That young voice XD

*guy surrounded by four armies in mountainside road* _Are you looking to negotiate with us?_

Exploit 1: Unlimited boat movement 0:31 Exploit 2: Time-out Assult Win 2:12 Exploit 3: Agent Squashing 4:53 Exploit 4: Merchat fort 5:41 Exploit 5: Pseudo random chance manipulation 6:56 Exploit 6: Sally Out Draw Glitch 11:45 Exploit 7: Attacking factions of the same religion on crusade/jihad 14:35 Exploit 8: Units never desert 16:53 Exploit 9: General With Quadruple Movement 18:20 Exploit 10: Recruitment Replenishment Glitch 19:36

-10 chivalry +10 dread

I can't believe this. You OCCUPIED three cities and RELEASED prisoners??? Were you feeling well that day?

why do Legend sounds like a really angry English boy

3 doesnt even feel like an exploit, seems legit having your armies hunt down agents

My god its amazing how his voice changed

Merchant fort is awesome

Another siege strategy is to send a light cavalry unit or 2 (the faster, the better). When they sally out the next turn, just camp your forces in the farthest corner of the battle map. The AI never leaves a rear guard in the town center, and they leave the gates open when they sally. Let them get as close to you as they possibly can without getting your unit(s) destroyed, then BLITZ around them and straight into the town center :) The light cav is so much faster than infantry (and occasionally heavy cav) that you can time-out victory before they catch up to you. 2 units increases your chances of success because one can claim the town center while the other "skirmishes" or at least distracts the enemy long enough that they wont kill your main unit.

The merchant fort thing (Although it might be an exploit, technically) is actually a pretty fun game mechanic. Forts were constructed around valuable materials to facilitate trade so it's kind of true to life. I like to think of it as roleplay

cant quite understand the people who clicked on a video titled 'exploit guide' and then moaned that the guy is cheating... either use the exploits or dont, but theres no point watching just to moan about it... i thought this was a very helpful video, whether i choose to use exploits or not

This is definitely a game I keep learning about, even after years.

It's not an exploit as such, but I have found that if you place Pikemen as close as you can to the city gates during a siege, the pikes will stick through the gate and skewer any infantry using a battering ram. As they constantly have to replace the infantry, the ram won't damage the gate, leaving you free to combat any ladders/siege towers.

Jeez, his voice is so different now. It is almost freaky.

'Agent squashing' is the only one I'd use.

Still the best total war game they’ve ever made

The great exploit of all time is the stakes at the gates!

Damn XD When you said "Jihad Speed" on the boats, I instantly thought of Battlefield and boats with fronts packed to the roof with explosives.

Step 1: Play as France Step 2: Build armies of only heavy cavalry Step 3: Win

"There's nothing I can do to prevent a riot" *has high tax rate enabled*

I'd just like it on record that while I use agent squashing, I learnt it from the AI when the Mongols wouldn't stop using it on my merchants in the holy land.

hahah that voice and current voice have too much difference :D

I like to think this guy sounds this dramatic in everyday conversation.

Don't you raise your voice at me!

Great video! Another exploit I didn't see here: when you have a city with huge stone walls and cannon towers, and you get besieged, start a sally battle, but line up all your troops on top of your walls to man the towers. The enemy will abandon their siege equipment and move into defensive formation within range of your cannon towers; simply speed up time and wait until they are shot to pieces and rout or are killed. I've had this work regardless of odds or enemy equipment and never lost a man.

Is this what legends kid will sound like in the future

The exploit i've used before i ever seen this video is only the save n reload that i realised myself. Lol

That merchant one is really great. Got tired of losing merchants not to mention the income boost. Thank you for sharing. The rest of them are pretty cool, but smells a bit cheaty :P, I know it is a exploit, but it kinda changes the way of gaming. Anyway, pretty cool, Thank you.

that first one is fucking unreal. my full carack stack will have fun

AKA how to get bored of total war really quickly

Holy shit learning of Legend in 2023 and coming back to 10 years later, he's a damn kid!

Lol that voice. Sounds like you were auditioning for Cheez TV

Enrico Dandalo must have seen your videos about attacking a Christian city with a crusading army. That's how he got Constantinople!!! Lol

Okay, so watching this video from 2021, we can all say the all Legend is now locked up in a cave an the one running the channel is an imposter

Quite amazing how Legend's voice has change with time!

Note that, in time, the no-desertion exploit will remove all your generals points in StrategyChivalry and CrusaderHistory, then add one back if you join again of course.

Thanks to give us these glitches! I still don't get the logic of soldiers deserting while they are on sea, but maybe they were good swimmers :-) Merchants are a weakness, because they are kicked out of business all the time, so thank you to show how to have a maximum of trade income by them.

It's 2020 and this video is still fun

i cant believe he taught us how to savescum and called it "Psudeo Random Chance Manipulation"

5:25 "ArE YoU LoOkiNg To NEgOtIaTe WiTh uS?"

I don't know if I'm late to the party with this glitch and whether others have already noticed it, but I've found that in siege battles when I am the attacker, if I order 4-5 cavalry units (one by one) to run and position themselves right in front of the gate the models will start pushing each other forward and sooner or later one model will phase through the gate opening (capturing) it. This is useful when playing draw-out battles and the enemy defenders have siege units stuck inside the city and you have dealt with the other units before attempting this, or in any other situation when the enemy is not holding the walls.

wtf is this voice legend

Just performed the time-out assault win exploit today on my England campaign at Arhus. The Danish army in control of that particular city was only a General's Bodyguard, and I used 7 units of Armored Swordsmen. I stacked all 7 Armored Swordsmen just outside the town square, grouped them together, moved them until they were just in front of the enemy general, and simply waited out the timer. Now I have a full-strength elite army which I plan to use for other purposes, so in order to garrison my new acquisition, I have an army of Levy Spearmen in Britain preparing to sail for Denmark.

Merchant Fort, Recruitment Pool and Agent Squashing, those I shall do more often now.

theres also another exploit like the agent squashing bug: you can take advantage of the fact agents can't move through armies no matter the army's size (a unit of 2 peasants works as well as a full unit of feudal knights) so you can spam a bunch of peasants near a chokepoint to stop assassins, spies, priests, diplomats, inquisitors, etc from passing through

Sounds like the Bear Grylls of Total War

So here's my take on things: if it's not immersion breaking I use the exploit, otherwise I have a strict no-exploit policy. Like I would always use savescumming in any game, in fact i consider it almost playing a game wrong, not to its full potential if i don't use reloads. It ultimately does not make anything happen that could not have happened had I been lucky. The limit is how much time I'm prepared to waste on reloading. Eventually I get fed up. If someone else has more patience and takes the time to reload more often, they deserve the better outcome. I take the same approach to random loot in RPGs, if I put in the work to reload until I get what I want, I feel I've earned it. The movement glitch, especially the boat one, or the siege draw or the recruitment pool thing I find are completely immersion breaking and would permanently ruin a campaign for me if i would use them, just like using a cheat code. The crusader attack i'm more split on. If it can be justified from a roleplay perspective in the given situation's story I think it could be fine but it's on a case by case basis.

Cant believe I played this game so long without knowing these tricks haha, the agent squashing and merchant fort will come in handy

How do I undo knowing all this :S

Turns out Legend's 'skaven voice' is actually is real voice. Now I understand the obsession with cheese...

I love how he spent 5 minutes explaining savescumming

That voice xD At first I didn't know if he was trolling or if it was the actual little Legend's voice.

a good way to give your generals some few quick traits. when you are on a crusade and you know that you will take the target in the following turn, take all the generals you have back home and give them just enough troops to join the crusade. the generals now get their traits, pluss when you then take the settlement in the same turn your troops will not desert and all get experience for doing nothing. One of the more "honorable" exploits you can do

Eventually yes. I need to play them a bit more to find more out though. Glad you like it.

Fun fact: the speedrunning community have found small instances of rng manipulation in rome 1 that don't require reloads. Its small for now but the potential is limitless. for example, you can consistently gate syracuse as Scipii first try with correct tile perfect menuing.

Wow .. amazing how these things work .. truly you are a legend!

Wow great exploits, the greatest one for me would be the last one. Getting infinite recruitment numbers would be great for Third Age Total War with the recruitment limited Silvan/High Elves.

i enjoyed your video very much.Another interesting exploit i frequently use is the following: If you have a general or generally cavalry and you are being attacked and cannot win, you can simply move the cavalry around the corners of the map.That means that you move them to one corner and when the enemies are coming near you you command them to run to the other corner and so on so on...Provided that you have chosen to have a battle timer on the battles of the campaign , you can have close victories against an enemy and save you general-cavalry.This works almost every time

Wow. This somehow came up on my recommended list and listening to Legend's voice from back then is very much a " wtf, is this even the same guy !?" moment! lolz.

No problem. Thanks for making all your videos. They're almost as much fun as playing the actual game!

1 year on, here is another exploit: as a Catholic faction, if the Pope gives you a mission to stop attacking another Catholic faction, but you want to do it anyways and you're in at least decent standing with the Pope, you can call a crusade before getting excommunicated to ensure a crusade doesn't get called on YOU for a while. The settlement you call a crusade on has a big impact, select a settlement as far away from mainland Europe as possible, to stretch out the crusade and buy you more time. You should also call the crusade on a settlement owned by the strongest faction possible, definitely not rebels, to ensure that the crusaders will encounter as much resistance as possible. Not only will this prevent a crusade from getting called on you, this also draws away military forces from anyone foolish enough to go on adventures to the holy land, making them easier targets for conquest. If you call a crusade on a powerful faction, they might even destroy/weaken some crusader armies for you, and kill other factions' generals! Note that this doesn't prevent excommunication and you'll still get the negative effects associated with it (factions more likely to attack you, public order penalty)

Just checked this one on the forums, thks mate! Gonna watch it to check it out. A definitive must for those situations were we think there is nothing to do:D

I am finding this a late but this sounds interesting. I never considered the game can have exploits at all. This deserves some more googling. Then again you already have a wonderful compilation. One of the other commenters mentioned a speed running community for RTW, I can't believe i didn't consider that. haha.

Your voice has dropped about an octave in the last 5 years

I really like using ballista towers and cannon towers in campaigns. It is not a glitch to be honest, more like good defensive tactics. Cannon towers usually kill all the enemy army's siege towers in battle. Ballista towers also shoot down siege towers and rams with flaming ballista bolts. When attacking manually cities with large army garrison... It helps to use cannons to bombard the walls in a specific way. Try to make small cracks into two sections of the wall, so that an enemy unit manning the wall is stuck between broken sections of wall. Sometimes the pathfinding is so bad that the enemy infantry becomes stuck on the city wall. Then you bombard the wall, and watch the enemy unit die completely. usually the enemy completely dies, when the wall crumbles from underneath them. This usually requires 3-4 cannons and preferrably city walls, (citadel not ideal...)

I once planned to attack an enemy city, but my ALLIES (this is important) already started besieging that city. Enraged, I sent 7 soldiers to BESIEGE as well (also important). The defender, after ending my turn, attacked me, and my ally joined the battle. It was a large battle of two armies, my allies won, I lost 0 soldiers, but since it was my besieging army that was attacked, I got the city instead of my allies. So, basically, I got a free city without even fighting- my allies fought for me.

The speed up exploid is really handy for crusades, normally by the time you get there you have nothing to fight with.

Hi legend. I have a question to you I'm a huge fan of your blitz campaign and of this video, and after seeing the jihad boat movment glitch, I couldn't help but wonder why didn't you use that trick in your blitz campaign? you might have even finished the game much faster

oh my god his voice. It sounds almost like a parody of his current voice

Oh gosh this is so long ago and Legend sounds so different...

Awesome guide! Is this applicable with the mods or it is for vanilla M2TW only?

"Probably just try to keep your cities in good order in the first place." Hear! Hear!

Great video. and the very useful tips. and have you heard of the mad faction leader glitch .

Does the unlimited ship movement allow you to attack enemy fleets for unlimited number of times, per turn?

Holy shit, I've played the shit out of this game for the past decade and a lot of these exploits are new to me. And even better, a lot of these exploits can be used/justified through role-playing. Thank you!

I want medieval 2 remastered and I want it now.

@:6:30 I didn't know you could place them in forts! Omg that would have helped soooo much! I exploited this 500+ gold mine right next to the Warring Crusaders and Jihadists (Aka right next to Constantinople) I had no idea you could place armies in forts, so I simply just put all the merchants in a single army which was satirically comprised of Merchant Horsemen. When I was attacked, I used no strategy at all, just charged straight into the enemies forces, (I was a noob back then and didn't know shit about flanking and out maneuvering) and completely swamped 2 full-stacked enemy forces with my Gigantic Merchant Cavalry Horde. Eventually, the Jihadists started sending more backup armies, and my Cavalry forces were dying faster than I could replenish them. So eventually I had to cut my loses and abandon the gold mine. Had I known that you could place units in fortifications, I'd have placed tons of pikemen/long archers in it along with a full stack of merchants, AND a full stacked "Merchant Cavalry" (with a full stack of merchants) Behind the Fortification. Mhuhahahahaha! I'm playing Medieval 2 again thanks to you Legend.

Holy shit, he used to be such a pure Australian.

Thanks. Yeah I know of that one. I wasn't sure whether to put it in or not. It is a great technique. Maybe if I make a part 2 I'll put it in. Thanks for your input.

It seems the merchant fort doesn't work. Maybe it was patched? (I tried using it as Venice and the build option is greyed out when I am in that spot in relation to a resource).

In siege battles the AI will only protect their gates and walls if you man your siege equipment. If you do not, they would change focus. So you can break through the gate by dropping the rams multiple times without casualty from arrow towers. To bring the numbers of your generals to the limit, besiege a settlement and attack an inferior army nearby without a general. Capture them all and release them afterwards. You will get the man of the hour event each time you repeat.

though I may ask how does the fort even stay up with merchants inside or anything non military? how does that work?

Thanks for this! I would never use any exploit for any reason, but big +rep for putting this together.

Thanks. I did not know that one. It borders along the minor exploit though. There are other ways to delay battering rams as well.

Does the first exploit work on the Steam version, or just the CD version?

Some are ok but some are waste of time

Exploit #3 when it comes to killing agents. Question 1: does that work on killing assassins, merchants and priests, too? Question 2: does that effect the diplomatic status quo with that faction I just killed an agent of?

Its amazing, to see youtubers from theyre start to where they are nowdays. An additional glitch: If you want a NPC Faction to pay a tribute of arround 3000 or more florins per turn, for 999999999 Turns, You can practicaly can get anything from them. Ceasefires, all of theyre settlements, it will Always be a bery generous deal. (Thats because the algorythm will identify this as such a infinite bad deal, that it loopsnl it backwards to an infinite good deal)

There are a few that were missed, you can place crossbowmen or archers on your walls and have them engage an enemy unit that has climbed the wall in melee then retreat to the other end of the wall the enemy will often (depending on the distance your units moved) chase in melee but slowly and in small groups. This lets a single group of archers massacre soldiers of much greater quality and quantity, at least until they run out of arrows. This one may have been patched but iirc some pikemen can be put in pike wall formation and have their pikes extend out through a gate or portcullis allowing them to attack any soldiers bringing a ram to the gates preventing them from breaking the gates down. Iirc again as it was a long time ago when I discovered this it was quite hard to do and couldn't be done with all gatehouses as some didn't let you move your units close enough to the gate. A third, this one is most useful against hordes like the mongols or timurids. you can prevent them from reaching your cities by blocking fords/bridges which would be the fastest route to your nearest city with an army for a single turn then moving it away the next turn and blocking whichever bridge they moved towards with a second army. So long as they aren't already at war with you they will move back and forth between the two bridges and never get anywhere. I haven't done this when they are at war with me so I don't know if it works in that case. General units recover casualties at no cost and are overpowered enough at the beginning of the game that they can take most rebel armies that hold a city by themselves, just besiege until they sally out and charge them repeatedly from the sides and rear draw them far away from the city walls first so you can run down any broken units before they reach the gates and make sure to not let your general get too tired as combat effectiveness drops off massively then.A side effect of this is that your generals bodyguard will rapidly reach max experience, also don't let your general die. Lastly a single unit of light cavalry can be used to defend against a much larger army simply by having it run around the map until time runs out, any cavalry can do this but the ai is decent at catching you if they have cavalry in the army.

Thanks mate i found this really useful

I'm curious.. for the merchant fort exploit, can you still have units garrisoned there? To protect them, or does it have to be merchants ONLY for it to work?

Great video bruhhh. I was Watching ur pure evil Conquistador campaign and I was wondering how do you do the land troop movement glitch?

you earned yourself a subscriber.thanks dude greetings from Turkey

Awesome video mate, can you make an exploit guide for Empire and eventually the other games too please?

IMO, the time-out victory is more of an AI deficit than a real exploit. You can get the AI to react in lots of dumb ways on the battlefield. While it's taking advantage of a failure in the programming, it's a subset of programming that is imperfect by substance. The weird stuff on the fringes of the RTS AI doesn't strike me as an "exploit" per se. I know it's semantics. Sorry for bringing down the discussion. =P

I tried some of these exploits on stainless steel mod and jihad/crusade double movement didn't work does that mean stainless steel is awesome or I suck?

I would add two exploits - forced sally out and canon sally out. Forced sally out: You siege a settlement with a single weak unit in one corner and put your big army in another corner, two tiles away, so they both stand next to the city/castle but not next to each other. During the end turn, the AI doesn't detect your big army and sallies out against the single unit, but your big army comes as reinforcements anyway. If you manage to kill 85% of the enemy troops and all their generals, you can take the city/castle without assaulting the walls. Cannon sally out: When your city/citadel is under siege and it has cannon towers, sally out against the enemy. In the battle they won't move, because they're defending, but they'll be in range of your cannon towers, so just put your soldiers on the walls and let the cannons kill everyone. You'll just need patience, because it can take a loooong time for the cannons to kill all the enemy troops. Disclaimer: I've learned both of these exploits from Legend's videos, but they weren't mentioned in this very video, so I felt like talking about them in the comments.

Watching this in 2022. Wtf is this voice. hahahahahahah

Hi Legend! After you win a battle (manually or auto) you can stop the withdrawing enemy at any point. Do you know this bug? It's very useful if you can't destroy 85% of the enemy army (or you can't sink the enemy fleet).