phillydilly's LW2 tips:

be selective about missions. priority #1 is having enough time to get a reasonable sized squad to 100% infiltration. priority #2 is having a good mission reward. An 8 day prep mission is a lot less useful if the reward is some intel, but you end up missing a scientist.

buildings are different. You no longer need squad size upgrades, so AWC definitely is priority #1 ahead of GTS. AWC helps heal soldiers, and the additional skill thing is much more user friendly imo than the original.

the mission i realized i was probably ****ed was alien's were raiding my supply convoy. its a tougher mission than you might think.

I prefer starting out with GTS and getting officers asap. Main reason is because officers can extend mission timers by 2 turns when needed which can be really useful when you're in a though spot. The command ability is also really useful especially when doing stealth missions.

Mastering doing smaller stealth missions helps a lot with getting some extra missions in when you don't have enough soldiers to send a full squad. Shinobi+specialist for hack missions and solo/duo shinobi for extract are usually the ones I try to stealth.
For stealthing hack missions you will usually want to scout out a safe spot for the specialist to hide out at and then have the specialist break stealth by throwing the evac point at the location he can do the hack from. Then wait for the skyranger to arrive and run in with the specialist to hack and evac. If you have a shinobi officer the specialist can even wait at dash distance since you can command him to hack.

So I downloaded the 1.1 patch and it has lagged my game like crazy. No idea why. Cannot figure it out. X2 ran fine. The original long war mod ran fine, all mods have run fine. Everything at ultra settings. Now, it takes many seconds for somebody to move after I click the mouse button, and it's essentially unplayable on medium settings.

Wtf happened?

lol so i haven't played it enough to even know what officers are, so there's that.

I have not yet tried to stealth missions. the idea of this is very cool though and i look forward to trying it.

While i do look forward to seeing the the officer thing is, so far i have had zero issues with the mission time in LW2, nowhere near as much of an issue as vanilla.

Officers are a separate skill tree, you can bring one per mission and they have odd unique abilities that are pretty far outside the normal skills. The time extension is just one of them, if you need it though it's nice to have. Leadership and Command are just generally very good, Leadership is a passive buff and Command is just really good at getting you out of tight spots. They are, as noted, really good for trying to stealth missions since they add a lot of mobility options.

I like snipers for officers because they have a pistol anyway, shinobi are also good.

Arrrg. Full deletion and reset and it's still happening. Wtf

Still in Vanilla, not that far into the game, because haven't dedicated a ton of time.
I'm just now at inspecting the first advent site. I tried it last night, it was going flawless until I was about to capture whatever it is - had already killed like 10 guys, including muton and MEC.

Patrol of regular 3hp advent trooper, stun lancer, and muton. I was in perfect positions to be ready for them - my squad of 5 - I frag the muton and his cover. The other 4 guys have 85%+ chance to hit the muton - all 4 miss. Lancer knocks 1 guy unconscious(my medic specialist), muton walks up and 1 shots my biggest guy, and trooper shoots someone else, causes him to panic. He panics, runs next to the muton and misses hit point blank shot.

So, now I have 3 guys left - 85%+ chances to hit still, since they are now in even less covered spots - all 3 miss. And then 2 just die to the muton melee, and lancer knocking 1 unconscious.

I rage turned it off. Will try it again tonight probably. I don't wanna do the math but the odds of missing 8 shots in a row with over 85% chance is probably astronomical?

I'm yet to have that sort of moment so far. I know it's going to happen at some point though.

I am a complete knob.

I moved this weekend and upon setting up my computer in the new place I plugged my monitor into the integrated card instead of my gtx970.

****

Jesus Christ the haven defense missions are hard

I spent a good few hours trying to work out why my laptop was slower than a week in jail whilst doing some photoshop work.

Turned out I'd left it in powersave mode

Playing Vanilla, on my second game, the first one was abandoned when it was clear that I had no clue what I was doing and things were way way too difficult. (Bad build order, no upgraded weapons, no AWC, no GTS)

So, second game, I have a better feel for what's going on. Some mistakes were still made WRT mission choosing and build/upgrade order. We're going on our first avatar project mission while I only have 3 blips left in the progress bar. First mission that I've tried that says "Difficult," the rest have said like Easy and Moderate.

I've put more hours in this one than I did the EU/EW. I just didn't like the difficulty ramping in the original. It starts out hard and gets worse - I had anxiety playing it, because of the timer it puts you on from the beginning. Haven't gotten to the bad parts of this game yet, I assume.

While long war 2 was a bit of a bust, I've been watching some gameplay of the New expansion and it looks incredible. Can't wait to give it a try

Argh the DLC is $40!!!

33 on gmg

Wow, that is really interesting pricing decision. I guess it has more content than your average DLC, but customers may not see it that way. Then again, I wasn't going to buy it even at $10 since I honestly don't want even more bloated base game, and that is what the DLC brings.

Word on the street is that it has even more to offer than when Enemy Within was released, and that came out at the same price point.

Actually it was $30/25€

Finally beat the XCOM2 vanilla on commander level and figured I'd go back and give Enemy within another go. Holy crap I forgot what Pain in the ass the chrissalid nest mission was! I think i rage quit several runs just on that mission alone

Does anyone have a link to a decent combat tutorial?

I saved scummed my way through Xcom 2 vanilla and would like to do a better job of War of the Chosen.

Christopher Odds series of videos tend to be a pretty good look on how to strategically engage in combat. He isn't the best, but you aren't either, so he's immitatable.

Grenades, early and often.

I ragequit a for a week or two at a time when I did my blind vanilla playthrough, but eventually got it on my 15th or so attempt. I didn't do Legendary though, **** that noise.



Maybe when this DLC is on sale, I'll give Legendary Ironman a shot.

Any of you guys play on Legendary? I tried it a few times, but literally never made it beyond the 2nd mission.

Green man gaming has it 25% off at 29.99 right now

I had a quick look at one of Christopher Odds videos. I was surprised at how close he kept the soldiers to each other. Seemed to be asking for a grenade to be launched at them.

Basically the optimal way to play the game is stay as close together as possible, use everyone twice so that move A, move B, move C, move D, move E, move F, then attack/overwatch A, attack/overwatch B... You never want to double move as then you wouldn't have 6+ attacks when you run into enemies.

Grenades should be used a ton to clear sight and guarantee kills.

Concealment is good.