History ThatOneLevel / RealtimeStrategy

*** Then ''The Lion and the Demon'' tops ''Jihad!''. You are required to build and defend a wonder in Acre, while holding off ''five different Crusader armies'': Genoese (warships), the Franks (cavalry, gunpowder units, and rams), Knights Templar (rams, Teutonic Knights, and cavalry), Jerusalem (camels, onagers, and trebuchets), and Richard the Lionhearted (longbowmen, cavalry, and mixed siege weapons, including two unique trebuchets). You have some resources inside your walls, but they'll run out quickly (especially your very limited wood supply). There's no real way to bottleneck the attackers; they come from both north and west, almost constantly. This is widely considered the hardest scenario in the game, and for good reason. [[Spoiler:However, you can build the Wonder on an island in the west of the map, where only Genoese can attack it.]]

** The Fourth Night Elf Scenario: with only a few troops, you must move your base along a twisted, very long path with tons of obstacles in your way (including feral Furbolgs, a whole human base and a wood which is totally filled with undead monsters that re-spawns until you kill their chief (a high-level wraith)and include mainly Banshees, who have the nasty habit of possessing your soldiers when their health is low. Oh, and you must also look out for casual Orcs and Undead skirmishers. The re-spawning [[MoneySpider]] enemies encountered later can ease the frustration of the limited resources by letting your heros slay them for extra gold, but you must fight you way to them before bankruptcy.

*** The Last Undead mission, Under the burning Sky, is considered by some to be the hardest in the game. It is a HoldTheLine mission where you have to defend squishy wizard, Kel' Thuzad for 30 minutes until he summons the local Archdemon. There are three ways to get to them, one of which is defended by your base and the other two, which hold a spirit tower each. Your opponents? 3 human bases with their full arsenal. The last few minutes are particularly terrifying as your opponents proceed to dump their full arsenal into you.

* ''[[VideoGame/{{Syndicate}} Syndicate Wars]]'' has the infamous mission ''The Dead Zone'' (Church mission 18). Your objective is to penetrate a compound and ''persuade'' a certain Eurocorp soldier and take him back to your starting point. The first problem is that the entire city is full of booby-traps, which are very difficult to see and will kill at least one of your agents if you run into them. The second problem is that someone has control of a defence satellite above the city, and will use it to bombard almost every area outside the compound soon after you enter it. The third problem is that the city is absolutely crawling with Unguided; while not too tough, chances are that they will distract you or hold you up while your agents fall foul of one of the previously mentioned threats. The fourth problem is that you need to ''persuade'' 15 civilians before you can ''persuade'' your target - due to all the explosions that will occur due to everything mentioned above, there is a very real chance that not enough civilians will be left alive at the end. The fifth problem is that the compound is heavily guarded, and a few of the guards are armed with extremely powerful Plasma Lances - if you are not careful, you can easily lose more agents here. The sixth and possibly most frustrating problem of all is that, once you attack the Eurocorp soldiers, you have only a limited amount of time before a lone Eurocorp agent decides to kill your target. Finally, you actually have to return your target to your starting point, which is normally easy, but might not be if you weren't thorough in neutralizing all the threats outside the compound.

Quick thinking and flawless strategy won't always save you. In [[ThatOneLevel these levels]], frustration will be your biggest adversary.

* "Engine of Destruction" can be tricky if you don't know what you're doing. It's an EscortMission with a LeeroyJenkins hero that will barge into enemy bases with no sense of self-preservation, and it's up to you to keep repairing his unit to keep it from being destroyed. Thankfully this hero is a OneManArmy and actually ''is'' strong enough to take out those bases on his own like he's trying to, but you're still liable to find yourself screaming at him for not giving you enough time to repair him before he goes charging in again. Also fortunate is that after this mission comes "Media Blitz", which is a good contender for the campaign's CrowningMomentOfAwesome.

*** It turns out that thanks to [[spoiler:a [[ArtificialStupidity Bomber AI exploit]] that [[LeapOfFaith violates common sense beyond belief]]]], doing the mission with [[NoCasualtiesRun no casualties]] and a Perfect S-Rank is possible, as shown [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLD4eH9UfkQ here]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZryqxsj2bY here]]. Unfortunately, it's still a LuckBasedMission thanks to [[spoiler:AIRoulette]]. If not for these FakeDifficulty issues, the linked run would be a CrowningMomentOfAwesome.

* ''VideoGame/Battalion Wars'' has some levels that fall under this:

* ''Lock's Quest'' has The Well Cluster, in which you have to capture THREE points in THREE different missions (as well as hold on to the other Source Wells you captured.) and to top it all off, ''you have to defend all three Source Wells spread accross the map from each other, and you cannot lose a single one.''

* ''Majesty 2'': there's a level in which your castle is trapped between two camps of enemy heroes. On one side, endless rogues and elven archers that can slaughter your heroes due to poor anti-archer AI. On the other, paladins with healer support. Your only chance is to get lucky enough to kill early enemy heroes before they level up.

* "Legacy of Tesla" from the Counterstrike expansion is incredibly counter-intuitive. The idea is to destroy a prototype nuclear MiG. A "prototype" that can be replaced over and over, mind you. So, these new Tesla Tanks must be important to the mission, right? No. The MiG's landing strip is overseas, but you don't have a Construction Yard or Sub Pen, so you'll have to capture the Allied Naval Yard. Don't capture it though, as this provoke nuclear retaliation. What you're supposed to do is capture a Construction Yard, build a Naval Yard and many AA Guns to ward off helicopters, and send units to attack an island.

* Power games in [[AnnoDomini Anno 2070]] is the only three-star difficulty mission in the original game, for very good reason. The victory conditions are as follows:

* From ''Empire at War'' in the StarWars universe comes the fifth Empire Campaign mission, where you have to destroy a powerful Rebel space station - when [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard they have a higher population cap than you and get free reinforcements.]] The best part? While you're attacking the station, two [[BossInMookClothing Mon Calamari Cruisers]] come in from behind you, and you're required to kill them. Good luck.

** '''Every single''' stronghold mission in ''Soulstorm'' is ThatOneLevel. Tau can attack anywhere on the map with a ridiculously powerful cannon and, like the Orks, possess multiples of their most powerful units ([[MyRulesAreNotYourRules their numbers are supposed to be limited to one or two]]). Imperial Guard can build multiple Baneblades if their factories aren't watched carefully. Space Marines frequently send fully-upgraded squads directly into the player's forces. Both Necrons and Chaos can spawn their two most powerful units at a moment's notice. Eldar have half a dozen hidden bases, each with massive rushing potential. Dark Eldar only allow a base to be built halfway through and spam their special abilities. The Sisters of Battle stronghold is the worst though, possessing an invincible unit that causes ''everything else near it'' to become invincible as well. The only way to defeat it is by destroying four icons: said unit ''immediately teleports'' if one of them is under attack.
*** The only way to win the Sororitas stronghold mission is to deliberately take massive casualties. You mount simultaneous attacks on two of the icons, allowing the Living Saint to tear one of your forces to shreds while the other one levels the icon. When there is only one Icon left, you have to throw a large force directly at the main Sisters base to draw the Saint away, and then hit the last Icon with a small demolition force that you kept back. And sometimes even this tactic does not work, because the Saint refuses to go away from the Icon.

** Mission 8 of 'The Liberation of Caen' campaign from ''Opposing Fronts'' has you use what force you have left from the last two missions to defend agaisnt the Panzer Elite onslaught from three different directions, and the enemy just loves throwing [[DemonicSpiders heavy tanks]] like [[LightningBruiser Tigers, Panthers]], [[GlassCannon Hetzers]], and the worst nightmare of all, [[MightyGlacier King Tigers and Jagdpanthers.]] Not only you have to deal with all of them at once, the AI loves to make use of the ruined city landscape and the heavy night storm to hide themselves from sight and sneak past behind your defenses and surprise-attacks you where your defense is lacking, forcing you to send your precious tanks to deal with them first before they completely destroy your entire base, all the while leaving the areas where you are ''required'' to defend vulnerable to further attacks. The final mission is even worse if you wanted to do the bonus objective. Flak 88s and Panzer groups made the large open ground a killing field, and the aforementioned King Tigers and Jagdpanthers have their cannons buffed so they can now almost one-shot kill your tanks. To put in perspective, the bonus objective of this mission requires you to lose no more than 10 tanks, while your enemy has ''more than 30 tanks, including the deadly Flak 88s'' in their arsenal, and their tanks have heavier armors and hit harder than your tanks. Have fun.

** Mission 8 of 'The Liberation of Caen' campaign from ''Opposing Fronts'' has you use what force you have left from the last two missions to defend agaisnt the Panzer Elite onslaught from three different directions, and the enemy just loves throwing [[DemonicSpiders heavy tanks]] like [[LightningBruiser Tigers, Panthers]], [[GlassCannon Hetzers]], and the worst nightmare of all, [[MightyGlacier King Tigers and Jagdtigers.]] Not only you have to deal with all of them at once, the AI loves to make use of the ruined city landscape and the heavy night storm to hide themselves from sight and sneak past behind your defenses and surprise-attacks you where your defense is lacking, forcing you to send your precious tanks to deal with them first before they completely destroy your entire base, all the while leaving the areas where you are ''required'' to defend vulnerable to further attacks.

* God have mercy on you if you play ''EuropaUniversalis III'' as one of the indigenous North or South American societies, even if you start in 1399. You do have some breathing room until the European countries show up on your doorstep, but you start out extremely poor, with no forts in your provinces, with your slider far on the decentralized end of the scale, and with your research way behind most other countries in the game. You might stand a chance if you manage to Westernize, but that requires that you survive for a fairly long time and have more than a bit of luck. Better hope that in your game the Ottoman Empire invades at least most of Europe!

* DarkReign has mission 5, which is infuriating no matter whose side you're on. The Freedom Guard get a hopeless level where they have to save up 30000 credits, while holding off waves of Imperium tanks. Wouldn't be so bad, if the [[GameBreaker Tachion Tanks]] didn't make their debut appearances in this level. As a result, the only viable tactics are to constantly build units, meaning you'll never hit your goal, or gather up everything you start with, bring it back to your base, and only build when absolutely necessary, meaning you'll get near your goal but get stomped by Tachion Tanks. As the Imperium, you have to destroy the Freedom Guard while protecting a MacGuffin located ''inside their base'', which they attack the moment you show up on their doorstep, meaning the only possible way to win is to build a horde of Tachion Tanks and pray you can break down their defenses quickly, destroy the units attacking said MacGuffin, and then hold out long enough to build some reinforcements and get them up there to mop up the rest. Oh, and the Freedom Guard get access to Martyrs in this level, meaning taking your eyes off your base for more than a minute means you'll find smoking holes where all your buildings used to be. While the rest of the levels after this get harder and harder, this one takes the cake for sheer frustration.

* "Amon's Fall" itself is no walk in the park. The goal is to destroy rotating crystals when they're above ground. Kerrigan's energy reserves don't regenerate nearly as fast as they did in ''Heart of the Swarm''. Amon will constantly summon void crystals that not only summon more troops, but ones that can ''damage yours very heavily'' as well. Don't count on your AI allies to help much; they don't pitch in enough troops at a time to make a dent against the crystals that get close to their bases. As if fending off enemies and the [[DemonicSpiders defense crystals]] weren't bad enough, Amon quickly resorts to ''taking out chunks out of the ground belonging to your base and your allies' bases'', rendering the resources on those locations LostForever. Finally, and unlike other missions involving spots that summon Shadows of the Void, they cannot be permanently destroyed - at best you can make the Void Chasms dormant for some minutes, so it does not actually get easier at any point.

''[[VideoGame/StarcraftI Starcraft]]'':

''[[VideoGame/StarcraftI Starcraft: Brood War]]:''

''[[VideoGame/StarcraftII Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty]]'':

''[[VideoGame/StarcraftII Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm]]'':

''[[VideoGame/StarcraftII Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void]]'':

** ''WorldInConflict'' really loves to abuse this situation. Only it takes it a step further. Since the way you control territory is by means of control points, not only do you have to defend up to three points, you have to press on an offensive elsewhere. This wouldn't be bad if you had more than 4 tanks and 6 squads of troops, and you need about 1 tank and 2 squads minimum to hold a spot for a respectable amount of time.

* ''EmpireEarth'' has the second Novaya Russia mission, where you're surrounded by enemies at a higher tech level (read: they get [[HumongousMecha giant killer robots]] and have little in the way of ressources, so you mostly end up having to protect your workers from attack.

* ''HostileWaters: Antaeus Rising'': In the level where you return to island zero, If your first wave fails to cause crippling damage to the bugs' main production facilities, it becomes almost impossible for you to collect enough energy to clean the island. But the bugs, of course, have no similar problems.

** One of the worst ones is in ''CompanyOfHeroes'', mission 12 and 13. Your main objective is to defend not one, but '''two''' locations: Hill 317 and a little town nearby called Mortain. The first part isn't too bad, it's mostly driving the Axis out. The second part however, will really test players, as if the game wasn't hard enough up until then. Not only will you be pounded from every direction on Hill 317 (and you have to defend Mortain), but the Axis will pound you with mortars and 88 flak guns. And all you're given is whatever you were able to save from the last mission plus a howitzer.

** The second level of the Saladin campaign, ''Lion of Arabia''. You're tasked with destroying Reynald's Bandits, Reynald's Raiders, and Reynald's Pirates, while protecting the cities of Aqaba and Medina. Reynald's Bandits consists of several groups of Castle Age-strength units scattered across the map, Raiders has a well-defended fort along the upper edge of the map, and Pirates is holed up on an island across the sea. You start in the Feudal Age, with a miniscule base and next to no starting resources or military units. Aqaba and Medina are completely useless; all they can do is annoy the shit out of you with the same soundbites every time one of their caravans gets killed. You can't venture into the ocean without your ships getting sunk by the Pirates, and the Raiders will take the offensive very quickly. Even worse, while most teams in this scenario are restricted to the Castle Age, Reynald's Pirates ''aren't'', and they have no problem showing up with Galleons and transports full of Cavaliers.

*** Then ''The Lion and the Demon'' tops ''Jihad!''. You are required to build and defend a wonder in Acre, while holding off ''five different Crusader armies'': Genoese (warships), the Franks (cavalry, gunpowder units, and rams), Knights Templar (rams, Teutonic Knights, and cavalry), Jerusalem (camels, onagers, and trebuchets), and Richard the Lionhearted (longbowmen, cavalry, and mixed siege weapons, including two unique trebuchets). You have some resources inside your walls, but they'll run out quickly (especially your very limited wood supply). There's no real way to bottleneck the attackers; they come from both north and west, almost constantly. This is widely considered the hardest scenario in the game, and for good reason.

** There's also "The Siege of Paris", the second-last mission in the Joan of Arc campaign, an EscortMission with NO HEALERS to support your forces. To make things worse, you will have to go through a heavily guarded city fill with longbowmen and halberdiers. You will also have to rescue the villagers in the city and AT LEAST SIX OUT OF TEN of them must reach the destination.

** The second level of the Saladin campaign. Where to start? The fact that you are still restricted to the Castle Age, while your enemies can go all the way up to Imperial? The way that you start out with almost nothing, up against Reynalds' Bandits, which consist of a small army, and the Raiders and Pirates, both of whom are building their own? The knowledge that you have to protect two almost-useless allies who do nothing but [[MostAnnoyingSound scream at you]] every time the enemies look menacingly at one of their caravans? The way that there are almost no resources near your base, forcing you to herd sheep ''across the map'' just to get enough resources so your enemies don't wipe you out with one misplaced sneeze? The way that even if you somehow manage to destroy the first two enemies, the third is probably so well entrenched by this point that it'll take an hour and a half to defeat him?

** TwoWords: [[NintendoHard Thaddis Sabbah]]. As mentioned above, the scaling enemy fleets can make parts of the game ridiculously difficult, but this level takes it up to eleven. Your objective is to rescue a prisoner from a space station. The fleet guarding said station ''at least'' outnumbers your own three to one. You can only have two battlecruisers at the same time - your enemies will have seven - and as mentioned on the ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}'' main page, their fighters will possibly outnumber every fighter you've built in every mission in the entire game combined. If you're unlucky, you could easily spend something like a third of the total playtime on a playthrough trying to beat this one mission. ''Out of 14''. The difficulty was nerfed in a patch, with good reason.