X-COM XCOM 2 + War of the Chosen Expansion Thread

[Jimmious]

Holy shit the game is fucking hard as balls! I will soon have my 4th restart. Commander & Iroman, can't even fathom how people would go to Legend immediately. Wow

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Holy shit the game is fucking hard as balls! I will soon have my 4th restart. Commander & Iroman, can't even fathom how people would go to Legend immediately. Wow

Yeah I stop doing Ironman. I got tired of restarting the first mission.
I rarely reload a save though, so I guess I have a better feel of the game.
Might do Ironman later.

Does anyone else think the tutorial is bullshit? It forces a whole campaign on you, and makes you choose sub-par decisions.
Like, why would I ever buy a medkit first, when at that stage the enemy kills you in one hit? I'd rather get bangs and not get hit at all.

 

[Jimmious]

Yeah I don't play with the tutorial anymore, I find it boring. But man, if you get a second pod in the first missions, you're more or less fucked, unless you have ample grenades and items...
Brutal stuff. Love it

 

[Zetor]

On guerrilla missions with a hack target, the hack bonuses for it can be amazing. I once got a 2x scanning speed increase for a month. Get a hacker with skulljack + skullmining ASAP, and protect them.

Not to mention Alien Facility intel. If you get one of those early and use it when the only alien facilities are like 3-4 regions away, you can immediately hit one of them, allowing you to build contacts towards the other and hit that as well. This can fuck the momentum of the Avatar Project pretty badly...

How do you find facilities? Is it random?

Well, they should be visible on the world map (most of them, anyway). You just can't get to them until you've made contact with their region... unless you research the 'facility lead' item.

I researched my facility lead when there were only 2 visible alien facilities way outside my controlled regions (I made sure to destroy the ones in my own zones) and I got the option of hitting the one in Asia directly. Haven't tried to reload to see if it changes the outcome, though.

 

[FuriousGamer87]

I still don't get how TotalBiscuit can lose 5 out 6 men in the last mission. It's not easy but it's not hard either.
I finished my Veteran Ironman run with no loss of personnel whatsover.

Spoiler

100% chance guaranteed mind control for the commander avatar is fun as fuck in the last fight. Nothing like raping the avatars with their own troops.

 

[Disgruntled]

Fuck, there goes my longest Commander-Ironman attempt. I was doing fine with minor losses till the UFO intercepted me. Even then, the assault felt manageable but in classic xcom fashion I strung a few misses on easy shots which domino toppled my team. Flew away with one vet and 2 rookies who proceeded to die in the next mission. Skipped time to watch the fail cinematic.

Going into that scenario blind makes it really tricky to read. Part of me was cautious but then I assumed I needed to rush down the beacon only to end up face first against 2 lancers and a berserker. Half the frontmen get stunned/unconscious, guys in the middle get flanked by reinforcements, multiple lancers survive with 1-2 hp and I was screwed.

Spoiler

 

[mutonizer]

Spoiler

Veteran Ironman, end of July, no plasma, no psionic, no chamber, no big armor, only US and part of Asia under contact control, nearly constantly maxed out avatar project dots...All missions rated very difficult now with non stop streams of Codexes, Red Robots and other crazy shit...
Not looking good

 

[Alienman]

Panic is a broken mechanic. Maybe even worse this time around, because one mistake will probably cost you the game on commander. Anyway. I can take that a few men die, even officers, but when soldiers constantly panic it just gets tedious as hell. Firefights never really escalate. Start of battle. You take down one or two. An alien manage to flank and take out a man. Cool and all, but usually this means that you are down two men or more. One man dies, and then another panic. So when it's time for you to retaliate you are two man short... and yeah, if you are facing a sectoid one of your men will probably be mind-controlled as well. Happy times. You know what this reminds me off? Trying to PvP in WoW, in the good old days. You enter an arena but spend 75% stunned and unable to attack back.

Panic is a cool gameplay thing otherwise, but I don't think with this small-scale skirmishes it works out well at all.

Wut? There's way, way less panic than in the first game. (Playing on Impossible/Legendary.)
That's why Legendary is so much easier than Impossible. In Impossible there's a really good chance that if someone dies, the entire squad panic chains. This never happens in this. Maybe you are just getting unlucky.
Also the sectoids are 100% harmless this time around, wasting their turns mind controlling and raising zombies, leaving them open to be killed with ease. The generic ADVENT are more of a threat.

This game is such a big improvement on the first one, I've got to say. It amuses me how everyone is complaining about the difficulty when the game is clearly easier than Impossible used to be. Even our HARDKOR codexers are complaining about the timers and the difficulty and "too many fires to put out|! You guys are terrible! Whining about how they wand difficult games with a lot of complexity, and then failing at a game that's easier than it's predecessor, which they made fun of for being dumbed down and easy. Don't cut yourself with that edge. This is probably modern Firaxis' best release yet, knocking the latest Civilization out of the park. Well, for me.

Could be that I'm unlucky. My guys have a serious problem with panic And Sectoids usually do mind-control first and raise dead second in my game. Rushing the weapons and armors made the game a lot easier overall. Seems that is the strategy to survive.

 

[Inspectah]

For Legendary, slicing is useless, Phantoms and Gunslingers are kings, as are Grenadiers. (Which some of you called not that useful in lower difficulties!) Remember, you can basically not afford to miss. Oh, you will miss many times, but you must absolutely minimize it.

On legendary the granadiers are the absolute mvp, way more useful than anyone else in the actual battles

 

[Alienman]

I think my ironsave is broken due to bug now

Check Black Market and Making contact. I have minus days.

 

[Jimmious]

Finally in my last (5th or 6th) attempt things seem to be going a bit better.
As someone mentioned already, it's much better if you break the concealment with a shot (and kill hopefully) but have the others ready with both actions left so that they can finish off the rest of the pod in that turn, than to have the rest in overwatch. If they miss the overwatch shots the aliens get an extra turn and who knows what positions they took after scattering!
Also found this ability of specialists for a certain 2 damage to be really good to finish off alien scum.

 

[Alienman]

I think my ironsave is broken due to bug now

Check Black Market and Making contact. I have minus days.

I had the same issue, not really sure what happened, but there's an avenger event that didn't clear properly, so all the new geoscape events get held up.

Did you fix it or did you have to restart?

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I just discovered that combat protocol deals extra damage against machines.
I am dumb

I also discovered that enemy units can, in fact, see your drone when you move it to a tower to hack.
Which...makes a lot of sense, actually.

 

[Alienman]

Ah okay, thanks. Guess I will have to do that.

 

[Jimmious]

I just discovered that combat protocol deals extra damage against machines.
I am dumb

I also discovered that enemy units can, in fact, see your drone when you move it to a tower to hack.
Which...makes a lot of sense, actually.

Yeap just found that out too

 

[Zombra]

Comedy screenshot.

Spoiler

"Oh. Hi."

 

[Jimmious]

Guys I notice in the Achievements a mention on a "Commander+" difficulty. Any idea what that is?

 

[veevoir]

Commander or higher.

 

[Galdred]

Panic is a broken mechanic. Maybe even worse this time around, because one mistake will probably cost you the game on commander. Anyway. I can take that a few men die, even officers, but when soldiers constantly panic it just gets tedious as hell. Firefights never really escalate. Start of battle. You take down one or two. An alien manage to flank and take out a man. Cool and all, but usually this means that you are down two men or more. One man dies, and then another panic. So when it's time for you to retaliate you are two man short... and yeah, if you are facing a sectoid one of your men will probably be mind-controlled as well. Happy times. You know what this reminds me off? Trying to PvP in WoW, in the good old days. You enter an arena but spend 75% stunned and unable to attack back.

Panic is a cool gameplay thing otherwise, but I don't think with this small-scale skirmishes it works out well at all.

Wut? There's way, way less panic than in the first game. (Playing on Impossible/Legendary.)
That's why Legendary is so much easier than Impossible. In Impossible there's a really good chance that if someone dies, the entire squad panic chains. This never happens in this. Maybe you are just getting unlucky.
Also the sectoids are 100% harmless this time around, wasting their turns mind controlling and raising zombies, leaving them open to be killed with ease. The generic ADVENT are more of a threat.

This game is such a big improvement on the first one, I've got to say. It amuses me how everyone is complaining about the difficulty when the game is clearly easier than Impossible used to be. Even our HARDKOR codexers are complaining about the timers and the difficulty and "too many fires to put out|! You guys are terrible! Whining about how they wand difficult games with a lot of complexity, and then failing at a game that's easier than it's predecessor, which they made fun of for being dumbed down and easy. Don't cut yourself with that edge. This is probably modern Firaxis' best release yet, knocking the latest Civilization out of the park. Well, for me.

Are you positively sure that legendary is easier than I/I?
I mostly relied on advancing very slowly and carefully and knowing the layout for the hardest abduction maps (cemetery, construction yard...Granted, it is a very poor use of RL time...) and all of the council mission maps perfectly in I/I. Both of these options being out now, it might be harder to pull it out.
My game has not arrived yet, so I am just speculating.

 

[FuriousGamer87]

Going to start another playthrough on commander ironman difficulty just for shit and giggle.

 

[Zombra]

Mr. Pink

Concealment mod, timers don't tick down until conc is broken.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=618077830&searchtext=

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

One thing Long War did that I didn't totally appreciate was tuning down how explosive cars were. At Classic/Commander and up, it's a bad risk to use them for cover because even a lowly trooper can set them off with missed rifle shots. On the flipside, the explosions make some harder enemies trivial if they happen to stand next to them (or if multiple enemies take cover behind a car a single grenade becomes way too powerful).

I just had a mission where, in a single round, a lowly trooper killed a blast padding grenadier by missing her and grazing a motorcycle while a MEC went down to two peashooters b/c it happened to stand next to someone's barbecue sized propane tank (explosion shredding too stronk). It evened out, but it was all kind of silly.

Of course it was also disappointing that blast padding doesn't protect against scenery exploding. Maybe it's a bug. Either way, live and learn.

 

[Jaedar]

I like how they handled psionics in this, although it is a bit sad how the proper way to use them is to just have them sit in base for a month before sending them on their first mission. Don't like all the dead researches required to progress in the plot. Concealment system is pretty nice.

Burrowing chryssalids are a fucking insane pain and I swear I'll start bringing 1 medkit per person on missions where they show up.

 

[Jimmious]

Ok I get some of the timer criticism.
I went for a VIP mission. 12 turns to find the guy and get him to the extraction point along with everyone else.
Find first two pods, 1 Viper 1 lancer and 1 Sectoid 1 normal advent dude, kill them in 3 turns. Proceed to find the VIP, about 6-7 turns left.
Next turn find pod with MEC and lancer.
During that, reinforcements pop.
MEC kills one before it goes down, lancer makes one dude unconcious. Two guys panic. So out of the 5 man team, 1 dead, 1 unconcious 2 panicked.
Until I deal the MEC and lancer, the other 3 join the party. We're almost fucked, Im barely holding on....and timer. Everyone is captured or something.
I mean I get the urgency but wtf, I can't even evac as in other missions. Something goes wrong in these ones and you're done.

 

[Morgoth]

There's already mods that give you either extended timer turns for non-story missions, or let you switch it off entirely.

Plus you get to keep Achievements!!




It probaly also fucks up the balance entirely.