Why I Have 1,430 Hours In™ XCOM: Long War 1

I think i prefer the graphics style of xcom 1 over xcom 2 :/.

I would love to see your recommended mod list for Long War 1. Especially hoping to see how you were able to get the camo mod to work for Long War 1.

The larger troop count is why I prefer the original XCOM: UFO defense to a lot of modern XCOM, certainly to XCOM 2; you can bring up to 14 soilders with the initial troop transport, and up to 26 with the avenger, if you actually want to do that is a different question. You can also bring various HWPs (Tanks and alien tech equivalents) using up quite a few crew slots each, but not needing to grind up from private making them disposable and tanky.

Of course Being able to bring more than 2 squads worth of troops does lead to issues, both in having to actually control them, max item count issues (open XCOM fixes those), and of course the fact that you probably dont (in fact you basically cant) have 26 elite soilders and one panicked (or MCed) rookie with an explosive can wipe the entire landing craft before you get to disembark, or even a panic cascade from the mind controlled rookie shooting the XO, which leads to everyone firing wildly before even disembarking, leading to mass fatalities before you even see the first alien. Although to a certain degree that is part of the charm.

It also has you managing multiple bases, with the ability to intercept multiple craft at once, and dealing with possibly multiple combat missions at once; that allows you to make specialized bases for say radar / hyperwave decoder coverage, research, engineering, intercepting craft and launching ground missions, although you really dont want any that just do one or 2, and if your launching interceptors you want a troop contingent on base to fight off possible retaliations, at which point you might as well use them for ground missions too. All that is of course a double edged sword, since managing bases all around the world, and multiple combat missions can be very mentally taxing and frankly sometimes tedious.

The greater degree of possible destruction also is great. There is a much greater weapon selection, not limited to arbitrary classes, even just the basic weapons include great stuff like an autocannon that can fire incendiary and HE shells, allowing you to do stuff like just burning down the barn instead of having to send out a fire team over an open field next to the alien craft and plenty of cover to clear it. Even grenades have much higher flexibility, by being able to set a timer, instead of them instantly blowing up, allowing stuff like sending in the rookie into the alien craft with the grenade already ticking, so if they predictably get shot the second they go through the door, they just drop the grenade on the floor, which will probably kill a good chunk of the aliens that killed them, and the resulting dust and debree will give whoever gets to go next some concealment. Another thing you can do is a bucket chain where you pass along the hot grenade along a line of troopers from the one guy that still has a relevant grenade (incendiary, smoke, high explosive, you get your moneys worth) to where it needs to go.

Chryssalids also have never been more scary.

All in all its a flawed game but incredibly enjoyable, and it holds up to this day. I have no clue how many hours ive played it since open XCOM isnt through steam, but it certainly is many.





Long war is great too but thats not where my autism took my train of thought

Long war is fun, yeah. The best part about it was the customisation. I remember the Exalt being way too difficult, so I halved their combat values. Same thing with the Ethereals

>250 hours is average longwar campaign
yeah fuck that....

i played on 0.5 the length setting and it still took me a whole month to not even finish the game because you also have to level psi abilities separately which fuck that , too long and still felt like 250 hours

The story of Dr. Vahlen is an interesting one. She was ALWAYS a crazy mad scientist that would look past her own morals just to sate her curiosity. She basically admits it herself in XCOM 2 with one of her voice lines.

"Commander, sometimes I wish you were still here to keep my ambitions in check."

The only reason she didn't do anything TOO psychotic in EU or EW was because XCOM reined in her more crazy tendencies.

On a somewhat related note, I always found it funny how XCOM uses stereotypes. You have the serious American soldier (Bradford), the eccentric mad scientist that happens to be German (Dr. Vahlen), and in the first and second game you have the techy Asians (The Shen family). The stereotype for Dr. Tygan is much harder to find but if you dig deep enough, he's a Black American that lived in Chicago I guess? Kind of weird that he doesn't really fit neatly into any particular stereotype considering pretty much every other character does but I enjoy his character anyways.

I've played a few rounds of LW1 and tried LWR (too harsh for my taste).
I liked LW and I thought I would never like XCom2 as much as XCom.
But now I'm really enjoying LWoTC with ModJam: tons of new enemies, 50+ new classes and infinite combinations of tactical paths. Not saying about hundreds of cosmetic mods for customization.
I cannot stop playing it.

how to install long war1 mod on steam? (X com enemy within)

I think the actual battle for North Africa was faster

Lost all my Respect the moment you said the Cleric is boring. Damn peopl just dont know how to play clerics in DnD xD

Not sure if you ended up figuring it out but you can have multiple squads in Jagged Alliance 3 attack the same area, meaning you can have like 12 mercs in one battle if you wish. Just have them both move to the same location and close the window prompting an attack from your first squad if they don't arrive at the same time.

Hello fellow tactician.

how is LW2 worse? imo the LW2 is more strategic. in LW2, you can actually choose which missions to partake and choose a squad that is fit for a mission type. you can even bail your squad thats currently infiltrating if a more important mission came up. not to mention, you are also managing havens and advent strength in a region. that's why I prefer LW2 because the game is encouraging you to be proactive. LW1 is too passive for me.

hey, cool video! Have you played Xenonauts? At launch I would say it was inferior to XCOM with Long War but after few years of modding I think Xenonauts became my favourite game of this type

"and Floaters... are idiots"

My beautiful, special little boys

I’ve been trying to do a challenge of shooting down a battleship by month 3. Do you think it’s possible?

Huh, your description of "wrangling the rng with a lasso" is rather similar to how a friend of mine describes a ttrpg I'm developing. It also has a large focus on giving the player many options with no general best one, and it lets you affect the odds both of your own success and the enemy's more dramatically than most ttrpgs.
Btw having body envy of a mech cyborg is a big enby mood.

It's wild to find a channel that objectively has the best taste in and takes on games. I especially like the point about action economy spiral. Weaker strategy games require near-perfection and great luck otherwise the battle is FUBAR, something even more damning in a long-form campaign.

Anyway, now I'm gonna start looking into The Campaign for North Africa.

The bard will seduce

Serious question, which is better in your opinion, LW or LW Rebalance?

Modded jag3 has the problem you mentioned sorted out. Lw1 is superion because the fights are semi random generated.

It's good to see that EW Long War is still being played. It's my favorite game of all time.

Can you talk about diffrences between LW1 and LW2?

:)

I literally started a LW playthrough again today after giving up on my last one a couple of months ago. I'm really glad you popped up in my feed

Despite some flaws I have fond memories of XCOM 2 and Chimera Squad i guess I will give the first a chance and the mod too

As a person who's never actually managed to finish a game of XCOM, LW is completely terrifying in scope to me. Maybe I'll give it another crack.

I have limited time i can spend on videogames, but i like marathon long strategies, especially tactical strategies like Xcom. So i want to play long war but cant dedicate my full attention to it. So i play it like a roguelike. I randomise every soldier's class and stats as not to spend time pondering it, and then just force myself to improvise on the fly with what i happen to get. My campaigns dont last too long until i get wiped out, because this is an objectivelly inferior strategy, if you can call it that, considering how much macro matters in here. But i dont intend to win, i intend to loose as slowly as possible.