Overview
The game offers a number of historical scenarios to be played in campaign mode with each playable country presenting a different kind of challenge and gameplay. This guide describes how to set the first steps in campaign games and gives you additional hints.
Scenarios
The game offers a number of historical scenarios to be played in campaign mode with each playable country presenting a different kind of challenge and gameplay.
Road to War -scenario:
Your campaign will start in 1750, in the aftermath of War of the Austrian Succession. In this campaign you have time to build up your nation and to strengthen it before the inevitable war. You will also have freedom to make or break alliances as it suits you, as well as to follow historic developments as they are presented to you as dilemmas.
Eve of War -scenario:
This campaign starts just before the war erupts, so you have just little time to manage your country. In this campaign you will also be free to influence how the war will start, and who will you go to war with.
Both of these long campaigns will run all the way to 1763. In the given time you will need to meet the scenario goals to win. Even if you reach the scenario goals before the set end date, the scenario will go on, as it is also possible that the tide will turn…
The other scenarios start from a specific historic situation, including alliances and wars, and will have unique and usually limited goals, and also shorter time to reach them.
Note about the scenario goals:
Occupy means that you not only need to capture the given province, but you will also need to annex the lands either by defeating the owner by conquering all its provinces, or by forcing a peace and then taking the lands as part of the negotiations.
Conquer means you only need to capture the province from enemy forces, and so is a lot easier to accomplish.
Note about later scenarios – economic progression simulation:
If you pick a scenario that starts later than 1750, the game will calculate how the game world (economy and research) has progressed during the years. In short you will notice all countries having built more industries to support the economy, as well as some progress in research. Not all countries will have the same technologies available, as they may have different research priorities.
Campaign tips to get you started
Once the scenario has loaded, it’s advised to pause the game, take a look at your country and its situation, including neighbouring countries (red border means enemy, green means ally, and white neutral) and first to decide on your strategy: how will you accomplish the given goals?
The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) differs from other similar strategy games in that you are forced to prioritize, as you cannot aim to be the best in every category. Your nation’s resources will simply not allow it. So you need to plan ahead, how to use the resources to reach your goal.
To get your nation running, it’s advised to first run through these steps:
Step 1: Check your production. Open the production building list (hotkey F2). This list shows all your industries and their production. Look for craft producer -buildings and what they are set to produce.
Tip: It’s advised to be self-sufficient in in the most basic goods first: bread, bricks, iron. You will need them to feed your people and to construct and upgrade buildings. If you don’t produce these, you will have to rely on import.
Step 2: Choose new policy in the politics list. It’s advised to initially choose one that suits and supports the needs of your strategy best, not one that balances it out.
Step 3: Start research in the Choose research list.
Tip: You need to prioritize heavily in research, as even if you take every step to boost your research capability, you will never be able to research all technologies during one game. By concentrating research on just a few technologies will give you advantage in a field of your choosing, whether it is naval power, land warfare, production…
Note about research:
Technologies are less time consuming to research, once more nations have already completed them. Also increase in the research capacity is not linear: the later schools with their upgrades will offer progressively less research points per building.
Step 4: Take a thorough look at diplomacy. It’s advised to make trade agreements and to trade technologies with countries that are your allies, or are not in the way of your victory. You may also boost your economy by asking for money.
Tip: In case your campaign goals include occupation of territory, you could also use diplomacy to buy some of these provinces, without going to war. Buying provinces is very expensive, more so if the said provinces are well developed.
Step 5: Open one of your towns by opening city and province information window by left clicking on one of the town names on map, or in the city list (hotkey F3).
The first thing you want to do is to set the taxes. The taxes are 25% in each province by default. If the province population is satisfied with how things are, they will be able to pay more taxes without negative impact.
Tip: Set optimal tax level to one or all of your towns by using the automatic tax adjustment feature. Left clicking on the automation icon will set automatic tax level to chosen town, right click will set automatic tax level to all your towns.
Then it’s also good to run through all your towns to see what buildings are in place and how much goods are present. Full summary of available goods can also be seen by opening the goods overview (hotkey F1) in the campaign screen.
Step 6: See if you have native tribes or other indigenous people living in your provinces. Set up trade priorities with them. Especially in America, you will be able to utilize the natives to attack your enemy, as the tribes will have settlements in multiple provinces. If you don’t set these priorities in the start of the scenario, you may find yourself in a situation where your foe has established good relations with natives living in your provinces and these natives may be turned against you.
Step 7: Inspect your armies and navies using the army and fleet overview (hotkey F4). Moving the armies (divisions) close to your borders is not a bad idea, but remember not to place too many divisions in provinces with no supply depots, as it will take time to get the supplies to the front and some divisions may run low or out of supplies.
Final step: Now that you have the basics covered, unpause the game and see your nation come to life. After a while it’s good thing to check the tooltip menu in top right corner, where a summary of important issues are shown in the sub-menus:
Provincial emergencies list shows if there are any bigger issues in any of your provinces, offering advice on how to improve the situation. Notice that these issues may not be quick to solve, but may need long term development.
Supply emergencies list shows if your provinces are suffering from lack of needed supplies. It also gives advice on what to do about the supply shortages in the town screen.
These steps should have you on a good start. Below there are some further tips to help you manage your nation during the campaigns.
Economy
You will not be able to quickly upgrade every town and every building to highest level. Instead, you need to be careful in planning and prioritizing your upgrades. The limited resources will not allow a lot of simultaneous building projects in all your provinces. Hence you should rather build one project or product chain at a time.
Your industries will automatically set such profit margins, that their products will get sold and the industry will make money. You may also increase/lower the profit margin manually in the production building window. Lowering profit will make the goods more appealing to traders, increasing profit may bring more money. Increasing profit margin may be helpful if you are not low on said goods and a neighbour is importing it.
Remember that the game takes into account demand and supply, and that your automated traders and trading fleets will prioritize what is transported first and what can wait. These traders think money first, so you may need to set up priorities in your provinces to speed up your projects. This is done by increasing/lowering trade priorities, and by setting minimum supply levels in your towns. These steps will divert the traders to the products of your choosing, not the ones that are probably financially more appealing.
If you are flooding the markets with certain goods, they will lose value and the product chains will stall because the final product will not sell. So it’s important to always consider the real need for output, and change craft producer production type accordingly: during the first years you may need to push out as many bricks as possible, but once war erupts, the same industries may need to start pushing out ammunition for your armies and navies.
To utilize your (expensive) military product chains even during peace time, you may:
Sell horses and weapons to natives. This will improve your relations with them, but also if you manage to get native allies, they can use these weapons to attack your enemy’s traders.
Upgrade the weapons of your existing military units. This is done by moving a division to a town, then in the city and province information window opening the division hierarchy window, where you can select regiments and change their weapons by clicking the weapon icon, and choosing a newer model in the list. This will need of course researching the needed techs.
Recruit more units and build ships.
Build and upgrade forts in your towns and in your borders. These will also increase your defensive power later on, but the cost in building products is high.
It’s not necessary, and in many cases not even possible (for example when playing as Russia) to produce everything you need in your own nation. Make trade agreements with your allies and neighbouring neutral nations and your traders will be able to purchase goods them.
When needed technologies are researched, industries can be upgraded for increased production. This is done in the production building window. Notice that upgrading will cost quite a lot of building materials, and that the industry will stop production for the duration of the upgrading. It’s important to stockpile material beforehand (increase minimum stock in the province) and also have an alternative source of said goods.
Armies, Navy & Supply
Building up armies/navies and recruiting soldiers/sailors and officers:
To help you increase your recruiting potential:
To get more officers you have to build and upgrade officer schools in your provinces. It does not matter in which towns the schools are located in as the officers will be moved to the units wherever they are recruited.
Use of officer patents policy will grant you more officers in case you are running low on leaders to your units. The officers are taken from more experienced lower level leaders in your regiments, meaning the units will lose some experience in the trade off.
Build and upgrade field camps, garrison quarters and official buildings. This will allow higher recruitment numbers in the said province, as well as more unit types to recruit.
You can also increase the recruitment base by hiring mercenaries from neighbouring provinces, but this needs available recruits there and will also hurt your relations with the nations in question.
The other way is to force recruitment, but this will increase unhappiness.
For fleets you will need a harbour. Otherwise the sailors come from the same recruitment base as the soldiers, same with officers. Building ships will need a lot of resources (materials and money), but the real cost will come from upkeep, so you need to have a strong economy to support your naval power, otherwise they will just sit at harbours doing nothing.
Supplying your armies and fleets:
Supplies are delivered to your land units (divisions) using supply trains from supply depots in your (or your allies) provinces. The bigger the depot, the more trains it can provide, meaning the more divisions it can supply. It’s a good idea to upgrade the supply depots in your provinces that are bordering you rivals’ lands, as once the war begins, you will want to move your armies in their territories and supply lines will grow longer.
Supply trains will transport following material to your divisions:
Supplies (barrel), this is basically food that is consumed all the time. It requires bread/fish in the sending city. Looting will allow the army to live off the land, which will lower the need of supplies.
Ammunition (bullet), that is consumed in fighting or when maneuvering to gain experience. Ammunition requires bullets and black powder.
Replacements (soldier + number) that are used to replace combat losses. See more later on.
When your division runs out of supplies (or your nation runs out of money for soldiers’ pay), it will start to lower the morale. You will be notified in this case. When the morale starts to lower, individuals will start to desert from the units and the division will start losing more and more men. It will not function as a combat ready force and can easily be defeated.
Your divisions will need to be stationary to receive supplies. In case the division moves, the supply train will be halted until the division again stops. For this reason it’s important not to march long distances, far away from friendly supply depots.
Tip: Engage enemy supply trains whenever possible. Your troops will not benefit from these supplies (as they are destroyed in the skirmishes), but this will leave the enemy inadequately supplied, making their armies easier to defeat in the long run.
Fleets are supplied in harbours. Once the fleet runs out of supplies or ammunition, it will automatically move to closest harbour with supplies. Fleets can also be manually ordered to resupply.
Resupplying, and repairing fleets is very expensive, as the amount of needed goods is substantial. The harboured fleet will keep resupplying automatically, depending on harbour settings.
Tip: Stockpile needed goods in the city where you plan on resupplying your fleets. If you manage to resupply and repair quicker than your enemy, you may be able to gain upper hand in naval balance, as the enemy is waiting in harbours.
Replacing losses and upgrading your units:
When taking a look at your divisions, you will see the strength is given as a number on top of a coloured bar. The number given is the amount of combat ready soldiers and is shown in green. Wounded soldiers are shown in yellow. As a rule of thumb, approximately two thirds of combat losses are wounded instead of deceased. Red colour shows the amount of men that the unit has lost (killed in action, or deserted) and that need replacing.
Replacing losses happens in two ways:
Wounded soldiers returning to unit. Over time the yellow bar will turn to green. If the division is placed in a province with ambulance building, wounded will be treated quicker.
Receiving replacements in supply trains.
Tip: When a division has suffered enough combat losses, it will take a lot of time to make it combat effective again. Move it to a friendly province with ambulance building, recruits, supply depot and stockpiled military products. The division will be automatically resupplied and replenished and will be ready for combat quicker.