History GoodBadBugs / TurnbasedStrategy

* The Apple II game ''{{Taipan}}'' had the player as the captain of a trading/fighting ship in the Far East. In Hong Kong, one of the ports you could visit, was a moneylender (loanshark) with a ruinous interest rate. Unfortunately for Elder Brother Wu, he didn't understand the concept of negative numbers, so you could borrow 100 and pay him back 200, at which point he'd start ''paying you interest at his usurious rate''.

* ''MightAndMagic VI'' has a bug that allows you to turn in a certain quest an infinite number of times and thus giving you infinite experience. All you have to do is keep clicking the quest turn in button without closing the window. This might seem like a godsend, but leveling in that game required you to go train, which costs an increasing amount of gold per level, training to the max level would cost you a huge sum of gold.
** And as luck would have it, there's an infinite gold bug as well! In each of the 15 outdoor maps there is an obelisk, which displays part of a code which, when figured out, gives the location of a valuable treasure chest. This chest contains the most powerful spells for both Light and Dark Magic, two or three magical artifacts and bestows 250,000 gold on the opener. Then, if you exit the chest and go back in again, you get ''another'' 250,000 gold. Repeat until satisfied. Note: Once you leave the chest, the bug stops working, so make sure you get your fill there and then.
** ''Might and Magic 2'' for the SegaGenesis had a bug where if you dismissed your hirelings before opening a chest, the chest would have ludicrously valuable treasure. Also, in dungeons which didn't let the player use the spell that goes through walls it would sometimes forget it wasn't supposed to allow that, making the final dungeon a cinch.
** In ''Might and Magic 7'', the player's attack range was slightly longer than the monsters' attack range. [[DemonicSpiders Minotaur Lords]], which had tons of hitpoints and a ludicrously powerful attack that also had a chance of outright killing whoever it hit, were also very big - big enough that they could get stuck in the scenery in certain places. Combine the two and a player could lure a Minotaur Lord to a chokepoint, get in that range where he could attack it and it couldn't attack back, and carve it up. (Minotaur Lords weren't the only monster this strategy worked on, but because they were so big and dangerous, they're the ones against whom players resorted to this exploit.)
*** Also in ''Might and Magic 7'', you can duplicate some quest items indefinitely. Just put your quest items in a chest somewhere, talk to the Arbiter in Harmondale to get the quest items back, go back to the chest, and repeat. Since quest items have limited use, this may not be very useful. But cool, nonetheless.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Xenonauts}}'', if you leave an injured soldier in your base to recuperate, it will take many days. However, in the current version of the game (as of 5th of August 2013), sending him or her into battle again and using a simple medikit fixes the problem instantly.

* The first ''SuperRobotWarsOriginalGeneration'' game had a bug that caused all character themes to be overriden by a particular enemy unit's theme when he comes into play. The theme was [[CrowningMusicOfAwesome so awesome]], however, that the feature, now dubbed "Trombe Override" (after [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvbkVAnpcR4 the theme music, named ''Trombe!'']]) is a regular fixture of the series.

** ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsZ2'' had some interface tweaks between the first and second parts. One of the tweaks opened up a bug that allows you to have ''[[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters all of your party members]]'' take a turn at using the Sub Orders system, instead of the normal limit of twenty. While this can be used to gather enormous amounts of money very quickly, a less game-breaking application is to gather kills and PP on the units that you don't normally deploy on a given run. Another bug allows you to select and then deselect the carryover option when starting a new game to stack the carryover bonus money, allowing you to gain enough money to max out all of your units before the game even begins.

** ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsJudgement'' had a bug where, if you applied an item to a unit that would be lost due to game events (such as Mazinger Z or Layzner), whatever they would replace (Mazinkaiser and Super Layzner/Layzner Mk-II) would get those bonuses even though the item would be returned to you.

* In ''VideoGame/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms IV: Wall of Fire'', one can transform a number of soldiers into a nigh-infinite number of soldiers by assigning them to a general's command and then declining to go to war, removing the general and reassigning him, and repeating as desired.

* FinalFantasyTactics. Ninja can attack twice. Knights can break equipment. Combining both (Knight+Two Swords or Ninja Break Tech) gives you two chances of breaking it in one turn. That's all intentional, but it seems the game only removes the 'Broken' item after the attack. So if the first strike breaks the target's weapon, there's still a chance that they somehow block the second strike.

** In [=FE8=], that enemy control glitch (which can now be activated by normal combat damage as long as it's the enemy's turn) still lets you make all the enemies hand their weapons and equipment to your team. Including, say, claws, teeth, and eyes, which the game treats as weapons. And if you then equip eyes, you can train any character, no matter their class, in dark magic (which, if this editor understands correctly, will ''replace'' the normal weapon abilities of non-casters). You can also give rare items to a gorgon egg, which will mark its whole inventory except the first item as "items which will be dropped when I die", wait for it to hatch, and kill it, and when you do all the items will be fully recharged, even the unique items which were specifically designed to be unrechargable.

* EndlessSpace briefly had a similar bug to the above-mentioned Masters of Orion 2, when one patch removed the minium duration of cease fire. Combined with the way the game measures empire strenght, it allowed this troper to conquer a rival empire that would have curshed me in a direct fight with minimal violence: while they had far more fleets, my empire was ahead of them in non-military matters, so the AI considered me powerful enough that they would happily accept a cease fire. However, next turn they would just start a war again. I exploited this by offering them resources in exchange of a cease fire and them handing one of their systems to me. Next turn they declared war again, cancelling any trade agreements and giving me back any resources I traded them last turn. Repeat untill they only posessed their home system.
** It also used to be possible to in some circumstances trick the enemy into giving all their systems to you in exhange for cease fire. Granted this required them to only have a couple of systems and you massively overpowering them, so you could've probably just conquered them the regular way, but it could save a few turns and more importantly, the systems gained this way did not ahve their morale lowered due to beign conquered.

** Civ I gave the AI single blanket aggressiveness ratings. The Democracy government made your citizens unhappy with war, so it gave a modifier of -2 to the rating. This worked pretty well at making them less likely to start trouble, except that Gandhi's default aggressiveness was 1, and would underflow to 255, so as soon as he got democracy he would turn into a bloodthirsty maniac that threw nukes around with reckless abandon. This was so memorable that [[AscendedGlitch later games in the series give Gandhi an abnormally high priority on the construction of nuclear weapons]].

** You could also put this same Settler on a transport and use this bug to build a road and then a railroad in the middle of the ocean. Ocean roads bestowed their improved movement on any seagoing unit. A ship could carry cargo halfway across the map if you have a railroad in place for it. You'd have to end a unit's turn when it's loaded into the ship, but other than that you can go VERY far.

** You could also put this same Settler on a transport and use this bug to build a road and then a railroad in the middle of the ocean. You couldn't move onto it, but it did give the financial bonus to any city within range.
*** On the contrary, ocean roads bestowed their improved movement on any seagoing unit. A ship could carry cargo halfway across the map if you have a railroad in place for it. You'd have to end a unit's turn when it's loaded into the ship, but other than that you can go VERY far.

* FinalFantasyTactics. Ninja can attack twice. Knights can break equipment. Combining both (Knight+Two Swords or Ninja Break Tech) gives you two chances of breaking it in one turn. That's all intentional, but it seems the game only removes the 'Broken' item after the attack. So if the first strike breaks the target's weapon, there's still a chance that they somehow block the second strike.

** In [=FE10=], an enemy Bishop with a Rescue staff can place an enemy on top of a pitfall trap in Chapter 3-11. This allows a unit with Pass to move through the square unimpeded, as well as creating a very silly situation where a unit can engage an enemy and then fall into a pit as soon as they try to pass through the recently occupied space. More importantly, this suggests that by placing your ''own'' flying units atop one of these spaces, you can move your non-fliers past the pitfalls, since the game will not allow two units to occupy the same space and therefore will not stop them as they go over the pitfalls.

* ''Colonization'' has a bug on the trading screen which lets you sell resources that have been forbidden through a Customs House. Naturally, most players don't bother installing the patch to fix this bug, as it makes the game a good deal easier towards the end.

* The Apple II game ''Taipan!'' had the player as the captain of a trading/fighting ship in the Far East. In Hong Kong, one of the ports you could visit, was a moneylender (loanshark) with a ruinous interest rate. Unfortunately for Elder Brother Wu, he didn't understand the concept of negative numbers, so you could borrow 100 and pay him back 200, at which point he'd start ''paying you interest at his usurious rate''.

* The original ''{{Civilization}}'' had the Settlers bug: if you ordered a Settler unit to perform some multi-turn task (like irrigating or mining a square), it'd usually stay inactive until the task is completed, which e.g. in case of mining a mountain would take up to 9 turns. However, if you canceled its current action and then ordered it to do it again, the engine would interpret it as if the Settler already spent a turn doing it and continue from where it "stopped". This trick could be repeated until the task was complete. Sure, it's a lot of manual clicking but it allowed you to fully irrigate/mine the area around AND build roads your city in a few turns, which is crucial at early stages when every Settler counts.

** The "[[FanNickname Uberspear]]" that gives major boosts to Vaida's stats when she appears as a boss is not a bug. Being able to steal it off of her and enjoy the stat boosts yourself ''is''.
** In [=FE8=], that enemy control glitch (which can now be activated by normal combat damage as long as it's the enemy's turn) still lets you make all the enemies hand their weapons and equipment to your team. Including, say, claws, teeth, and eyes, which the game treats as weapons. And if you then equip eyes, you can train any character, no matter their class, in dark magic (which, if this editor understands correctly, will ''replace'' the normal weapon abilities of non-casters). You can also give rare items to a gorgon egg, which will mark its whole inventory except the first item as "items which will be dropped when I die", wait for it to hatch, and kill it, and when you do all the items will be fully recharged, even the unique items which were specifically designed to be unrechargable.

* FinalFantasyTactics. Ninja can attack twice. Knights can break equipment. Combining both (Knight+Two Swords or Ninja Break Tech) gives you two chances of breaking it in one turn. That's all intentional, but it seems the game only removes the 'Broken' item after the attack. So if the first strike breaks the target's weapon, there's still a chance that they somehow block the second strike.

* SuperRobotTaisen:OriginalGeneration had the Trombe Override. The theme music for Elzam V. Branstein would take priority over the theme of any other enemy, even major story bosses, whose themes would override everyone else's. It became an AscendedGlitch (probably because the song was so good) and ultimately was INTENTIONALLY programmed in future games to override everyone else's theme, except one boss who had "The Blue Danube" as his theme, but only took greater priority because it was [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome actually being played over the robot's speakers in-game!]]

* SuperRobotTaisenOriginalGeneration had the Trombe Override. The theme music for Elzam V. Branstein would take priority over the theme of any other enemy, even major story bosses, whose themes would override everyone else's. It became an AscendedGlitch (probably because the song was so good) and ultimately was INTENTIONALLY programmed in future games to override everyone else's theme, except one boss who had "The Blue Danube" as his theme, but only took greater priority because it was [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome actually being played over the robot's speakers in-game!]]

* {{Worms}}: With quick fingers it is possible to switch to the rocket launcher and the mini gun at the same time, causing the minigun firing code to fire rockets. There is usually a significant chunk of the level missing afterwards.

* One of the patches for Master of Orion 2 introduced a very odd AI quirk. Every so often an AI controlled race might notice that your science and military make you significantly stronger than they are. So it would decide you are a threat and declare war on you. A few turns later the AI will take a look at you again and realise they can't possibly win a war against you, so they will ask for peace - often throwing in one of their planets as an incentive. This can happen repeatedly - so the enemy literally hands over their empire to you one planet at a time.
** In MasterOfOrion I the AI cannot manage more then one or two attacks at a time. This allows the player to win simply by hitting his enemy at a faster rate. Sourcebook claims this was deliberate if I recall, so it may not be a "bug" per se.

** There's also the "[[FanNickname Uberspear]]" that gives major boosts to Vaida's stats when she appears as a boss. Naturally, people have found a way to get that piece of equipment from her.
*** Wasn't that intentional and part of the story, used to explain that [[spoiler: [[BigBad Nergal]] was regaining strength?]]
**** The spear was meant to give those stat boosts, but it was supposed to be unable to be obtained, but with the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYG1ZY5Oung Mine Glitch]] you can trade it to an enemy that drops an item, allowing you to get it for yourself. It makes any boss a joke, and even allows you to have so much Resistance that you take no damage from [[spoiler: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCUTBEZONwA&l Nergal himself!]]]].

* FinalFantasyTactics. Ninja can attack twice. Knights can break equipment. Combining both (Knight+Two Swords or Ninja Break Tech) gives you two chances of breaking it in one turn (and if the first one succeeds, the second attack does actual damage) But it seems the game only removes the 'Broken' item after the attack. This lead to the 'Epic Miluda's Last Stand' incident witnessed by [[Ramsey276 this troper]] where Miluda's shield was broken by a powerleveled Knight/ Ninja. First strike causes Broken and the typical pieces falling all around Miluda, yet she '''''[[BeyondTheImpossible somehow picks up the pieces and put them together well enough to BLOCK THE SECOND STRIKE!]]''''' Many versions of "Miluda is _____" were said after the shock wore of, and plans of adding Miluda's Shield to the weekly DungeonsAndDragons game were made for the next week or so. After all, she isn't even a Major Boss character and did something that would make "Thunder God Cid" proud!