Strategygames areknown for being extremely difficultat times. One of the strongest appeals tothe wide world of strategy gamesis pushing yourself through tougher and tougher mind challenges. If you’re like me, beating the game once isn’t enough. There’s so much more to do.
While you might simply opt for playing on progressively harder difficulties, achievements and trophies provide further challenges to conquer.
Some achievements will come naturally with your first playthrough, but some are more difficult to accomplish than anything else you can do in the game. Most importantly, you get bragging rights from holding such rare and challenging achievements.
10God-Like
Sid Meier’s Civilization VI
Sid Meier’s Civilization 6
The God-Like achievement is completed by winning a regular game at Deity difficulty.
AI can only do so much. In an ideal world, turning up the difficulty in a strategy game would make the AI more intelligent, but that’s often not possible. In Civilization, the difficulty setting decides whether you or the enemies get unfair advantages.
On higher levels, the other nations spawn with more units, generate everything quicker, and become stronger in combat. By the time you get to Deity, the hardest difficulty, you are starting the game extremely behind with little way to catch up, and the enemy might decide to wipe you out just a few turns in.
9Outside Context
The Outside Context achievement is completed by invading pre-FTL Earth while it is in the midst of a world war.
This achievement requires a lot of luck, as Earth isn’t guaranteed to be in each game, let alone in the exact situation you need for it to offer that short window where you’re able to get the achievement.
In the rare chance you are presented with that situation, you will still need to do a lot to prepare so that you can invade when the time is right, like protecting the planet until the time is right.
All of this has to be done with Ironman mode enabled, which disables manual saves to prevent you from reloading if something goes wrong, to get the achievement.
While it is entirely possible to do this by accident, it’s a painfully difficult achievement to pull off on demand.
8T.H.R.E.A.T. Detected
Marvel’s Midnight Suns
The T.H.R.E.A.T. Detected achievement is completed by surviving three turns in the THREAT room with every hero.
While this achievement may not be the hardest in the traditional sense, there’s a reason it’s the rarest achievement in the game. It’s incredibly tedious. You need to nearly complete the game to get all 17 heroes, which you obviously need to do the challenge.
Then, surviving in the THREAT room isn’t exactly easy. Three turns may not sound like a lot, but you only have one hero, and you’re completely overwhelmed with enemies. Unless you get a great first turn, there’s not much you can do, as the enemies will take you out immediately.
10 Strategy Game Hidden Gems You Need to Play
We have cossacks, tanks, and even submarines!
7Life…Uh…Finds A Way
The Life…Uh…Finds A Way Achievement is completed by launching the ship in a playthrough where Losing Is Fun difficulty and commitment mode are turned on the whole time.
It can only be earned inRimworld Console Editionsince the PC version doesn’t have achievements, although you’re able to still challenge yourself by doing it on PC anyway.
The aptly named Losing Is Fun difficulty often sends unfair threats and bad luck to destroy your colony, and commitment mode functions much like an Ironman mode, with the only way to save the game being autosaves when you quit the game.
This prevents you from reloading a save and trying again when things inevitably go wrong. Given that launching the ship is the end goal of the base game, this is a long and excruciating challenge.
61001 Nights
Cities: Skylines
The 1001 Nights achievement is accomplished by experiencing 1001 nights in the game.
This isn’t difficult at all in a conventional way, as you could technically accomplish this achievement by leaving the game running and not actually playing. However, when you realize just how long it’ll take to do that, you’ll understand that it is a challenge after all.
At the standard speed of the game, it would take the game running for over 480 hours to achieve. Even if you have the game set to 3x speed, it’ll take roughly a week of nonstop runtime in the game.
That said, if it’s a game you truly love, getting this achievement as a byproduct of simply playing the game is very possible.
5The Winterhome Survivor
To get The Winterhome Survivor achievement, you have to finish the Fall of Winterhome scenario in Survivor Mode.
Winterhome is a doomed settlement introduced in the main story after it had already collapsed. The Fall Of Winterhome Scenario puts you in charge of Winterhome as things are falling apart, with half of the settlement burnt down and not nearly enough resources to sustain everyone.
On top of that, survivor mode sets all difficulty sliders to the highest level, removes the ability to pause, and removes manual saves, only autosaving when you quit. This means you don’t have time to think or room to make mistakes, all while in a nightmare scenario.
12 Best Grand Strategy Games Of All Time, Ranked
The video game industry has given us several grand strategy games, and these are clearly some of the best ones.
To meet the Valhalla achievement, you must beat the game on Commander or Legendary difficulties with Ironman mode turned on.
You better not make a single mistake because it can, and likely will, cost you an entire playthrough when playing on Ironman mode.
In XCOM 2,your characters have perma-death, and with any game’s Ironman mode, the game uses autosaves instead of manual saves to prevent you from reloading after things go wrong.
You need to keep your characters alive for the entire playthrough to keep them at an appropriate level to take out the increasingly difficult and overpowered enemies. Having a single one die can massively set back your attempt, and if several die, you may as well start all over.
3King Of All The Isles
Crusader Kings III
Crusader Kings 3
To get the King Of All The Isles achievement, you must control all islands in the Atlantic and Mediterranean oceans while playing as a North Germanic ruler of the Asatru faith, all while keeping your realm size below 80.
Now, by islands, it luckily doesn’t include all of Britain, but you will make some powerful enemies like the Byzantine Empire when capturing the Mediterranean islands.
Given that you have to keep your realm size low, you’ll be stretched extremely thin and be incredibly underpowered in comparison, making going up against them a major challenge.
Luckily, you can do this without Ironman mode on and still get the achievement.
230 Minutes of Hel
Hearts Of Iron IV
Hearts of Iron 4
To complete the 30 Minutes of Hel achievement, you must inflict over 1,800,000 casualties to Germany as Poland in the 1939 “Blitzkrieg” scenario.
If you know your history, you’ll know that 1939 was not kind to Poland. There was a joint invasion from Germany, Slovakia, and the Soviet Union that led to Poland being completely captured in about a month as they were overwhelmed.
Given that this scenario recreates this situation, you start off in a horrible position and have to put up a massive fight to rewrite history. 1.8 Million is a lot, so you’ll not only have to survive the invasion, but carry out an impressive counterattack as well.
This also has to be done with Ironman mode on, meaning a mistake can make you have to start all over.
1Three Mountains
Europa Universalis IV
Europa Universalis 4
To get the Three Mountains achievement, you have to own or have a subject own the entire world as Ryukyu.
Ryukyu is a tiny group of islands in the Pacific Ocean. If the Mandate of Heaven DLC is enabled, Ryuku also starts the game as a tributary to the Ming Dynasty, having to pay them a yearly tax in exchange for sometimes choosing to protect you if you get invaded. It’s not exactly a fair deal.
Regardless of whether or not you’re a tributary, Ryukyu is in one of the worst possible starting spots to conquer the world.
Being so isolated, you haveplenty of options on how you handle the challenge, but all of those options are going to be difficult. To make matters worse, you have to have Ironman mode enabled to get achievements in Europa Universalis IV.
8 Best Strategy Games For Beginners
If you don’t want to read the manual, I’ve got you covered.
