History GameBreaker / Civilization

* Babylon. ''Sweet lord'', Babylon. Its ability to ''instantly finish any research'' when corresponding mini objectives called "Eureka" is completed can break any game. If Babylon is spawned near stone, iron and some bonus food crop, it can explode from bone tools into ''industrial district'' within less than 40 turns, industrial steel enough to build Eiffel Tower and bypass all wall constructions before Christ if lucky.

* As mentioned below, pretty much anything that increases science, including Civs with science bonuses, is potentially a game-breaker. It doesn't matter if the war-focused civilization gets +15% to damage if they're still shooting muskets while the science-focused civilization has got tanks. It doesn't matter if the trade-focused civilization gets +15% to income if they're still using carts while the science-focused civilization has got trucks and automobiles. The problem so often in these kind of games is that science makes ''everything'' better, meaning science-focused civilizations will be better than everyone at everything just by virtue of their tech.

* As mentioned below, pretty much anything that increases science, including Civs with science bonuses, is potentially a game-breaker. It doesn't matter if the war-focused civilization gets +15% to damage if they're still shooting muskets while the science-focused civilization has got tanks. It doesn't matter if the trade-focused civilization gets +15% to income if they're still using carts while the science-focused civilization has trucks and automobiles. The problem so often in these kind of games is that science makes ''everything'' better, meaning science-focused civilizations will be better than everyone at everything just by virtue of their tech.

* Babylon. ''Sweet lord'', Babylon. Its ability to ''instantly finish any research'' when corresponding mini objectives called "Eureka" is completed can break any game. If Babylon is spawned near stone, iron and some bonus food crop, it can explode from bone tools into ''industrial district'' within less than 40 turns, industrial steel enough to build Eiffel Tower and bypass all wall constructions before Christ if lucky.

* Before they were nerfed, China was a monster at warmongering. Their special ability, Art of War, lets them gain Great Generals 50% faster, and before nerf they gave a ''20%'' additional bonus to combat ability on top of a normal Great General's 20%. Combine this with the Chu-Ko-Nu, the Chinese unique crossbowman that dealt more damage per hit and could ''attack twice''. Since you gained Great Generals from combat, the Chu-Ko-Nu's rate of fire fed into the 50% additional Great Generals. And those Great Generals would feed the China war machine further with their massive 40% bonus to combat. Swarms of Chinese Chu Ko Nu could strip even the most massive of cities down to nothing in the blink of an eye, and you'd soon have more Great Generals than you knew what to do with, which would promptly go into feeding you Golden Ages. Combined with an excellent Unique Library and China had almost no weaknesses. Later, the Chukonu were nerfed to deal less damage per hit than a regular crossbowman, and the Great General bonus was reduced to 35% combat bonus rather than 40%.
* The "reduction in gold cost of items" effects, all combined, are very strong in the right hand. The problem is each absolute value ''adds'' with the others instead of multiplying with them. 25% for going 3 social policies into the Commerce branch, 15% for building Big Ben, and 33% for units 2 social policies into the Autocracy branch means a whopping 73% discount for units (would be 58% if the effects multiplied).

* The "Faith Healers" belief available for religions grants all units +30 HP per turn they spend next to or in a friendly city. For most of the game, this is merely good. Once aircraft enter the picture, it's extremely powerful; aircraft are infinitely stackable within a city, which means any number of them get the healing benefit simultaneously. Other units have to make their way to the target, and don't get the faith healer's bonus until they make it back home, while aircraft always return back to their city after completing their mission. Combined with the air repair promotion, which lets units heal even when attacking, this makes for ''an entire air force that recovers nearly half of its maximum health every turn''. Since there's no "non-air units" qualifier for Faith Healers, this works in practice the same way it does on paper, and can even make spreading your religion a detriment, since enemies following the same religion still get the bonus. Later patches made it only possible to store 6 aircraft (raisable to 10 with an Airport) per city, nerfing this greatly.

* In multiplayer, against other human players, no Civ is more directly effective than Babylon. The reason is quite clear: no other civilization generates nearly as much science as Babylon does. In a game where staying on top of the Tech race is critical to staying ahead of enemies, particularly those with period-specific unique units, Babylon can make the entire game laughably easy, due to the sheer amount of Science they can generate. Upon discovering Writing, Babylon receives a free Great Scientist, and they earn Great Scientists at a 50% faster rate than anyone else. Since Writing also contains the Great Library, which grants a free Tech to whomever builds it first, this can quickly lead to Nebuchadnezzer outstripping everyone else within 50 turns. Coupled with the fact that Babylon's unique building adds extra health to its cities, and has great synergy with its unique unit, and Babylon is assured to survive the critical first few turns it needs before it can reach Writing. There's a reason why Babylon is always ranked very high in Tier lists, and it's not uncommon to see the Civ banned entirely in Multiplayer games.

* For cultural victories and score victories, China. Your unique benefits allow you to gain 60% completion if you get a Eureka moment, an extra build action from your builders, and the ability to speed up the process of an ancient or classical era wonder by sacrificing a build action. This allows you to quickly snatch all the good early game wonders, most notable being the Pyramids which grants you yet another build action. You'll likely win a cultural victory before the 16th century is over if you play your cards right.

* An alternative to above would be changing Jesuit Education with Religious settlements where the lower tier buildings like monument and granary could be built with faith... Until the computerization technology pops up and flood barriers, ''freaking'' flood barriers can be erected with a tiny faith cost, negating the worst effect of climate change.

* Babylon. ''Sweet lord'', Babylon. Its ability to ''instantly finish any research'' when corresponding mini objectives called "Eureka" is complete can break any game. If Babylon is spawned near stone, iron and some bonus food crop, it can explode from bone tools into ''industrial district'' within less than 40 turns, industrial steel enough to build Eiffel Tower and bypass all wall constructions before Christ if lucky.

* The Theocracy government allows you to purchase military units with faith rather than gold. With the right build this can help you field entire hordes without losing much money (if any).

* Australia has consistently stayed at the top of tier lists in ''VI''. Their main ability means that coastal starts are much easier to deal with thanks to that extra housing, they can snap up lands quickly thanks to pastures triggering culture bombs, and can gain some truly ridiculous yields if they build some of their districts on tiles with high appeal (this includes campuses that can provide +10 science right from the get-go if they're lucky enough). Outback Stations can turn deserts into breadbaskets if there are enough sheep around, and can get some fairly decent food and production if the placement's right. However, there's also the fact that attacking Australia doubles their production for 10 turns, which provides a [[MortonsFork slight dilemma if you're worried about them beating you]]: either you can leave them alone and let them snowball, or try to take them out and have them get their jobs done faster ''and'' build up an army big enough to push you back. Also, those desert cities that pump out food and production for Australia become next to useless for you if you take them, as those Stations disappear and your new territory becomes a liability. On top of this, if they declare war on you and you're suzerain to at least one city-state, that CS will declare war on Australia and trigger the ability, so that's double production for them again.

* ''I'' and ''II'' also had the Republic and Democracy governments in combination with the [[HundredPercentAdorationRating "We Love the X" Day]] and trade mechanics. While other governments simply gave resource gathering bonuses to cities with enough happy citizens, Republic and Democracy governments got those bonuses by default, and happiness allowed for instantaneous population growth instead. Meanwhile, trade caravans could be built and sent to foreign cities for absolutely ludicrous one-time cash windfalls. The upshot of this was that a civilization with these two governments could effectively pour the vast majority of its taxes into luxuries and watch as all of their cities turned into economic powerhouses over a few turns, continuously pump out trade caravans, and use the absurd amounts of money they would soon have in order to rush build any and all units and improvements necessary. The only downside (a Senate that would veto war declarations and try to force your civilization to make peace during negotiations whenever possible) was negated by the fact that the AI was already suicidally aggressive anyway, and that the player could use spies and their ludicrous piles of money to subvert enemy cities even when not at war. "Power Democracy" takes a bit of fine-tuning to pull off correctly, but it'll allow you to run away with the game if you manage it right.

* Trade caravans. They break the whole game on few distinctive ways and if that wasn't enough, AI can't use them for any of the truly broken powers they offer.
** First, caravans, once established, provide passive income, scaled with few different factors, ultimately generating something like 60-80 gold each turn out of thin air per city. Needless to say, that's a lot of money. And this is also where AI capacity of using caravans ends.
** Second, they can be used to help build wonders. Why should only one city work on a wonder, if you can send caravans from all across your empire and each of them will add 50 shields to ongoing construction.
** And most importantly, each new trade route provides you with both an instant payment ''and'' beakers for research. When done at random, the payoff is meager. When micro-managed properly, this allows to rush technology like crazy, to the point of jumping through few technolgies ''per turn'' due to the overflow. And even if not, if you can tech-out in early game at a pace of a single tech per turn, you've already won anyway.

** Another aspect of Engineers is how they allow to change one type of terrain into another. Aside the obvious benefits (switching tiles to more productive ones) it had two additional effects: city tile could be always changed into a grassland (most food production, which could go as far as support one more pop) and revealing resources. When map is spawn, the special resources are generated in clusters and placed in very obvious, L-shaped pattern, but sometimes a specific tile is "hidden". So just by looking on the map, finding the correct tile and altering it to different terrain would not only make it more productive, it would also unlock the otherwise hidden resource. This includes "sacred" tiles of grassland with shields that nobody wants or needs to switch into something else, which, with sufficient amount of engineers, could be turned into even better plains with Wheat resource, generating even more food.

* If you're going for a conquest victory, the Fundamentalism government type makes taking over the world really easy. Under Fundamentalism you never have any unhappy citizens, and buildings that normally increase happiness instead produce gold (and never require maintenance). You can also produce the Fanatics units, and each city can support up to 8 of them for free. The only downside of Fundamentalism is that scientific research is halved, which isn't a very big deal once your armies are rolling since you gain enemy civilization techs you don't have yet on city conquest.

* And now, we have the "Beaker Overflow" exploit. At its worst, one could compound enough "beakers" (or amount of science currently outputted) to 100k+ by the later parts of the Renaissance era; that's enough to buy just about every techs in the game. Even slightly tamer methods yields thousands of free beakers, a not insignificant amount in the same era.
** This could actually backfire to the other end of "broken", too. Accidentally overflowing past about 210k science output (achievable only through this exploit or modding, actually) will net you a ridiculously large "beaker" deficit, more than enough to halt your tech progress for the rest of the game.

* The Statue of Zeus World Wonder gives you a free Ancient Cavalry unit every 5 turns. They're 3/2 mounted units that also gets an extra hitpoint, letting them go to six. Since retreat odds for mounted units are tied to hitpoint totals, they're notoriously resilient as well, both on the attack and defense. Their total stats makes them by far the most powerful military unit in the Ancient World, and they'll be able to keep up with Middle Age units too, only tapering off in usefulness once you get to the end of the Middle Ages and Calvary are an option. Of course, you need Iron or Saltpepper and Horses to build Knights and Calvary; Ancient Calvary need only Ivory, and produce for free every five turns.

** Matriarchy makes population increase 15% cheaper and in the same time provided 5% more food production. It is accessible since early sedimentry life. The benefits remain valid for the rest of the game. Yeah. Unless you are fishing for Great People (something Representative Democracy excells at), you will run this civic from the moment of adoption till the end of the game.

* Sumeria is often seen as one. They have the powerful Warcart unit - [[DiscOneNuke available from turn 1 with high movement and combat strength with no weakness to Anti-Calvary units.]] The constant spawning of Barbarian Encampments is a [[PinataEnemy benefit for them]] since clearing one provides a tribal village reward. Combined with Ziggurats for early Science/Culture and you have a civ that hits its maximum power on the very first turn with the ability to steamroll neighbors and mature quickly
* Scythia is a monster of war. +5 combat strength against any unit that is not at full health will mean they almost always have an edge on the combat strength match-up - which also hinders enemies further since they already have combat strength penalties when injured. Scythian units healing up to 30 health on kill also gives them an edge in wars of attrition. Their ability to get two Light Calvary units whenever they produce a single one applies well to ZergRush tactics that involve simply swarming the enemy with masses of fast and powerful Horsemen. Their Kurgan tile improvement will also ensure they never run short of money to keep the war-machine going.#

* There are also a number of game breaking wonders, such as Leonardo's Workshop, which upgrades all your units to more modern equivalents when the necessary technology is researched, allowing the player to crank out a huge army of cheap early-game units and then rush to a key technology to boost them up to powerful, expense late-game units.

* ''Civilization III'' had the Small Wonder "Wall Street". Its effect? Giving you 5% interest on your treasury per turn. After a few turns you had no money issues for the rest of the game, as long as you kept your treasury above zero. It was later fixed with an ObviousRulePatch, capping the generated income from the building to 50 gold.

** Another aspect of Engineers is how they allow to change one type of terrain into another. Aside the obvious benefits (switching tiles to more productive ones) it had two additional effects: city tile could be always changed into a grassland (most food production, which could go as far as support one more pop) and revealing resources. When map is spawn, the special resources are generated in clusters and placed in very obvious, L-shaped pattern, but sometimes a specific tile is "hidden". So just by looking on the map, finding the correct tile and altering it to different terrain would not only make it more productive, it would also unlock the otherwise hidden resource. This includes otherwise sacred tiles of grassland with shields, which, with sufficient amount of engineers, could be turned into even better plains with Wheat resource, generating even more food.

* The ''Civilization II'' Pyramids counted as a free Granary in every city you have from when you build it (right at the start of the game) right up to the end. Quite efficient for the 200 resource cost to get double population growth in all cities and that never expires!

* ''VideoGame/CavemanToCosmos'' has few civics that make or break your civilization:

* For basically the same reason, if you're reading a guide on which policies to take, chances are, regardless of your civ, it'll recommend you max out Rationalism as soon as possible. The only reason it's not broken [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome is that ''everyone'' takes it.]]

* The humble Chariot, en masse. Civ1 military scales a bit slowly with tech level, so neglecting your infrastructure and economy in favor of a network of undeveloped small cities pumping out an endless wave of Chariots works pretty well for would-be world despots.

* In ''I-III'': The Great Library, which gives you any technology breakthrough known by two other factions for free. Rushing to it in the early game can make any civilization a scientific powerhouse. ''II'' tried to nerf it by making you learn tech known by three factions, and ''III'' made it two factions you have contact with. After that its effects were just changed entirely since it was still a Game Breaker even with these restrictions.

* The ''Civilization II'' Pyramids were also a game breaker as they counted as a free Granary in EVERY city you have from when you build it (right at the start of the game) right up to the end. What's that mean in real terms? ''Double population growth'' in all cities and it ''never'' expires!

* If you're going for a conquest victory, the Fundamentalism government type makes taking over the world really easy. Under Fundamentalism you never have any unhappy citizens, and buildings that normally increase happiness instead produce gold (and never require maintenance). You can also produce the Fanatics units, and each city can support up to 8 of them for free. The only downside of Fundamentalism is that scientific research is halved, which isn't a very big deal if you've already researched all the late-game tech or if you're rich enough to just buy technologies from other nations, or you've had such a commanding tech lead the whole game that half-science still means you're a century ahead of everyone else and ''still'' gaining. Not hard with the aforementioned Great Library.

* ''Civilization IV'' still has the Pyramid wonder, with pretty much the same effect as in ''I'' - it enables all government civics (''Civ IV'''s equivalent of government types). Combined with stone in one's starting area to halve their cost, this changes them from "hellishly expensive" to "doable", and constructing them gives early access to the Representation civic, which both allows you to increase the population of your largest cities by around 30-50% for the time period you are in and grants each specialist a research bonus (basically meaning you can treat any specialist like a scientist, and scientists themselves are twice as effective).

* In ''Rhye's and Fall: Dawn of Civilization'', the original Rhye's and Fall's spiritual successor, China is the most ridiculous civilization in the current 1.15 patch. It's unique power was changed from faster melee/gunpowder unit production to a increased science rate for technologies that nobody has discovered yet. While China still suffers from tech cost penalties, the bonus is big enough to ensure a massive snowball should either the player or even the AI, depending on how high the difficulty is, maximize it's infrastructure. While you're still a target for various barbarians and other hostile neighbors, the player is still capable to prepare himself to beat the onslaught, ensuring that he can propel at an even higher rate, thanks to it's very fat and rich core cities.

* Although a very late game occurrence, as soon as you unlock the Giant Death Robot and have sufficient uranium, opposing armies are essentially completely and totally ''fucked'', especially if you combine them with Stealth Bombers. The combat penalty against cities is all well and good, but even with that, a percentage off of ''150'' combat strength is all but irrelevant, especially if you happen across a civ that's still playing with swords and musketmen (and there's always one). It's entirely possible to blitzkrieg your way across about 10 cities in a few turns if you're canny about placement. This was indirectly nerfed in ''Brave New World'', where the new [[ShoutOut XCOM Squad]] unit has enough attack power to dent the GDR's armor while being much cheaper.

* Venice is every bit as overpowering in high-difficulty single-player as it is underpowered in multiplayer. On higher difficulties, gold is critical, and you get a ''lot'' of it as Venice thanks to their double trade routes ability. High difficulty [=AI=] Civs aggressively expand and take most of the choice land, normally forcing players to do the same or fight some very difficult wars that revolve around exploiting the [=AI=], but Venice can simply puppet the most prosperous city states with their unique merchants, side-stepping that issue. Another big problem on higher difficulties is the [=AI=] making [[ClownCarBase ridiculous amounts of troops]], but that applies to city states too, and you get ''all'' their units when you puppet them. Similarly, the [=AI=] gets a huge population growth bonus, meaning that when you puppet city states, they'll have an impressive population which is yours to keep. Now, the cities remain puppets which means you can't control them, but on the plus side, that means no micro-management besides workers, no increased culture costs, and the mayors of these cities will focus on getting you even more gold and merchants. Since you have so many extra trade routes, you can have each and every one of these city states deliver food to Venice, making that city a juggernaut, and all the excess gold can be used to ensure it claims ''all'' the land within three spaces of it before anyone else can. Just to top it off, their other unique unit, a powerful and fast ship for the midgame, is extremely useful for guarding trade routes, keeping an eye on the rest of the world, and discouraging would-be invaders. On Archipelago, players who have trouble on King\Emperor can win on Deity if they play their cards right.
** Venice doesn't even have to use its Merchants of Venice to lock down other city-states. Filling out the Patronage policy tree will make your reputation decay slower with city-states and give Venice extra gold from trade routes with them. Combine this with the Treaty Organization level 3 Freedom tenet, which gives you influence each turn you maintain a trade route with a city-state, and you'll build up a huge stockpile of ''hundreds'' of reputation points just for keeping a trade route with your partner city-states. And with Venice's doubled number of trade routes, it's easy to keep enough city-states in a permanent alliance with you to secure a Diplomatic Victory, without ever having to spend all the boatloads of money you're making on gifts.
* In multiplayer, against other human players, no Civ is more blatantly effective than Babylon. The reason is quite clear: no other civilization generates nearly as much science as Babylon does. In a game where staying on top of the Tech race is critical to staying ahead of enemies, particularly those with period-specific unique units, Babylon can make the entire game laughably easy, due to the sheer amount of Science they can generate. Upon discovering Writing, Babylon receives a free Great Scientist, and they earn Great Scientists at a 50% faster rate than anyone else. Since Writing also contains the Great Library, which grants a free Tech to whomever builds it first, this can quickly lead to Nebuchadnezzer outstripping everyone else within 50 turns. For reference, it's entirely possible to have Stealth Bombers guarding your cities while everyone else is still using Musketmen. Coupled with the fact that Babylon's unique building adds extra health to its cities, and has great synergy with its unique unit, and Babylon is assured to survive the critical first few turns it needs before it can reach Writing. There's a reason why Babylon is always ranked very high in Tier lists, and it's not uncommon to see the Civ banned entirely in Multiplayer games.

* ''Civilization IV'' still has the Pyramid wonder, with pretty much the same effect as in ''I'' - it enables all government civics (''Civ IV'''s equivalent of government types). Combined with stone in one's starting area to halve their cost, this changes them from "hellishly expensive" to "doable", and constructing them gives access to the representation civic, which both allows you to increase the population of your largest cities by around 30-50% for the time period you are in and grants each specialist a research bonus (basically meaning you can treat any specialist like a scientist, and scientists themselves are twice as effective).
* The Incas also became more laughably imbalanced as ''IV's'' expansions were released. Originally, Huanya Capac was Aggressive and Financial, which is a pretty strong combination to start with. Then for some reason he lost Aggressive but got the even more powerful Industrious trait to replace it (letting him build forges for production much faster and wonder-spam while he's at it). However, Quechas still get Combat 1 like they would if the Incas still had Aggressive, and they don't go obsolete as quickly as normal Warriors, so doing a ZergRush with Quechas and then upgrading them is viable for longer than usual. On top of all that, the Inca's unique Granary grants the same culture bonus as the Creative trait, and you're probably going to be building them in every city anyway. So now you've got a Civ with effectively four traits to everyone else's two.

* The ''Gathering Storm'' expansion added the Mali civilization, which is focused on accruing an obscene amount of gold. Their unique commercial hub, the Sugubu, gives a 20% discount to all gold purchases, including those for units. The Democracy government, (at the time), added another 20% discount, resulting in a 40% discount on unit purchases. Pretty good, but not broken... unless the Ngarzagamu city-state is in the game. Their suzerain bonus gives a 20% discount on unit purchases for each building in the purchasing city’s encampment district — since an encampment can hold three buildings, this adds up to 60%. So, a Malian city with a Sugubu and a full encampment, under the democracy government with Ngarzagamu as a suzerain, could buy units at a '''100% discount'''. That’s right, they were able to field an entire late-game war machine without paying a penny. Since the Mali are so rich that the gold upkeep would be negligible, the only downside is that some units require strategic resources to maintain, and too many of those will put you under, but being smart about how many units you purchase and/or having access to a lot of strategic resources make this a non-issue. The first patch after the Mali's release bumped the Democracy discount down to 15%, meaning the Mali have to pay ''something'', but 5% of the total cost is still ludicrously low.

** Matriarchy makes population increase 15% cheaper and in the same time provided 5% more food production. It is accessible since mid-tech Stone Age. The benefits remain valid for the rest of the game. Yeah. Unless you are fishing for Great People (something Representative Democracy excell at), you will run this civics from the moment of adoption till the end of the game.
** Coinage provides pretty lackluster bonuses, along with hampering profit from trade routes... but it's the only of the Currency civis allowing the option to speed construction by paying for it up until modern tech. Coinage shows up at the start of Classical Antiquity period.

* The ''Gathering Storm'' expansion added the Mali civilization, which is focused on accruing an obscene amount of gold. Their unique commercial hub, the Sugubu, gives a 20% discount to all gold purchases, including those for units. The Democracy government adds another 20% discount, resulting in a 40% discount on unit purchases. Pretty good, but not broken... unless the Ngarzagamu city-state is in the game. Their suzerain bonus gives a 20% discount on unit purchases for each building in the purchasing city’s encampment district — since an encampment can hold three buildings, this adds up to 60%. So, a Malian city with a Sugubu and a full encampment, under the democracy government with Ngarzagamu as a suzerain, can buy units at a '''100% discount'''. That’s right, they can field an entire late-game war machine without paying a penny. Since the Mali are so rich that the gold upkeep will be negligible, the only downside is that some units require strategic resources to maintain, and too many of those will put you under, but being smart about how many units you purchase and/or having access to a lot of strategic resources make this a non-issue.

** One simple trick during a war was to sell a military unit that was too weakened to possibly survive another attack, using the money to fund more troops. While buying a replacement unit cost more money than what was received from selling the original, it did help with the survivability of an army in the long run.