History GameBreaker / RealTimeStrategy

*** Rare case of GameBreaker ''lampshaded in-game'': Demolition Truck + Iron Curtain combo. Let's recount: Demolition Truck is a suicide unit carrying a mini-nuke that explodes if the unit is killed or if the unit is commanded to attack something. Iron Curtain is a minor superweapon that makes the targeted nine units invincible and immune to mind-control for a short time. [[OhCrap Do the math]]. At least the original Red Alert had the courtesy of suicide units exploding when using the Iron Curtain or the Chronosphere on them... Lampshaded in Yuri's Revenge in the Soviet campaign where one mission requires you to either use this tactic or spam a metric fuckton of V3 Launchers to crack the enemy base.

* The Mammoth Tank in ''CommandAndConquer 3: Tiberium Wars'' is a ''beast''. Easily the toughest unit in the game, with upgradeable weapons that let it kill infantry in a single hit, more firepower than any other armored unit in the game, ''and'' respectable anti-air capability to boot. Massed together, they're able to go toe-to-toe with equivalent numbers of Nod Avatars and win, and outlast Scrin Planetary Assault Carriers. Nothing short of a direct hit with a superweapon can really stop the billowing clouds of dust that herald a Mammoth rush.

** ''Tiberian Sun'', before the ''Firestorm'' expansion pack had the bugged Nod Artillery unit, which could always hit it's target, even if the shell itself didn't hit anything.
*** Also from ''Sun'', there were the GDI disc throwers. A combination of good damage against everything (unlike the Nod rocket infantry, which had a crippling weakness against infantry), low production cost, quick production time, and a GoodBadBug that allowed them to throw discs ''across the freaking map'' basically meant building an army of disc throwers was a perfectly viable strategy for most levels.
** Early ''CommandAndConquer'' games were infamous for having tank spamming being virtually uncounterable strategy [[except by an opposing tank spam]], giving them game ending status. Later isntallments of the franchise remedied this by creating more effective anti-tank units.
** In original C&C, the AI would not try to destroy sand bags that blocked its movement. (It would shoot through walls and fences that blocked line of fire, destroying them in the process, but sand bags didn't block LoF, so they would never be destroyed unless they were close enough to another target to be hit by stray shots). This meant that if you could build a sand bag wall round you base, far enough out from any target, then the enemy would be unable to get in. Then you could extend the wall into the enemy base, and wall off all their unit factories. Or build [[BFG Advanced Guard Towers]]/[[DeathRay Obelisks of Light]] inside their base. Or build a barracks in their base (particularly effective if you simultaneously build an Engineer, timed to complete just after the barracks completes, for instant AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs).
** In ''Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge'' expansion, Yuri has access to floating disks, which fly, rendering it immune to most attacks, regenerate health, has a laser beam that can target both land and air units for heavy damage, and has a tractor beam which can steal enemy resources as well as power down the enemy's base and defenses. A handful of floating disks will easily destroy even the most powerful bases with little resistance. Yuri also has access to Boomer submarines, which can shoot two torpedos at a time, as well as shoot twin ballistic missiles at land targets, and is able to hide underwater to avoid retaliation. These are also [[DiscOneNuke available much earlier]] in the game than other powerful units, and only few of these units is needed to destroy a well armed base. To make Yuri more unbalanced he has access to Yuri himself as a unit, who can be cloned. These two Yuris are able float on water, and can mind control units and structures at a considerable distance, and possessed buildings can immediately be sold for cash. Needless to say, most players won't let each other play as Yuri in a multiplayer game, and most YR mods make it one of their objectives to make Yuri a balanced side.
*** Example: building the two types of base defenses Yuri has next to each other can majorly screw over Soviet enemies because their artillery can be stopped by anti-air (which the Gatling Tower fulfils excellently) and NOT using artillery means losing units to mind-control (thanks to the Psychic Tower). Of course, many re-balancing mods ignore or don't realize the fact that Yuri's side was MEANT to be unbalanced so that conventional tactics won't work against them. Many of their units are only gamebreakers depending on the situation: Floating Disks don't have much in the way of armor and better players (presumably) won't rely exclusively on static AA, Boomers are the only naval combat unit Yuri can build and Typhon subs/Destroyers are available much earlier, Masterminds can mind-control everything in range but this can backfire if the enemy throws in cannon fodder to overload it, etc.
** Red Alert 2 suffered from cannon walking if someone was French, and nuclear planet walking if someone was Soviet and fast building/infinite money was on. Most online matches in Yuri's Revenge boiled down to who makes the most Guardian GI and Navy Seal-filled Battle Fortresses. For the more dastardly, a waypoint bug lets you infiltrate your own or allies buildings with spies. Most units can start as veteran, and with the right combination, a special unit can place bombs on units that teleport. This allowed for suicide bombers that could only be stopped by shroud generators. An ironic twist of fate however, the game would crash when selecting too many units at once (e.g. using the command that allows selecting ALL your attackers).
*** The Chrono Commando and Chrono Ivan units are {{Game Breaker}}s on their own right. Both of them teleport and both of them can wreck entire bases with their bombs. While Chrono Ivans can be defended against by Engineers defusing the bombs, they still explode when killed - logical conclusion is using them as suicide bombers. Skillful use of just a few Chrono Commandos however can wipe out an entire base in '''seconds'''. While they DO have a cooldown that increases with distance, this can be abused by targeting structures near each other with waypoints; this means the sucker will TeleportSpam across the base and instakill everything he touches with no way to stop him without playing as Allies and making a SEAL who can instakill the Commando. Gets even worse in Yuri's Revenge where C4-carrying units (thus the Commando) can instakill tanks with their bombs too, not just buildings.
*** Rare case of GameBreaker ''lampshaded in-game'': Demolition Truck + Iron Curtain combo. Let's recount: Demolition Truck is a suicide unit carrying a mini-nuke that explodes if the unit is killed or if the unit is commanded to attack something. Iron Curtain is a minor superweapon that makes the targeted nine units invincible and immune to mind-control for a short time. [[OhCrap Do the math]]. At least the original Red Alert had the courtesy of suicide units exploding when using the Iron Curtain or the Chronosphere on them... Lampshaded in Yuri's Revenge in the Soviet campaign where one mission requires you to either use this tactic or spam a metric fuckton of V3 Launchers to crack the enemy base.

** The series also has elephant-mounted warriors. The Elephant Archer in the original has as many hitpoints as ''buildings'', and the Persians' War Elephant of the second game is probably the strongest unique unit.

* The first AgeOfEmpires game had the Horse Archers. They can move fast, do a ton of damage, and have a range longer than anything except upgraded Priests and certain siege weapons. The only downside is that they're expensive to make and can't take much damage...at least, not until you upgrade them to Heavy Horse Archers.

* In the first two installments of the ''Warlords Battlecry'' series, a character who was created for the campaign mode could not take part in skirmishes (and receive experience for it) until they finished said campaign and exported their user data. In the third installment, these two modes were integrated, letting a savvy player set up matches against ridiculously-hard AI opponents who had little to no resources, then reap hundreds of XP points in a short time. By combining this a few points pumped into the the Knight Lord skill for the Knight class, a player could conceivably start a campaign mode tens of levels higher than the initial difficulty, and (by spending all starting XP on Knights) a posse of bodyguards who will ravage anything and everything in their way. It's possible to use a Knight Hero with eight Knights to clear out an entire map using this method.

** In ''Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge'' expansion, Yuri has access to floating disks, which fly, rendering it immune to most attacks, regenerate health, has a laser beam that can target both land and air units for heavy damage, and has a tractor beam which can steal enemy resources as well as power down the enemy's base and defenses. A handful of floating disks will easily destroy even the most powerful bases with little resistance. Yuri also has access to Boomer submarines, which can shoot two torpedos at a time, as well as shoot twin ballistic missiles at land targets, and is able to hide underwater to avoid retaliation. These are also [[DiscOneNuke available much earlier]] in the game than other powerful units, and only few of these units is needed to destroy a well armed base. To make Yuri more unbalanced he has access to Yuri himself as a unit, who can be cloned. These two Yuris are able float on water, and can mind control units and structures at a considerable distance, and possessed buildings can immediately be sold for cash. Needless to say, most players wont let each other play as Yuri in a multiplayer game, and most YR mods make it one of their objectives to make Yuri a balanced side.
*** Red Alert 2 suffered from cannon walking if someone was French, and nuclear planet walking if someone was soviet and fast building/infinite money was on. Most online matches in Yuri's Revenge boiled down to who makes the most Guardian GI and Navy Seal-filled Battle Fortresses. For the more dastardly, a waypoint bug lets you infiltrate your own or allies buildings with spies. Most units can start as veteran, and with the right combination, a special unit can place bombs on units that teleport. This allowed for suicide bombers that could only be stopped by shroud generators. An ironic twist of fate however, the game would crash when selecting too many units at once (e.g. using the command that allows selecting ALL your attackers).

** The only argument that could be made for "balancing" the Consortium was the comparatively high prices their units had, but the existence of the Palace at a planet vastly increased credit revenue far more efficiently than Imperial or Alliance mines and only took up one building slot per planet. It is flagrantly obvious that Petroglyph never bothered to balance this faction.

** To win a game of Galactic Conflict the Consortium only needs to fight using two standard units, in space the Vengeance Frigate whith the rapid fire, highly damaging and [[ArmorPiercing shield ignoring]] [[GameBreaker mass drivers]]. They do have more weapons, but they mostly serve as other targets to distract attention away from the mass drivers and engines. The other unit they need is for land battles, but is just as bad, the Canderous Assault Tank is also packing mass drivers, it may be their only weapon but they cannot be disabled until the unit is destroyed. They still ignore shields which makes them devastating against the handful of shielded vehicles and structures, and are themselves shielded, a single tank on it's own would lose in a fight against an Imperial AT-AT, [[OhCrap leaving the AT-AT crippled...]] [[ItGotWorse But there are three tanks per unit, compared to the single AT-AT.]]

** Not to mention his ability to temporarily turn into the Essence of the Nightbringer, an invulnerable killing machine that could rip apart even the strongest units without even trying.

** It should also be noted that virtually every Consortium unit aside from basic infantry and the Vengeance frigate possessed shielding of some sort, which, by Star Wars canon is utterly ridiculous. And to make up for the lack of shielding (and make matters worse), Vengeance frigates packed mass driver weapons which pierced through the shields of capital starships and wrecked fighters and bombers that tried to get close. Vengeance frigates were capable of tearing through most starships like they were tissue paper. ''And this was not even the Consortium's most powerful warship.''

** The Dark Crusade ExpansionPack also gave us the Tau's ridiculously effective rushing ability and the Eldar's late-game strength (several invisible bases, untouchable economy, automatic wraithlord spam, etc).
** And ''[[ExpansionPack Soulstorm]]'' made it even more broken with the Essence Of The Deciever ability.
** Sgt. Cyrus in DawnOfWar 2. In the beginning the scrawny scout is good for little more then, well, scouting. Once he obtains the sniper rifle, the collection of explosives (satchel charges, proximity mines and remote-controlled bombs), learns to use all that stuff without breaking stealth and to stun enemies, he becomes death incarnate whom only the limited number of supplies prevents from clearing the whole maps alone. Even then Cyrus can kill ''bosses'' single-handed.
*** In the expansion pack the last limitation seal is removed from Cyrus when he learns to make unlimited explosives and "healing potions" out of his stamina and throw ridiculously powerfull mines in bundles capable of taking out a whole enemy squad or a tank. Now everything just dies.
** In vanilla Dawn of War you could build as many super powered high-tier soldiers as your population cap allows, meaning that you can build 5-7 terminator squads and just have them attack-move to hostile base. Later expansion pack limited their number to 1.

* SupremeCommander: Play Seraphim. Get the rapid restoration upgrade on your ACU. Then march it directly into the enemy base. Only experimentals can stop a RRF'd ACU, and you can get RRF by the beginning of T2.

* Many people consider the King Tiger in [[CompanyOfHeroes Company of Heroes]] to be this. It's a one time use unit that drains 2000 manpower over the next few minutes after being fielded. It's also slow. However, it has tons of health, is heavily armored, can be called in at a moments notice, does not require you to 'pay' to field it, and and damage done to it can be repaired. It is essentially a supertank that you can call in for 'free' (you don't need to save up for it) and can be added to your existing army to give you a massive edge over the other player. The other player will need to field lots of AT Weapons to take it down, but these are costly and take time to make, and ontop of that, he still has to deal with your existing army while trying to set up and defend these AT Weapons.

* ''AgeOfMythology'' has the Titans. introduced in the expansion pack, these giants can basically turn any battle into a CurbStompBattle, and require practically an army of heroes to take down. Whoever unlocks the Titan gate first is basically guaranteed a win, because he can use the Titan to go over to the enemy's base and stomp his half-finished Titan gate into oblivion. The game past the Mythic Age essentially becomes an arms race to get the Titan. Similar units like Nidhogg might also count, except that they aren't NighInvulnerable like the Titan is.
** Except that Titans have their own counters: Magic units. Build enough of these, especially the ranged ones, and the slow titans will suffer DeathOfAThousandCuts

* Bloodlust in Warcraft II is a spell which triples damage and is cast by the Orcs' primary attacking unit. The Humans get extremely inefficient healing and a spell that only affects two rarely-used units. Needless to say, Orcs have a huge advantage here.

* Lashes in DwarfFortress have an incredibly small contact area, travel very very fast, and do blunt damage. This leads to people's brains being knocked out of their skulls - it's easily possible to one-shot a ''dragon'' doing this.

<<|GameBreaker|>>

* While not breaking ''StarCraft'''s famously balanced multiplayer, Protoss Carriers with an Arbaiter in tow are overpowered in single player scenarios against Zerg. The Arbaiter generates an invisibility field, and while being visible itself the computer doesn't bother to go after it if it's stays in the background. As soon as you can build this air fleet, you'll be able to kill AI Zerg with impunity.

** In vanilla Dawn of War you could build as many super powered high-tier soldiers as your population cap allows, meaning that you can build 5-7 terminator squads as marines, and just have them attack-move to hostile base. Later expansion pack limited their number to 1.

* In ''EvilGenius'', enemy agents won't show up in your island before you reach the first objective. Therefore, if you build enough lockers to hold 100 [[{{Mooks}} construction workers]], get 100 of them, send them all overseas to steal money, and leave the game running for at least 2 hours, you'll end up with a strongroom holding at least... [=* Pinky raise* =] ...''Three '''Million''' Dollars''!

** While the King Tiger can be a tough nut to crack, it by no means "breaks" the game. It's rather slow, and a single sticky bomb essentially makes it immobile, or at least slow enough to be taken out by pretty much anything with good armor penetration and/or long range. The turret is very slow, so the KT can be kited by anything that hasn't got its engine blown or tracks damaged. KT is excellent at soaking damage, so the American or British players shouldn't focus on it unless it's alone, but doesn't exactly destroy everything in sight within seconds.
Considering the things that have been in the game (and have been removed or tweaked since then), KT seems like pretty much any "ultimate" power of any company\doctrine of any faction, and is by no means unstoppable.

** Sgt. Cyrus in DawnOfWar 2. In the beginning the scrawny scout is good for little more then, well, scouting. Once he obtains the sniper rifle, the collection of explosives (anti-tank grenade, proximity mine and remote-controlled bomb), and, most important, learns to use all that stuff without breaking stealth, he becomes death incarnate. Huge mobs of enemies are blown straight to Warp along with garrisoned buildings and heavy covers, and elite mooks recieve instant headshots. Sufficient to say that Cyrus can kill ''bosses'' single-handed and it is even much safer (if more tedious) way than rushing the whole team in.
*** Dreadnought is arguably even better. Armed with an autocannon he can decimate mobs and raze buidings in a single sweep and at that he can whack anybody stupid enough to come near, even a mighty Tyranid Carnifex. The upside is that unlike Cyrus' bombs, Dread's abilities are unlimited and recharge real fast so you can use them to your heart's content. He's much better protected too. Seriously at times I can't help but wonder why the whole team didn't slit their throats and got themselves all Dreadnoughts.
*** In the expansion pack the last limitation seal is removed from Cyrus with the ability of unlimited, stamina-based use of explosives. Everything just dies.