History VideoGameCrueltyPotential / RealTimeStrategy

* In a mission in ''VideoGame/{{Sacrifice}}'', you have to destroy a tree for one Pyro, but if you kill all the peasants around the tree, Charnel rewards you for it.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'', there are all manner of horrific things you can do to other species in the galaxy. You can enslave or purge them of course, but if you have the [=DLCs=], you can get very creative with that sort of thing. There's a reason why a popular fan nickname for the game is "Sci-Fi War Crimes Simulator".
** If you choose to enslave your enemies, you have tons of options.
*** Chattel Slavery is standard, where pops are used to perform menial tasks like farming, mining, running generators or doing clerical work for a reduced amount of resources.
*** Battle Thralls mean your slaves will be forced into combat, becoming part of the police force, joining a planetary Defense Army, or become Duelists in gladiatorial combat.
*** Domestic Servitude is when slaves are forced to tend to the needs of free pops. They usually serve in the households of free pops, or work as entertainers.
*** Indentured Servitude, where pops work without pay in order to pay off a debt. Of course, their contracts are structured in such a way that they'll never be able to pay it off...
*** Livestock is where [[IAmAHumanitarian you eat your slaves]]. These pops don't work, their only job is to reproduce before being slaughtered and processed into food.
*** Grid Amalgamation is perhaps the most cruel way to treat your slaves. If you're a Robotic empire in need of energy, you can ''fuse your organic pops to the network and harvest electricity from their brains''.
** Purging species also gives you plenty of options to work with.
*** Displacement is probably the least cruel of all of these. Sure, your pops are kicked out of your empire and have to find somewhere else to live, but at least they'll be alive...
*** Extermination. Good ole systematic genocide.
*** Neutering. The species is allowed to live, but they will not be able to reproduce anymore, meaning they slowly die out.
*** Forced Labor is like Chattel Slavery, except there's no requirement to keep your species alive. The pops will be producing resources for you until they're worked to death.
*** Processing. Like Livestock, except no need to keep up the population. Just throw them all in the meat grinder and enjoy your tasty xeno-burgers.
** At the end of The Sentinels archeology dig, you defeat the machine guardians of the Sentinels and discover their civilization, now living in a LotusEaterMachine on a massive computer drive. If you're Xenophobic or Militaristic, a possible option is repurposing this digital paradise as a hunting ground for your own species or as a playtesting ground for sociological studies (turning the locals into "lab rats").
** Want to [[InstantWinCondition win the game in one fluid motion]]? Buy the Nemesis DLC and take the Existential Threat path. Step one: build a StarKilling machine. Step two: blow up star after star, wiping out entire (possibly-inhabited) solar systems, to acquire dark matter. Step three: use that dark matter to build the Aetherophasic Engine. Step four: activate the Aetherophasic Engine. When it goes off, your civilization ascends to godhood... and all it takes is ''every surviving star in the galaxy collapsing into a black hole'', '''''killing every living creature left in the galaxy'''''. In terms of sheer body count, this may be the cruelest thing you can do in video gaming ''period''.
** There are so-called "genocidal" empires whose purpose is to kill everyone else in the galaxy. The Fanatic Purifiers civic makes an empire ragingly hostile to every one of its neighbors and committed to killing them all, to the point that they cannot carry out diplomacy other than declaring war, while also getting buffs to their fleets to make the job easier. The [[RobotWar Determined Exterminator]] civic is the equivalent for machine empires, while the Devouring Swarm civic for {{hive mind}}s adds a HordeOfAlienLocusts twist on it by having you ''eat'' the filthy xenos you conquer instead of simply slaughtering them. Naturally, any empire with one of these civics [[VideoGameCrueltyPunishment takes a massive hit to relations with everybody else]], such that they're guaranteed to be constantly fighting wars.
** That's just the clear-cut options that the game presents to you. Some enterprising players have gotten creative in how they go about treating aliens. [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/dl7wbw/whats_the_best_worst_warcrimes_youve_ever/ This thread]] on Reddit has players sharing their horrifying stories of what they did to the aliens they conquered.
*** If you go down the organic ascension path, you unlock increasingly powerful tools for genetic modification. It is possible to [[GettingSmiliesPaintedOnYourSoul paint smilies on their souls]], lobotomize them so they can't rebel, or make them tastier so that they produce more food when you use them as livestock. In the above thread, one player turned conquered aliens into delicious livestock ''without'' lobotomizing them first, specifically to create an AndIMustScream scenario for them.
*** [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/653obc/ive_done_something_awful/ One player,]] using a combination of conquest, livestock slavery, and trade deals, managed to find a way to sell conquered aliens back to the empire they were conquered from. [[TheSecretOfLongPorkPies As food.]]

* In ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'', there are all manner of horrific things you can do to other species in the galaxy. You can enslave or purge them of course, but if you have the DLC's, you can get very creative with that sort of thing.

** You can kidnap fat tourists and [[IAteWhat stick them into the mixer that is stored in your minion's mess hall]].

** Feeling bored? Try [[SuicideMission marching your troops across a Tiberium field]] for shits and giggles, which is surprisingly a viable tactic. If your enemy's base is close to a tiberium field, letting enough infantry die in the field and morph into visceroids causes them to eventually merge into very dangerous large visceroids, which will soon start attacking the base. It's probably not as efficient as just attacking with the infantry units in the first place, but it's so deliciously sadistic!
*** It is, actually. Large visceroids are **incredibly** tough, and their attacks do ludicrous amounts of damage. The only problem with them is that they don't obey commands, but if their attacks can be guaranteed by proximity, it takes a surprisingly small amount of resources to start wreaking some real havoc on the enemy base. Sadism rewarded!

* VideoGame/AgeOfEmpires and games derived from it make killing civilians a sound tactical move. Then again, most of the games are set before the Geneva Conventions and most civilians can take up weapons and attack the enemy anyway...
** VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresIII added a physics engine, which is best put to use by training a force of [[NoKillLikeOverkill 5 Falconet cannons]], sending them to attack a single enemy villager, and watching him scream and fly about 7 feet straight up in the air before landing headfirst on the ground.

* ''VideoGame/DungeonKeeper 2'' gives the player access to prisons, torture chambers, traps, fight pits, a temple where you can sacrifice your minions, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and rigged casinos]]. So many possibilities...
** Capture a group of heroes and convert all but one of them. Feed your converts, heal them, and train them while giving the odd one out only the barest amount of food and healing to survive the prison. Then drop the unconverted one into a pit and put his former friends on the sidelines to cheer as he's beaten to a pulp over and over.
** Capture a hero. Drop him in the torture chamber and keep him barely alive until he gives some information. Reward him by dropping him in the fight pit with your meanest monster before returning him to prison and letting him starve to death, becoming a skeleton.
** Line the walls of your hero lair with torture devices, so the heroes that serve you live surrounded by screams as you torture their former allies.
** Take the monsters you don't want and lock them a sealed room without food, money, or beds. Wait until they get angry and revolt and burn them down with lightning. Have your imps send them to prison and let them rot into skeletons or vampire fodder. Or simply beat them into unconsciousness or death.
** When Payday comes around, grab every minion in your domain and drop them in the Casino. Switch it to rigged and let the money roll in. Once you've got back some and the monsters begin to show displeasure, switch it back to normal and put the monsters back to work.
** A monster displeases you? Stick it somewhere surrounded by lava so it can't reach the exit portal and wait for it to turn on you. Send your creatures to beat it up, then torture it into serving you. [[AndIMustScream Repeat.]]
* The PC and Amiga game ''VideoGame/{{Syndicate}}'', where evil corporations use squads of cyborg hitmen to duke it out in bloody campaigns of espionage and terrorism, and where plenty of innocent civilians would end up getting caught in the crossfire even if you weren't aiming for them on purpose (and let's be honest, you probably were. Maybe you even have brought the flamethrower for that reason.) And if that wasn't cruel enough, you could even use mind-control devices to round up herds of civilians and use them as meatshields.
** Why use them as mere meat-shields, when you could arm them all with [[GatlingGood miniguns]], or - god forbid - [[{{BFG}} gauss guns]]. (Of course, if you wanted to be ''really'' cruel to your mindless minions, you could lead them on to a train track or other soon-to-be fatal area.)
** Is it a subversion that the persuadertron (the MindControlDevice) would let you take over and own the enemy agents without firing a shot, provided you first took over a large enough number of civilians?
** That one is probably closer to MercyRewarded, as the persuaded agents get a permanent spot on your team if there's a vacancy.
** The sequel adds more fun weaponry for further cruelty. Trigger wires are upgraded razor wires [[StuffBlowingUp which explode]]. The Graviton Gun not only obliterates whatever you shoot at, [[NoKillLikeOverkill but also emits tendrils that home in on every living thing on the map, killing them]]. [[NukeEm And then there's nuclear grenades for added fun.]]
* Even since ''VideoGame/DuneII'', RTS players have been running over infantry in tanks. The crunching sounds just encourage you.
** In a later game, ''Emperor: Battle for Dune'', the Harkonnen light vehicle is the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Buzzsaw]]. Unsurprisingly, it is good at destroying spice fields and infantry.
** Way back in 1986, you could do this in the Creator/OriginSystems adaptation of the boardgame called Ogre; overrunning infantry with an AI-driven mega tank was not just fun but standard, orthodox tactics.

* Countless Critters of several ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}}'' games have met their bloody end at the hands of various troops.

* In a mission in ''VideoGame/{{Sacrifice}}'', you have to destroy a tree for one Pyro, but if you kill all the peasants around the tree, Charnel rewards you for it.
* VideoGame/{{DEFCON}} is a {{Defictionalization}} of the game Global Themonuclear War from ''Film/WarGames''. [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin You simulate a nuclear war for fun, 'nuff said.]]
* In ''VideoGame/{{Stronghold}} Crusader'', you can set enemy buildings on fire (provided they aren't made of stone). Even better, the fire ''spreads'', potentially turning the entire castle into a raging inferno. Aside from the cathartic potential, this is also an effective tactic, as it pretty much obliterates their economy and prevents them from replacing their troops. Of course, you may want to make sure the fire spreads, by taking out the water pots or killing the firemen...
** There are also "Bad Things", ominous decorations (e.g. heads on a spike) and various forms of torture devices you can build in your castle to "encourage" your peasants to work and move faster; after a certain number is reached you can see peasants being tortured on them and when clicked on the peasants will cower and beg. They have downsides however: First, your troops take a penalty in combat (bad if you face opponents that build Good Things which gives them a combat bonus); and second, creates unhappiness which needs to be compensated in some other way.

* In ''VideoGame/EmpireAtWar'', if the Rebellion captures Coruscant and the player is the Empire, the player can use the Death Star to ''blow up Coruscant'', killing the planet's population of ''over a trillion''.
* ''VideoGame/EvilGenius'', a game where you play as a CardCarryingVillain, naturally provides a variety of options for cruelty.
** You can toss female agents into the [[AllAnimeIsNaughtyTentacles greenhouse]].
** You can kidnap fat tourists and [[IAteWhat stick them into the mixer that is stored in your minion's mess hall]].
** You can imprison, torture and execute ''[[WeHaveReserves your own minions]]'' at a whim. Super Agents [[ContractualBossImmunity can't be killed unless you use the very specific methods for beating them]], so as long as you can keep tabs on them, you can horribly torture them endlessly, and ''[[AndIMustScream there is no reprieve for them]]''.
** The various methods you finally deal with the Super Agents themselves count:
*** The P.A.T.R.I.O.T Agent, Franchise/{{Rambo}} {{expy}} Dirk Masters: [[spoiler:you dunk him into a tank of chemicals that have been engineered to react violently with the steroids in his body, transforming him into a Freak. Not only is he stripped of his humanity, but he has to serve ''your'' every whim, and there is nothing he can do about it.]]
*** The A.N.V.I.L Super Agent [[BruceLeeClone Jet Chan]]: [[spoiler:you drug his food with sedatives, and then arrange a "fair" sparring match with a minion. In the resulting match, he is so [[CurbStompBattle utterly and humiliatingly beaten]] that he retires from the agency and flees civilized society with his name and reputation in tatters, and spends the rest of his life in seclusion, meditating bitterly over his defeat.]]
*** The S.M.A.S.H Super Agent [[MsFanservice Mariana Mamba]]: [[spoiler:giving her reverse-liposuction treatment and making her hideously obese. Without her primary asset - her splendid looks - she is forced to retire as an agent.]]
*** The way you deal with the H.A.M.M.E.R agent [[IceQueen Katarina Frostanova]], arguably the most cruel of all of them: [[spoiler:you take her childhood teddy bear, the only thing she has ever shown affection for, and you order a minion to beat it up, chop it, and tear it into pieces. [[ForcedToWatch Right in front of her]]. Her resulting [[FreakOut mental breakdown]] is so catastrophic that it renders her completely unfit for active duty.]] ''YouBastard''.
* The ''VideoGame/TotalWar'' series: there's just something darkly satisfying about ordering a cavalry charge or artillery bombardment and watching the enemy's levies ''[[WreakingHavok literally fly through the air]]''.
** ''VideoGame/MedievalIITotalWar'' has to be the most blatant example of this in the whole series. Your troops lost a battle and captured by the enemy and begging to be ransomed? [[YouHaveFailedMe You don't have to accept - they knew the price of failure]]. Got an incompetent family member you don't want? Just hire an assassin to kill them... ''or'' [[UriahGambit send them to die in a pointless battle]] [[CurbStompBattle against a vastly superior enemy force]]. Need to keep your bloodline pure? [[BrotherSisterIncest Force one of your princesses to marry one of her brothers]]. Just captured the last city of a faction who has been annoying you? [[RapePillageAndBurn Sack it]], or [[LeaveNoSurvivors simply kill everyone]]. Got a plague outbreak on one of your cities? Send a Spy to transport the contagion from your city to theirs as an act of spite. Get a kick out of starting epic religious conflicts? Take a city between two Muslim nations, sell it to the Papacy for a few thousand florins and watch {{Hilarity Ensue|s}}. The fun never stops.
* ''VideoGame/PlanetBlupi'': You can force the Blupis to perform many tasks without rewarding them with food, thus starving them and killing them once their energy runs out. You can also kill off Blupis by killing them in an explosion or exposing them to killer enemies.

*** Processing. Like Livestock, except no need to keep up the population. Just throw them all in the meat grinder and enjoy your tasty xeno-burgers.

** '''VideoGame/MedievalIITotalWar'' has to be the most blatant example of this in the whole series. Your troops lost a battle and captured by the enemy and begging to be ransomed? [[YouHaveFailedMe You don't have to accept - they knew the price of failure]]. Got an incompetent family member you don't want? Just hire an assassin to kill them... ''or'' [[UriahGambit send them to die in a pointless battle]] [[CurbStompBattle against a vastly superior enemy force]]. Need to keep your bloodline pure? [[BrotherSisterIncest Force one of your princesses to marry one of her brothers]]. Just captured the last city of a faction who has been annoying you? [[RapePillageAndBurn Sack it]], or [[LeaveNoSurvivors simply kill everyone]]. Got a plague outbreak on one of your cities? Send a Spy to transport the contagion from your city to theirs as an act of spite. Get a kick out of starting epic religious conflicts? Take a city between two Muslim nations, sell it to the Papacy for a few thousand florins and watch {{Hilarity Ensue|s}}. The fun never stops.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'', there are all manner of horrific things you can do to other species in the galaxy. You can of course enslave them, forcing them to do hard menial labor to net your empire more riches. You can purge them, sending execution squads to enemy planets and systematically wiping them clean. And if you have the DLC's, you can get really creative with that kind of thing.