XCOM: The Long War

The Game Room
1

Someone grabbed me the XCOM expansion Enemy Within for Christmas, so I’ve got back into the game. I played a normal/ironman mode through the new content - and I like it, solid expansion.

But I wanted something deeper. So I’m trying out The Long War. It’s a mod that redesigns the whole game for significantly more strategic depth.

Here’s the wiki and a few articles about it.

There are hundreds of changes, but the gist of it is: the aliens turn into a strategic faction with its own tools and goals. They have to try to subvert countries, gather resources, research new technologies/alien types, and your actions can affect their ability to do this. So instead of basically a story-mode series of campaign in the vanilla games, it’s two factions playing a strategy game against each other. You won’t be able to stop every alien activity, you’ll have to pick your fight and strike them in the most efficient way. It changes the way you approach missions - often having to pass on them for various reasons - rather than treating them all as stepping stones along the campaign.

It significantly deepens the soldiers. More stats, more classes, three abilities to choose from per rank, rather than 1-2, each subclass gets its own MEC with unique abilities. It has an officer system in which most soldiers are enlisted but you can bring along an officer to give some sort of squad bonus. But you have limited resources with which to train officers. The RPG element to assembling and training your soldiers is far deeper than the superficial choices given to you in the base game.

There’s depth to the interceptor component. You have individual pilots who can gain skill with kills, different levels of aggression for pursuing UFOs, and I think more depth to the module in general, but I haven’t gotten too far with it yet.

You have way more in the way of gear choices. A lot of class abilities like battle scanner and smoke grenade become inventory items, and you start with two items per soldier. There are 5 tiers of weapons (instead of the vanilla game’s bullets/lasers/plasma) and within each tier there are different types of weapons with different tradeoffs. For example a submachine gun might give you more movement points than an assault rifle, but does less damage and depletes its magazine faster.
Psionics plays a role earlier in the game and a lot of psionic abilities were added.

You can have up to 12 soldiers on missions, but soldiers suffer realistic wound recovery times (a guy that’s gravely wounded might take 6+ weeks to get back into action) and there’s a battle fatigue system that keeps you from simply taking your best 6 guys in mission after mission. You may end up rotating 40+ troops in battle. Soldier management becomes its own resource intensive component. The game moves slower in general - research takes longer, you gain fewer resources from missions, etc.

They also made it hard as hell. Some enemy types have been buffed significantly, and the AI seems to be a lot smarter, going for better positioning and flanking a lot more often. Some aliens were made a lot tougher, like sectoids getting psi panic, outsiders having 10 hp with 3hp per turn regen, thin men have 5 hp which makes them significantly harder to handle in the early game. Soldiers have to pass panic checks more often, and one of their teammates failing a panic check gives everyone else a panic check. My first time out I actually failed the little intro mission that you get after you select your continent - my soldiers were facing some sectoids who panicked my troops, flanked them, and slaughtered them. I had to restart the game and pick the “cinematic mode” second wave option - not quite sure why it’s called that, it’s just a straight +15 to hit buff for your soldiers - because it’s very hard even with that.
Anyway, I’m just getting started, and I was wondering if anyone else has played it or wants to give it a try. If you like the premise of XCOM, but thought the strategy elements and soldier customization/specialization was too shallow, this would be right up your alley.

I think they have a version for just enemy unknown, without the expansion, but they stopped supporting it a few versions back. It’s better if you have enemy within - then you just run the installer from my first link.

2

This looks really cool and I’m going to check it out soon.
Thanks for the info!

3

I’m really liking the mod. It is indeed “the long war” - I’m about 8 hours into the playthrough, in month 3, and I think I’ve researched 3 or 4 basic things - the only significant upgrade I have for my troops is slightly useful armor and SCOPEs. At this rate, the campaign seems like it could easily last 50+ hours. They do have a “not so long war” second wave option that gives all the improvements of the mods but with a shorter game span.

Aliens have a range of stats and abilities, somewhat like the soldiers. Thin men seem to have an p range of 3-6 for example. Some aliens have class abilities - some chrysalids have lightning reflexes, which is pretty mean. But not all of them. There’s also a damage resistance stat that varies between soldiers and may vary with aliens - it simply subtracts the amount from the damage you do. The stealther units, the ones that suffocate people, have a DR of 2, so when you’re using regular weapons that do 3-4 damage, you’re only doing 1-2 damage against them per hit. It makes them quite difficult, and gives more value to high damage weapons.

You can defintely get missions you can’t handle early on. I’ve had the chance to raid landed supply ships, but the 12-15 aliens that come with them just slaughter my squad of fuckups. It’s very slow to get decent soldiers because you rotate them so much, and they die a lot. A wound can keep them out of battle a month. So I only have a couple of soldiers at rank 3. I’m regularly having to order new soldiers to keep a rotation of 40+ because of the death and wounds.

Alien AI is a lot smarter too. They place a heavier emphasis on flanking and they make better decisions about when to move, when to shoot, when to suppress, and when to overwatch. It makes the game significantly more challenging even without accounting for their newly buffed HP and abilities.

It’s really tough. I’m trying not to save scum, but I’ve restarted battles after I’ve had my whole squad wiped out. I’ve already lost 2 or 3 satellites out of my 6. Interceptor management is a much bigger component of the game.

It kind of amazes me how much they’ve done. The game isn’t mod friendly at all - they basically had to go in the game configuration files, tweak stuff, see what it did, and turn that into a complex overhaul of the whole game.

One problem is that it’s tricky to know where you stand. If you’re going to lose a game, you probably won’t know about it until many hours after it becomes hopeless. Oh well, the journey is the important part.

4

There are a lot of things I would have liked to have seen in XCOM, but “harder difficulty” isn’t one of them. So I won’t be trying The Long War, because the changes I might want are bundled together with changes I know I don’t want.

5

So my first play through I focused too much on getting lots of satellites up, like in the vanilla game. Bad idea. Your income isn’t based on satellite coverage to the same degree, so there’s not as much reason to get them up quickly, and you end up neglecting other things. I didn’t have any labs until a couple months in, and I fell behind. This is especially painful with interceptors, which are a much bigger and deeper part of the game. If the aliens are advancing their UFO research while you are stagnating for your interceptor technology, a time will come when you can’t even shoot down small ships, so you can’t stop anything.

I was also late to build a foundry, and there’s a ton of good stuff there. Expensive though. Makes me wonder if it’s worth starting in Asia and then focusing on getting another continent’s bonus first.

I think I may have reached a point where I’m just too far behind to advance. I’m still using laser weapons and tier 2 armor against muton elites, sectoid mechs, beserkers, etc. UFOs are running freely in the world and I can’t intercept them. It’s frustrating since I’m a good 40 hours into the campaign, but I don’t know if I can salvage this one.

There really isn’t a simple way in game of making it easier. It’s definitely really tough. But you could edit the gamecore ini to make it a lot easier if you wanted to. You could double funding, tweak weapon values, etc. I wouldn’t change any of the in-combat stuff - it’s good that it’s challenging - but you could flood yourself with resources to make the strategic element easy.

6

Are there more missions? Or are the missions longer? My one gripe with all the X-Com games is how frequently the ground missions come. It seems like there is never time to do research.

7

The default game is a lot longer, so there are more missions, yeah. It’s kind of like turning a civ 5 game to epic or marathon - there will be a lot more turns between eras.

Using the “not so long war” keeps things the same in calendar terms of how long the game will last, but lowers the mission rate frequently, along with the requirements for researching/building/upgrading stuff accordingly. Not money, since you’re still getting as many months of monthly funding, but like how many alloys you need for stuff. So if you’re worried about the frequency of combat, not so long war is definitely the way to go.

There’s definitely “time to do research”, though, since you’ll need to research a whole lot of stuff to beat the game. I don’t know how long the games will last, but I’m guessing anywhere from 50-100 hours for a normal (not “not so long war”) campaign.

8

Do you need Enemy Within?

9

You could use one of the old versions before they switched development over to EW, but those are probably a lot rougher and I’d recommend just grabbing EW. It’s a good addition to the game anyway.

10

Seconding this; While PROBABLY not worth the $30 price tag, EW really ups the ante on a lot of stuff, and just generally makes the game a lot better.

11

Is it available for Android phones? That’s where I’ve been blasting aliens.

What I’ve longed for is any way to increase the difficulty WITHOUT increasing alien accuracy. Just going up one llevel to “Classic” makes their accurate so high it trivializes cover. The player should be afraid to leave the safety of cover, not jaded by its ineffectiveness.

Does this mod provide that ?

12

No, it’s not going to be available for the mobile version. I don’t think anyone has ever modded a game for a phone in that way, but I’m not sure.

And yes, the difficulty in the game doesn’t come from a straight accuracy bump to the aliens. It comes from having them use better tactics, having to face more of them (though with more troops of your own), giving them a range of special abilities/perks, and having the alien commander able to upgrade his troops with research just like the player. I don’t know if there’s a straight accuracy bump, but playing on normal, there doesn’t seem to be. They miss plenty when I’m in cover.

13

From watching Beagle’s videos (thanks bldysabba for recommending them in this thread), it seems like low cover is a lot more effective in Long War than in vanilla. That makes several of the maps more playable, since some have very sparse high cover.

The bigger squad sizes and expanded troop classes also give the human side a lot more flexibility and overall firepower. And taking down supply barges can severely limit the resources that the aliens have to work with.

The overall increase in complexity is pretty daunting though. My experience with it is strictly second-hand, as I’m still trying to beat Ironman Impossible on vanilla, and Long War isn’t available for the Xbox 360 version.

14

I restarted on a “not so long war” campaign a few weeks ago. Even with that modifier, it’s still a very long game. I didn’t record when I started in terms of hours played, but I would guess that even a not so long war campaign could easily add up to 80 hours.

Not so long war is indeed easier - by not requiring so many missions, you’re able to get troops some rest between battles, so you can use your best troops more often. Without not so long war enabled, you’d have to rotate through 40 or 50 troops as everyone got fatigued or injured, but with shorter campaign it’s more like 20-30.

But I’m also doing better because I’m cheating a little (I adjusted the game to give me 20% more funding, less will damage when incapitated, higher stun chance from arc throwers) and I’m save scumming fairly frequently. I don’t know if the game is beatable without save scumming. I’m pretty much restoring when I get one of my top 20 guys killed. Without that core group of top tier soldiers, I’m not sure I could win battles even if I’m winning the strategic layer. Sometimes I’ll take a bunch of low level troops on easy missions like after I shoot down a light UFO, and I still struggle without my rank 6+ troops. If I wasn’t savescumming, and people were dying before they got high rank, I’m not sure how I’d win battles.

I’m fairly close to the end game now, my interceptors are finally able to take down most alien craft, I just started making firestorms, and I’m bleeding the aliens dry of resources because I’ve got global satellite coverage and I’ve interrupted quite a few of their resource gathering missions. I managed to shoot down and capture an assault carrier (terror ship) which is the first time I’ve done that, in the vanilla game or otherwise. My main limitation right now is actually elerium and alloys. Everything I want - MECs, high tier weapons and armor, aircraft armaments, pretty much anything - uses a lot of them. I skimped on the workshops (which give rebates on materials used) early on in favor of labs - and while I did a lot of research fast, I definitely started running up against material limitations. Never sell alloys or elerium, take the foundry upgrade that lets you recover more alloys - not sure about the elerium one, it comes fairly late and costs a decent amount of elerium to research, but it’s probably worthwhile.

MECs are awesome in this game. In addition to having 8 classes (which determine perks/abilities), they’re extremely modular. You can plug in whatever weapon, secondary weapon, and buff modules you want into any class’ mech. Mostly I’ve built mecs that rush into combat, heavily armored, and flamethrower the shit out of everyone. The flamethrower is a devastating weapon because of the large area of effect, damage, and it can cause panic for multiple turns. I definitely recommend running at least 1 mec suit (you can have multiple augmented soldiers who can immediately re-use the suit for another mission when the first guy is fatigued or injured).

SHIVs are also quite useful in the game, they’ve given them a lot of different types of equipment you can load them up with. The stock SHIV may not be worth building, but fairly early on you can build an alloy shiv, and those are extremely useful scouts and especially civilian rescuers on terror missions. Definitely have at least one alloy shiv.

It’s been a worthwhile experience and significantly more interesting than the base game, but it’s a very long game - I suspect once I finish up this campaign I’ll be finished with the urge to play the game.

15

I missed this the first time through. Going to have to look at getting the expansion and trying the mod out. I picked up the base game but never put too much time into it.

16

I only recently found this mod and have started a new campaign. So far it’s been a blast, though it’s a lot more difficult than either the original game or the DLC add on games. There are a ton more tactical choices though right out of the game with weapons and equipment and even bolt on armor additions, plus a ton of new classes. You will need them all, though, as even before I had my first counsel meeting I managed to bring down one of their large cruisers and it was a nightmare. Literally I was fighting multiple 4-6 alien groups through out the ship and around it, and when I finally made it to their engineering/bridge there were 6 energy commanders (one with 3 full bars of health!), a group of 4 heavy floaters, 2 groups of grey aliens and 2 of those armored aliens with plasma guns (and this doesn’t count floaters, thin men aliens, those flying stealth squid aliens, greys and assorted other nasty aliens on the way to get there). It was unreal and I ended up having to reload and basically retreat as there was no way to fight that sort of thing without even my first weapon upgrade or new armor.

That said, it’s been a total blast and I highly recommend this mod to anyone who liked the original game. Like Enemy Within, it really remakes the game into something a lot better than the original, which, IMHO, was already fun to play.

17

I posted this some months back, hopefully it helps some:

There are some things you need to remember in Long War.

  1. Don’t worry about nations backing out of XCom. You can get them back later. Indeed I would suggest if you aren’t losing some countries you are probably doing it wrong.

  2. SKIP THE FIRST TERROR MISSION! Really…just skip it. Yes you will lose that country. See #1. You can get them back later.

  3. Rename your fighter aircraft (you can take the default the game suggests). If you do they gain experience.
    3b) Don’t ignore your fighter aircraft. They are very important as the game goes on to protect your satellites and so on. Keep them upgraded.

  4. Build a deep bench. You need a very deep pool of specialists to be able to tap.
    4b) Don’t forget SHIVs. I almost never bothered with them in vanilla XCom. Here they are much more useful.

  5. Be sure to mix up the training trees. There are a LOT of tech specialties and having a mix is good. XCom Long War Perk Tree (some may deem this a spoiler)

  6. Bait alien overwatches with soldiers who have Rapid Reaction (or whatever the perk is that makes it very hard to hit a soldier with an overwatch shot).

  7. Be super careful about getting aggro. It is all too easy to aggro 2-3 groups at once and then you are in big trouble.

18

Also, while it is a long series (actually two series on this), the Northernlion videos on Long War are pretty enlightening.

He fails in his first run through but that is still interesting and he notes tips viewers would give him which sheds light on the inner workings of the game (to some extent).

19

Holy crap this game is freaking impossible! I feel like I’m in quicksand and can never really get ahead of the curve. I can’t seem to get tech fast enough to keep up, and the computer keeps throwing increasingly impossible scenarios at me. The latest are swarms of aliens with ridiculous hit points and shooting abilities. The last mission I did there were 2(!!) mechtoids, 2 berserkers, and 2 cyberdiscs, along with the usual cast of thousands of all the other pain in the ass types. When it was over (after seemingly thousands of reloads), I had killed over 40 aliens and 2/3rds of my squad is in the hospital for 30+ days (one poor bastard is in for something like 49). I can’t keep up with the alien space ship raids (I still have the fighters you start off with, though armed with lasers…not that it makes much difference), I’ve lost most of the really wealthy countries, and I’m in the red for my monthly credits from the counsel.

This is a very, very difficult game, and while I like the additions I would highly recommend anyone, even veterans from the 2 earlier games start with the easiest setting. Classic has been a nightmare, and I have to admit that I might not be able to salvage this game unless I get a break and some breathing room to research tech, actually build some stuff and get my guys healed up (and maybe get the Firestorm researched and into production).

20

Haven’t played yet, and really in two minds about it as some of the mods sound like they’d just increase the frustration:

Increased panic mode: I’m sure real soldiers would panic at certain times, I’m not sure that elite soldiers would panic to the extent of firing on their own teammates so regularly.

Enemies have higher hit points: just sounds like the bad old days of artificial difficulty: the boss can take 50 rockets to the face for some reason.
Now, it could be argued it’s justified in the case of fighting bio-engineered extraterrestrials. Sure, but if we’re going down the realism road, that just makes us question the premise of a conventional firefight happening in these circumstances. As a game, XCOM is fun partly because it’s not about trying to converge vast amounts of fire on a single target but making good tactical decisions.