Almost all of Anora's affection is tied to Chaos choices. Always prioritize affection gains over Law or Chaos points for endings. You will never be short on Law or Chaos to access extended routes as long as you aren't skipping events.
Hard difficulty is much harder than Normal, but terrain and leader formations can still be ignored. At minimum, you need to be comfortable with unit builds and the roles they fill. Most importantly though, observe and take notes. VB is a series that teaches you by showing you how effective something is, then expecting you to incorporate that into your own strategy. Anything the AI can do, you can do better. Except spam the same unit. I highly recommend the
interface mod made by hilih--, which allows you to search recruitable units.
NG+ lets you keep your units, equipment, Tactica, and investments.