Game Breaker/Total War

• In Medieval II, Elephants. The Russians may also qualify: while they start with the weakest roster of any faction (and a hard territory to conquer an control), any city of theirs with the Huge Stone Walls upgrade is able to build Cossack Musketeers, a top-tier gunpowder unit, the instant blackpowder weapons become available.
• In Shogun, Legendary Geisha. Nearly invincible, can wipe out entire clans if strategized right. Essentially kunoichi.
  • Also in Shogun, 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.
• Arguably the Dismounted Feudal Knights are an early-game Game Breaker in Medieval II. These powerhouse infantry units have insane defensive bonuses and are very effective in close combat as well. They're eventually countered by crossbows and gunpowder.
  • And in Medieval II, 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 archery 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, cavalry, or gunpowder is going to save your ass. And 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 countercharges, and you'll destroy nearly everything.
  • The Stainless Steel mod for Medieval II manages to make the Scots even more broken. The Highland Nobles are nerfed (though still powerful, it becomes much harder to recruit them) but in turn makes recruiting pikemen even easier, so most Scottish armies are going to be packing at least four to ten units of pikemen. And, just like they were historically, pikemen are powerful, 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 (just like it did historically) and with hordes of pikes poking them, even heavy infantry will 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, 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.
• 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, recieve a hefty debuff due to horses being unnerved by the smell of camels.
• Horse Archers in Rome. They're practically impossible to catch with cavalry (and a clever player can simply support them with some melee cavalry) and can easily manoeuvre 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.
  • Also in Rome...MOTHER. FUCKING. 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!
  • Also in Rome, Roman legionaries set to autofire. No, seriously.
  • Another for Rome, selecting a city and typing "oliphaunt" into the romeshell produced an elephant unit that could win most any battle with enough of them (they had to be auto resolved, otherwise they took no casualties but took ages to kill anyone).
  • The berserker unit in Rome also qualifies, expensive to deploy, late in the tech trees, any other player will shit themselves in fear and arrow them to death, and worst of all, has a chance of going completely uncontrollable when hit (or if you just want them too). The upside? They can take down half a dozen men in a single sweep, have almost unlimited stamina, and when berserking are among the fastest foot units in the game. If you can get them into charging range a single unit will force the other army to make every platoon even in their general 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.
    • Berserker is arguably Awesome but Impractical. 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.
  • General's Bodyguards are at their height of power in RTW. 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 statistics than any other unit in the entire game barring elephants, but also regenerate stamina x4 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.
• In the Americas expansion for Medieval II, 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. Hernan, meanwhile, is a ridiculously tough cavalry bodyguard who 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.
  • Which is not too far from what happened in real life.
• One of the more popular total conversion mods is Third Age Total War. This is Medieval II Total War meets The Lord of the Rings. 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:
  • Dwarves are notoriously heavily armored and dangerous in melee. Meaning you can't use arrows or infantry against them effectively. They're slow but seeing as how most Total War combat revolves around city sieges...
  • The High Elves can recruit an "archer" that not only has the longest range in the game and fires arrows which can kill most heavy infantry units through their shields, it has armor and a melee attack greater than most infantry and can run alongside fast cavalry. You're tempted to scream at the cocky Noldar elves as cheap enemy infantry surge in on your very expensive, difficult to recruit archers. That impulse goes 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. (Dwraves 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 both 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 fighters 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....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.
• The Thera: Legacy of the Great Torment 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 Third Age: Total War 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 penalties like cavalry in sustained combat. 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 streetfighting 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.
• In Medieval II, 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. Massive, free upkeep army with major bonuses, access to religious mercenaries for almost no cost, and can scream across land faster than ships can sail, and available on demand? Yes, please.
  • A pretty bad example of this is when you are playing as the Moors. You begin with a Imam that can immediately call a Jihad after building up a small army of 8 Units, and 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 is that you can only declare Jihad 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 only aim to conquer Spain. However, Crusades can target any large, non-Christian city. An army on the Crusade has no upkeep and can recruit lots of excellent, 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 turn closer to the target than it was, even if it's only one square.
• Cavalry in Medieval II against everything else. Well, everything else in the early period anyway. It is possible to completely eradicate entire armies on Very Hard with just two units of generals bodyguard, properly applied. This includes armies with other, weaker, knights. Watch units of spear militia, the supposed counter to the cavalry of the early period, get smashed aside by your bodyguards with few losses. Cavalry are a lot more expensive, but it still doesn't reflect their awe inspiring power.
  • 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 Medieval II multiplayer is to ask about the policy with cavalry; usually the limit is six horse, up to two of which can be horse archers.
• Don't forget the "Old Guard" form "Napoleon: Total War". These guys may be expensive and late game but they can make entire enemy formations break and run in fear based on their mere presence on the battlefield. Inspiring fear abillity combined with inspires friendly troops and ludicrously high stats make this one of the most feared units in the game. Used wisley one squad of these guys can break an enemy flank and change the tide of battle.
• In Empire and Napoleon, Frigates are this. The main reason is that Artificial Stupidity 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 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 your Chain-Shot range (at which point a single volley will usually slow them to a crawl for the rest of the battle). Since in Naval Combat your ammunition is unlimited, 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 single 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...
• In Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai expansion pack, Iron Ships utterly dominate against wooden ships in multiplayer. It has less to do with the toughness and extra range of the iron ships, but more do to the fact explosive shells almost always set fire to wooden ships after a single volley, and wooden ships on fire will explode, damaging all there ally ships right next to them.
  • This, of course, is Truth in Television.
  • Another in Fall of the Samurai: Massed artillery in the campaign. At least on the normal and lower difficulty settings. Let's just say it makes it really obvious why you're restricted to only 1 artillery piece a battle in multiplayer, as you watch your team of 2-4 parrot guns tearing the enemy army to pieces and forcing them to rout before they even get close to you. It doesn't help that the enemy AI does not really know how to deal with artillery, preferring to slowly march out in the open instead of hiding in the forests.