Game Breaker/Video Games/Turn-Based Strategy: Difference between revisions

** Also in ''Civilization II'': The UN was a crucial Wonder. Not because it was particularly useful (you could force other civilizations to make peace with you, but that was rather pointless since they'd then just break the treaty a few turns later), but because if another civilization gets it, having them constantly force you to make peace is a hassle.

** In Civilization Revolution, the simplified mechanics provides a number of opportunities to completely dominate the AI even on the most difficult setting. And the Leonardo's Workshop wonder is so overpowered, since it upgrades all your existing units. Given the right circumstances, you can destroy any AI. First, always produce as many cheap, weak units as possible. As you're doing this, follow the path on your technology tree to discover the internal combustion engine. Time the building of Leonardo's Workshop so that it occurs right after you discover the engine and gain the ability to build a tank. All those cheap warriors you've been building since the beginning? They're now tanks. The game is over in 2 or 3 rounds max.

** In ''Civilization III'' the Persians are considered by many to be the most powerful civilization in the game because they possess the Industrious and Scientific traits, which grants them bonuses to both production and research. Additionally, their unique unit, the Immortals, are the single most powerful ancient age offensive unit (it isn't until knights come along that a unit possesses more offensive power). The sheer power of the Immortals makes it easy for the Persians to conquer other civilizations during the ancient age and even well into the middle ages.

* In ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'' the supply crawler unit, which the computer never uses, gives the player a major advantage by itself. What makes it a game breaker is when you upgrade cheap crawlers and contribute them to builder wonders, because the cost of upgrading units is about 8 times cheaper than trying to pay for buildings. This makes it possible to build wonders, even the late game ones, in a single turn. Even at the highest difficulty, you civ score should skyrocket right after getting the tech for crawlers.

** In addition there was a starship component called a Structural Analyzer, which doubled all damage that struck the target's bare hull. Not a [[Game Breaker]] on it's own, but there was also a component called the Achilles Targeting Unit, which caused all attacks to ignore the target's armor. Combine these with weapons capable of bypassing shields and season with some more general damage/accuracy boosting components and you had a warship who could wipe-out 10-20 ships by itself in a single round (a more 'conventionally' equipped ship takes 2-3 rounds just to destroy a single ship of similar size).

** The Guardian of Orion can be defeated very early on with large numbers of MIRVed Merculite missiles. The battleship you get as a reward for this will, at this early stage, be so powerful that the other races can't touch it, allowing you to wipe the floor with them. Gyro destabilizers can also be used for a game-breakingly early Guardian kill because they do completely plain structural damage and ignore defenses.

** Ditto Stasis Field Generator. It can be used rapidly incapacitate most of the enemy fleet and then tear them to pieces one by one.

** The Custom Race option can be used to achieve a [[Game Breaker]] effect: simply slap both the "subterranean" and "aquatic" bonuses on your custom race. (Never mind that it makes no biological sense whatsoever.) The result: a race that can out-breed any other, given a planet with water. And since most of the easily colonizable planets are "terran" or "aquatic" by default... And more people means more production and science. Plus the subterranean bonus gives a big boost to ground combat when defending against invaders.

** The Creative racial trait borders on game-breaker, requiring only 6 of your 10 available points to buy but allowing you to research all of the technologies available, not just one out of every two to four options given. Like, say, the various technologies referenced in this section.

** In version 1.2, the Plasma Cannon (specifically, the Heavy Plasma Cannon) was this. Whoever decided to make it that small apparently failed to realize that Enveloping doesn't just mean four times the shield penalty - it means ''four times the damage''. And the Heavy mod largely negates the weapon's worse-than-usual range dissipation. It was entirely possible to lose a late-game battle solely by researching Disruptors and [[Artificial Stupidity|having all your bases "upgrade" automatically]]. (In version 1.31, they [[Obvious Rule Patch|made the thing 2.5 times as big]], and it was ''still'' approximately tied with a fully tricked-out Phasor as the best beam weapon in the game.)