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[[WMG:'''Historical Total War Titles''']]

[[folder:Shogun: Total War]]
[[WMG:'''VideoGame/ShogunTotalWar''']]
* Legendary Geisha. They're nearly invincible and can wipe out entire clans if used right.
* The Hojo clan's income bonus. Even a middling Hojo player could sweep the campaign map before the first European contact.
* Kensai with decent Honour/Weapons/Armour can put down whole peasant rebellions, add a few to your uber-general's army and watch them carve everything up, excluding the Heavy Cavalry lead by heirs/Daimyos, Warrior Monks and high level Naginata Cavalry.
* The Takeda clan will sometimes start with an heir who has Honour 5-6 in addition to their Daimyo with Honour 6.
* It was possible to wipe out any of the clans by assassinating or killing in battles their heirs and then the daimyo himself, triggering NonstandardGameOver. Taking over the clan's fief from rebels was significantly easier.
* The game infamously combines general's skill with combat prowess. This makes general's bodyguard not only the strongest unit in the game by default, but [[BodyguardingABadass they are guarding a warrior that can easily put down an army on his own]]. The high ranking general is virtually unstoppable killing machine that can't die, unless facing some high-end units.
* NoRangeLikePointBlankRange is in full effect. Musketeer Ashigaru, when firing at troops right in front of them, will simply ''slaughter'' whatever is in front, while survivors will be under the debuff effect of firearms to morale. If sheer number of men killed in a single go won't cause rout, then the debuff will. Firearms also pierce armour like tissue paper.
* The Mongol's units in the expansion. Their calvary units are often strong enough to ignore the penalties attacking Yari units, their samurai unit counterparts will rout if pitted with their Mongol Counterparts (Aside from Guardsmen, who will rout against the armored Naginata Samurai), and their ranged units (Besides the Thunder Bombers) are often strong enough to attack in melee.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Rome: Total War]]
[[WMG:'''VideoGame/RomeTotalWar''']]
* Horse Archers. They're practically impossible to catch with cavalry (and a clever player can simply support them with some melee cavalry) and can easily maneuver themselves behind enemy infantry units where they don't have their shields for protection. The only thing they need to be wary of are foot archers. The Cliblinarii of the expansion are even worse in that they're ''tough'' horse archers. Cliblinarii immortals are quite capable of mauling their way through ''several units of opposing Roman soldiers''. Spears are no refuge from these armoured nightmares.
* CHARIOTS. Any army that can use them will flood their armies with them. Hope you enjoy watching in screaming frustration as they drive full-pelt into your units, running them over and causing them to run merely seconds after hitting!
* Roman legionaries set to autofire. No, seriously.
* Typing "oliphaunt" into the console command while selecting an army or a settlement with an army in it on the campaign map will produce a single elephant unit called Yubtseb Elephants into that army/settlement. This unit is so powerful that they could easily win any battle all on their lonesome (they had to be auto resolved, otherwise they took no casualties but took ages to kill anyone).
* The berserker unit also qualifies. They can take down half a dozen men in a single sweep, have almost unlimited stamina, and are among the fastest foot units in the game when berserking. If you can get them into charging range, even a single unit of them will force the other army to make every platoon in the area either run in the other direction or take absolutely insane amounts of casualties. Even the feared armored elephants are at a disadvantage in an even fight.
** Berserkers are arguably AwesomeButImpractical. It's an expensive, late tech unit in a faction that is cash and growth starved early on, which means you generally have to expand to get it. It requires a specific temple be built, which is an inferior version of another one of your temples. By the time you can deploy them, getting them close enough to even do damage is potentially going to be difficult. Several units can also attack Berserkers with complete impunity because they can continuously attack them without any chance of the Berserkers catching up. From a tactical standpoint, since Berserkers have very poor support by the time they show up (the other troops Germania has aren't bad per se, but when you are going against high tech troops equivalent to the Berserker, they are very low end even for the specialists), it can potentially be very easy to set them up to be slaughtered. They might outclass most other individual units, but it is very easy to set up situations where most of the unit is killed on the approach and when they do get in range, they get slaughtered by several units attacking simultaneously.
** Berserkers are however almost gamebreaking in sieges, either assaulting walls or gates. Their melee attack uses the same code as that used by the -elephant-, which means they send multiple units flying every which way with each swing of their weapons. This naturally plays merry havoc with formations, turning otherwise meat-grinder gate defenses into a scattered rabble to be smashed easily by more disciplined infantry. On walls they are also virtually invincible, given that the numerical advantage of other infantry units is completely nullified by terrain.
* General's Bodyguards are at the height of their power here. It is an entirely reasonable strategy when playing as the Gaulish or Germanic tribes to put all your nobility into one stack and march on Rome itself. Bodyguards not only have better base stats than any other unit in the entire game, barring elephants, but they also regenerate their stamina 4 times faster than any other unit, meaning they can run rings around anything but the lightest of cavalry. With flanking attacks and strategic lures, bodyguards can utterly annihilate armies that have more than a ten-to-one advantage in numbers. In addition to these ludicrous advantages, bodyguards also regenerate their losses after every battle with no additional cost, and because of their hilariously lopsided kill ratios will gain golden experience ranks very quickly, turning them from powerhouse units into nigh-invulnerable walking demigods that can send armies of elite units routing if they so much as ride towards them threateningly.
* Any and all Phalanx units are truly ridiculous if used properly, and can make you all but invulnerable in sieges. The very basic infantry of many factions, the Militia Hoplites, can be used effectively at any stage of the game, because short of overwhelming numbers or missile troops, there is no way to power through the wall of spears. And if you double or even triple stack up they can stand firm against Urban cohorts, Cataphracts and Generals Bodyguards. In fact, Phalanx's are also hard counters to just about every other game breaker from Rome. Chariots? Literally die on contact with the spears. Elephants? See last. Berserkers? Don't even get close. A properly used Phalanx is an immense balancing force, with their only weakness being speed, and in return making their user all but invincible in defence.
** Defending your cities via units that are able to form a phalanx is remarkably easy. The AI will, upon breaching the city walls try and rush for the main square in order to capture it and it will do so practically BLINDLY, hurtling any and all units towards it. The only thing you need to do is determine the one-two streets the enemy will charge along and position phalanx units at the mouth of the street in the city square. If done right and with good support of at least two missile units per phalanx/street to soften up the oncoming attackers, you will be able to beat armies several times your own size and beat them BADLY (incurring hundreds of losses). This strategy can be invaluable early in the game to defend vulnerable cities, freeing up your main forces to do other things and is also easy on the economy, requiring at most 6 (often cheap) units to act as a garrison.
** Furthermore, you can even use a version of this outside of cities. Have 4-8 units of phalanx troops, position them in a square/rhomboid/octagon (preferably on a hill and far away from the enemy to maximise tiredness) and watch as the enemy army fruitlessly crashes against the formations. Greek Hoplites are the ideal for this but other phalanx units can work well. The only effective counter against this tactic is artillery.
** Bridge battles are notoriously broken on a tactical level. The AI will generally attempt to bum rush across, stacking all troops on top of each other. They can be held off with minimal numbers of phalanx units or other strong infantry and peppered with flaming arrows or artillery to demoralize them. Because routing troops give their allies a morale debuff based on proximity, a single routing unit will quickly cause the entire enemy army to collapse. Sending your cavalry onto the bridge to mop them up at just the right time when this is about to happen will easily destroy full stacks of thousands of soldiers to the last man at very low losses. Now consider that even the Rhine has only a handful of crossings; it's possible to hold a giant frontier against a superior enemy just by controlling these crossings with a small force and even drain them of manpower and strength by constantly baiting them into these bridge battles.
* Egypt's Desert Cavalry unit: relatively inexpensive, available at a low level (Large Town, which is the 2nd level of settlement on the game, plus a Blacksmith) and packing armour-piercing axes. In the original release, they also had 40 men per unit as compared to 27 men for all other cavalry units in the game - this was later patched because they proved too dominant. Even now, they can be easily massed and can break armies comprised of units of much higher quality due to their powerful charge and the aforementioned axes. Only a combination of phalanx and archer units can reliably defeat them.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Medieval II: Total War]]
[[WMG:'''VideoGame/MedievalIITotalWar''']]
* Just one word: elephants.
* The Russians may also qualify: [[MagikarpPower while they start with the weakest roster of any faction (and territory that is difficult to both conquer and control)]], any city of theirs with the Huge Stone Walls upgrade can build Cossack Musketeers, a top-tier gunpowder unit, the instant blackpowder weapons become available.
* Arguably, the Dismounted Feudal Knights are an early-game GameBreaker. These powerhouse infantry units have insane defensive bonuses and are very effective in close combat. They're eventually countered by crossbows and gunpowder. They're also ''incredibly'' vulnerable to a direct cavalry charge. Best used in an assault.
** Also, Dismounted Feudal Knights are probably the most effective unit in auto-resolving battles, so if you feel not confident in controlling a huge army you can just spam dismounted feudal knights and auto resolve. It will almost guarantee winning against any other stack of army costing the same or even more, provided that general skills don't differ too much.
** The Scots have access to Noble Swordsmen, who are basically Dismounted Feudal Knights on steroids. Also, the Scots have Highland Nobles which, when fully upgraded, cleave through most infantry and cavalry like a chainsaw through tapioca.
** The Scots don't get high-end gunpowder units and have relatively weak archer units. The reason for this is because when you've got 1,200 screaming, painted, claymore-swinging Highland Nobles charging you, ''no'' amount of arrows or bullets are going to save your ass. Cavalry are squished outright by the range of pikemen that the Scots can field. Timurid Elephants? Psh. Scottish infantry are some of the ''best'' in the game, especially on a charge, and are pretty cheap compared with most other factions' infantry. Pair Highland Nobles with some Noble Swordsman for shock attacks and a bunch of pikemen to ward off cavalry or accept counter-charges, and you'll destroy nearly everything.
* Think Highland Nobles and Noble Swordsmen are bad? Try the Moors Dismounted Christian Guard unit. Sure, you don't get them until late in the game and all the other infantry the Moors can field are mediocre, but their baseline stats of 16 attack and 22 defense, low upkeep and good morale and stamina more than make up for it. The Moors also get Camel Gunners, which are essentially mounted musketeers, and start off close to Timbuktu, where a few merchants can make several thousand florins per turn.
** Camel Gunners really are in a league of their own. The mobility and speed of light cavalry? Check. Sizeable stock of ammunition? Check. Highly accurate missile attack despite being a gunpowder unit? Check. Ranged attack that can tear through entire units of heavy infantry like paper? Check. Can fire on the move? Check. Faster reloading than other ranged units? Check. And enemy cavalry, who are the only units fast enough to pin them down, receive a hefty debuff due to horses being unnerved by the smell of camels.
* In the ''Americas'' expansion, New Spain starts out with both Hernan Cortez ''and'' a couple of culverin artillery pieces. The culverin is able to pretty much one-shot any tower, wall, or gate and can blow massive, gaping holes in enemy regiments, and the native population has ''no'' possible counter. Cortez himself, meanwhile, has a ridiculously tough cavalry bodyguard and starts out with eight Command stars that only go up, and provides an immense morale bonus on top of that. In other words, Cortez can practically conquer most of the Aztec empire right off the bat with only his single army stack. [[TruthInTelevision Which is not too far from what happened in real life]].
* Any Islamic faction's imam can call a jihad if he has 4+ piety. In other words, if you have any reasonably competent imam, you can call jihads every ten turns or so. A massive army with major bonuses, no upkeep, access to almost free religious mercenaries, that can move faster than ships can sail and is available ''on demand''? Yes, ''please''.
** A pretty good example of this is when playing as the Moors. You begin with a Imam that can immediately call a Jihad after building up a small army of 8 units. After hiring a bunch of Jihadist mercenaries, you can effectively destroy either Spain or Portugal by blitzing their inexperienced and lightly spread out forces and capturing their only 2 settlements. Wait ten more turns, then you can take out the other faction, and you immediately have control of the Iberian peninsula and your home in North Africa.
* The downside of Jihad is that you can only declare it on former Muslim lands that have been conquered by other factions, so it's not ''too'' powerful unless you're on the ropes or, as has been said, are aiming to conquer Spain. On the other hand, Crusades can target any large non-Christian city. An army on the Crusade has no upkeep and can recruit lots of excellent and cheap mercs. You can have as many crusading stacks as you have generals. The downside is that the army ''must'' move towards the crusade target every turn or it starts deserting in droves. The catch here is that it doesn't matter whether you close in fast or slow, only that your army ends its turn closer to the target than it was before, even if it's only one square.
* Cavalry against ''everything else'', at least in the early period. It is possible to completely eradicate entire armies on Very Hard with just two units of General's Bodyguards, if properly applied. This includes armies with ''other, weaker, knights.'' Watch units of spear militia, the supposed counter to early-period cavalry, get smashed aside by your bodyguards with few losses for the bodyguards. Cavalry are a lot more expensive, but it still doesn't adequately reflect their awe-inspiring power.
** Late in the game, certain factions can field elite knights that have almost identical (save hitpoints) statistics as General's Bodyguards. They are one of the few melee units who can actually directly fight elephants, if used wisely.
** This is so bad that using large amounts of cavalry, or even worse, using cavalry almost to the exclusion of everything else, will earn you dirty looks in multiplayer. The first thing an incoming newbie learns about multiplayer is to ask about the policy with cavalry; usually the limit is six horse, up to two of which can be horse archers.
* Normally the Papacy is an extremely annoying version of GoddamnedBats, but you can turn it to your advantage through some religious manipulation. If you're a Catholic faction, start the game by immediately allying with the Papal states, then as you work on expanding your empire keep spamming churches and priests, and send those priests to battle heresy in non Catholic lands. Building churches, recruiting priests, and battling heresy all increase papal favor (especially when you build cathedrals), and consistently recruiting priests from the same place opens up guild options. Soon you'll have high papal favor and plenty of guild-trained priests experienced in battling heresy. If you get a guild headquarters you can usually get each new priest to start with at least five piety, the minimum to become a Cardinal, and it will only go up as you let them preach and denounce heretics. Since you have high papal favor, your priests are the first choice for new Cardinals, and with that you can easily get an entirely stacked bench (excluding the other two preferati), getting your faction members elected Pope every time. And with that comes consistent good favor for you and risk of excommunication for all of your Catholic enemies. If you need the extra push towards excommunicating them blowing up their religious structures works great. The downside is it will take a lot of money and probably at least a couple of generations, so you have to play your cards carefully in the meantime, but once you've accomplished it...
* Do you want to play Total War but are you too polite to conquer cities? Well, why don't you buy them instead! While the AI will never sell its last 2-3 settlements in trade deals, any beyond that can be bought for surprisingly low amounts of money, often less than an army to conquer it would cost. An experienced player can essentially print money in this game, and since you don't need to support offensive armies, you can snowball that economy even faster. Italian factions are especially suited to this, as the existence of pavise crossbow militia means you can turn all your castles into money-making cities while still having a passable army. On lower difficulties, Venice or Milan can literally buy Bologna from the HRE on turn 1.
* Are you having problems defending your frontier cities from irritating stacks of mid-to-powerful units? Fear not! Church scholars have uncovered a tactic hailing from the days of antiquity, that, with some modification, can be applied to modern times. This tactic is most potent in castles but can also work in cities too. Simply get 4 units of Dismounted Feudal Knights or a unit of similar strength plus 2-3 middling cavalry units. Position the infantry on the gates of the castle's inner courtyard or the mouth of a street if in the city and watch as the superior numbers of the invaders get crushed. Then use your cavalry to catch fleeing troops and ransom them.
* Once gunpowder is discovered, defending settlements become ridiculously easy simply by building the "Cannon towers" building and leaving a few units in the settlements, then sallying out when you're sieged. When sallying out, the enemy army doesn't move until your units have actually stepped outside of your walls, even if your cannon towers are shelling them out all the while (ballista towers don't have the range to hit enemies in their deployment zone, but cannon towers can and will). Simply park your units on the wall to activate the cannons, put the game in fast-forward, and watch the enemy get obliterated. Even if it doesn't destroy the army entirely and/or make it rout, it can easily take out half of a would-be attacker's strength at minimum with zero losses for you.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Empire: Total War and Napoleon: Total War]]
[[WMG:'''VideoGame/EmpireTotalWar and VideoGame/NapoleonTotalWar''']]
* Frigates. The main reason is that ArtificialStupidity prevents the AI from being able to organize a trap or a proper chase. This allows the various frigates (which are notably faster than most ships, while still reasonably-armed) to lead enemy ships on a chase throughout the entire battlemap, while constantly turning to bombard the nearest chaser and then turning away to widen the gap again. This is similar to horse archer tactics in the previous games - fire at the enemy and retreat to a safe distance, over and over. Moreover, if any enemy ship is fast enough to chase you properly, the AI gets even more confused and will usually run right into chain-shot range (at which point a single volley will usually slow them to a crawl for the rest of the battle). Since ammunition is unlimited in naval combat, you can continue doing this as long as you have time left on the clock (and that can be set to "infinite"). Also, this tactic works best when you only use one ship (reducing micromanagement to a minimum). You can take on pretty much any fleet with a single frigate this way. And then you research 38-gun Steam Ships...
* Don't want to face a country with many allies? Check if they have a protectorate, then declare war on it. As a result, you will only face the overlord, rather than the entire alliance. This is particularly important for the Prussian opening situation, as it is sandwiched between three different multi-member alliances.
* Ottomans are the only country that isn't affected by expansionist diplomacy debuff one way or another. Not only do the Turks not care if you are conquering all the world, but, more importantly, the world doesn't care if Turks are conquering it. This means you can easily maintain positive relationships with everyone except the countries you're busy conquering, which makes alliances and trade agreements last, rather than falling apart as you turn into a pariah. Good luck keeping positive diplomacy in Grand Campaign as any other country.
* Due to the sheer amount of provinces and their general lack of development, Ottomans can easily build a handful of schools right from the start, using the empty slots. Then just tech like crazy, simply because they can research 6-8 different technologies simultaneously, while short from conquest, AI is almost guaranteed to not get a 2nd school prior to 1730 or so.
* An exploit regarding technology allows to rob AI blind if you know what you're doing. Starting as either France or Netherlands, you can easily send your gentleman to steal from Prussia, Sweden and England (or reverse order if you're France), focusing on technologies they don't have. In the same time, you build your own universities ''in the colonies''. Once this happens, you can simply burn your university in Europe: you no longer risk tedious revolts in your capital province, while in the same time, AI can't steal your advanced technologies from you, as it will never send gentlemen to a different theatre than the one with capital.
* The "Old Guard" from ''VideoGame/NapoleonTotalWar'' may be expensive and late game only, but they can [[TheDreaded cause entire enemy formations to break and run]] just from ''being'' on the battlefield. This, combined with their ability to inspire friendly troops and ludicrously high stats make them one of the most feared units in the game. Used wisely, even just one unit of these guys can break an enemy flank and change the tide of battle.
* France's Chasseurs à Cheval are an early-game breaker due to having no hard counters or equivalents in France's European rivals. While somewhat more expensive than other factions' light cavalry, they are one of the few mounted ranged units in the game. This means they can fire and reload on the move and all fire at once regardless of formation (unlike infantry where only the first rank fires). Elite units fall just as readily to gunfire as weak ones, which means this light cavalry unit can devastate heavy cavalry just as much as light cavalry. The ability to fight enemies from range with carbines instead of charging them like other cavalry have to also puts them on equal terms with anti-cavalry squares formed by infantry (which increases their melee but reduces their firepower).
* Light infantry in columns. At first, light infantry is a fairly balanced and unassuming unit type. It's essentially a cross between line infantry and skirmishers: they have 90 men per unit instead of 120 or 60, superior accuracy and range but not as much as skirmishers, and superior melee but not as much as line infantry. However, their ability to fan out in a skirmishing line is what makes them utterly broken. As it turns out, light infantry in a skirmishing formation fire over/through other men in their unit. Several narrow, deep columns can then be put side by side, packing several light infantry units into a small space and allowing the player to concentrate hundreds of accurate-long range bullets on just a single enemy unit. Such massive firepower can even overcome their disadvantage against cavalry, as they lack the ability to form infantry squares like line infantry or lay stakes in the ground like skirmishers.
* Step 1: Allow British troops to board a ship or a fleet; the smaller the navy stack, the better. Step 2: Fight a manual battle against that troops-carrying fleet. Step 3: Capture, sink or burn all British ships. Step 4: Congratulations, you rid Britain of its army in the process of killing its fleet. Playing as France, you even see without any tricks or gimmicks British shoreline, so it's not even hard to spot the moment when AI decides to board an army into a ship and then kill the entire stack without any land battle. It is particularly lethal in ''Napoleon'', where with minimal effort it is possible to utterly crush British ability to fight any war on the continent.
* Related with above is the fact that in ''Napoleon'' the only starting British shipyard, producing military units, is in Portsmouth[[note]]the one in Gibraltar can be simply marched to with army stationed in Aquitaine and easily conquered by turn 4, rendering it useless for Brits[[/note]], with every other port being a trade one. Damage it by any means, even if by sending a suicidal raid of a merchant ship. For a turn, AI can't recruit a ship nor upgrade the building, since it has to fix the damage. Come next turn, repeat the raid. In the meantime, hunt down any military ships Britain has. Even if you aren't doing great at seas, you can simply wear Royal Navy down, as it won't receive any reinforcements other than merchant ships, which obviously are terrible at fighting. AI will never try to switch other ports into shipyards, because it already has one build, it just needs to be fixed...
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Total War: Shogun 2]]
[[WMG:'''VideoGame/TotalWarShogun2''']]
* In vanilla ''Shogun 2'', it's possible to build a Monastery (or a Jodo Shinshu Temple), a Naginata Dojo and an Armorer (Encampment upgrade) in a province with a Master Armorer (Smithing); in fact, the Ikko-Ikki start with Kaga Province, which has master smiths and comes with a temple. The one weakness of standard Naginata Warrior Monks is that they're vulnerable to arrow fire due to their lack of armor, but this combination makes them more heavily armored than vanilla Katana Samurai, negating their usual weakness. Particularly for the Uesugi and Ikko-Ikki clans, this allows them to become the "nuke" in the TacticalRockPaperScissors.
* ''Basic Yari Ashigaru'' are this due to the sheer cost-efficiency in the singleplayer campaign - they'll even up to a comparably-costed amount of Katana Samurai combined with flat stat boosts bonuses (such as a Weaponsmith), while Yari Wall is a very powerful ability that with proper use, will boost Yari Ashigaru's survivability and effectiveness in melee greatly against even infantry, while cavalry will be murdered at a fraction of the price. You'll save a ton of time and money just by filling your army with them, due to Yari Ashigaru not requiring a special building to make them and lets you spend your money on economic buildings/upgrades instead and of course, the number of units in your army will be far greater to better outmaneuver your opposition. On top of that, the combination of infrastructure and traditions by late-game will make freshly-recruited Yari Ashigaru to straight up be on level 7 already, so you don't need to be particularly careful with their survival either, as replacements will be probably better than what you are currently fielding. Correspondingly, the Oda clan is considered to be quite high up there in terms of campaign effectiveness, thanks to their Yari Ashigaru having innately better morale.
* The game also has the Black Ship, [[NormalFishInATinyPond a ship which would be considered a weak trading ship in]] ''[[NormalFishInATinyPond Empire]]'' [[NormalFishInATinyPond and]] ''[[NormalFishInATinyPond Napoleon]]'' [[NormalFishInATinyPond but can obliterate whole fleets of native Japanese ships in]] ''[[NormalFishInATinyPond Shogun 2]]''. The Black Ship cannot be built but will occasionally show up sailing along the shores of Japan. It can be captured, but you will most likely lose a lot of ships doing that. Additionally, capturing the Black Ship results in a huge hit to your economy, as it has a huge support cost. On the other hand, most naval battles after that become a cakewalk. The ship just has to be properly positioned before the battle to maximize its use as a floating gun platform. There are weaker variants that ''can'' be built, provided the player has agreed to deal with Europeans. Eventually, a higher-tier Japanese gun platform can be built, but it is significantly weaker than its Western counterparts and less maneuverable. On the other hand, Western ships depend heavily on wind.
* ''Shogun 2'' also has the Shimazu clan. While the Shimazu have cheaper and higher quality Katana Samurai (which rip through infantry like nobody's business), what really makes them powerful is their starting position. Their starting province has a Blacksmith in it, which can be upgraded to either improve attack or armor. Upgrading attack makes the normally CannonFodder Ashigaru into formidable combatants and upgrading armor makes Warrior Monks terrifying in battle. In addition, because the Shimazu start so far west, they are among the first of the clans to have access to Christianity. Converting to Christianity means that you will have to put a lot of money into converting provinces you conquer and that everyone will hate your guts for converting. Usually, this would usually give you a hard time as every other clan on the mainland gangs up on you; however, since the Shimazu start on Kyushu, the westernmost island of Japan, they don't have to worry about this as much, provided that they eliminate all other clans on the island. In return for converting, the Shimazu get early access to gunpowder troops, powerful siege artillery and warships, insane boosts to researching and a host of options to subvert your enemies' territory utilizing missionaries. In addition to the Blacksmith in the Shimazu starting province, Kyushu also has good farmland, a School, two Merchant Colonies, Warhorses and a source of Crafts. The ultimate advantage of the Shimazu, however, is their proximity to the trade nodes. They start off next to two-thirds of the trade routes ''in the entire game'', meaning they can make a lot of money via trade. There is one other clan that starts on Kyushu, the Otomo, but the Otomo start off Christian and have a much harder time surviving EarlyGameHell.
* If you can survive EarlyGameHell as the Otomo clan, you will quickly see just how powerful your imported Western weapons are. With the ability to cheaply recruit and upkeep matchlock Ashigaru ''from the start of the game'', you can tear great chunks out of enemy formations and shake their morale before they even reach you, not to mention make defending castles very easy. It gets even better when you acquire Portuguese Tercos via a Nanban Trading Port; these Portuguese soldiers have comparable melee skill and armor to ''samurai'' and far superior accuracy to any other matchlock units in the game. A unit or two of them will generally rout any other matchlock unit- and the vast majority of all bow units- in a one-on-one fight and its steady, rapid-fire volleys will leave charging enemies wavering and almost dead by the time they reach your lines. On the waves, the Otomo clan is also a dominant force: they can create whole navies of European-style ships with cannons.
** This is made even more broken if the Otomo relocate their Nanban harbour to Buzen, a province they control from the start. Buzen has Crafts as resources. It gives +20 to accuracy (+25 with hunter lodge encampment, while also making all units 10% cheaper to recruit) to all ranged units, including ''gunpowder'' ones. Meaning Tercos fire at a whooping ''90 accuracy''. And [[MoreDakka they fire by rank]]. The only thing that’s tied with them is a hero unit and it consists of only two soldiers, while Tercos have 120 men to make their volley. Expect Ashigaru-heavy armies to be dropping dead by the face of two or even a single unit of Tercos with accuracy upgrades, firing in a volley, with cavalry getting wiped out before it can even get close enough to engage them in melee.
* The Mori are usually disregarded due to being a naval-oriented faction in a series where naval battles are something of a ScrappyMechanic, but their strength actually lies in their strong starting position. Their home province has a Holy Site from which they can pump out level 3 monks and units with extra morale almost right away and their western flank is comfortably secured by an alliance with the Ouchi clan, who can be trusted to be too distracted with their enemies in Kyushu until you have gathered enough strength for the inevitable betrayal. The first item on their agenda is the conquest of Izumo, which contains a gold mine and provinces with blacksmiths, crafts and naval traditions are not too far to the east. Most importantly, they are arguably in the best position of any of the western clans to gain a monopoly over trading posts, as unlike the Otomo, their Amako rivals don't have much in the way of a navy to threaten them and unlike the Shimazu or Chosokabe, they start with an upgraded port which can immediately start pumping out ships and with their increased naval stats they can easily block other clans from parking their ships over trade goods and defend them. With DLC, they gain access to the Wako Raider, a sword infantry unit that, in comparison to the Katana Samurai, has half the price and training time, can hide and deploy outside the deployment zone like ninja, while only being disadvantaged by slightly less armor and requiring a Military Port to train.
* Each faction is restricted to a single Nanban port, but nothing prevents you from capturing more of them from others. Moreover, with a bit of micro-management, it is possible to capture a province that has a Nanban port, then wait for the previous owner to build a new port... and capture that province too.
* One of Realm Divide's harshest effects is the loss of your trade partners, costing you thousands in gold income per turn. Well, if you establish vassals ''after'' Realm Divide, those vassals won't be affected by the Realm Divide diplomatic penalty and would love to trade with you. Just don't try it in ''Fall of the Samurai'' - vassals retain their Shogun/Emperor allegiance and still hate a Republic clan.
* Kisho ninja when assaulting a fortress. Nobody can see them until it's too late, while they can scale walls without any penalties. Small size of troops? Doesn't matter, because they are armed with high explosives, so whoever they meet on their way to the next gate their capturing will be ripped into pieces, while they will disappear into mists once more. Their presence in the army renders the whole "sabotage gate" option of ninja agents moot, along with the requirement of said agent to be skilled enough in the first place to avoid capture.
* ''Siege Tower Bune spam'' is a multiplayer cheese strategy that is frowned upon for being blatantly overpowered. This is because the matchlock gunners on the siege towers will annihilate any enemy archers really quickly before they can send a volley of arrows at them. Not to mention that using matchlocks perfectly resolves the problem of naval battles dragging out for much longer than they really need to, due to archers constantly missing their targets and even trying to shoot at enemy crewmen that are safely located in parts of the ship where arrows can't reach them. Matchlock bullets address this problem by being armor-piercing projectiles that can both inflict hull damage and reach those crewmen that can't be hit by arrows. If you also consider the fact that the upkeep cost for a Siege Tower Bune is very low and the [=AI=] simply cannot deal with this strategy, then you can establish absolute Naval Supremacy in the campaign without putting a heavy strain on your economy.
* ''Shogun 2'' also has the monk’s ability to create riots, especially with some save-scumming involved. There is a province you really, really want but it belongs to a friendly (or even allied) clan you don't want to declare war upon? Station your main army just outside the borders, then send in a monk and have them riot the populace. The resulting army will consists of a lot of Yari and Bow Ashigaru and should take over the castle in the province on the next turn. The turn after that you send in your army into the now neutral territory, take over the castle (which should be easy, since the gates should be broken and the enemy lead by a weak general) and claim the land as your own for only a minimal hit to your diplomacy score and with no loss of honor. This tactic can be used to take over entire clans one territory at a time without ever declaring war on them. The downside is that the province is looted by the rebels, but that's about it.
** It can be used to wipe out or at least significantly weaken the other clans before triggering Realm Divide. Rebels simply sit in captured provinces, which means it's to your best benefit to either pre-emptively create a borderland of rebel provinces while heading towards Kyoto or go as far as to wipe out clan(s) entirely by inciting riots. This way the only faction around Kyoto will be the Shogunate itself, making it a breeze to quickly capture a handful of surrounding provinces and the city itself, while everyone else is a few rebel provinces away, having to get through them first to reach you.
[[WMG:'''Total War: Shogun 2 - Fall of the Samurai''']]
* In the ''Fall of the Samurai'' expansion for ''Shogun 2'', ironclads utterly dominate against regular ships in multiplayer. This has less to do with the toughness and extra range of the ironclads and more to do with the fact that explosive shells almost always set fire to normal ships in a single volley and ships that are on fire will eventually explode, damaging all ships near them.
* Torpedo boats, made from otherwise useless Chiyodagata gunboats, further stripped from guns and crew. Instead, they are packing 10 torpedoes. Any given ship, even the mightiest ironclad, can be sunk by a single torpedo. They are fired ''in pairs''. And the slower the unit, the easier it is to hit it. A cluster advancing in your direction? Still no problem, because ''someone'' is going to be hit anyway. Since this is an upgrade of Chiyodagata, torpedo boats are still dirt cheap to build and maintain, even in large numbers. The only thing that prevents torpedo boats from utterly dominating seas is how far in the tech tree they are.
* Massed artillery in the campaign, at least on normal and lower difficulty settings. Let's just say that being restricted to only 1 artillery piece a battle in multiplayer becomes understandable when you see your team of 2-4 Parrott/Armstrong guns tear the enemy army to pieces and force them to rout before they even get close to you. It doesn't help that the [[ArtificialStupidity enemy AI doesn't really know how to deal with artillery, preferring to slowly march out in the open instead of hiding in the forests]].
** Armstrong guns are infamous among the fanbase for being high up in the running for the title of "Most horrendously overpowered unit in the Total War series". The only thing that stops them from becoming too powerful (and more useful than Parrot guns) is the lack of high-explosive shells for demolishing infantry and fortifications.
* The entire Satsuma clan can qualify. All three of the foreign powers are on their side, their income is more steady than most others, they modernize faster than most other clans and they have more favor with the Imperial household. (By the way, the Satsuma are the descendants of the aforementioned Shimazu. InTheBlood, perhaps?)
** To elaborate: the Satsuma clan is in a very convenient position, which is a bigger deal than in ''Shogun 2''. They have two coastal provinces in a corner of sorts and they also start with a blacksmith (which is a HUGE boon to their military) as well as easy access to sources of iron, copper and coal. With said iron, they can quite easily upgrade their blacksmith to an iron works and then to a gunsmith relatively quickly, giving them a source of highly accurate infantry and artillery. With a gunsmith, basic Line Infantry have their accuracy boosted from around 30 to 50, which is nothing to scoff at. Things get really silly once they have access to foreign marines, faction-specific infantry and guard units. Spending the time to research 'Domain and the Realm' and then constructing a firing range in the same province as your gunsmith gives infantry and artillery trained there a monstrous ''+35 accuracy bonus''. Combine these amazing military bonuses with the wealth generated by holding all of Kyushu and Satsuma can easily become the most powerful faction in the game.
* If one is lucky or knows how to re-roll the retainers agents gain, it is possible to get a Foreign Veteran with three variations of foreign gun trader, netting in a total of +15 accuracy and reload speed bonus to modern units, on top of the regular +10 to accuracy from the "Soldier" skill tree. Adding to this, the units trained in a gunsmith province (+20 accuracy) with firing range (another +15 accuracy) and your Line Infantry, the most basic of units to field, will have a whooping 90 accuracy right after being fielded, with reload speed close to that of your [[EliteMooks Imperial/Shogunate/Republican Infantry]]. Said Foreign Veteran can easily add a few experience levels just by being in the same army, raising accuracy above 100. Or you can (as Shogunate follower or Republican) invite French experts, for yet another +5 accuracy to your modern units. [[ButWaitTheresMore Still need more]]? Rank 5 Generals have mutually exclusive skill that either adds yet another +5 to accuracy[[note]]so at this point, French-alligned faction has a Line Infantry with 100 accuracy without those soldiers even gaining a single rank of experience[[/note]] ''or'' +10 to reload speed for units under his command[[note]]While also offering faster artillery support from ships and greatly speeding up ship reload in naval battles[[/note]], so pick how exactly you want to break the game. Remember that Yari Ashigaru example listed above? Line Infantry are their equivalent in ''Fall of the Samurai''. And obviously nothing prevents you from doing the exact same thing with the next tier of infantry once you unlock it, making them superior to just about anything else in the game, as they aren't limited in numbers, unlike the elite Guard units, while retaining the main advantage of Line Infantry, that is - cheapness to field and maintain. Sharpshooters? Who even needs those slowpokes?
* When an enemy clan is against the ropes and down to one province, they'll sometimes beg for a peace treaty. The game doesn't mention that the AI in this state will agree to become a vassal through the diplomacy screen. This is mostly useless in the vanilla campaign short for forming vassals post-Realm Divide, but it's utterly broken in ''Fall of the Samurai''. Clans vassalized this way will switch to your allegiance (which they won't do if vassalized through conquest, and they will ''never'' become Republican) and your army doesn't get tied up, while you retain a trading partner.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Total War: Rome II]]
[[WMG:'''VideoGame/TotalWarRomeII''']]
* Rome in the campaigns where they're playable. Each faction is militarily fairly balanced, with the Romans possessing an army that, at first glance, appears to consist mostly of heavy, sword based infantry, with sub-par but relatively cheap cavalry, and powerful but short-ranged javelins for their ranged units. Rome however, possess a unique building called the Auxiliary Camp. Each Auxiliary Camp will always produce a decent spear infantry and spear cavalry unit, but its most notable feature is that it's capable of [[EnemyExchangeProgram recruiting units from the factions native to the area it was built in]]. As a result, Rome is capable of fielding an army consisting of virtually any type of unit it pleases without having to resort to Levies or Mercenaries, as long as it has control of the territory said unit belongs to - and they can be some pretty good units (Rome will only be incapable of fielding the absolute best horse archers, spearmen and shock cavalry...but they can still get some pretty solid ones out of these categories).
* Pikemen, though only in single-player siege defensive battles due to ArtificialStupidity. Everywhere else and especially against actual players, there's no trouble to weather pikemen down with ranged units and/or flank their sides or rear which utterly crushes pikemen...but while defending a town, the AI is far too willing to suicide against arrayed pikes protected from the town's buildings' at their sides rather than attempting to attack from every possible angle first. Also, a player can make this even worse by placing an armoured unit (such as Hoplites) or a barricade in front of the pikemen which will protect the pikemen from the front thus ensuring the AI isn't going to get to the pikemen (but they'll try to anyway).
* Proper use of chariot units is similarly broken against the AI and will allow them to pretty much singlehandedly hammer an army's infantry all on its own - merely have your own infantry engage with the enemy to tie them up on 1 side and then have a chariot unit moving at full speed charge at them from their flank. With this tactic, even a single chariot unit will mow down the enemy's infantry units from one end to the other like grass while barely being touched. Chariot units are pretty terrible against actual cavalry and will die quickly to a group of javelinmen, but this isn't much of a drawback when just a single chariot unit will have little trouble in quickly eradicating the enemy's infantry - leave the rest of your army to handle its drawbacks.
* Ballista on their own are absurdly powerful. They're the first tier of field artillery available, requiring only a level 1 workshop to build. They're exceptionally accurate, are capable of firing both standard boulders that can destroy settlements and explosive shot that may as well make them equal to the ''Fall of the Samurai'''s rifled cannons. The enemy's best units will hardly matter when a ballista shot all of them half to death before the enemy can even reach you.
* Parthian cataphract-style cavalry is the "tank" in TacticalRockPaperScissors. They just ''won't die'' and while listed as the slowest cavalry, have enough speed to chase down [[FragileSpeedster steppe archers]]. Aside from the regular version, there is also [[ElitesAreMoreGlamorous a royal one]], which can take even more punishment while ''literally'' plowing through enemy ranks, [[ScissorsCutsRock even if they are some kind of]] AntiCavalry [[ScissorsCutsRock unit like the pike infantry]]. There is also a camel-based version, which scares horse-mounted units. And finally, there’s teh noble horse archers: armoured better than ''heavy cavalry'' of other factions and able to lead an effective charge on infantry - mind you, we are talking about [[FragileSpeedster horse archers]]. All of this goes beyond any sense and scale when combined with captured special building of nomadic tribes, making the horses even faster.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Total War: Attila]]
[[WMG:'''VideoGame/TotalWarAttila''']]
* Tagmata Cavalry, a late-game melee cavalry unit available to the ERE with a ridiculously high AntiCavalry bonus that let them defeat practically all other cavalry in an already very cavalry-focused game. In single-player, they were balanced by being the last unit you unlocked in your tech tree. In multiplayer, where you can buy any unit you want in any combination... They weren't. This got so bad the unit got outright ''banned'' by the online community.
** Notably, the only other units that could give the Tagmata a run for their money in brokenness were Germanic Horsemen (with a cavalry general) and Burgundian Royal Lancers, both of those ''also'' cavalry with big AntiCavalry bonuses. This led to multiplayer battles being dominated by three factions and their respective heavy cavalry units.
* Slavic archers' poisoned shot. If it so much as nicks one man's finger in a unit, the entire unit will be exhausted for the remainder of the entire battle. Two archers units with it can expect to exhaust an entire army with all of their ammunition, and ''then'' the poison causes damage that can cause some casualties as well! Did we mention that there's an more advanced Slavic archer unit with even ''deadlier'' poisoned shot? This might be PurposelyOverpowered given the Slavic factions are probably going to have to tangle with the Nomadic factions or even the Huns themselves long before their scripted peak at 420 AD makes them a problem to everyone else.
* Late game Western Roman Armies are able to withstand the hordes of barbarians with little or no problem - if the Empire can survive long enough to reach that point...[[note]]A Western Roman player basically has to abandon Britannia, Gaul, and Illyria (only holding Italy, North Africa, and Spain), dismiss their expensive and corrupt generals, then turtle in the Alps with everything they have and rebuild Italy one province at a time. Once the mini ice-age hits, the West will have stable food production while their enemies begin starving- and your troops are still heavily armored, wield crossbows and have iron discipline.[[/note]]
* Spet Xyon Archers are a JackOfAllStats-combination-LightningBruiser that approaches being MasterOfAll. While being light bow cavalry with the high movement speed that implies, they are ''also'' shockingly tough with excellent armour and shields - this allows them to outpace anything they can't fight in close-combat with ease, and outfight anything in close-combat that they can't outpace. Their aforementioned shields will block 70% of all missiles, meaning they'll have little trouble outshooting or approaching to charge non-javelin ranged infantry, which are the standard method for outshooting horse archers. They're a bit better in melee than other horse archers too (which already are usually quite respectable at the task in ''Attila''), and they're only a tier 2 unit that doesn't take long to get. Spet Xyon Archers will shrug off long-ranged missiles, run circles around quality melee units or javelins until they use up all of their ammunition and weaken it for a close-combat to finish them off, and beat up any melee units fast enough to catch them. Only good artillery will have much of a chance at doing anything against them, which still isn't much of a problem for Spet Xyon Archers since the cost of 4 Large Onagers is about the same as 8 Spet Xyon Archers so the Spet Xyon Archers should have no trouble slipping in and punching above their weight against the Onagers still unless the enemy force with Large Onagers has dramatically more money put into it.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Total War: Three Kingdoms]]
[[WMG:'''VideoGame/TotalWarThreeKingdoms''']]
* At launch, the most powerful exploit is Yuan Shao's ability to form coalitions and vassalize smaller factions before anyone else can in China. A canny player can snowball off smaller factions to become the top power in China. With this and his AI handling diplomacy like the infamous Milan from Medieval 2, makes Yuan Shao strong even when you're playing against him.
* Another game breaker faction is Sun Jian. His starting position is the easiest of all the warlords, bar none; he can (and nearly always does) ignore his historical nemesis Liu Biao and his vassals, and concentrate on gobbling up commanderies held by the pathetically weak Han Empire. Once he is of sufficient size and power, he can also vassalize factions easily.
** Adding to his strengths, he can recruit unique mercenary units from the start of the campaign. These mercenaries come in the form of axe infantry, bow infantry and lance cavalry, each of which is just shy of top-tier for their respective categories. On top of that, they're recruited instantly ''at full strength'', allowing Sun Jian players to muster entire armies of them in an instant.
* Sun Ce's faction bonus is generally considered the best one in the game. It's easy to see why when that bonus is a +100 charge bonus to all cavalry (which pretty much makes your melee cavalry have the same charge bonus as shock cavalry, and makes your shock cavalry even more devastating).
* For officers' abilities, Sun Ren's Heart Seeker ability is powerful enough to OneHitKill lower-level generals from long range. The only strike against it is that it comes rather late in the game, as with Ren herself (she starts the game as a baby.)
* Ma Teng's faction can recruit [[BornInTheSaddle Qiang cavalry units]], which are the best in the game because of their [[AutomatonHorses immunity to fatigue]]. With his -15% to their upkeep and proximity to four Horse Pasture counties, each of which grants a further -20% to cavalry upkeep, you can easily muster whole armies of top-tier cavalry that barely cost any upkeep.
* Cao Cao's unique Credibility resource can be devastating when used right. You can make people like and dislike others, including yourself, allowing you to make and break alliances a single battle. You can even instigate proxy wars between two factions, though it does have a hefty price tag. How good are proxy wars? You can get a close ally to fight your rival for you, while you sit pretty and mop up the minor factions and, if your ally likes you enough, they'll even pay for the privilege of doing so.
* Trebuchets. While not hugely different compared to the siege weapons in the other Total War games (which is to say, also very powerful in pure combat ability), Trebuchets ''only'' [[DiscOneNuke require that you have a Strategist recruiting them to their retinue this time around]] rather than a special building and technology to unlock such buildings. In some ways though, they're actually still a lot better than siege weapons in the other Total War games as Strategists will inherently give them bonus ammunition and have skills that will improve them compared to other Total War games (possibly right off the bat, given that you can recruit generals at a higher level), which can only hope to improve their siege weapons via much rarer and later available buildings, general skills and technology. Flaming rounds are also a fair bit more powerful than in previous games - a single particularly good volley aimed at enemy troops just sticking together as they approach you (to say nothing about firing on them clumped up in a chokepoint) may be fortunate enough to earn over 200 kills, and one volley will easily set a encampment wall alight which will soon spread to make the entire wall ablaze and burn down the two arrow towers connected to it...so it'll likely just take four volleys to turn an encampment battle into a field battle, except the enemy also has a morale bonus from their camp center. Trebuchets' accuracy was reduced to alleviate this issue, but they hardly remain a bad choice for most armies.
** Players used to be able to single-handedly clear out settlements of defenders with them by firing off all of their ammunition at them, and then having the entire force withdraw...which declares the battle a draw and keeps the player's army as sieging the settlement so they can just attack ''again'' with their ammunition replenished and do the same thing repeatedly as long as their action points hold out, allowing players to use their siege weapons like they would have actually been strategically but at breakneck speed instead of over time. This has been prevented by only allowing an army to attack a settlement once per season while constantly sieging it.
* Gong Du's unique unit, Guardians of the Land, is practically the Spartans of China. They are available right from turn 1 while most other factions still have to make due with peasant levies. Such is their ability to hold the front line, a single unit of Guardians can reliably hold off at least three low-tier unit for a decisive amount of time. Their only weakness is ranged attack, but since their effectiveness allows you to have fewer frontline units in your army, you can devote the freed-up slots to more cavalry and ranged units of your own to counter the enemy ranged units. A well-balanced Gong Du's army can take on two enemy stacks at once and has a good chance of coming out on top.
* ''Three Kingdoms'' multiplayer: All heroes can be taken multiple times, which means that some of the high-tier Champion or Sentinels lords (like Xu Chu) can be taken in triplicate and then take on entire armies single-handedly. Three Sun Rens are similarly popular because her Heart Seeker can lordsnipe the entire enemy command staff almost instantaneously, leaving the enemy without generals, or add a Sun Ce for his area-of-effect morale debuff that makes the general-less army rout almost immediately.
* Caltrops, wooden spikes, and oil. [[NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer No seriously]]. Little brumble pricks, some oil, and some pointy sticks is all you need to hold minor settlements (ones that aren't just an open field) against superior forces. At the start of siege battle of a minor settlement, the AI will try and psych you out by placing units in front of one entrance but then move them to another entrance when the fight starts. Once you determine exactly where the enemy is going to go, [[SaveScumming concede defeat]] and rematch. Place oil in front of the entrance(s), wooden spikes behind it, and have your low tier garrison pepper the ground in front of and in the oil with the caltrops. The AI will hesitate when it notices the oil, but will send men into it. The brumbles will slow them down, giving you an opportunity to ignite the oil when they are half through, literally blowing several off their feet. The enemies cavalry and infantry will try to rush through, but be slowed by the brumbles increasing their exposure to the fire. Then their cavalry will slam into the wooden stakes and kill them and the survivors' momentum. Dog pile all your melee units into the breach and put them on guard mode so they don't follow retreating enemies through the fire. All the while your archers are peppering away at their archers and their front lines. Then, trapped between you lines and the fire, the enemy units will break and ''run back through the fire''. If you're lucky, your archers won't have to finish off their morale as they will stop routing and make another desperate charge through the fire. Once your archers are out of ammo, dog pile them into the breach on guard mode as well. If done right, you can easily win 3:2 odds against armies led by three generals using nothing but garrison militia and no generals. Even if your troops are routed, they can reform in the settlement's interior and continue the fight as they get a bonus to morale for protecting the victory point. It then comes down to managing the troops that are constantly routing and reforming and then sending them back in. The major obstacle is dealing with high level generals which can cause so many casualties that your garrison's morale breaks before they can take them down, but this can be countered by having at least one general and his retinue guard the settlement. Even if you do lose, the enemy will be so reduced that a reinforcement army that couldn't quite make it in time will easily steamroll the survivors.
* Zheng Jiang's Tribute mechanic can be this in a co-operative multiplayer game. Zheng Jiang recieves a hefty 35% of a tributary state's tax and trade income, and high Infamy levels and construction of the Tributary Hall building chain add a multiplier to that... but this multiplier is applied *after* the tribute is paid, effectively making money out of nothing. You can therefore have your fellow player pay you Tribute, refund them the tribute they're actually paying, and split the (corruption-free) profits however you please. Congratulations, the two of you are well on their way to being the dominant economy of all China.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:A Total War Saga: TROY]]
[[WMG:'''VideoGame/ATotalWarSagaTROY ''']]
* Chariot units were infamous on release for their ability to drive through enemy units and squish them almost like it's ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer''. Bracing infantry units will be able to stop the initial charge of a chariot unit running into them from the front...but the second chariot unit will succeed in their vehicular homicide attempts as a unit cannot be braced while in close-combat and individual infantry units won't be able to bog down another chariot unit. Chariot units are also not so powerful that at least, say, two of them running headlong into eight infantry units close together won't end up regretting it, but they remain a pretty easy way to slaughter armies without too much consideration or micromanagement. Due to every army's hero in ''TROY'' always having Siege Attacker, this even makes them unexpectedly effective even in a capitol assault as it won't be difficult for a hero to break down two gates and then allow the chariots to work their magic by rushing in to the victory point from multiple angles, avoiding large groups of enemies, and running down targets of opportunity as the enemy forces tries to reposition as quickly as it can to reinforce the victory point. Hero chariots weren't quite as crazy in practice since the single chariot has just a portion of the impact damage of multiple-troops chariot units, and a patch reduced chariots' mass for pushing through units and their melee defence significantly to curb the problem.
* Spies' 'poison well' action could easily kill half an enemy army with the right picks, requiring only a few levels. One skill even causes its success to automatically wound the army's hero as well..and a late skill would make it ''never fail''. This was later patched to do far less damage to armies.
* In the game's earliest builds it was possible to turn the game's economy inside out using trade agreements. By agreeing to give a faction resources every turn for many turns you could in turn ask for all of ''their'' resources ''right now.'' Since the agreement didn't take away any of your resources until the turn ended you could sign this agreement, take all of a faction's resources, then simply cancel the agreement before you lost any of your own. You could then repeat this even easier with other factions (since you now had more resources to tempt them with) until you amassed a truly ridiculous amount of resources for free. You'd tank your diplomatic standing, of course, but you'd be too wealthy to care and you could perhaps give some of your basically-all-of-the-resources to some key factions that you'd still like to be on the good side of.
** Better yet, in the same early builds, if you had 0 or practically none of a certain resource, your promise to gift even a single unit would be valued incredibly highly. So highly, that you could get every single resource the AI had, right now, in exchange for a gift of 1 stone \ wood per turn, for the next 5 turns. Or get the AI to ally with you, break alliances, join a war, and even trade low value settlements, all for a gift of measly 5 resources. Since this exchange left you with huge profits for every transaction (and nothing stopped you from making multiple tiny gift agreements at the same time) you didn't even need to break any agreements.
* Maxing out Apollo's favor is by far the most logical choice of god to worship first - the seer agent granted from Apollo's final tier of bonuses can allow you gain maximum favor with a god by having the seer perform an action at a region that has that god's line of temple buildings, so it won't take too long or many resources for you to soon gain maximum favor for ''all of the other gods'' as well. His agent bonuses are also pretty handy to pump out high-rank and soon-immortal agents to aid your expansion.
[[/folder]]

[[WMG:'''Fantasy Total War Titles''']]
[[folder: Total War: Warhammer]]
[[WMG:'''VideoGame/TotalWarWarhammer''']]
* The Empire's Demigryph Knights. They're some of the tankiest heavy cavalry in the whole game, even more than Bretonnia's Grail Knights (that is, even tougher than the elite heavy cavalry of a faction ''[[PlanetOfHats built almost entirely around elite heavy cavalry]]''), absolutely devastating on the charge and when equipped with halberds they gain the "Anti-Large" trait and can counter several high-tier monstrous units from other factions which cost twice as much.
* Coming in second place would be the Greenskin's Doom Diver Catapult. It is hands down the best artillery piece in the entire game, better than anything the Empire or Dwarfs (the ''artillery specialists'') have, for one reason: self-guided homing missiles that practically never miss, coupled with enormous range and devastating power (which also counts as armour-piercing). In the campaign you can usually see it get over a hundred kills in auto-resolve battles and end up with much more experience than any other unit in the army. What's worse, there isn't much that can be done to nerf the Doom Diver without severely gimping the Greenskins overall: common suggestions are either a straight-up reduction to damage and[=/=]or range, or removing the armour-piercing which will leave the Greenskins desperately lacking a source of ranged [=AP=] and a way to deal with other factions' heavy cavalry and large monsters.
* Speaking of Greenskins, Nasty Skullkers. They are dirt cheap and only require first level barraks for recruitment. But they have stalk and decent armour-piercing damage. This makes them really strong for sieges. First, put a bunch of them in your army. Then attack the walled settlement. Put your general (and other visible troops) at one side to draw AI attention, put nasty skullkers on the other side. Climb the undefended walls and capture the town square. Profit. It requires some planning, as you need to avoid attention and time well so the main enemy forces are busy fighting while you are taking the settlement, but it allows to capture the settlements defended way over your army strength. It is really overpowered early game if you need to take stronger enemies fast. And an army consisting just of nasty skullkers and high-level Goblin Great Shaman (as you need a Spider Shrine) is a perfect throw-away late-game force to put on the front where you need to do a lot of sieging that won't cripple your economy.
* Vlad von Carstein, if taken as a starting lord in a Vampire Counts campaign, allows your troops to deploy anywhere on the battlefield except the opponent's deployment zone and a small radius around that (vanguard deployment). This not only overcomes one of the Vampires' greatest weaknesses (lack of ranged units), but with Vlad's powerful starting units (especially the top tier Blood Knights, who are almost as strong as the previously mentioned Demigryph Knights) players can destroy most early game armies with little effort and overrun multiple provinces in the time it takes most other factions to conquer one.
** Possibly even more powerfully, Vlad has a passive campaign skill "Coven of Undeath", that gives a small amount of XP at the end of the turn to every unit in the faction, including ones in armies led by other lords and even garrisoned units. Before long even units that have seen little fighting will be in the gold levels. If this wasn't enough, he gains this ability at level 4, which is easily reachable in the first few turns of the campaign and only requires a single skill point, as opposed to double digit levels and multiple skill points or a lengthy quest like equally powerful abilities of other lords.
** Vampire Counts in general have a way to cheese campaigns by just tossing as much getting as much CannonFodder zombies as they can manage into a new early army and having that army along with their starting Legendary Lord's army march on an enemy capital. The player will then, depending on the enemy's strength, send in nearly all of their units in such a way to mostly be guaranteed to die. Win or lose (preferably win), such a battle will incur over five-thousands casualties and mark the area as a famous battle site, forever allowing the player to recruit maximum tier units from the area, which other AI armies will stand little chance against early in the game and greatly aid the player when Chaos comes to their lands. Now ''that's'' HumanResources!
* Kholek Suneater has a bit more missile resistance and 25% ward save in his skill tree. This doesn't count horrendous at first glance, but it can be eventually combined with good equipment to make him literally immune to ranged attacks and almost (ward save's benefits actually caps out at 90% no matter how much can be accrued) invincible to melee damage.
* Early in ''Warhammer'''s lifetime agents were getting this treatment for players, as the AI would use "agent-spam" (flooding the map with agents and surrounding your army with them to do actions against them again and again) to repeatedly inconvenience your army, to the point that people were using mods to neuter the AI's ability to do so.
* The Regiments of Renown. No, ''not'' because they're [[ElitesAreMoreGlamorous fancier and more powerful version of your normal units]] actually - it's because they can be immediately disbanded and recruited from any army with access to local recruitment, meaning as long as you are in your own territory and have the money to recruit them again, any losses the regiments take are irrelevant and after you have a high-level lord, you can easily and immediately give your rear areas at least around a half-stack of extra support against an encroaching enemy. This was later changed with a patch - whether deliberately disbanded or destroyed in battle, each Regiments of Renown unit will incur a ten-turn cooldown before being recruitable again after the unit is disbanded.
* Unfortunately despite the developers' intentions, like the tabletop game a lot of magic spells have been fairly broken at some point or other in the game's lifetime. The Spirit Leech spell could notoriously kill any lord with only two or three casts, with great range and no real way to defend against it; it allowed Vampire Counts, Greenskins and Chaos players to dominate competitive multiplayer by sniping the lord long before he could contribute anything useful to the battle. Similarly the Flock of Doom spell used by Beastmen used to be so powerful that it could wipe out nearly any unit, even a really powerful late-game high level one, with a single cast. And it didn't use a lot of mana to cast either. It received a massive nerf that ended up making it useless, and then got buffed again to make it dangerous but not as bad as it used to be.
* Rejecting Archaon's alliance and destroying the Warriors of Chaos faction as Norsca grants them the Everchosen buff for the rest of the game. Increasing chaos corruption from all characters, while providing +3 ranks to all recruited units, and reducing upkeep of your forces by 75%. Somewhat justified since you did just interrupt the apocalypse by killing the AntiChrist in order to seize his position as destroyer of the world. Late-game Norsca as a whole can get broken to the point of being able to raise entire armies in a single turn with Global Recruitment, with many of their low to mid-tier units being upkeep free, with the right number of taken capital cities, settlement buildings, and dead Everchosens.
* There is a pretty nasty exploit that can be used with Beastmen. Two Beastmen hordes support each Chaos invasion as vassals. And all their armies have free upkeep (and this trait is linked to a specific horde, not a lord or faction). If Warriors of Chaos are defeted but this vassal Beastmen horde is still alive, you can confederate them (they are fellow Beastmen after all) and get a couple of armies with free upkeep for any units you add there. And considering how many Doom tides happen... Though, it was somehow patched after the Chaos invasion rework as now there are only two, albeit much stronger invasions.
* The "Punching Bag Strategy" is excellent for leveling up Lords and Heroes at a time when they need experience but you're not even at war with anyone that is conveniently close to your territories.
** To elaborate on the setup, you need to declare war on a neighboring faction (preferably one that is minor), steamroll and reduce them to only one settlement (preferably a minor settlement), repeatedly subject the settlement to siege assaults and victory sackings (WITHOUT occupation or razing), and then recover your casualties by encamping or going back to friendly territory. Doing this on every turn will provide your Lords and Heroes with a lot of XP in a short amount of time since a Decisive Victory will always give a set amount of experience to every Lord and Hero that was present after every battle. And if a rebellion occurs as a result of your constant sacking, it's considered another opportunity to gain even more experience. One more bonus is that when playing as Skaven, successful use of this strategy will also provide a steady source of food, making it handy for getting out of starvation and maxing out a settlement upon capture.
** Some sort of variety to this strategy is a High Elves influence farming one. You just leave one of the minor HE factions with one gate (or let your enemies capture it when they are close to defeat) and just use it to farm influence with your nobles. They cannot build any armies this way but kept alive still and so valid for hero actions.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Total War: Warhammer II]]
[[WMG:'''VideoGame/TotalWarWarhammerII''' - Patched]]
* Malekith has excellent melee stats, fantastic armour, access to the powerful lore of Dark Magic, can be mounted on a flying mount (Seraphon, his dragon) that allows him to enter and leave engagements almost at will and throw elite troops and unmounted lords around like rag-dolls, and his signature magic items add 50% miscast chance and a +45s cooldown to the opposing side's spellcasters, neutering their magic to a point where it's near useless. In single-player he is a OneManArmy in the late-game, and in multiplayer he is considered one of the best lords [[MasterOfAll thanks to his incredible flexibility]] -- luckily for anyone up against him, he comes with a price tag to match.
* Mazdamundi is LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards taken to a high extreme. At the start, he is a fragile lord with a few minor healing spells. As he levels, he gains access to high damage area of effect spells, including Ruination of Cities which is bound, many passive defenses that extend as a shield, a monstrous mount that significantly upgrades his melee game while also saving him from assassin lords, and an area of effect immobilization that ensures his (very potent) spells connect. Add this to passive abilities that gut enemy magic while bolstering his own as well as those aforementioned buffing spells, and you can see how Mazdamundi is considered the most powerful spellcaster in the world.
* Kroq-Gar seems to be lacking compared to the others until you realize that he's not meant to be a one Lizard army, he's a power multiplier for your monstrous units. He provides solid buffs to their attack, defense and morale. Which also stack with the leadership traits you can purchase upon leveling up. All while reducing the upkeep cost.
* Upon release, the Skaven's summoned Clanrats had no collision detection, which potentially allowed their full numbers (yes, all 160 of them) to attack a single target at once, probably slaughtering or heavily-damaging a lord or hero with little more than two button-presses. Sure, they'll probably only have the minimum 10% hit chance against the target, but [[DeathByAThousandCuts over 160 attacks will eventually get through...]] and if these summoned Clanrats don't kill the poor fellow, well, the next ones summoned probably will.
* The Depth Guard of The Vampire Coast. During The Everchosen Invitational of Halloween 2018, these guys were seen plowing through nearly every single infantry in the game like it was nothing, dealing massive damage and healing from it thanks to a trait that allowed them to regenerate as long as they were in combat. Not even The Chosen of The Chaos Warriors could slow them down enough! The only things that kept them from winning the whole tournament singlehandedly was fire from artilery and Wulfric The Wanderer stampeding with his mammoth. Ironic that a faction mostly based around guns and cannons has arguably the strongest infantry in the game. They were, however, nerfed very quickly and are no longer able to stand up to high-tier elite infantry.
* The AI gets one in the form of Confederations on high difficulty. This is two-fold - One, the AI gets a lot of bonuses to confederations on high difficulty, and two, they get to ignore most of the restrictions that stop players from snowballing confederations. This often results in certain factions forming unstoppable juggernauts, especially the Dwarfs, who already have high bonuses to confederate without the assistance. It's not unusual for the Dwarfs to completely take over the Old World if the player doesn't stop them, leading to a phenomenon nicknamed 'Dawitide.' This was eventually dialed back in a patch that forces the AI to respect the same cooldown the player has on confederations, preventing them from forming huge conglomerations very quickly, though the Greenskins were given this back in the form of Norsca-styled confederations where a faction leader who beats another faction leader can immediately confederate the loser.
* Skaven Warlords gain access to a skill at level 12 that boosts the income of settlement buildings factionwide. This skill has two levels in it, for a 40% bonus. What makes this such a game-breaker is that the Lord doesn't need to be active for this to take effect; it still works even if you disband them, bypassing the Loyalty and Supply Lines mechanics altogether. A Skaven player who can recruit Warlords at [[ArcNumber level 13]], which isn't terribly hard to do, can recruit a Warlord, take this skill, then disband them, every single turn for the rest of the game. Since every Skaven settlement building produces income, this can quickly lead to a Skaven player making hundreds of thousands of gold per turn. This was nerfed in the Total Waaagh! update.
* Wood Elves factions have a mid-tier technology that renders your armies immune to attrition... ''All'' attrition. This includes the (otherwise crippling) attrition you take from running a budget deficit. As long as you are able to sack a settlement for enough money to queue up whatever you need to build or recruit before the turn ends (or squirrel it away by using Global Recruitment to queue up units you can cancel and refund in subsequent turns), the Wood Elves can literally ignore the game's economy.
** The same strategy can be used (through not as effectively) by any faction that gains majority of its income from sacking or razing settlements, like Norsca or Chaos, by simply using the raiding stance to avoid the attrition.
* Ikit Claw of Clan Skryre can use his faction-exclusive workshop in single player to make his signature Warp Lightning spell cost 2 Winds of Magic and have a cooldown of 1, allowing him to repeatedly chain-lightning everything in sight. As if that wasn't bad enough, his unique 'Second Wind Serum' gives Ikit a HealingFactor and increased Melee Defence whenever he casts a spell, meaning he's essentially immortal for as long as he has Winds of Magic left. He also has access to the 'Musk of Fear' caster attribute for the Lore of Ruin that stacks a Leadership penalty on all enemy units every time he casts a spell -- while this debuff does not stack, any army facing Ikit basically permanently suffers from this Leadership penalty.

[[WMG:'''VideoGame/TotalWarWarhammerII''' - Current]]
* Mono-unit doomstacks. They usually consist of a full stack of either strong monstrous artillery (Steam tanks, Necrofex Colossi, Stegadons), strong melee monsters (Dragon Ogre Shaggots, Dread Saurians, War Mammoths) or strong fliers (Royal Hippogryph Knights, most dragon-types qualify), a lord, and one or two heroes buffing and healing them. While the composition and individual tactics may differ, the core idea is the same: reduced micromanagement, efficient healing due to a small number of units, no loss of combat strength due to loss of models in the units, and the AI lacking any way to effectively counter them. Not all of them are equally strong, but as far as the campaign is concerned, you can more or less steamroll any enemy army on the map regardless of army composition or difficulty setting (though it can admittedly get a little boring to do it the same way every single time).
** A subset of this is the hero spam stack, where you simply recruit a lot of heroes and put them all in one army. Heroes are much stronger than most regular units, especially once they gain a few levels, and don't cost much more. They may also have powerful abilities that can stack with themselves or each other to do incredibly game-breaking things (see below) and have several other benefits, such as their small-target nature making them virtually immune to artillery fire and magic, their high all-around stats, and their ability to use equipment and followers. The only limit on this was your hero capacity. CA tried to nerf this with the Twisted and the Twilight by making heroes much more expensive but backed up because of the backslash.
*** There is a specific type of hero spam stack that takes this up to eleven and rips the dial off. Beastmen, Vampire Counts, Vampire Coast and Lizardmen all have access to a hero trait that lowers enemy leadership in the region (Nurgle's Foul Stench, Dread Incarnate, and Pompous, respectively). A full stack of these can cause the enemy army's leadership to bottom out at 0 before the battle even begins, meaning the instant anything reduces it more (and all of these factions have magic that does just that) they will all begin routing. It's possible to win a battle without killing any enemies this way, and it's considered the single most broken thing in the entire game because it basically can't lose (the only counter to it is to field shitload of unbreakable units which AI never does).
*** A bit different case is available for Grimgor because of his Immortulz banner, which prevents the unit holding it from losing members so long as their leadership doesn't fall below 50%. You can stack a lot of heroes with a Confident trait to buff one Black Orc unit's (or better their RoR version's) leadership up to the roof. You can buff it to such a value that they literally do not die and can take on a few enemy stacks on their own.
* Corner camping. It is a strategy available to every faction in the campaign, and even in multiplayer (though it is considered unsportsmanlike), and it is really easy to pull off as well. The tactic relies on using the map; by picking a corner and lining your army right next to it, it simply disables the opponent's ability to flank you and hit your squishy ranged and artillery units. This even works for armies with little or no ranged units, like the Vampire Counts, as the single line makes a great spot for using wind spells, and as an added bonus, since the edge of the map is so close, routing enemy units would quickly exit the battle before they could rally again (though this also applies to your units). That said, certain maps make this strategy impratical, and it can be countered by amassed artillery, but the AI rarely if ever does so, and in most cases a player can beat overwhelming odds using this trick.
* Tyrion takes Vlad's place for having outrageous starting bonuses in campaign where he cuts the recruitment time of infantry and cavalry by one turn for every lord you control. This makes it possible to build a new army full of high tier units with startling speed. He is also single-handedly one of the best Lords in the game, which when combined with his combat tree, Bloodline of Aenarion tree, and enchanted items in the Campaign, can quite literally make him an army killer, with over 150 armor, 108 melee attack, magic and flaming, 87 defense, 99 speed, 118 charge and with over 834 Weapon damage, which is harder than [[LightningBruiser Kholek Suneater]]. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L99aZwGhFs&feature=youtu.be&t=124 Add the Sword of Khaine to him]] for additional unfair hilarity.
** To fully underscore how useful Tyrion is, the aforementioned Bloodline of Aenarion skill tree is considered the ''worse'' of the two mutually-exclusive ones. What could possibly top that? Well, first we need to consider the three biggest weaknesses of the High Elves - Their armies are expensive to maintain, they get very few recruitment slots, and they get no global recruitment bonuses. Tyrion's Majesty of Ulthuan tree addresses all three of those problems by giving them the only global recruitment bonuses the faction gets in the form of a one-turn reduction and two more global recruitment slots, also addressing the recruitment slots problem, while also having a 10% reduction in upkeep to all units factionwide. While not as impressive as the numbers and power of a full Bloodline of Aenarion Tyrion, a Majesty of Ulthuan Tyrion really takes the sting out of the High Elves' drawbacks and allows them to recruit more and better armies quicker than they could otherwise.
* The entire Tomb King faction campaign becomes this if you can survive the EarlyGameHell with weak starting position/economy - especially with Settra the Imperishable - and overcome their general DifficultButAwesome playstyle. Tomb Kings have no recruitment or upkeep cost whatsoever and can raise up 20-stack armies right from the start of the game with only gold investment - although they can only initially keep one army at a time and cannot field the high tier units in large number. Once you start raiding and pillaging local areas for enough gold to raise the ArbitraryHeadcountLimit, the faction quickly snowballs as they can raise more and more armies which are also resilient to environmental and combat attrition. While their regular skeleton soldiers are very weak compared to other starting unit, the Tomb Kings have quite strong and quick blob-killer units like Ushabti and Tomb Scorpions. Their end-game Monstrous units are some of the most powerful in the entire game, with the Necrosphynx laughing at other equivalent end-game units and commanders, while Warsphynxes and Hierotitans devour regular infantry and can even hold their own against Anti-Large infantry. Combined with the Legions of Legend - essentially the prenerf Regiments of Reknown from the first game - which can be summoned as extra upgraded armies anywhere for absolutely free once you get enough Canopic Jars to unlock them (very easy if you know what you're doing), it doesn't take long for the Tomb Kings to start utterly steamrolling other factions in short order. This is actually a bit of FridgeBrilliance too, since their campaign and their lore revolves around the Tomb Kings slowly reawakening from undeath and recapturing their empire's former glory.
** On that note, Tomb King chariot units, which are the fastest (albeit least tanky) in the game. Step One: Charge your skeletons straight into the enemy as meatshields. Step Two: Charge your chariots in the flanks of the central mass. Step Three: Laugh as the chariots instantly break the morale of whatever they hit and annihilate swaths of the enemy's starter units. This can swing the battle for you in an instant as the AI really, ''really'' doesn't know how to recover from this. This gets taken up to eleven if you research their respective Dynasty to make them even faster and hit even harder. Their only downside is the micromanagement aspect, since they die exceptionally fast if they get swamped by blobs.
** The money you get back for demolishing a building is based on the base cost of the building, not how much you spent on it. If you pile up construction cost reductions from heroes, followers, effects, etc, you can build and demolish buildings for profit. Normally this isn't worth the extra management, but the Tomb Kings' economy is basically nonexistent making this ''extremely'' powerful for them.
* Lord Kroak of the Lizardmen is known in the lore as the mightiest wizard of all of ''Warhammer Fantasy'', and his portrayal as a Legendary Hero in ''II'' does a fair job living up this - his 3 versions of the Deliverance of Itza do not cause friendly fire and pretty much means he will rarely not be nuking his enemies to dust, and the Supreme Shield of the Old Ones is a significant defensive buff to your units while not costing any Winds of Magic at all. His presence pretty much means any defensive siege battle is doable unless facing particularly insane odds, like over 3-to-1 unit counts. It'll take a few quests to get to Lord Kroak for most Lizardmen Legendary Lords, but he's well worth it.
** Gor-Rok is rightly considered a very easy start out of all the Lizardmen Legendary Lords. This is because unlike the other Legendary Lords, he does not have to complete a quest to get Lord Kroak, but instead ''starts'' with him in his army. Gor-Rok being a particularly tough Legendary Lord pretty much means you can just send him into the enemy army while Kroak blasts them all apart around him.
* High Elves as a faction have a lot going for them, to the point they're often considered the strongest faction in the entire campaign.
** Basic Archers are the Yari Ashigaru of the faction: easy to recruit anywhere (just having a level 1 colony building lets you recruit them), great range (they outrange almost every other factions' archer units, and are equals to the few ones they don't) and respectable damage. An army full of them and basic spearmen will be able to handle the threats the game throws at you for most of your campaign, and will only fail against armies full of elite units.
** High Elves can have the Entrepreneur trait on Mages and Handmaidens. These give a +3% increase to tax income factionwide and 30% increase to income from buildings in the local region. This is nice, but not much. However, there's nothing but time stopping you from getting tons of mages with this trait and piling them all in the same province, resulting in an income so high you can't possibly spend it all, and since High Elves have five different recruiting pools for mages and start with one of the best provinces to let them amass in (Lothern) this isn't especially hard or unlikely. They can also get Administrator on Mages, which reduces construction cost and time. These also stack, making it possible to make all construction nearly-instant and free by having three of them in the same province. These were ''significantly'' nerfed as of the Total Waaagh! update, and the modified version of Entrepreneur given to Lords is widely considered to be a nerf since it eats up a valuable 60-Influence trait that could be filled by something better. Thankfully, the hero version of the trait is still very powerful.
** High Elf Nobles can get the Conscientious trait which gives +2 levels to all Lords and Heroes recruited faction-wide. Like with Entrepreneur, this stacks with itself, so if you can get a number of them you can have a late-game situation where you can recruit new lords and heroes at maximum level. This trait also lets you embed them in an army to give +1 experience level to all units that army recruits, which also stacks. Every Noble regardless of trait also has a passive bonus that increases trade good production by 30%, which stacks well with Entrepreneur above to make them even more money. On top of that, you need Nobles anyway because they generate the Influence you need to hire more Mages. They can also eventually gain skills that increase the incomes of certain types of buildings factionwide, which compounds the above Entrepreneur spam even more. Emollient nobles are also highly valued for giving faction-wide Public Order.
** High Elves have one of the smoothest unit progression trees in the game, having strong choices of units at all levels. Their most basic Tier 1 units, Spearmen and Archers, are quite capable of punching well above their weight if managed well, standing toe-to-toe with most other factions' mid-tier units and sometimes even beating Chaos Invasion armies with the help of a Hero or two. They can recruit Lothern Sea Guard at Tier 2, which solve the question of 'Do I want spearmen or archers' by being both of those things, allowing stacks of nothing but Lothern Sea Guard to function well into the mid-game with only their upkeep being a problem, one easily mitigated by the generally-wealthy Ulthuan economy. Tier 3 Sea Guards also get shields to resist return fire from other archers, though they cost more. They also get the Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower, which on its own seems unexceptional but it's one of the best anti-artillery pieces in the game due to its incredible precision, which can eliminate other artillery pieces extremely quickly before switching to spread shot to wreck tightly-clustered infantry. At higher tiers they get access to three different tiers of dragons that get increasingly better, with the Star Dragon being anti-everything, as well as the Sisters of Avelorn, an anti-everything archer unit that still performs passably in melee, in addition to respectable chariot and cavalry options if they're more your thing. High Elves also excel at the type of combat favored by higher difficulties, having an extremely heavy focus on ranged combat. While higher battle difficulties boost enemy melee stats and leadership, making the lives of melee infantry and cavalry harder, ranged units are largely unaffected.
** On top of all the above, their Legendary Lords are no slouches either. Tyrion is widely considered the best Legendary Lord in the game due to the incredible bonuses he offers his faction on top of being one of the game's strongest duelist Lords. He also has relatively easy access to the Sword of Khaine since he starts on Ulthuan, which turns him into a one-man army capable of taking on pretty much anything short of full end-game armies by himself. Alith Anar combines the strong roster of the High Elves with an Underway-style movement mechanic ''and'' the ability to ambush armies on the attack like Skaven or Beastmen, making Nagarythe possibly the most powerful, versatile faction in the game once they get rolling. Alarielle starts with an ability that greatly boosts the missile damage of Sisters of Avelorn, the High Elves' best unit, and eventually gains an ability that halves the recruitment time of them too; she can also recruit a handful of treemen units that give her archer armies an incredibly durable front line.
*** As the icing on this many-layered cake, all the High Elf legendary lords except Imrik have significant faction-wide bonuses in their skill trees or from their quest items, meaning the more of them you successfully confederate the stronger the whole faction gets. Tyrion can boost Public Order in every settlement, reduce the upkeep of all armies and recruitment cost of all units, and reduce global recruitment time while adding more slots. Alarielle gives more public order, increases the tax rate, and reduces Sisters of Avelorn recruitment time (both local and global) even more while also allowing more liberal use and recruitment of Handmaidens. Alith Anar adds a 12% damage bonus to all missile units, which is what most High Elven armies are based around. Teclis gives significant bonuses to Mages and Loremasters, making them more likely to succeed at their actions and making those actions cheaper while also making mages widely available. Eltharion reduces the cost and increases the speed of wall construction, allowing for rapid fortification, and adds even more global recruitment slots. Even Imrik allows for the easier recruitment of more nobles, and make powerful fire based armies thanks to his weapon. The end result is that fully-confederated High Elves can recruit nearly any hero from nearly anywhere, can materialize full armies of high-level archers with greatly improved damage in very few turns, have more and more successful mages than everyone else, fortify captured territory almost instantly, and almost never have to worry about rebellions, ''on top of'' the simple fact they have six Legendary Lords.
** Sisters of Avelorn are worth their own mention. These High Elven ladies have a very long reach for archers (Only Wood Elves can shoot farther) and their arrows are armor-piercing, magical, ''and'' flaming, meaning they deal maximum damage against everything without significant magical resistance or ward saves, both of which are rare. They have reasonable upkeep costs, less than that of a lot of factions' higher-tier units, meaning you can field a lot of them. The real kicker, though, is that with all the bonuses you can stack from Legendary Lords, research, and Handmaidens, they're not only devastating at range but [[MasterOfAll also in melee]], able to take down mid-tier infantry and cavalry on their own and hold the line against elites long enough for another unit to shoot them to pieces. They also benefit from the faction-specific powers of multiple Legendary Lords - Tyrion can recruit them in a single turn (even globally, after confederating Alarielle), Alarielle can build their recruitment building in minor settlements, and Alith Anar can ''ambush'' with them, removing their weakness against artillery. All in all, they're widely considered the best unit of an already very powerful roster for very good reasons. Their only problems are that autoresolve [[CrackDefeat consistently thinks they're worse than they are]] and [[BribingYourWayToVictory they're only available]] if you own [[DownloadableContent The Queen and the Crone]].
** Archmages, a new Lord type included in the ''[[DownloadableContent Warden and the Paunch]]'' are considered absurdly good. They are better than any other casters in the game (thanks to being able to perfrom any lore of magic, latent magic cost reduction, a bound Chain Lightning spell, and both Arcane Conduit from the start ''and'' access to Greater Arcane Conduit), they have access to Dragon Mounts, completely removing the "squishy" in their SquishyWizard and making them decent in melee ''and'', like High Elf mages heroes they can also have the "Incendiary" trait, which buffs their melee stats to the point of absurdity, making them better Lords than almost every single non-High Elf Lord (including Legendary ones) in the rest of the game.
* The Wind of Death spell from the Lore of Vampires is infamous for practically being a "Delete infantry units that are directly hit" button; the overcast version is even able to scythe down ''Dwarfs.'' Any individual with that spell can expect to rack up hundreds of kills in a battle once infantry units are bogged down in combat, and every faction with access to the Lore of Vampires has a ton of cheap, easily replaceable chaff that exists purely to bog enemies down in combat.
* Deathmaster Snikch gets an [[PurposelyOverpowered intentional one]] in the form of his final unique power, Plunge Into Anarchy. It requires him to be level 30 and has a ''100 turn'' cooldown once used, but it allows Clan Eshin to simply choose a faction and kill it. The ''entire'' faction, all at once. All Lords, armies, and heroes that faction controls, even legendary ones, are instantly removed and all settlements that faction controls switch to rebel control as if they had successfully rebelled. All this ability costs is 20 Food (or 4 Eshin actions) and Snikch is wounded for five turns. This action is 100% successful and has no defense or counter. Thankfully, the AI can't use it on the player (and very rarely uses it on computer factions anyway) and players in Head to Head can't use it on each other.
* Clan Moulder's Flesh laboratory is already pretty powerful (on par with Skryre's Forbidden Workshop) but it allows a new level of doomstack combined with the new units and heroes added alongside the faction. Brood Horrors are already strong units, having high speed, high mass to push through enemy units, and regeneration, but adding the "Cellular Instability" mutation literally turns them into walking warp-bombs on demand (and it is much easier to use). You can kill tons of enemy infantry using them and just scatter the remaining ones if they make the mistake of bunching up around it, and you can do this as many times in one battle as you have Brood Horrors. The new Packmaster heroes work extremely well with Brood Horrors being able to buff them and give them even more regeneration while summoning packs of Wolf Rats as distractions or flankers. Yes, this doomstack suffers against monster-spam (a rare circumstance anyway) but it makes sieges very fast which is a big plus.
** Both Brood Horrors and Cellular Instability were heavily nerfed in the Rakarth update. Now the explosion not only deals about half the damage it used to, but it also causes more damage to the Brood Horrors, which are now slower, easier to bog down, and die quicker. They are still pretty powerful in single-player, though.
* The Wood Elves' answer to the above-mentioned doom-stack is a doom-stack of their own. The Twisted and the Twilight DLC not only upgraded Hawk Riders so that they are no longer [[LowTierLetdown borderline useless]], but they become absolutely devastating when playing as the Heralds of Ariel, as this grants all of them the Volley of Kurnous ability. As the name implies, it's a volley of magic missiles that doesn't cost any Winds of Magic, can be used twice in a battle (three times with a skill from the Sisters of Twilight), and it deals tremendous damage to infantry, monstrous infantry, and cavalry, easily capable of erasing between a half to two-thirds of most units with a single cast. Furthermore, they can be vanguard-deployed right on top of the enemy lines, allowing them to instantly delete all of their ranged units right at the beginning of the battle. If that doesn't break the enemy's morale right away, they can still easily whittle down remaining units with their arrows and bide their time until they can cast their ability again, as melee units can't hit them while they're airborne. This does have a few weaknesses, though. First, Volley of Kurnous is not very effective against single entities or heroes, so armies with a lot of those are problematic. Second, Autoresolve will never be in your favor; expect to have to fight a lot of battles manually. Third, you need at least some forces on the ground, making a 'weak link' that you have to protect at all costs.
* Walls. Not in the player's cities, but in the ''enemy'' cities. Sieges are noted by most veterans as being especially easy to win once you understand how the AI interacts with walls, because it is ''very'' [[ArtificialStupidity stupid]]. The most important things to know are that towers will always shoot at the closest target in their firing arc and the enemy will almost never come out of the settlement, except when its units are routing. This means it's child's play to simply park a lord or hero in front of towers to draw their fire, knock them down with artillery, then move archers or mortars up to shoot the enemies standing on or just behind the walls until you run out of either ammunition or enemies. The AI prioritizes having its troops on the walls or behind the gates to maintain control of the zones there, even when their towers have been destroyed (usually making it pointless to stay on the walls) and the last eight squads got shot to pieces by your forces. If that's not enough to win you always have the choice to withdraw, often without suffering a single casualty, then put the city back under siege so the garrison can't replenish any of the losses you just inflicted and attack again next turn with replenished ammunition. Once you become good at this it becomes significantly safer and easier to take out a dangerous enemy army that's behind walls than that same army minus the garrison in the open.
* In multiplayer, the three Undead factions (Vampire Counts, Vampire Coast, and Tomb Kings) are consistently considered the best, or at least have the least bad matchups, due almost entirely to their different MoraleMechanic. Undead units will never rout and run from battle, but instead start to crumble and disintegrate when their leadership runs low. In singleplayer campaigns, this is fairly balanced - if anything, it can mean more losses if you don't notice a unit melting on the spot when other factions would run. In multiplayer, where the ending state of your army is meaningless as long as you win? This means your tarpit units have to be dead almost to a man before they can be shaken off, mass routing is less likely, and low-leadership chaff units will last longer, so it's extremely difficult for anything to punch through the lines and get a clean shot at your damage-dealers. This also means no micro in trying to get rallying units back into the fray, keeping your attention on the major engagements, which makes them more than worth having to sink some army value into support units to keep the army healed. Oh yeah, all of those armies have healers, and the Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings have easy access to resurrection, making their roadblocks last ''even longer''.
* Grom the Paunch's Cauldron mechanic can make Goblins and Trolls, two usually unreliable units of the Greenskins Faction, become full one-unit armies with only two ingredients: Stunty Ale and Troll Meat. Troll Meat gives all your goblins Regeneration, this along with their high entity count means that they hold a line for a long time without routing, turning them into very effective chaff. Meanwhile, Stunty Ale makes all trolls in all armies Unbreakable, completely getting rid of their main crippling weakness of low morale. What makes this even better is that Troll meat is available from the start and in Grom's Vortex Campaign, he starts extremely close to a dwarf settlement, giving you easy access to Stunty Ale. This results in whole armies of goblins winning battles through sheer attrition as they rack up dozens of kills while losing very little of their own.
* The game becomes hilariously broken just by switching to Small unit scale simply because of how the game is programmed to handle it. The game compensates for unit scale by modifying the numbers of models in each unit and the health of single entity units, but it ''doesn't'' adjust the damage numbers. This turns single entity units into killing machines since they're killing the same number of enemies per attack, but those enemies now represent a larger percentage of a whole unit - 5 kills per swing matters a lot more to a unit of 30 than a unit of 120. Mages can also assassinate enemy lords and heroes with impunity with single-target damage like Spirit Leech because it's applying the same damage to less health. On top of that, it turns single-entity artillery units like Stegadons, Necrofex Colossi, and especially Luminarks of Hysh into snipers from Hell. Most players will recommend only ever running the game on Large or Huge unit scale, which the game was balanced around, unless you have no other choice.
* The Rite of Primeval Glory earns a place for being one of the few game-busting tactics the AI will use on the player. The Lizardmen factions can spend 12000 gold to get an half-army of feral dinosaurs and the ability to summon feral Cold Ones in battle. What breaks it? This ritual is unlocked at the start of the game and has no prerequisite other than its price. This can lead to AI-controlled Lizardmen (since they AI gets massive economic buffs) attacking the player with one of these armies as early as ''Turn 10'' and completely dominating any early-game army they've managed to throw together by then. It's one of the leading causes of death of Clan Pestilens, since they start adjacent to and at war with Itza.
* Playing as Har Ganeth in co-op gives you control of the Blood Voyage. Similar to the Rite of Primeval Glory, rushing a Death Night in multiplayer will give the player a full army with massive upkeep reduction and a lot of extremely experienced high-tier units they can use to [[NotTheIntendedUse blitz their neighbors instead of wasting them on attacking Ulthuan]]. You can also transfer units in and out of the Blood Voyage army, allowing you to replenish them, keep them, and use them in other forces (though you have to pay normal upkeep). And if the army survives past a certain number of turns you get to keep the whole thing, Lord included, though the upkeep costs are crippling early on. This can allow the player to quickly crush their initial enemies, wipe out Naggarond before Malekith can get up to speed, or just [[BoringButPractical get access to end-game units long before they can recruit them normally]].
* A series of bugs let you make infinite money when playing as Tor Yvresse. Tor Yvresse can capture an enemy faction's lords and indoctrinate them, giving Tor Yvresse 5% of that faction's treasury every turn per surviving indoctrinated lord. The first bug is that this is doesn't actually take money from the faction, it simply gives you a percentage of their money. This matters because, by exploiting a different bug in the Diplomacy system, you can give money to a faction you're at war with. If you Indoctrinate a number of Lords from the same faction, then whittle them down to one settlement and keep it under siege so they can't spend money, you can give them all your money and get a percentage of it back every turn, then give ''that'' to them as well, effectively earning compound interest at a 5% rate ''per indoctrinated Lord'' every turn.
* ''The Silence and the Fury'' gave us the Beastmen update, and Beastmen are no longer a laughingstock...
** The Slaughterhorn Tribe gains a unique mechanic called Rampage. As they win battles and kill enemies they gain Rampage Tokens and Momentum, with the Rampage ending once Momentum is depleted. There are three tiers of Rampages - Harsh, Savage, and Cataclysmic - with each tier giving a bonus. Another important thing to know is that Taurox, the Slaughterhorn Tribe Legendary Lord, has access to the unique Juggernaut Raiding stance, which combines the best aspects of both Raiding and March, giving him 150% movement but also keeping his ability to attack, though his units start Winded. The game starts to wobble upon achieving a Harsh Rampage, since Taurox can now replenish his full movement by spending 2 Momentum, exactly the amount he gains from winning a battle. As long as there's another battle in range Taurox can refresh his movement and attack again. Where the game breaks completely is upon achieving a Savage Rampage, since one of the rewards you can pick reduces the Momentum cost of refreshing Taurox's movement to 1. Now Taurox effectively has a massive amount of movement that he can refresh indefinitely as long as he can find something to fight, allowing him to fight dozens of battles, capture whole provinces, or even ''wipe out entire factions'' in the span of a single turn as long as the player is good at avoiding casualties. One streamer, [=LegendOfTotalWar=], managed to fight around two dozen battles in one turn... ''on Turn 14.'' He'd later top this a few turns later with '''''43'''''.
** Malagor the Dark Omen received a significant buff as well. Most notably, he gains Mantle of Crows around Rank 15 that lets him cast Flock of Doom centered on himself whenever he's in melee. Automatically. For free. Indefinitely. Add in other items that grant Ward save and resistances, and the Sword of Khaine if you can get ahold of it, and Malagor becomes capable of getting thousands of kills by himself. He's no slouch on the campaign map either as his unique movement stance combines March and Beast-Paths, letting him teleport long distances across the map.
** Morghur the Shadowgave gets a lesser version of Malagor's infinite Flock of Doom in the form of his Aura of Transmutation, but unlike Malagor he doesn't have to be in melee to activate it, he starts the game with it, and it's always on. This, combined with the AI's problems with sieges, makes Morghur a one-man settlement-taker since he can simply stand under the gates of an enemy settlement where the enemy can't hit him and let his aura damage the infantry on top of the walls and behind the gate until they all die, since it will just send more units to guard said walls and gate until it runs out. He also gets a special stance that lets him cause Chaos attrition to any army in the same region as him regardless of the region's corruption, or even if they're in their cities.
** Gorebulls have an ability that lets them give a ''15'' Melee Attack bonus to all friendly units within 30 meters of them, a bonus that will nearly double a basic Ungor's melee attack and pairs exceptionally well with single-entity doomstacking. This can turn even bottom-tier units into dangerous adversaries if a Gorebull is nearby and transforms elite units like Minotaurs into blenders that tear through anything in front of them.
** Any Beastmen faction having the Sword of Khaine after this update, for the simple reason that they can completely ignore all penalties associated with the weapon. The primary drawbacks of the Sword are that the wielder's faction gets widespread Public Order issues as it possesses the wielder, Unit Upkeep costs go up to a 10% increase faction-wide, and diplomatic penalties with all factions. After this update, the Beastmen have no upkeep, they don't deal with Public Order in any Herdstone Settlement they raise at all, and Beastmen players have really no incentive for diplomacy [[note]]Beastmen can't trade, only Chaos factions will even come close to tolerating Beastmen, Order factions hate them anyway, and non-Chaotic races often have Aversion or other diplomatic penalties[[/note]]. This leaves any Beastmen faction in possession of the Sword with an incredibly powerful Lord that can eventually solo armies and no real repercussions for claiming it, unlike every other faction in the game.
** In a FLC update alongside ''The Silence and The Fury'', Razor Chariot mounts became absurdly powerful. Their attack animations were bugged in such a way that they could strike twice in a short duration, which not only allowed Wargors to mow down infantry formations, but calvary, monsters, generals, and pretty much anything in the game.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Total War: Warhammer III]]
[[WMG:'''VideoGame/TotalWarWarhammerIII''']]
* The Daemons of Khorne - Skarbrand's LL campaign in particular - is generally considered the game's strongest race, and for good reason. All of their mechanics combine to let them snowball at an unbelievable rate that makes even Taurox the Brass Bull, blitzer of the previous game, jealous. Blood for the Blood God indeed!
** The Blood Host is a unique mechanic that lets Khorne armies raze a city to spawn a new army. This new army cannot replenish outside of combat, cannot exchange units, and slowly takes attrition if not constantly fighting battles, but compensates with dramatically reduced upkeep that can be reduced even more with technology. The size of the army and duration they can go without combat can also be improved with technology, eventually allowing you to raze a tier one minor settlement and get a free full-stack army of mid to late-game units that costs almost nothing to maintain, can go for 5-6 turns without a fight before suffering attrition, and lasts until it dies.
** All of this faction's mechanics, from their tech tree to their lord bonuses to their regional commandments, benefits one thing - Bloodletters. Already solid anti-infantry killers well-liked by autoresolve, Bloodletters can eventually get unbelievably powerful in the late-game due to all the different bonuses they can get stacked onto them, with even the basic Bloodletter leaving other factions' ''elite infantry'' in the dust and Exalted Bloodletters becoming unstoppable juggernauts of destruction. Seeing Exalted Bloodletters with 70 melee attack (Not even considering their sky-high charge bonus, which is enough to crank them up to '''100 melee attack'''), more than most ''heroes,'' is not unheard-of.
** All Khorne armies can move after razing a settlement, allowing them to fight, raze a settlement, and keep moving where other factions have to stop. If they can attack a settlement at the end of their movement this lets them move farther than they would ordinarily. Skarbrand extends this to gaining this extra movement after ''every'' battle, letting him bounce around a densely-populated area slaughtering everything inside a single turn. If he's just out of reach, he can use one of Khorne's manifestations to summon an army for him to fight in order to refresh his movement, thankfully on a 15-turn cooldown.
** Skarbrand himself is a one-unit doomstack on his own, literally capable of solo-ing entire armies by himself (once he gets enough upgrades, though he is still extremely strong early game) and two-shotting enemy generals due to his insane melee attack and weapon strength. Not only is almost all his damage armor-piercing but with his unique weapon it ''improves'' the more units Skarbrand kills, ending with a ''100%'' bonus.
** Finally, Skarbrand's faction (not just his personal army, but ''all'' of his armies) enjoys full replenishment in foreign territory, making model losses [[WeHaveReserves almost irrelevant]] if you spend some skill points to maximize it. Combined with the above movement bonuses and the creation of expendable Blood Hosts, the player's military campaigns can snowball with little effort.
** And if all of this wasn't enough, Khorne can establish Chaos Cults in any settlement similar to the other Chaos Daemon factions with enough Corruption. While most of the bonuses simply feed Skulls to you, the most powerful one is the standout - it lets Skarbrand and his entire attached army ''instantly teleport to the settlement on the spot''. This also has no maximum range, essentially allowing Skarbrand to '''teleport across the entire Immortal Empires map for virtually free''', albeit doing so also destroys the Chaos Cult building in the process.
* Tzeentch's army construction leans into everything that's traditionally good in the ''Total War Warhammer'' series, namely ranged attacks and magic, and does them better. All Tzeentch units gain a Barrier, which is an infinitely-recharging secondary hitpoint pool that takes damage before the units' hitpoints, meaning Tzeentch units are highly resistant to being worn down in skirmishes since the barrier can take all the damage then just replenish. Nearly all of their roster has a ranged attack, even many of their 'melee' units, making them masters of kiting and skirmishing, and with the change in game mechanics that means Spell Resistance no longer applies to magical damage their attacks can only be resisted by Armor, which is often in short supply, and their Armor-Piercing attacks can't be resisted by anything except a Ward save. Their magical abilities are second to none, which only adds to their ability to frustrate and destroy, and on top of all that their campaign mechanics allow them to do things like force other factions to go to war, force all of a faction's armies to skip their next turn, or just straight-up steal settlements and hand them to whomever they want (including the player themselves). That they're ''not'' the strongest faction in the game only underlines how broken Khorne's mechanics are.
* The Slaaneshi roster is ''fast'' and gets extra bonuses when flanking, which makes them very DifficultButAwesome due to their reliance on cycle-charging, but once mastered they can do staggering amounts of damage while taking very little in return before the enemy routs. And the enemy routing is a good thing, because some Slaaneshi units get bonuses when fighting low-Leadership and broken enemies up to and including Regeneration. Most of Slaanesh's unique spells support this strategy by reducing the enemy's Leadership and Melee Attack, hindering their ability to fight back. They're also the only Chaos faction to be able to engage in diplomacy with non-Chaos factions and they have a unique system by which they can force other factions to become their permanent vassals. How effective this is depends largely on situation, playstyle, and difficulty, as vassals range from 'good sources of income' to 'worse than useless.'
* Despite being the game's weakest faction, Nurgle eventually gains access to the Crumbling Ague, a unique plague that can be quite powerful. If it afflicts your own armies it gives a massive 35% Casualty Replenishment Rate, which is not only the most important campaign stat an army can have but is doubly important for Nurgle due to his unique army recruitment, allowing for the swift replenishment and recruitment of entire armies far from home. If it spreads to the enemy it causes no small amount of attrition while also cutting their movement range, making them even more ineffective, and its inbuilt bonuses to plague spread rate means it takes a very long time to go away completely.
* Legion of Chaos get a low-key one that the AI can use too. Legion of Chaos gains an ability that gives each of their armies a plague which they can change whenever they wish and is always in effect. Not mentioned anywhere is the fact 'armies' includes ''settlement garrisons.'' Every army in Legion of Chaos territory has a chance to get the default plague, Bowelsteep, just by going near their settlements. Further, fighting a plagued army has a ''very'' high chance to give the opposing army the plague, meaning that every Legion of Chaos settlement captured or sacked has a chance to give the attacker Bowelsteep, which halts replenishment for several turns. This makes trying to ''capture'' Legion of Chaos territory an utter nightmare of plague attrition that would do Papa Nurgle proud.
* And then there are the Ogre Kingdoms...
** Ogre Leadbelchers. These guys come in packs of 16 and deal 110 damage per shot, 70% of which is armor-piercing, and their projectiles have very high piercing. They absolutely ''decimate'' infantry ranks and will shred anything without a massive amount of physical resistance or missile resistance in short order. They also have a longer range than every other missile unit in the game at 200, allowing them to get the first volley over any other missile unit. These are just their baseline stats, too, there are Lord skills and technologies that make them ''better.'' Their only downsides are the line-of-sight requirements (shared with all gunpowder units, and slightly less for Leadbelchers because they're tall), their inability to shoot walls and wall towers, and their their fairly slow reload and mediocre melee stats making them vulnerable to fast-moving units.
** Similarly, The Ogre's Ironblaster is a candidate for the strongest artillery piece in the game period. Firing 5 projectiles that deal 210 damage each in a shotgun-like blast at 380 range, you might think they'd have a hard time hitting their targets. You would be wrong. Ironblasters fully avert the ShortRangeShotgun trope, and against especially big targets like Ku'gath it's not unusual for all five shots to hit the same target. If you think you can just kill them with fast units, they have another surprise for you - They're surprisingly fast and tough, with 90 armor, 66 speed, and decent melee stats with an anti-infantry bonus to boot. With all this going for them they're even closer to modern-day tanks than Empire Steam Tanks are. And just like Leadbelchers, there are ways to make them ''even stronger.''
** Due to AI limitations, it is very easy to completely cheese settlement battles and sieges with Ogres thanks to two factors: Gorgers, and the "Stoneshaker" battle ability. The former are fast, relatively easily accessible monstrous infantry with Stalk. The latter is an ability that allows the player to, after the initial cooldown, knock down a gate or wall anywhere on the map with a single cast. This becomes cheesy because when the AI deploys its troops during a siege, it ignores Stalking units. By placing a handful of Gorgers at the far end of the map and simultaneously clustering their remaining forces at another gate, the player can bait the AI into dedicating all their troops to the visible threat, leaving all other gates and even the victory points completely undefended. The player can then use the Stoneshaker ability to blast a gate open on the other end of the town and march the Gorgers through. Since they don't enter battle, they remain Stalking, so the AI will completely ignore them even as they can rush up to the victory point and capture it. They'll turn around and try to retake it then, but they often don't have any units fast enough to get there in time. With some practice, this tactic allows an Ogre player to not only beat normally insurmountable odds, but depending on the layout of the city, do it in just a few short minutes.
** Gorgers are also broken in the launch build of the game for another reason, presumably due to GoodBadBugs, being able to deal far more damage than what their weapon strength and overall base stats suggest. Even without Gnoblars to screen for them or Skrag's pot fully charged up and buffing them, they are able to trade blows far more effectively and cost efficiently than they should against supposed counters such as Kislev's War Bears or Cathay's Celestial Dragon Guard, as showcased in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2Hw-CrL4Tc this video]].
* Kislev gets Boris Ursus. Boris reduces the upkeep for war bear riders, one of Kislev's best units, by 50% in his army and he gets multiple boosts that make them hit harder. Throw in a Patriarch or two for Salyak's Lullaby (to heal them) and Tor's Battle Hymn (for that '''''+40 melee attack''''') and maybe a Frost Maiden (put them all on bears, of course) and you get a nigh-indestructible doomstack of bears that can simply run over anything in its way. Seriously, even the once gamebreaking Demigryph Knights in the first game look like buckets of KFC in comparison once the Red Tzar gets enough buffs and upgrades going. [[https://youtu.be/hxLBqMqqNWI Here is just a sample]] of what doomstacking War Bear Riders with Boris can get you in the late game.
* On the initial release of Immortal Empires, Helman Ghorst of all people skyrocketed to the top of the food chain after being a joke for the whole series. He gives a ton of ridiculous faction wide buffs to zombies, turning them from fodder designed to bog down the enemy for a few seconds into a massive tide of unkillable bodies that do decent damage. That, coupled with the copious amount of AOE buffs and heals the faction has means that a zombie army can punch far, far, far above its weight class. If that wasn't enough, there is a bug on release that gives them unlimited healing, meaning you can't ever hope to even outlast them.
* The Vampire Counts as a whole are extremely oppressive in Dominiation, to the point that they, and occasionally the Dark Elves, were the only returning factions played in the Summer Tournament. Due to how cheap their basic infantry is, they can keep on mindlessly sending in waves of skeleton and zombie reinforcements to completely overwhelm their opponents (And even '''respawn''' such units when your opponent grinds through them). Daemonic infantry has a similar crumbling mechanic, but they are much more expensive compared to zombies, crumble way faster (A basic unit of zombies takes 10 minutes to die from full hp from crumbling) and the new healing mechanics allow the Counts to keep the infantry in the fight for as long as possible. They still lack range and speed, but in domination, the capture points will spread even the fastest armies thin, which allows the Counts the plow through the weakest link with their respectable calvary.
* The unique faction mechanics enjoyed by Be'lakor in Immortal Empires add some impressive options that no other Lord choice can enjoy. First, he starts off with a slot open for each of the Gifts of Chaos--from almost the start of the campaign, as long as you keep fighting and acquiring souls, permanent replenishment in enemy territory (accelerated by the Authority mechanic) and +35% campaign movement range for all armies are on the table. He also has access to Unholy Manifestations, with Slaanesh's allowing for instantly removing 1/3 to 1/2 of an enemy army (even if you're besieging them) and Tzeentch's borrowing the rift mechanic from the Realm of Chaos campaign and letting you establish a PortalNetwork that ''cannot be deleted'' or used by the enemy, allowing for the most versatile long-distance transportation in the game: as you can target enemy units for portal spawning, you can even use it to launch attacks from the safety of your own fortresses.
* For a brief period, Metal High Elven Archmages [[https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/wwvecd/game_breaking_bug_found_metal_lore_archmage_on/ were discovered]] to gain an absolutely ridiculous amount of HP when mounted on a dragon. Presumably from a typo, they gained around '''''60,000 HP''''', several times the amount of even Ku'gath! (Who also became very hard to take down due to stacking healing, damage reduction, and mortis engine effects). Since this absurdity wasn't from mods, people caught these mages in multiplayer until the bug was fixed.
* It's possible via the Alliance system to borrow allies' armies for a few turns for a rather high cost of Allegiance points. Heroes in a borrowed army can be detached. These heroes will then remain with your faction even after you give the army back or lose it, letting you permanently steal them from your allies. This even applies to ''Legendary'' heroes, which means characters like Isabella von Carstein, Ariel, and Lord Kroak can be stolen by any faction capable of allying with their controllers. This can obviously break the game in half by combining multiple races' heroes with stacking abilities that were never meant to be used together or factions gaining access to schools of magic they weren't balanced around having.
* With the release of the Chaos Dwarfs, Astragoth Ironhand quickly cemented himself as the strongest of their Legendary Lords due to being a LightningBruiser spellcaster with surprising amounts of health and speed who could hold his own even against elite melee infantry. Balance patches would see him adjusted to the level of his fellow Lords.
* The Akshina Ambushers, added in the Shadows of Change DLC, quickly became contentious for how strong they were, being a MasterOfAll unit with ranged armor-piercing and respectable melee stats who were seen as a straight upgrade to the Streltsi, despite being considered a tier lower than them in campaign. Patch 4.1 would hit them with the nerf hammer as a result.
[[/folder]]

[[WMG:'''Well-Known Mods''']]
[[folder:Medieval II: Total War Stainless Steel]]
[[WMG:'''VideoGame/MedievalIITotalWar Stainless Steel mod''']]
* The mod manages to make the Scots even ''more'' broken. The Highland Nobles are nerfed (while still powerful, they're harder to recruit), but recruiting pikemen is even easier now, so most Scottish armies are going to be packing at least four to ten units of pikemen. Pikemen are ''powerful'' here, particularly thanks to the combat system. Every time a soldier takes a hit from a weapon that doesn't penetrate their armor, they have a brief "flinching" animation that either stops them from advancing or prevents them from attacking. Pikemen, thanks to their long pikes, inflict these "flinching" animations well before an opponent can get into striking range, and three or four men at least are going to be poking every enemy soldier, thanks to the pikes' reach. This dramatically slows them down and makes it hard to attack them ([[TruthInTelevision just like it did historically]]) and with hordes of pikes poking them, even heavy infantry will [[DeathOfAThousandCuts eventually]] go down, and the small size of a cavalry unit compared to the pike unit ensures that every cavalryman is getting stabbed by dozens of pikes at a time. But the real kicker comes from the fact that Scotland is based on the British Isles, and all castles in the British Isles, once upgraded with the right archery ranges, can produce longbowmen. Pikes + longbows = nearly unbreakable formations that render just about any form of cavalry into a sad joke. Even missile cavalry are largely useless against this formation, as the longbowmen generally out-range them, outnumber them, and have better bows. So, instead of the Scottish armies in vanilla ''Medieval II'', which are a powerful infantry-oriented force that can destroy anything on a charge, you instead get a nearly-invincible Scottish army with unbreakable pike-and-shot formations, about three hundred years before widespread firearms use resulted in its development historically.
* Adding to Stainless Steel's brokenness is the 6.4 edition. Now, a few short turns after whenever England invades in the Late Era campaign, the Scots get ''William Wallace'' and his rebellion, just like in Brittania. That's right. ''Two'' full stacks of veteran infantry light years ahead of your recruitment capabilities, with incredibly high level generals and a thirst for English blood. If someone playing the Scots plays the right cards, they can go from struggling for survival to ''dominating'' the British Isles. If you're playing the English, prepare to lose your starting army and everything north of Nottingham.
* Stainless Steel's Holy Roman Empire faction gives you the most brokenly overpowered knights on horseback until the late game era, the fearsome Teutonic ''Ritterbruders''. These are those famous Teutonic knights with horned and winged helmets that strike fear in the hearts of enemy infantry and cavalry alike. They also sport the hightest melee damage of any mounted knight, only being outclassed in the late game by armor-crushing Gothic Knights, which you will also have access to. They are one of the few cavalry units that can charge an enemy bodyguard unit and actually win. If mounted knights are the [[TankGoodness tanks]] of the Medieval era, Ritterbruders are the ''M1 Abrams'' compared to the rest.
* Byzantine fire throwers, which have been enabled in the main campaign from ''the crusades''. You get them in the mid-game, and once you do, it's game over for everyone except the Mongols.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Third Age: Total War]]
[[WMG:'''VideoGame/ThirdAgeTotalWar''' '''mod''']]
One of the more popular total conversion [[GameMod mods]] for ''Medieval II''. The modders have generally done an excellent job of implementing and balancing widely different factions. There are, however, some glaring exceptions that make sense in the lore but are still murder:
* Dwarfs are notoriously heavily armored and dangerous in melee, meaning both arrows ''and'' infantry are ineffective against them. They're slow, but seeing as how most ''VideoGame/TotalWar'' combat revolves around city sieges...
* The High Elves can recruit an "archer" unit that not only has the longest range in the game and fires arrows which can kill most heavy infantry units ''through'' their shields, but also has armor and a melee attack ''greater'' than most infantry and can match the speed of the fastest cavalry. You might be tempted to scream at the cocky Noldar elves when cheap enemy infantry surge in on your very expensive and difficult to recruit archers. That impulse will likely go away after the first time they butcher and rout the orcs that hit their lines and then merrily execute the fleeing survivors with arrows to the back. The only thing slowing the High Elves down is that they start off in the campaign in a fairly poor position with limited expansion options. (Dwarfs to the north, Eriador to the east, Rohan to the south). As a result, expansion as the High Elves is slow and you won't be able to build a big, potent economy for a long time, so your armies will be rather small, unless you're willing to go totally against the lore and start conquering the other "good" races.
* The Silvan Elves as a whole. Even their basic Light Elven Archers have range and firepower comparable to most other factions' best archers, and the Sentinels that are their second-level archers are excessively long-ranged, hit hard and have excellent melee capabilities as well. Because of the versatility of their archers, it is possible to have the lion's share of any Silvan army be made up of Light and Sentinel archers, which will utterly butcher any army trying to charge them. Sure, their melee infantry aren't that great, but when 75% of the enemy army is already dead by the time the lines meet, and the archers are just as good in melee as the dedicated melee troops, they don't ''need'' to be. It's possible to destroy an entire enemy army that outnumbers yours two or even three to one, with trolls and wargs, while only taking a couple hundred casualties at most. Hell, the Silvans' ranged capability is so great that they can siege and assault small fortresses and villages ''without setting foot inside them''. Casualty-free victories are not only quite possible, they're almost expected when playing the Silvans.
** The only thing that beats the above archers are trolls, which will beat them with absolutely no effort or direction from the player. If you see trolls on the other side, regardless of what your faction or army composition is, resign yourself to losing 300 men off the top. Oh, and trolls are also as fast as cavalry and ''can even climb siege ladders'' because they are coded as infantry.
* The Free Peoples of Eriador are actually one of the weaker factions, despite the large territory they control, mostly having militia and irregular troops... [[MagikarpPower unless you bide your time, build up your economy, and eventually build the Hall of Kings to reestablish the old Kingdom of Arnor]] and get among the ''very best'' troops in the game. Arnor's roster resembles Gondor's, with heavy infantry and cavalry which can fight on-par with many of the Elves' units, but they're not set back by the whole "we're dying out and can only bring about fifty guys to this major battle" thing.
* As in un-modded Medieval II, heavy cavalry are very powerful. The mod writers did a very good job of rebalancing cavalry, but even so a dedicated Rohirrim cavalry army is very powerful. By using hit-and-run tactics to repeatedly charge, your 30-man cavalry units can easily crush 100-orc infantry units, even Uruk-Hai Pikes. About the only thing that can beat heavy cavalry is Trolls (which crush everything, of course).
* The Balrogs that spawn in Moria are, as you'd expect, quite capable of butchering entire armies of elite soldiers.
* Archers of any kind are extremely useful in many situations, as Third Age gameplay focuses a lot more on custom siege battles than the base game does. Many of the custom maps can be turned into horrifying deathtraps for even the largest enemy armies simply by knowing where best to position even weak archer units. Siege weapons are also extremely useful counters to many of the 'elite' units such as trolls and especially balrogs. Nothing is quite as amusing as potting a Nazgul capable of offhandedly slaughtering a hundred of your best troops in the first minute of a battle with a flaming catapult shot. Since most starting generals in the Third Age have incredible statistics, such an attack usually decides the battle in an instant. Just don't let it happen to you...
* Rhûn certainly has the potential to become this. They have the richest starting lands in the entire game, and their two opponents will be Dale and the Dwarfs: Dale are a joke early on, your forces can generally outshoot theirs and you're much, ''much'' more mobile to boot; and the Dwarfs' otherwise excellent heavy infantry are poorly suited for fighting Rhun's armies of missile cavalry and skirmishers. Later on they get many powerful infantry and cavalry options to round them out too.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Thera: Legacy of the Great Torment]]
[[WMG:'''{{VideoGame/Thera}}: Legacy of the Great Torment mod''']]
* The mod has one of these in the form of the Uruk Dominion. The Uruk-Hai (which are pretty much exactly like the ones from the VideoGame/ThirdAgeTotalWar mod) are given some truly terrifying stats, including high attack, high armor and two hitpoints each. Essentially, they're an infantry version of a General's Bodyguard that doesn't suffer the sustained combat penalties that all cavalry get. Watch in horror (or glee, if you're controlling them) as they charge an entire stack's worth of elite heavy infantry and archers, and go right through their arrows to crush the infantry without stopping. And heaven forbid they assault a city or castle, because street fighting is where the Uruk-Hai troops ''excel''. Fortunately, they're still vulnerable to cavalry, gunpowder and siege weaponry, and sieges drain their numbers if they're on the defensive.
* General's/Royal Bodyguards are already tremendously effective in vanilla ''Total War'', but in ''Thera'', they become a vastly different story once you start piling the faction-specific artifacts on them. Even a mediocre family member or general can become a terror on the battlefield when he's wielding {{Excalibur}} in one hand, Odin's War Axe in the other, flying three crusade banners, draped in the Cloak of Human Flesh, and carrying the Book of Morrigan and the Holy Grail. Entire armies break before these generals even hit their lines.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Warhammer Rage of Dark Gods: Battle for the Empire]]
[[WMG:'''[[{{TabletopGame/Warhammer}} Rage of Dark Gods: Battle for the Empire]] mod''']]
* The total conversion mod was always notorious for giant enemy stacks spawning ''right'' on your doorstep, with little to no time to prepare whatsoever. But massed artillery and magicians will make mincemeat out of those stacks. And it´s not like there´s few of those. On the side of the Conclave of Light, we have Imperial Mortars and Bright Wizards as well as the famously inaccurate but devastating Helstorm Rocket Battery, the Kislevian Uragan Mortar, High Elves´ Archmages and the incredibly powerful dwarfen Anvil of Doom. On the side of the Forces of Chaos, there´s the sorcerers of Tzeentch and Nurgle, the Hellcannon (which also tremendously reduces morale), the Chaos Dwarf´s Earthshaker and Doom Rocket. Even Orks and Goblins get one in the form of Shamans of Gork and Mork. They tend to have very high upkeep and are fragile in close combat, but if properly protected and positioned these troops will win the battle for you easily ... or wipe you out if the enemy has them.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Hyrule: Total War]]
[[WMG:'''VideoGame/HyruleTotalWar mod''']]
* In the mod, Goron are infamous for having an insanely [[LightningBruiser strong and tough infantry, coupled with the skill to roll]]. And that is just for their weakest units, Din spare you if you encounter Fire Warriors ''[[FromBadToWorse mounted]] on [[BeastOfBattle Dodongos]]''.
[[/folder]]