Basic Trope: The synergistic effects of a particular combination of abilities/powers/characters/etc. allow for exponentially greater power than the sum of the parts alone.
- Straight: In Tales of Troperia - The Real-Time Strategy, the Borusail nation gets a 50% bonus to all maritime trade. Completing an early optional objective to seize a specific port gives you an additional 50% bonus to maritime trade, and the effects stack, giving Borusail enough money to compensate for their weakness in land warfare by hiring mercenaries while maintaining their dominance of the seas.
- Exaggerated:
- The bonuses are each 100%, which creates more money than can realistically be spent.
- The optional objective is so easy to complete that it's actually difficult NOT to do.
- Downplayed: The bonus is helpful, but not unbalancingly so.
- Justified: According to the game's story, the Borusail nation is explicitly stated to have a monopoly on maritime trade and are quite wealthy as a result.
- Inverted: Capturing the port causes a penalty to maritime trade, canceling out the Borusail's bonus.
- Subverted: The Borusail are notoriously corrupt, and any income bonus over the initial 50% is embezzled by their plutocratic leadership, negating any gains from capturing the port.
- Double-Subverted: The game allows you to switch governance modes, meaning you can throw out the Borusail's corrupt plutarchy to restore the bonus.
- Parodied: Upon capturing the port, a special message appears for Borusail players pointing out that dominating the world economy should be a cakewalk at this point and there's probably not any point in even playing anymore. The expansion to the game no longer provides the same bonus at that port, and has a historical note that the previous Borusail governor was thrown out for being the laziest and most incompetent individual of all time with literally nothing other than maritime trade to their name, impugning the skills of players who'd made use of the combo in the previous version.
- Zig-Zagged: Any income bonus over the initial 50% is embezzled by the Borusail's corrupt plutocratic leadership, but you can switch goverance modes to restore the bonus, however every other governance mode also has drawbacks making it a "pick your poison" scenario.
- Averted: All bonuses in the game are carefully balanced.
- Borusail specifically receive an alternate upgrade which boosts fishing food production by 50% instead to make the port retain its "good boost for a side income source" behavior.
- Enforced:
- The game is based on a book, in which the Borusail nation is explicitly stated to have a monopoly on maritime trade and are quite wealthy as a result.
- The developers forgot to range-check Boost Lookups and Borusail(16)+Port(32) gets its Boost value not from the Boost Lookup Table(0-62), but the Faction Color Lookup Table right next to it due to absent padding.
- Lampshaded: The on-screen advisor says "Man, that bonus sure isn't balanced," when you capture the port as the Borusail.
- Defied: A balance patch is issued which reduces the bonuses to 25% each. Still helpful, but they no longer give an overwhelming advantage.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: A end-game cutscene between two hero characters of the Borusail sees them discuss how victory would not have been possible if they hadn't captured that port.
- Deconstructed:
- Capturing the port causes corruption to worsen within the Borusail leadership, leading to infighting as well as mercenaries demanding higher prices because they know the Borusail are more wealthy.
- Monopolizing the ocean trade and gaining a significant advantage leads to implications that make it straight up Suspicious Video-Game Generosity. Your mounting trade is a magnet for pirates from distant shores and obscure locations, everybody views you as an intolerable threat if allowed to remain. Even Gudking and Vilimp decide to band together to crush that greedy upstart merchant making others think that nobles and peasants differ only in how much wealth they have is intolerable!. The only way to avoid this while benefiting from it is to be doing so badly beforehand that it only takes you up to being a competitor again.
- Reconstructed: The game allows you to overthrow the corrupt leadership, eliminating the infighting, while allowing you to bring the mercenaries in line.
- Played for Laughs: Borusail obtaining the port results in them becoming comically rich as even beggars wear cloth of gold and silk and complain of being unable to afford caviar.
- Played for Drama:
