Campaign

Official sources describe campaign missions inspired by real historic events. This page summarizes confirmed features and identifies details and guides that this wiki does not include.

What separates one campaign scenario from the next is usually not a larger map but a tighter objective. An early scenario may only unlock the two starting industries, so a layout that works there will fail later for a reason that has nothing to do with your skill. Knowing which scenario you are on explains most of the difficulty people report.

Scenarios are listed here without walkthroughs or strategies. Those go stale the moment a patch changes a balance value, and a guide that sends you to the wrong building wastes more time than it saves. The scenario list tells you what exists; the data pages tell you what each object does.

If you want the rules that apply regardless of scenario, including income and difficulty settings, see Mechanics. If you would rather build without objectives, Game Modes covers the sandbox and the other free-form options.

Campaign progress is also not linear in difficulty. A scenario that introduces a new mechanic can be easier than the one before it, because the mechanic is what the scenario is teaching and the map is built to let you learn it. Assuming each step is harder than the last is a reasonable way to get stuck.

If you are looking for specific scenario names, counts, or the current list of objectives, that belongs to the official sources rather than to a wiki summary, and this page does not reproduce it. What is here is the shape of the mode and the things that trip people up, which do not change between patches.