need to use 1 full stack in a strategic spot to fend off 1 nation and use all your other stacks to crush the other.



In my case this meant putting a full stack at Istanbul because the Ottomans would constantly attack. If I lost Istanbul, I would lose the campaign as I would get overwhelmed. So this force held a key region while the remainder of my armies dealt with 1 enemy.

3. DO NOT give up. Can't stress this enough. This difficulty setting will get really frustrating and seem almost impossible. It will get BORING as you get attacked from nations repeatedly. Persevere.. Take a break if you need to. I gave up on my Poland Lithuania campaign in May 2020 and came back a year later...to finally win.

4. Don't auto-resolve anything, you can't win a very hard campaign via auto-resolving. The computer AI usually determines battles against you for no reason. You have to play literally every battle, act decisively and win 95% or more against all enemies. This is achievable because battles aren't that hard, but i'm talking about the ones that you might be not favoured in. I recommend playing critical battles in slow speed so you have a lot of time.

5. About 90% of my army for the entire game was line infantry because they're cheap, they always beat horses with square formation (dumb AI cavalry charges you alone all the time) and they can bayonet charge cannons. You'll lose 30-40 men from one volley of cannister shots but it's worth it. I did build some cannons myself later on, but only in a small amount, mainly horse ones for quick movement. Recruiting limited cavalry is good for running down routing enemies, but that's about it. I built no fleets until 1790 because I couldn't afford it. My ports were blockaded non-stop all game. Navy upkeep is too expensive to be viable. But don't worry - you don't need fleets to win, just taxes from cities and factories.

6. Take advantage of how dumb the AI is. Yes, it gets insane bonuses but it can still be manipulated. It DOES naval invade but not frequently. Sometimes it gives up entirely. I was at war with the Maratha Confederacy after they conquered the Ottomans. They sent several stacks to take Istanbul but couldn't. After a few attempts they completely gave up. I left my full stack in Istanbul for probably 50+ years and AI never tried to take it.

ALSO, I used several tricks to win the campaign. It was about 1784 and I had most of the territories required to win. I was allied to Great Britain and Great Britain was allied to Russia. My alliance broke down with Russia and they declared war. I called Great Britain to join me but they didn't. Now, I could've fought the battles and won, but I was worried Great Britain might turn on me in the West and the campaign would be done.

So, what I did was the following: took advantage of geography. I gave away all my territories on the Russian border to Great Britain in exchange for one.




Because Great Britain didn't allow military access to Russia, despite being allied, Russia could not attack at all. I effectively boxed the AI in. All they could do is naval invade - and they won't do that with 6-10 stacks, only 1 stack at a time.




Then, I paid Russia for peace so I could re-ally with Great Britain to receive the military alliance diplomacy bonus. I kept bribing Great Britain with a state gift for every new territory I conquered to offset the "territorial expansion" negative effect in diplomacy, so they didn't get too angry and turn on me. Had Great Britain declared war I couldn't win.

Then I sent fleets to America to conquer poorly defended pirate settlements and get over 40 territories by 1799.




So point is, take advantage of bad AI because the AI takes full advantage of the stupidly high money bonuses they get to screw you all game.

7. You just need a breakthrough. Once income is 10k+ each turn, you have won the game. When you have enough soldiers (3-4 stacks) to keep pushing forward and take 3-4 cities, you can snowball the campaign. You just need to get that breakthrough.

In my campaign the breakthrough was taking Berlin from Hannover. And after taking it, I was assaulted by thousands of their men and United Provinces reinforcements. If I lost that city, I was back to square one.

Instead, I won a very close battle by using cannons inside my city with cannister shot and narrowly holding it. When you get a breakthrough it begins the snowball process.

8. I never upgraded any of my workshops, farms, docks etc. Maybe casually here and there, but the most important thing is replenishing troops and building more troops. That and conquering cities. Basically all I built was jesuit colleges to reduce religious unrest. I did upgrade universities as technologies can be pretty important.

9. I had an early military focus for technologies because you'll be fighting non stop and then switched to the wealth tree once I had fire by rank researched for line infantry. I ignored naval technologies pretty much all game as I didn't use fleets anyway. Workshop/farming technologies were invested into late game, because I wasn't upgrading them and you can source most income from taxes and already existing AI resources when captured (which will have maximum upgrades) due to their silly money bonuses.

10. You can turn the tax rate up to the maximum (or close) for nobility and lower classes usually once every 2nd turn with no consequence as they just send you letter of demands or do a worker's strike, which does nothing.

Make sure you do the little stuff correct - like booting out ministers who give no bonuses or even worse, bad bonuses to tax, army upkeep etc.

Use rakes to scout enemy AI movements in fogged parts of the map or if not available, a missionary.
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Anyway, hope these tips and insight helped anyone trying to get this very hard achievement. If there's any questions, let me know.

[Josh]

Yeah, was very proud to finally beat this on very hard after so long. Was a tough campaign.

[Preacher]

Nice guide brother. might download etw again