Rome 2: Total War - Legendary Mode Coop Guide with Sparta, Macedon, or Athens

Version 1.0 - June 09, 2014 - Completed the basics.
Version 1.1 - July 11, 2014 - Added some talk about economics. Grammar check.
Version 1.2 - July 13, 2014 - More advice.
Version 1.3 - July 17, 2014 - Added a lot of pictures.

Hello there! My name is Humanvegetable and I'm here to present my guide to helping you, the reader, how to beat Rome 2's coop mode on legendary. I assure you that it is a lot easier than Shogun 2, and if you read this entire guide carefully, you will learn a thing or two about strategy, tactics, calculated risks, and conquest!

My partner and I have beaten the game on LEGENDARY (check our profiles for the proof). As of Jan 12, 2014, only 0.4% of people have beaten legendary. That means that there is a 99.6% chance that the other "legendary" guides are garbage since they probably didn't beat the game on legendary. What a bunch of big, fat phonies!

My coop game took a lot of hours. Almost 40 hours. Ensure that you and your coop partner are competent and dedicated before you begin or else you will have failed before you start.

Creative Assembly did not test the coop function properly and you WILL (95% of the time) experience desync problems which will be catastrophic and irreversible. The only way to combat this is to back up your multiplayer auto save every now and then at:

C:/YourUserName/AppData/Roaming/The Creative Assembly/Shogun2/save_games_multiplayer.

If you didn't do this, and you're having desync problems, you can switch your saves, so that you're both using either the host's save, or the client's save. This will buy you some time until the desync problems occur again. My partner and I make backups every hour.

If you encounter any serious glitches, immediately quit the game (Alt + F4) and reload the auto save so the glitch does not carry over. Glitches were encountered included:

1. Can't recruit units
2. Partner Faction Icon is a glowing orange orb in the campaign map.
3. Can't rotate camera.
4. Partner ended turn but it's still his turn.

Also, it is reported that pressing Alt+Tab while in the game may increase the chances of desyncs, so avoid alt-tabbing at all costs. If you want to reddit, just use the steam overlay browser (shift + tab).

If you do not follow this advice, you are going to regret your life.

Since the map is gigantic, many things can occur. To write a guide with specific instructions is pointless. My job here is to give you the tools you need to succeed. I will show you how to exploit every enemy weakness,

How to take a turn - Go through all four scrolls from left to right, up to down. Review every thing. Make sure all your agents, fleets, and armies have moved. Make sure all your provinces are at positive happiness growth. When current happiness hits -100, then you will have a growing revolt, which is a waste of time and money. If you are at -99 happiness with no growing happiness, then you better get that to at least +1 happiness growth.

In order to win this game, you're going to need a lot of money.

But to do that, you're going to have to cut a lot of unnecessary corners and ease the financial burden of war whenever you can. These are some strategies.

Raiding stance - This will piss off anyone you raid, but it will reduce upkeep by a lot. I highly recommend you do it if you need to idle for long periods of time in enemy territory.

Trade with people - Don't forget to trade with people.

Maximize economic buildings, minimize militaristic buildings - Military buildings don't do much except build military units and cause problems. So try not to build too many of these buildings. Your capital should have Light-Blue buildings (needs economic research) (Fountains, Aqueducts, Etc), some light-purple buildings (temples, preferably one which do not have any negative effects like -8 food in the higher levels), and some yellow buildings for anything you need like food or order. The minor towns should have farms and temples.
I normally have a few military capitals strategically placed throughout the world and delivery armies that deliver to front-line armies.

Slums - Slums do nothing good. These are 100% preventable. If you have an empty building slot, build something in its place.

General's Traits - When they level up, be sure to pick the attribute that reduces army/fleet upkeep. This will give you a few extra hundred gold per turn. This adds up for a long period of time.

Minimize your armies - Don't have armies or unit you don't need. Mercenaries have a very high upkeep, so don't use them if you don't need them.

Declare peace and get money - If you are dragged into a war due to allies, try to declare peace and get money. Normally you can squeeze thousands of gold out of them. In general, try to declare peace to minimize warring factions. The more factions you are up against, the more costly it will be to defend against multiple fronts. War is expensive, so avoid it.

Don't forget wounded generals - If you have a general wounded in battle, you may see him "return" in the events. You can replace your cruddier general with these more veteran, often forgetten generals.

Deploy agents for money and power - Train all your agents in the art of manipulation. This is OP. Once you have a lot of agents, you can deploy them in your own territories for lots of bonuses. Dignitaries in your territory will grant you significant tax boosts which pay for themselves after 10 turns. Veterans inside an army will give XP to all your troops every turn. Without agents, it will take forever (like 100 turns) to bring your troops up to gold level. Spies will spy.

Overall Food surplus - Food surplus equals more growth and unit replemenishment. More growth equals more taxes. There is a limit to the food surplus. Once you realize what it is, you should spend it on "food expensive" buildings.

ENDGAME - My Capital

Initially, You want to try to use nothing but long pikes, slingers, and a few horsemen to chase those annoying missile units.
A basic army set up will look like; 1 general, 3-4 horses, 3-5 slingers, at least 6 pikemen, 2 ballistas, and infantry. The ballistas will easily kill 200 units a piece per battle.
In the future, you'll gradually want to upgrade to super elite archers and pikemen. Sparta has unit limits for some of their spartan limits. I do not know how the limit can be lifted. Damn you, CA. You can custom build your armies in the custom battle option to build and see your dream army.

I will pass down to you, the reader, several super cheese strategems that will maximize the stupidity of Creative Assembly's god-awful suicidal artificial intelligence. Even though these stratagems are HIGHLY FROWNED UPON in multiplayer mode, don't you worry, for the single player AI aren't programmed to care, just die. And die they shall. At one point, I was using FPS view to shoot from a ballista boat onto a mass of enemy cavalry just sitting there at the shore. I was able to expend all the ammo and they just stood there and died! Also, even if you are defending, they'll probably attack you with everything if you skirmish them a little bit.

Your enemy will send wave after wave of their own men to die. With a super fast replenishment rate of 3 turns, your men will gain valuable EXP and traits that will make slaughtering the enemies' new green armies a laughing matter. Unit replenishment is super fast in Rome 2 and works if you have an army with a General anywhere inside allied territory. Unlike Shogun 2 Legendary, you don't need to spend a crazy amount of time getting adequate upgrades.

Listed below are the super secret single player stratagems, Use these wisely and you will laugh as you march your men straight into the heart of Rome!

Fortify Stance - Whenever you move into enemy territory, you will always want to be in fortify stance. This costs 50% of your remaining movement so whenever you are moving, just click and hold and move your movement ghost to an appropriate area that will make you have at least 50% of the movement points left over then release your click. The suicidial enemy will be pour into your fortifications at specific key chokepoints filled with traps. A deadly mistake.

Take the walled cities and camp in them - The enemy cannot win against you as long as you have 3 pikemen to defend the walls. The AI normally send 4 ladders even in the end game stage. Just guard the entrances to the inner gates with pikes to combat these ladder-men. This is an essential cheese strategy when combined with Gates of Oil and Gates of Arrows.

In Enemy's territory and Near Yours - You can lure an enemy to attack you and then once you decimate their armies, you just move into your ally's territory to heal your entire army within 3 turns. You do not want to lose any veteran units so do this. Watch out for those agents who try to hinder your movement..

One-Two Coop Punch - The first player, on his turn, will "soften" a target enemy town with agents and ballista fleets. When the first player ends his turn, the second player will immediately take over the soften town with ease.

Use your allies - You can set up "war targets" through diplomacy. It's a button on the bottom of the page. Use this to tell your allies to attack certain targets.

One enemy at a time - Do not declare war with everyone. Be aware of who you are declaring war with. They may have allies. Also, be aware that if you keep "killing captives" this may anger your enemies' enemy. Seeing how this is legendary, you will always have more enemies than allies. Therefore it is wise to either enslave (this may cause future rebellions) or release captives. I always release, but having slaves is good for economic development.

Take Over Port Towns with Ballista Fleets - With 6-ballista ship fleet, you can go to unguarded port towns and ballita them into submission. Aim for the general first and then get the rest of the troops. They will crumble.

Quell the Rebellions - In order to raise public orders, you need to research the philosophy tree and also build temples (purple buildings) and fountains (blue buildings - can only be built in region capitals and it must be initially researched). Once any possible rebellions are dead, you can advance further without any worry.

Client States - Try to get a few if you can. But only a few as they may rise up and take more territories than you want.

Steal all the agents - Always manipulate enemy agents and never kill. Agents have no upkeep cost and they can wreck havok. In the end game stage, enemy agents will try to cause rebeliions in your territories. Also, if you "deploy" agents in enemy areas, the enemy will be more vulnerable to attack. You can deploy agents by moving them into enemy territory and clicking the deploy button next to "unit detail". If you deploy in your own territory, you will have various bonuses. If you deploy a veteran in your army, you army will continuously gain EXP (very important). Agents can be used to slow or stop enemy forces. Before you commit an agent action, more detail will be revealed the before you hit the "do it" button.

ENDGAME - Look at all of my agents! The world is revealed! Subversion everywhere!

Wonders - Wonders provide amazing faction-wide bonuses. They're in certain regions. You can see if a region has a wonder by clicking on a region and looking at the region details in the bottom left corner of the map. The wonder will be displayed as a tiny circular icon. Hover over it to see details. Also, they are physically visible on the map. You can google the wonder locations list. These things are not of a high priority. Look at the appendix of this guide for more information.

Mercenaries - Don't use them if necessary. Their upkeep cost is very high and will drain your funds.

Weapons factories - You do not need many weapons factories. Advanced weapons factories will cause squalor. Seeing how everyone gets mad really easily, it is recommended that you instead develop your region capitals as "pleasure palaces" with fountains and temples and possibly food buildings (yellow building - as a ham icon).

Sacrifice the plum tree to preserve the peach tree - One coop buddy slaughters the enemy and runs back to heal. Meanwhile, the ally will swoop in and take the territory with relative ease

Finally, to defeat a faction with ease, you will want to station a massive pike army in their territory, fortify your stance, declare war (if you haven't), and wait for them to attack you. Once in battle, you will use the "Never Attack; Always Defend; Fortify Stance; Pike Box" Stratagem to overcome overwhelming odds. Then you will use the "In Enemy's territory and Near Yours" in order to heal your wounded army rapidly. Simulatenously, you will use the "Sacrifice the plum tree to preserve the peach tree" stratagem to have your ally's army move in and enslave their province.

Noteworthy Techs to research:

1. Public Order to quell possible rebellions.
2. Siege gates with oil activated.
3. Unit Morale

Civil research is for long term development. Military research is more of a short term development.

One enemy at a time - Do not declare war with everyone you want to kill. Know who you are going to war with, they may drag in their allies.

Navies - Lots of balista ships. 2 rocks can destroy most low-level ships. Some assault ships for ramming power. Some tower ships as they have infinite ammo (The ammo fires from the tower.) It's up to you.

Military alliances and Subjugate - They will boost up your territory count, which helps a lot in the end game stage.

Consolidation of forces - Instead of splitting on everyone with everything, it's best to move as one in one area. You have to be careful who you go to war with and how happy your surrounding neighbors are before moving forces out from near that area.

Idling Armies - If you're not at war with anyone, position your armies near the borders (or coasts) of high danger zones. Mildly hostile neighbors can become future problems. Idling armies are pointlessly expensive so minimize idling.

Loot and Retreat - Build a navy with ballista ships and a landing force, and invade an undefended coastal town. Once you take over the town, loot it for thousands of gold, burn everything to the ground, and go back to the seas. Looting will anger your enemies but will give you money and hinder the enemy's advance and economy. You will lose this town but who cares.

War Factories and Delivery Service - I mentioned that war factories are horrible for public order. I try to keep only one complete region with complete land and sea production in order to maximize overall economic growth. The only downside to this is that you will have very few war factory zones (I had 1). But seeing how you are not going to make units nonstop and your war factories will idle for most of the campaign, it is more benefitical to make fewer of them since they cause lots of squalor and instead build benefical light blue, blue, purple, yellow, or green buildings in their place. Since your armies will gradually move further away from these war factories, I suggest using a delivery service. Here's an example.
If 3 unit cards were wiped out in my army called "King's Katamites" from the far north, he'd had to double time down back to the war factory zone down in Athens. This would take him 4 turns to get there, 1 to replenish, and another 4 to go back up. This takes 9 turns. You could have the army entrench and make a new army, let's call them "Savage Sodomites" and have them build the 3 missing unit cards in 1 turn, and double time it to give it to the King's Katamites in 4 turns. That took only 5 turns, a bit more than half.

War Factories and The Monument to Leonidas - On a side note, Sparta has a level 5 barracks called "Monument to Leonidas." This provides a small factionwide morale boost to units upon recruitment, -15% land unit recruitment cost, and if units are recruited at the monument, they get a 30% morale boost. Unfortunately, my campaign ended to early for me to buy this $10,000+ building which also took 10+ turns to build. Also all high ranking buildings can only be built in capitals.

Play to lose - Invade a city with nothing but ballistas. You do this to destroy any extra units. Do not enter the city. You will lose, but they will lose some unit cards, if you do it right.

Listed below are the super secret single player stratagems, Use these wisely and you will laugh as you march your men straight into the heart of Rome!

Pike box - Set your pikemen to form a thick box formation with pikes faced in every direction. Keep your slingers in the middle and faced towards the enemy. Even if you are faced against ridiculous odds, you have a greater chance of winning than using "maneuvering tactics." Pikes are weak against javelins.

Boundary Camp - Move your entire army to the end of the map and use the big red line to protect your flanks, your rear, or both!

Never Attack; Always Defend - Whoever is defending will always camp on a big hill. So why don't you always defend? The enemy will run up the hill and tire themselves out trying to kill you. Never initiate a siege or attack unless you have a 95% chance of winning.

Hill Camp - Camping on top of the biggest hill available while defending will tire and slow the enemy to death as they try to reach you. You can also pelt them with more missiles than if you were on flat territory.

Hammer and Anvil - Let them enter your line of pikes and then hit them from the rear with hoplites, swords, or cavalry. This is THE maneuver you do.

Gifting Units - You can press the gift button in the bottom left corner to gift a certain amount of units to your ally for the duration of the battle. He can help you micromanage.

It is most wise to use a combination of these stratagems to maximize killing power. Here are some examples below of Combination Stratagems.

Never Attack; Always Defend; Corner Camp; Pike Box - You can't lose against an army twice your size!

Never Attack; Always Defend; Fortify Stance; Pike Box - THE MOTHER GOD OF ALL CHEESE STRATAGEMS. You will easily kill a force triple your size doing almost absolutely nothing. You will feel like the GOD OF GODS.

Example of the Never Attack; Always Defend; Foritfy Stance; Pike Box.
http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/455160057250863607/6288928A1FD4808BFBA6AF32C8B79F30ECC6A53E/

Example of Master Strategy

For open field battles, your ballista should intially shoot explosive rounds and kill about 200 men per ballista if you research the ammo capacity upgrade. Your ballista should be behind your line of pikes. Your mobile infantry should be behind the pikes. Once the engagement starts, then you send your troops out to outflank. If you make one big line then the opponent will attack the ends of your line as well as the center. If your opponent is not attacking your pikes, then you're wasting men.

Once you outflank one side with cavalry or infantry, you can slowly start to cause the enemy to rout from one side to another.

My ally and I were playing on Patch 8 and the enemy normally had armies that had a lot of skirmishers. This is deadly in a prolonged battle. Luckily, they almost always leave these skirmishers undefended while their men are fighting your pikes. If you have cavalry, I recommend you get these these annoying skirmishers first.

Now that the battle is over, you can choose to continue to kill the routing units. I normally don't do this since it's a waste of time but if the enemy absolutely must be destroyed, please do so. You also gain a small amount of valuable exp killing routing units. It is more efficient to use champions to train your army.

ENDGAME - Grand Army 1 ENDGAME - Grand Army 2. ENDGAME - Grand Army 3 ENDGAME - Defensive Forces

Watch this video. Enough said. A 40 Ballista Fleet in a tightly packed formation cannot be defeated unless it is up against another 40 Ballista Fleet.

Firstly, the more ballista ships you have the better. Put them in a tightly packed line formation and watch out for ships coming from the flanks. These ballista ships will sink any transport ship in 1-3 hits.

The real navy ships are harder to sink and may move in and board your ballista ships, so you will want to avoid these before you even battle. But if you do have to fight them, they will try to board you. In that case, outflank them and shoot them while they are boarding another ship. This will cause them to unboard and die instantly.

Shooting in FPS mode will allow you to shoot at a much faster rate, so do that. If you can, gift a ballista ship to your ally and let him shoot as well. Be careful and be aware of your surroundings.

The general can normally have a large ramming ship that can be used to ram and instantly kill any transport ship.

ENDGAME - My Most Powerful Fleet

Siege battles are so easy, that all you need are 1/5 of the enemy forces to win. I recommend a small quarter-sized (3-5) army with a few pike men to guard your rear lines.

20 MInute Timer - Now, your battle timer should have been set to 20 minutes before you started the campaign to give you the advantage. The opponent is going to have a much higher difficulty taking your slaughterhouse in 20 minutes.

Oil Gates - Ensure that you have researched the oil gates. This is a fairly easy technology to get early on. The enemy will be slaughtered as they move through your gates. This also causes them to rout easily.

More Ammo - You can also research for more ammo for your units when sieged but it's unnecessary. Still nice to have though.

Level 3 SlaugtherHouse - If there is a city that is getting sieged frequently, upgrade to level 3 for in-city siege weapons for a higher kill rate.

City Towers - The city towers have infinite ammo. These will kill alot of the enemy if held!

Hellenistic Walls - These high walls are superior to the barbarian walls where the enemy can still shoot at you even if you are behind the walls. Always convert the city center immediately to have this.

Wall Archers - Right click and hold on top of the walls to put the skirmishers on one straight line and not the default two lines.

Enemy ladders - The enemy will place them and they have a tendency not to use them again for some weird reason.

City Siege Surrender - Enemies generally never let you or themselves surrender. You can generally wait a few turns and they'll attack you 98% of the time.

Before the battle begins, open up your map, and see where the enemy is. Place all your units on that side. If it's a starting enemy fleet, move your men in the middle of the city. The enemy almost always has 4 ladders. Nothing else. You will exploit that by shooting burning arrows to set them ablaze. Your city towers will also shoot at them with fire arrows automatically. If they are climbing the walls, tell your men to get off of the walls and set pikes up in front of nearby tower entrances. The enemy will climb down the tower and get slaughtered.

Set your pikes up in front of the gates in a U formation. The reason I do this is that when the enemy attacks the bottom of the U, he is automatically outflanked on both sides. I believe this is better than massing all pikes in one small line in front of the door. Also, the enemy cannot spill out.

After this, the enemy will send 1-3 units to burn down the gates. Normally your city towers will slaugther them one by one. Afterwards they'll send 1-3 more units. They'll repeat this until your gates are burned down.

The enemy will enter in mass on that one side and get slaughtered by your pikemen, the burning oil gates, and the city towers. The mass routing should happen 1-2 minutes into the battle. Once they are completely out of your gates, then you can chase the routers. Be careful not to go through the oil gates with them or you'll be the one that's cooked.

In one battle, the Persian army sieged one of my city. All I had were 3 unit cards of 300 Spartan Hoplites. I was outnumbered 5 to 1 and I still won. The initially win percentage looked like 1%. It was a pixel. The Persian enemy was so vast that once an enemy unit card was wiped out, another would take his place from off the map. They lost thousands of units. After that battle, they sieged me again in the same turn and lost another 1,000 units! The battle was so crippling for the enemy, we were able to counterassault them with no major hinderance.

At all times, remember to use the super cheese stratagems listed in the tactics section to ensure victory. To take a province with ease, use the super cheese stratagems to decimate the enemy's armies. Once they are gone, you can swoop in with ease.

Firstly, Athens and Sparta should create a big, balanced Pike army. Also, Sparta should create a minor balanced pike force (3-4 people) to defend Sparta.

With a balanced Pike army, Sparta should move in the take Larissa or wipe out the enemy forces, if possible, or at least defend Athens. Athens should take Hierapytna with a balanced Pike army. After Hierapytna is taken over, you can combine forces and take Larissa if you haven't yet.

Once these two territories are taken, Sparta should move up to take Pella, and Athens should take Apollonia and station a half stack of pikemen there for defense. If you haven't taken Pella yet, combine both forces and take it.

After you take Pella, you should experience a game-ending desync causing both saves to be corrupt beyond repair.

Don't forget to like and favorite. If you have any questions, please comment below.

Here are the remainder of my endgame pictures.

Provinces List of Improving Happiness. Known Factions that MUST BE PUNISHED. THE WORLD IS YOURS. Economic Research. War Research. Research the first thing in Siege for boiling oil gates. Money, Power, Respect. Trade for money. Finance. I normally don't read this. Stats. Faction Leader. "It is not the lash they fear... it is MY DIVINE POWER."

List of Wonders
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/70320-All-of-the-wonders-in-Rome-2