Playing in legendary mode already starts us off at a terrible disadvantage, but the spirit of achievement hunting won’t let this wall stop us! To win the campaign, we’re going to need to own 90 settlements. We’ll also need to own Sicily, Africa, Corsica et Sardnia, Macedonia, aand Latium. We’ll also need an army to hold all these lands with a army of 180 land units a naval force of 60 naval units. Doing this is going to be difficult but by following this guide you should be able to accomplish it.

How to Win with Pompey The Great in Total War: Rome II – Emperor Edition On Legendary Mode

Money Makes the world go round

We’ll need to start by quickly growing a strong economy. Immediately disband any units you don’t think you absolutely need, if we’re attacked enforce early we won’t survive anyways. I wouldn’t expect an army to arrive before the first 10 turns anyways.

Put the spy into stealing mode inside Italia in Octavian’s Rome to gather extra money and food. You can also research land management and improved irrigation for improved food management. A dignitary, built after research scholarship, will also save you money. You can either put him in a province to save money or add him to the army.

When playing with Pompey, take advantage of the Neptun Temples It improves both your economy and order in the provinces.

You’ll want to invest all your land into Economy and Farming. Any remaining space should be used to build a temple or theatre to help keep order. Once your food and your money is stabilized, and you have no riots, your ready to devote any extra money received to your army.

Building an army

Because of the high costs involved, we’re going to need strong and well made single units that can hold their own. Just about the only thing that is going to handle legendary is quality over quanity.

With that in mind, we need to keep our general as mobile as possible, bad circumstances can turn the tide of battle quickly and if that happens we wanna be able to get him out of there or get him to help someone else right away.  We’ll need to then Invade Numidia and Africa.  Infantry should be your strongest priority, while you have some decent archery back up, and a couple of cavallry. This is going to begin our “Three phase” Cycle.

Earn money, invest that money into the army, then conquer a settlement. Build up that settlement’s economy to earn money, invest that money into the army, then conquer another. It’s a rather straight forward process.

But simply put, a legendary game of Total War can take over a hundred hours. When your choosing which settlements to fight and what armies to attack, make sure to  Maximize your skills in combat. Read yourself some “Art of War” and use every tactic you can to your advantage. Do remember to keep your archery behind your infantry.

Use spearmen to defend your General, or you can use the Cavalry to defend him. If you cannot play well in battle mode, use 2 legions together and then let the automatic resolution to win the fight. We may be quality over quantity, but we can strike down the opposing forces bit by bit of caution is needed.

Mercenaries

Much like the real world, a small focused army can greatly benefit by calling up mercenaries for grunt work and strikes.

This allows you to call up quick mobilization using mercenaries to weaken your opponent, then using your prepared forces to destroy the enemy. This then allows you to quickly disband the mercenaries as soon as you have completed your campaign.

Because we are moving purposefully slowly and focusing on our economy, it’s far more practical to call up mercenaries quickly than it is to try and hold a very large standing army. To quote a amazing movie, avoid getting into a land war with aasia.

There just aren’t enough resources available to justify the expense, as there is way to much distance between settlements to make it worth traversing when we have far juicer targets.