Coping at the Start of Very Hard Empire Total War Campaigns

The Very Hard difficulty setting is a pretty hard standard in Empire Total War. I found that for Medieval II I could cope pretty well once I learned how to play the game, with the highest difficulty setting - in fact the campaign was quite easy and the AI didn't offer too much of a challenge, it was usually the battles that required more thought.

But in Empire your enemies don't allow you a moments rest or slackness. I must admit that I haven't had a successful Very Hard campaign in Empire yet. My observations though are that to succeed you need to:

1. Be paranoid about any neighbouring countries who are less than friendly - they are likely to invade quite soon!
2. Manage expenditure very tightly.
3. Be very sure of what strategy you are going to adopt - you probably need to play and fail a number of times before you can get this right.
4. Be brave when accepting battle and make sure you win.
5. Over-estimate your enemy, but don't be too cautious - probably the hardest ask of all.

Good luck, you'll need it!