Most unbalanced race/team.

[TheRightToArmBears]

Yuri from Red Alert 2 was stupidly overpowered. Providing you were good with him (I wasn't, my mates were, hence I lost a lot of games that way). The fact you could run units in and take over buildings with mind control and then sell them was ridiciously infuriating.
Honorable mention to the same game for Chrono Commandos. Not a race, but an overpowered unit if I ever saw one.

Not as bad as Kirov Airships. Chrono-Ivans are pretty ridiculous too.

Kirovs were ok if you prepared for them... but yeah, it was still easy to underestimate the amount of damage three or four Kirovs can take. Fortunately the RA2 expansion pack had the Force Shield.
As for Chrono-Ivans, those are superunits, but they're supposed to. They were very hard to acquire (I think you had to get a Spy into the enemy Battle Lab and have a infantry production structure of your enemy), so I think it's ok that they're really strong units.

I suppose so. You have to be an Axis side, get a spy (must be done by getting an engineer into an allied battle lab) and send it into an allied battle lab. But then, chrono Commandos are proper super units, along with Yuri prime (they cost 2000)

 

[Jovlo]

I'd say the Elves in the Battle for Middle-Earth games.
In most RTS games, archers counter infantry and cavalry counters archers.
In these games, upgraded arrows kill anything before it gets to you and they can bring down an enemy base in seconds.

 

[Inverse Skies]

Yuri from Red Alert 2 was stupidly overpowered. Providing you were good with him (I wasn't, my mates were, hence I lost a lot of games that way). The fact you could run units in and take over buildings with mind control and then sell them was ridiciously infuriating.
Honorable mention to the same game for Chrono Commandos. Not a race, but an overpowered unit if I ever saw one.

Not as bad as Kirov Airships. Chrono-Ivans are pretty ridiculous too.

Kirovs were ok if you prepared for them... but yeah, it was still easy to underestimate the amount of damage three or four Kirovs can take. Fortunately the RA2 expansion pack had the Force Shield.
As for Chrono-Ivans, those are superunits, but they're supposed to. They were very hard to acquire (I think you had to get a Spy into the enemy Battle Lab and have a infantry production structure of your enemy), so I think it's ok that they're really strong units.

I still say chrono commandos were the worst. That's all we ever tried to get if we were the US. How can you defend against a teleporting unit which can destroy any building in a single hit?

 

[Abedeus]

Illithids, mindflayers. They get HUGE Charisma, Wisdom and Intelligence bonuses, so they are perfect spellcasters, they can control minds and if they get close to you (or force you to do so) - poof, I mean, SPLASH there goes your head.

Oh, and there are also undead mindflayers. Those are the worst of all.

 

[I3uster]

Starcraft has serious balance issues.

A battle either is just an assault on a defenseless base or it turns into a war of attrition.

Do not say another word, traitor...

 

[GloatingSwine]

I'd say GDI in the original command and conquer. Like, no joke, nod had NOTHING to counter some of their items. (and don't say a "quick and sneaky" attack bike is going to counter a mammoth tank, because you're wrong.)

Attack bikes are going to counter your mammoth tank ten minutes before it gets built, by coming and blowing your harvester up early game, starving you of resources, and running away if it looks like a serious counter force is coming to stop them.

Bikes build early in the tech chain, and one on one can break any GDI unit short of the mammoth (you can dance a medium tank to death, costing the GDI $850 for your $500 unit).

NOD bikes, when used against harvesters, are the one thing in the game that has no real counter

Engineer rushes don't have a serious counter either. Sure, there are infantry units that could toast the engy, but he's coming in an APC that'll just run your flamer/grenadier over, and well positioned/microed engineers will get into a construction yard before a single GDI guard tower can kill it, or if the CY is too hot, steal a refinery, costing the opponent $2000 for a $1200 investment (assuming the APC dies).

Early in the game that can be fatal, because you can't hold back enough resources to build a second refinery that early or you get steamrollered by a fully active economy.

We had to reduce the starting unit size so that neither side started with an APC to minimise the engineer rush, but even then it was the decisive tactic on every map except Tiberium Gardens, because losing you contstruction yard halfway up the tech tree is a blow from which you will not recover. (On Tiberium Gardens there's a 2 square chokepoint into the bases that you can't get an APC into if it's got non-infantry units parked there).

 

[Cpt_Oblivious]

The Humans.

I mean the squirrels shit bricks when they see our tech tree completion.

 

[GloatingSwine]

As some review pointed out on this site: The Necrons and the Tau were balenced against each-other, but not the rest of the races. Tau: cheap+ ridiculous fire power. Necrons : way too many reasons to list.

They balanced them in the 1.2 patch though. Same thing happened in Soulstorm. The DE and SOB were hilariously overpowered (Especially DE's RJB spam), but got better with the patch.

 

[Nilix]

It's gotten better now, but the TEC in Sins of a Solar Empire broke the economy in every single game to the point where they had to fix it.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Starcraft has serious balance issues.

A battle either is just an assault on a defenseless base or it turns into a war of attrition.

That's not race balance though, because it affects all three races fairly even handedly. The economy model in Starcraft has managed to produce a strange high level game, where one championship in Korea was won because a player snuck an SCV in between the opponent's HQ and mineral patch and started building a supply depot, and the time taken to kill even the prebuilt template of the building caused enough economy disruption that it was unrecoverable.

(That, of course, is a race balance issue, because only the Terrans can do it)

 

[GloatingSwine]

The Humans.

I mean the squirrels shit bricks when they see our tech tree completion.

Please, if you've ever seen the amount of sheer armour it takes to stop a squirrel getting at your nuts, you'd realise how imba squirrels are.

 

[Clashero]

Elven units in Battle for Middle-Earth. Fully upgraded, their arrows can kill level 10 heroes in just a few shots.

Oh, and a full Armored-specialty Axis team in Company of Heroes. No matter what your Allied team balance, or how well you play, there really is no way to counter 10 panzers and some 15 stugs coming at you, accompanied with infantry and sniper support.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Elven units in Battle for Middle-Earth. Fully upgraded, their arrows can kill level 10 heroes in just a few shots.

Oh, and a full Armored-specialty Axis team in Company of Heroes. No matter what your Allied team balance, or how well you play, there really is no way to counter 10 panzers and some 15 stugs coming at you, accompanied with infantry and sniper support.

Err, if you've let your opponent build that much, they must already control a significant proportion of the map unchallenged by you (and I beleive you are somewhat exaggerating, given the manpower cost of armour in CoH rarely lets you get more than four or five tanks), and you have pretty much already lost anyway.

 

[Woe Is You]

Fucking protoss are soo overpowered its not funny.

Wait, what?

First I hear the game is too balanced, now I hear that the Protoss are supposedly so overpowered it isn't funny. Let me guess? You just thought slinging infantry was enough and high templars turned them into minced meat? It's the only scenario that comes to mind with claims like these.

 

[Clashero]

Elven units in Battle for Middle-Earth. Fully upgraded, their arrows can kill level 10 heroes in just a few shots.

Oh, and a full Armored-specialty Axis team in Company of Heroes. No matter what your Allied team balance, or how well you play, there really is no way to counter 10 panzers and some 15 stugs coming at you, accompanied with infantry and sniper support.

Err, if you've let your opponent build that much, they must already control a significant proportion of the map unchallenged by you (and I beleive you are somewhat exaggerating, given the manpower cost of armour in CoH rarely lets you get more than four or five tanks), and you have pretty much already lost anyway.

I said a team. As in, 2 Axis players choosing the armored tree, though I did exaggerate the number of tanks involved. Perhaps in larger matches it'd be possible.

 

[GloatingSwine]

[
Err, if you've let your opponent build that much, they must already control a significant proportion of the map unchallenged by you (and I beleive you are somewhat exaggerating, given the manpower cost of armour in CoH rarely lets you get more than four or five tanks), and you have pretty much already lost anyway.

I said a team. As in, 2 Axis players choosing the armored tree, though I did exaggerate the number of tanks involved. Perhaps in larger matches it'd be possible.[/quote]

You would still need to let them have control of the lion's share of the battlefield, which in a game which is all about territory control means you had already lost, the tanks were just there to show you the door.

Remember, take away the territory and you take away the manpower, which means no armour column of doom.

 

[Nutcase]

NOD bikes, when used against harvesters, are the one thing in the game that has no real counter

Engineer rushes don't have a serious counter either. Sure, there are infantry units that could toast the engy, but he's coming in an APC that'll just run your flamer/grenadier over, and well positioned/microed engineers will get into a construction yard before a single GDI guard tower can kill it,

It's possible to stop the quickest possible APC-engineer rush. I can understand why you believe otherwise, though. It took me and my friends tens upon tens of engi rush games to learn to repel the rush with enough confidence that it was only worth it to do the rush once in a while to "keep the opponent honest".

I don't remember an exact recipe that is guaranteed to kill the engis (if there *is* one), but obviously the options are blocking with buildings, blocking with vehicles, using guard towers, running over the engineers with your own tracked vehicle, and microing your engi-killing infantry so that it's harder to run over with the APC.

or if the CY is too hot, steal a refinery, costing the opponent $2000 for a $1200 investment (assuming the APC dies).

Early in the game that can be fatal, because you can't hold back enough resources to build a second refinery that early or you get steamrollered by a fully active economy.

Only the CY is fatal. If you see the engineer is about to get any other of your buildings, you sell the building, get some money back, and the minigunners and civvies running out kill the engineer. A refinery is dirt cheap and only loses you a bit of money; most of the $2000 pays for the harvester, which you do not lose. (Unless you were foolish enough to allow it to drive into the refinery when you see the APC coming.)

We had to reduce the starting unit size so that neither side started with an APC to minimise the engineer rush, but even then it was the decisive tactic on every map except Tiberium Gardens, because losing you contstruction yard halfway up the tech tree is a blow from which you will not recover. (On Tiberium Gardens there's a 2 square chokepoint into the bases that you can't get an APC into if it's got non-infantry units parked there).

We always started with just minigunners in addition to the MCV. An APC would have been hilariously broken.

 

[sgtshock]

Allies in Company of Heroes were pretty unbalanced before several patches. The allies had cheap, reliable tanks (Shermans), overpowered infantry (riflemen with sticky bombs and BARS), and a flamethrower tank that ate infantry for breakfast. The axis? They had rockets that passed through the enemy half the time, their tanks were either very expensive, or were slow as hell and had no turrets, and their infantry had wimpy grenades.