Family Members with high Command in Rome: Total War. Seriously, I know having a good general makes a huge difference for an army, but what I've experienced makes no sense whatsoever.
I once had a campaign playing as The Seleucid Empire (on very hard/very hard ofc), where my general who had slowly but surely captured the Anatolian Peninsula now traveled cross the Aegean Sea to Greece, which had now been conquered by Brutii (Roman house). I had one, full 20 squadron army with my general in the lead, now boasting with 10/10 command after his war with the Pontic etc. However, the Romans had an insane amount of military strength in the region, and seriously outnumbered me 20:1. So, they kept sending army after army, all with 20 squadrons, to face mine, 2 or 3 at a time. The combat odds were thus something like 2:3 or more in their favour every battle, and if I auto-resolved it, I always ended up losing.
...this is where the not-sense-making op stuff comes in; if I instead played the battles myself on the battle map, the fucking millisecond any of the Roman units got attacked or even got close to my units, they instantly began to rout, giving me a near instant victory, which I then used to chase down the retreating enemy forces, litterally giving me a 200:1 k/d for my army. This happened every single time I fought with that army. But then, a few years later, my now quite old general ended up dying of old age, and the same turn, I fought yet another battle, and guess what: now the Romans are brave as fuck all of a sudden and I can barely even win the battles anymore.
What the fuck man, how can one fucking person, general or not, inspire so much fear into the opposing army that this would occur, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever; all it did was making the entire warfront feel scripted >.>
For some reason in Rome total war Auto Resolved is calculated in absolute favor of the Romans. That's probably the case because their units have insane stats, and that the game doesn't consider the potential of some special abilities. For example in auto resolve a roman unit will always win against a phalanx, when in reality a phalanx can pin down an infantry unit and just destroy it. And Yeah Generals are really usefull if not imbalanced when they reach 10 stars, but its somewhat countered by the fact that they die so fast.
I'd have to disagree with that. The legions get to throw 2 pila and the later ones like urban cohort can wreck phalanxes just using those. After they throw theirs, enemy infantry are decimated enough that they just melt on the charge.
CRAGHACK! I played Fortress(was it called that?) solely based on this guy. Other OP favorite of mine was the Rampart hero that had.. logistics? as special ability, find the boots and you could walk around twice as much as anyone else.
MP-40 in World at War - just a fucking headshot machine Pistol in Halo:CE - lolwtf @ damage -.- Painkiller in Modern Warfare 2 - fffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuu Turtle Shell in Mario Kart - aimbot much? Black Widow in Mass Effect 3 - combining fire rate and instant kill into one super rare, super op sniper -.- Super Gravity Gun in Half-Life 2 - one shots everything from a million miles away Railgun in Quake - admittedly requires some accuracy, but hot damn is it better than every other normal gun lol
Man, I think most OP card/RPG character/weapon need their own threads.It's super tedious to scroll through all that garbage to get to OP units. Those things can be balanced by spreadsheet changes but unit designed is far more complicated and interesting.
I'm going to try to avoid stuff that's already been mentioned but if it has oh well.
Dark Colony Reapers- Most cost effective unit in the game and the alien's version of it was a melee unit that would just die to critical mass. Every game that wasn't some gimmick rush turned into mass reapers vs reapers. Ranged platform with the most DPS/HP combo that could be easily massed (cheap price and no build time in Dark Colony) was not the best idea.
Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds (Star Wars AoE mod essentially) Air Cruisers- These things would fire one huge AoE attack that outranged everything but had a long cooldown. In mass, they could one shot any sort of army (not too many units could shoot up) by cycling their cooldowns. A hard cap would have gone a long way but the game wasn't supported.
Empire Earth Expansion Space Combat Ships- Most aircraft had defined roles fighter, fighter/bomber, bomber, heavy bomber, but with the addition of the space ships you only needed (and on some maps could only realistically use) one. Basically imagine these as really powerful interceptors from a carrier that can free fly for a long time before needed to return to some sort of base.
Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends- too many to count. Air units in particular were either ridiculously good or worthless and faction balance was nonexistent. Extremely fun game but more of a proof of concept than something you would play for any competition.
Lords of the Realm II archers- put a few units shielding them in a chokepoint or castle and they'll beat any army cost effectively without micro.
Probably the only army in recent gamesworkshop history were people actually had to spend more time thinking how to take the worst possible selection of units just to give there enemies the possibility of winning, than actually making an optimum army. In comp tourneys, the daemons frequently had to play against other armies with 25%, 33% and even 50% larger forces than themselves and still often won regardless. Thankfully 8th edition tonned them down heavily, although they remain a fearsome army.
So fucking true. I used to play A LOT of Warhammer fantasy around this time and every GT I went to it was nothing but DoC players, although my Vampire Counts weren't what you would called 'balanced' either.
i can go completely afk and still win on spec-b, start the race half way done in spec-a and still catch up and win. there is NOTHING that can come close to touching this car(f1 is not even close)
CRAGHACK! I played Fortress(was it called that?) solely based on this guy. Other OP favorite of mine was the Rampart hero that had.. logistics? as special ability, find the boots and you could walk around twice as much as anyone else.
Actually, the most OP heroes (who got frequently auto-banned in tournaments) were the ones with specialization in Necromancy and Diplomacy. Also Solmyr on small maps, just because chain lightning would own everything up and could win you the game by the end of 2nd week.
Some other OP units:
Seriously, this is so OP that it isn't even funny...
damn Katana Hero just runs over the battlefield killing everything
I was toward the end of an intense campaign as the Uesugi and was doing really well. Towards the end of the time limit I decided to finally take Kyoto and had to face off against 2 stacks of Katana/Bow Heroes with my 2 stacks of fully upgraded Monks. I was so disappointed. They slaughtered my guys like it was the movie "13 Assassins"