Demonic Spiders/Video Games/Real Time Strategy

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


You definitely do not have enough Pylons to take these Demonic Spiders on.

  • The Pikmin series contains an inordinately large number of such mooks. For starters, nearly every enemy in the game is going to steamroll over any Pikmin not under your direct control, as a general rule. Secondly, any enemy you can't kill before it notices it's being attacked is going to kill everything attacking it when it realizes it's under fire, as a general rule. Thirdly, such Demonic Spiders are going to be positioned in such a way that either makes it impossible to reach their weak spot or impossible to avoid a direct confrontation, as a general rule.
    • Literal Demonic Spiders show up in the form of Dweevils, who will steal treasures and run into the midst of the various uber-destructive enemies littering the cave, thus forcing you to either micromanage with a teeny tiny strike force of the appropriate Pikmin or risk your whole party trying to clear some space.
    • Orange Bulborbs in Pikmin 2 are somewhat similar to their red counterparts, yet their slumber is much more easily broken. Bulborbs are best destroyed by circling to their back while they're asleep and piling purples or reds on as fast as possible to avoid the dreaded shake (which scatters your Pikmin and let's the thing rampage). Oranges, however, don't let you get close enough to actually DO this, forcing you to either waste a valuable Bitter Spray or sacrificing half your Pikmin to take it down with enough speed to save the other half. Did I mention they also tend to have their backs to the wall and be surrounded by tiny orange sentry Bulborbs?
    • Finally, the balloon-riding Careening Dirigibugs carry around giant bomb-rocks, which they drop in extremely inconvenient places. To kill them, you need to wait for them to drop one in a place where you can avoid it while tossing Pikmin up to the bug itself. The catch? These tend to appear in levels with Bottomless Pits, as well as around enemies who use wind or other methods to scatter your Pikmin all over, making a single unlucky move into a disaster that claims your entire squad and force a reset.
      • Bulbears and Gattling Groinks. You know how the aforementioned Orange Bulborbs wake up before you get a proper chance to hurl Pikmin on them? Well not only are Bulbears always awake, but they are always moving on Patrol routes. So if your Mins are carrying an item back to your ship without a guard, prepare to witness a Bulbear dinner. Oh, and if you can sneak up behind it, then you are in for a nasty surprise as they keep their young behind them, who will gladly go to town on your Pikmin while you deal with the adult. As for Gattling Groinks, for one, they have a front guard, so attacking them head-on is an exercise in futility, and you need to constantly flank them. And what's worse is that they attack by launching mortar shots in three cluster bursts, which can take out 10 Mins at the most at a point blank hit, and scattering the rest if they get caught in the splash range. And to top both these enemies off, if killed without being shattered, both can regenerate after their death and revive. So if you didn't take them back into your ship, well.....Have fun.
  • Anything capable of inflicting poison or disease in the Warlords Battlecry series. Having your otherwise superpowered hero reduced to 1/8th of his normal health or having the speed and combat ability of a three-legged kitten is especially bad when you're playing as one of the Exclusively Evil races who have limited access to healing spells.
  • Evil Genius features soldier squads who will arrive on your island if your heat rises too high with any of the world alliances. They travel in large groups of four to ten men, and can easily gun down most of your henchmen and minions in seconds, and there's so many of them that even a single skirmish with a single squad of soldiers is often enough to seriously deplete your supply of Mooks—and if you try to use social techniques on them, there's usually so many of them that most of them will withstand exposure to your social minions and continue on their mission to wipe your base out.
    • On top of that, there's Jet Chan—an A.N.V.I.L. super-agent who can cut through your supply of minions like a hot knife through butter, and can knock out most of your henchmen in seconds. You can't even keep him contained in a holding cell—he regularly breaks out, and when he does he'll usually drop four or five minions at least before they subdue him again. You can't get rid of him permanently until your reach the game's seventh objective, either. And if he arrives on the second island early on, before the base has been partially constructed, you're better off just reloading from your last save.
  • The first Battalion Wars has Pillboxes. They're supposed to be super strong versions of the MG Bunkers, but it isn't enough that they have explosive shells and side machine guns. No. They have to come with ridiculous health and defense as well. The only reason they go down quickly on a standard run is because in the only two levels where you encounter them, you get Anti-Air Vets, who themselves had too much power and can therefore devastate big targets like nobody's business. Unfortunately, you get the AA Vets in the first place on those two levels because of air units to make your life miserable too. Joy.
    • Battalion Wars 2 isn't free of Demonic Spiders either. Of course, Fighters, are mostly demonic for a No Casualties Run, but they have their definite responsibility for the difficulty of the 2 hardest single-player missions in the game. Nothing gets really annoying like seeing no enemies nearby and 2 seconds later, one of your air units is destroyed. This forces you to manually control a Fighter, which means if you don't have your ground forces Wait or keep themselves preoccupied (especially irksome to do with the lack of a command like in the first Battalion Wars where it sends troops to a specified location), they will move stupidly (either in circles or into a bad situation) just to try to follow you. Under Siege's second half gives you only air units anyway, but the problem is that you're expected to bomb targets and air units are pretty much Glass Canons now. And just to make this even worse, Fighters can do a barrel roll, which throws off the lock-on of weapons that you need to use to kill the Fighters. None of this would be so bad if your air units would actually try at all to pick up Jerry Cans, though that wouldn't help much with your Fighters occasionally crashing into the enemy Fighters and instantly dying as a result. At least Call Sign Eagle in the original isn't That One Level for anybody who can adjust to the aerial warfare, and that level had plenty of targets for the enemy Fighters and Strato Destroyers. But just for icing on the cake, in The Reckoning, the game's final mission, you don't even get any Fighters yourself to avoid needing to use anti-air units that can get one-shotted by the Battlestation. At least until Pierce provides you with 3 Fighters in his Big Damn Heroes moment--that comes after destroying the 3 Generators they're guarding. And Anti-Air Vets have horrible lock-on range, especially for their job. Argh, argh, argh.
    • Of course, Strato Destroyers in Battalion Wars 2, having their Elite Mook status discredited as an excuse by the Battlestations, aren't going to be off the hook. Even getting past the borderline Guide Dang It of their weakness in their lack of rear armor plating combined with the fact that they're only in the last part of one freaking level in the entire game--the last one in single player, no less--it doesn't change the fact that they take ridiculous punishment for an air unit, when you already have Fighters, as well as a strict Speed time limit if you're going for rank, to contend with. What is worse is that the Strato can blow most of your forces, including your mission critical Battlestation, to Kingdom Come. It doesn't help that the air units regenerate infinitely and the Battlestation under AI not only targets the lasers defenses (which you can't even lock onto) instead of the Mining Spider itself to get the bloody thing done with sooner to give you more grief if you manually control one of Pierce's Fighters, but also still takes notable damage from heavy laser fire.
  • Age of Empires II has Elite War Elephants, the unique unit of the Persians. They're heavily armored, have the highest hitpoints of any land unit, and they have a powerful splash attack. If you're fighting the Persians, get some monks ready because those are the only really effective countermeasure.
    • Apart from the Saracen unique units, Mamalukes, which take down elephants, as well as every other cavalry unit (as well as practically every other non ranged unit) with ridiculous ease. Even siege weapons weren't effective, because they were cavalry themselves, and could just charge them down. In online play, these were the real demonic spiders.
  • For Halo Wars there's Arbiter, Brute chieftain, Waolverines and Gauss Hogs. Both Arby and the chief can destroy half an army with ease. (The former assumes you have infantry or aircraft.) Engineers can make them as powerful as a scarab with the same number of Healers. Wolverines are inordinately powerful against almost everything but main tanks and counter units.Gauss hogs are DS's for the exact same reason.
  • Paradox Interactive games have not necessarily specific kinds of enemies, but certain nations can take on this trait. Europa Universalis III has France (though not as much anymore) and Crusader Kings has the Mongols.
    • The most recent expansion of EUIII, Divine Wind, has put all of the Horde-type nations as this. Austria also counts if you intend to expand at the expense of the Holy Roman Empire.
  • Homeworld 2 has Vaygar Laser Corvettes. These annoying little bastards can destroy frigates and other corvettes in a few hits, which is somewhat annoying seeing as they are the two units used to counter corvettes. Even more annoyingly, they can two squadrons can carve through destroyers and carriers with relative ease. The worst part? Due to the AI forces balance, the enemy will always have lots of them. They aren't especially expensive and move quickly.
  • Dawn of War has a few of these: Tau Fire Warriors, which have ridiculous range and stopping power for an infantry unit and is the Tau's basic infantry. Ork Flash Gitz, which have the same resilience as other Orks but with incredible firepower and accuracy, something Orks tend to lack. Chaos Obliterators, Mighty Glaciers effective against all unit types which can teleport. And of course the Necron Lord, which is powerful even for a Commander and becomes a relentless Boss in Mook Clothing with enough upgrades. The necrons also have Pariahs, which have a very powerful melee attack, a decent ranged one, a lot of health, and are immune to morale damage, as well as causing a slight maximum health reduction on enemies they attack but do not destroy. The main thing that stops them from being a Game Breaker is their slow movement and inability to teleport like other necron infantry, the limit of one squad and their cost.
    • Dawn of War II, meanwhile, has the Zoanthrope, a Glass Cannon that can obliterate vehicles in a few shots, even the Dreadnought in the campaign (otherwise a Game Breaker).
      • Eldar Seer Council and Warlocks are even worse, since they can do that AND move incredibly fast and hold their own in melee.
  • Plants vs. Zombies has the Gargantuars. Sure, they're slow, but they take a crapton of damage (it actually takes two One-Hit Kill plants to kill them), One-Hit Kill any plant it comes across, and throws a smaller zombie deep into your defenses when it gets close enough. They also like to attack in groups. And that's saying nothing about the Giga Gargantuars that appear in Survival mode...
    • In the earlier levels, Dancing Zombies are deadly because of the multiple backup dancers they spawn. It is very easy for a backup dancer zombie to spawn right behind your plants, and the zombies force you to micromanage.
  • Brutal Legend's Campaign mode has one in the ranks of the Drowned Doom army: the Reapers. They move ridiculously fast, can one-shot most of your non-vehicle units with their melee attacks alone, and they have some strange blue fire burst attack that tears you apart in seconds. Oh, and did I mention that there's at least one of them around every time you have to face the Drowned Doom? At least they can be taken down somewhat quickly by Double Teaming with a level 2 Razor Girl...
    • In fact, ANY Drowned Doom unit is a Demonic Spider, Reapers, Frightwigs and Brides being some of the worst. Reapers (as stated above) can practically murder you and your entire army in about a second, are INCREDIBLY fast, and usually come in pairs of two or three (at least during the later Stage Battles). Oh, and you're screwed if someone decides to Double Team with one... Frightwigs attack using their tentacle-hair, and they can easily butcher you or any unit from immense distances by themselves. If double-teamed with, they can be thrown at enemy-units to possess them, making them fight for you. If it happens to one of your units, you have to take your own unit down. Sounds like fun, right? And oh, the Brides. The Brides are support-units (buffing their own units, and de-buffing enemies) and don't exactly attack, unless someone hits them. If they're hit, the hitter gets a bolt of lightning thrown down upon them, which kills your units absurdly quick if you're not careful.
  • In Sacrifice theres the Death spell, not a unit itself but when summoned it will instantly kill any unit it can reach by touching it, this includes the monsters of the wizard that summoned it. Still wizards are not targeted by it.
    • Two of the most dangerous units are Pyro's Warmonger and Charnels Styx both are Glass Cannon that deal great damage the former has a short range machine gun that rips apart any target in seconds, and the later has a long range dark lazer beam that can obliderate souls.
  • In Battlezone 1998 there are the Soviet Light Tanks. They come equipped with the TAG Cannon, a weapon that fires a small tracking projectile. If said projectile hits, they'll unleash a huge, almost-impossible-to-dodge wave of missiles. Two good hits can take down basic NSDF tanks and turrets.
    • Also, the Furies. Their main attack is a bolt of lightning that's hard to dodge, and they have huge missiles with massive damage radii. Worst of all, the regular ones can drop out of the sky on top of you with no warning. The tank versions at least lack the mobility of the regular ones, but they're substantially tougher.
  • The spider virii in Darwinia can leap over long distances and tear through Darwinians like a laser cannon through butter. Annoyingly, they target Darwinians over player-controlled units, so it's easy to accidentally lead them back to your incubator and watch in horror as the army you've been building up for the last ten minutes is torn apart.
  • In Command & Conquer there are Spiders aplenty.
    • In the Red Alert 2 expansion Yuri's Revenge, the Allied Robot Tanks are the bane of the Yuri faction's existance. They are faster than the land-bound Grizzly Tank and can cross water with their hover-jets. The worst part, however, is that it is completely immune to the Mind Control units and structures that Yuri loves to use.
    • The same game has the Libyan special unit, the Demolition Truck. Its special ability is to blow up in a massive nuclear explosion. A fleet of these pointed straight at the enemy base, backed by the invulnerability-granting Iron Curtain, can level a base in seconds.
    • As the Game Breaker faction, Yuri gets his own spiders too: the Floating Disk is a high level unit that can deactivate your entire base, eat money and are generally a pain in the ass to kill.
    • Red Alert 3: Uprising's two most threatening units are the Allied Harbinger gunship, which can pulverize anything on land, and have the ability to repair themselves on the fly; and the Empire's Giga-Fortress, that transforms from a slow naval unit to an incredibly durable air unit with a deadly Breath Weapon. Four or more of these are enough to level a base in minutes.
  • Rise of Nations has the Stealth Bombers. Incapable of being targeted by SAM systems, capable of flying at fighter speeds, and inflicting obscenely high damage with laser-guided accuracy, these are the bane of any player, whether online or playing against the computer. The fact that they can't be targeted by SAMs requires you to spam fighters in order to protect your important sites from them, thus wasting considerable amounts of population. Even worse, they're not really that expensive, meaning that after your enemy has a good infrastructure, he can Zerg Rush you with them, requiring constant raids against hostile airbases to prevent the damn things from destroying your cities.
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