Frostpunk 2

Most of the difficulty is at the very beginning, once you get all of your needs checked, it becomes much easier (I will put my starting steps at the end of this guide). You do not need to do this in ironman. I attempted to do this while also going for other achievements (mainly Not On My Watch, Primus Inter Pares, and Moving Out), so some of this may be excessive if you're focused on just this particular achievement.

General Tips:

• Focus on increasing heatstamp income, you're going to need a lot of them and there are not a lot of ways to do it (raise funds is an ok stop gap, but don't rely on it)
• Don't let cold get above minor, or people will start freezing to death
• Try to maximize area effects, especially crevasses that provide heat and housing
• Related to above, it's not necessary but plan around hubs if possible, especially for housing districts, which can expand twice and have at least 6 hubs that can affect them (fighting and communications hubs especially, as they're one of the only ways to stack trust and tension modifiers, which becomes especially important during the civil war)
• It's a lot easier to scale up than it is to scale down, make sure you all of your needs are met first and plan out how you want to expand production
• There are some soft timers the game doesn't show or tell you about, but for the most part Chapter 3 and 4 on settling Winterhome branch gives you an almost unlimited amount of time to prepare as long as you don't complete the objectives. Utilize that to stock up for the civil war

In game setup, I went with Faithkeepers mostly for their counter-faction the Evolvers and their Enhance Workers ability to increase production efficiency. I also went with the "Embrace the Frost" path, though in hindsight I'm not certain that's easier than the other one (you need more pops for the settlements). For the ending, I found banishment to be significantly easier than the other two endings, and it has the added benefit of completely avoiding the peace and Captain's Authority rule laws (I've seen most people say peace will not nullify this but never hurts to be safe, plus that ending is the hardest of the 3 I think).

Initial Start Guide:

I'll start by listing my building, law, and research priorities and then talk about other specific actions. Keep an eye on all of the timers/progress bars and move onto the next item in the respective lists as soon as you're able.

Building order:

1. Build 4 housing districts in the caverns next to the generator, 1 food district on the side with most of the food deposits, 1 extraction district on the prefabs, 1 industrial district (I put this next to the prefab district and around the available material deposits), and council building on the generator
2. Frostbreak to the coal and to the materials out from the available deposits. When those are done, build extraction districts on both
3. Expand one housing district (I would pick one closest to the generator)
4. Switch industrial district to goods production (this will somewhat increase heatstamp income)
5. When coal district is done, activate generator and overdrive (turn off overdrive when game tells you to)
6. Build research institute on housing expansion
7. Expand coal, food, industrial, and material districts (if you don't have enough heatstamps, do it in that order)
8. Build 1 of each resource buildings on their respective districts as they're researched
9. When you can, expand over the remaining coal to the logistic waystation as well as to the crevasses at the edge (make sure you leave enough heatstamps for resource buildings). While not an immediate priority, do this as soon as you can before the coal deposits runs out
10. Build another coal district and housing districts in the crevasse when your population increases

Laws Order:

1. Paid Essentials (this will provide more heatstamps than Service Exemptions as well as provide production efficiency)
2. Service Exemptions
3. Foraged Additives
4. Family Apprenticeship
5. Durable/Mass-produced Goods (they seem comparable at this stage, try leverage it in promise)
6. Harvesting Funerals
7. Infectious Badge

Research Order:

1. Blasting Coal Mines
2. Biowaste Hothouse
3. All Do Maintenance
4. Mechanized Sawmill
5. Weather-Adjusted Shifts
6. Salvaging Factory
7. Moss-Filtration Tower
8. Housing Insulation
9. Heat Recycling
10. Vanguard Logistics Bay
11. Survivalists Headquarters

First thing, immediately raise funds from every community. Promote the Faithkeepers to balance out their relations a little. When the council is built, immediately do the vote to keep you as steward. For this vote, I didn't make any promises and instead kept reloading until RNG let me win. Then immediately call an emergency vote and get Paid Essentials. I had a promise that I was okay with so I used that to push it, but RNG might be enough for this too. For the coal dilemma, I decided to not take any risks because I think taking a risk and then choosing to save people results in less than you had originally (ignore if you're not going for Not On My Watch). When the logistic district is up, explore the frozen bay and go towards the dreadnaught. If you don't have spare housing, expand or build more districts and then take in the nearby survivor group. When I found the dreadnaught, I cleared the graves to get access to the closest oil deposit (the nomads are not that hard to deal with). Prioritize getting oil production and trade up as soon as possible. Once that was secured was the point that I started feeling comfortable and able to properly prepare for the road ahead.

Do not pass any Rule laws on captain difficulty, i only passed the peace law at the end of the game and it doesnt block the achievement.
What i did early/mid game was to take heatstamps from faction when i could and research thing only on favor, this way i was always on good terms with factions with lots of heatstamps and you have to prepare for the last civil war.

I took the peace route and you should meet your agreement with both factions at the same time, if not, they will hate you the more you play. On agreement, take no more than one law and one research if possible. The goal is the end the war as fast as possible (waiting to vote for 2 laws or do 2 researchs is already too slow). If you're fast, you will have low casuality, and fraction affinity will not tank. When you meet your peace agreement with one faction, you'll gain huge affinity boost. By ending the civil war, all factions gain affinity. So if you end the civil war by doing both your agreements at the same time and in less than one voting circle (you can fund all fractions to get the last boost), you will be able to do the last vote without manipulating people and end the game. It is more difficult to survive early game than setting up your civil war plan.