Long War 2 difficulty

[Bullett00th]

I've played X2 twice - on Veteran and Commander Bronzeman (I almost never restarted so consider it to be ironman)

Should I start LW2 on veteran or commander?
I did play through the majority of LW1 on normal.

[76561198322429733]

rookie.

[drake_hound]

rookie level definetly, unless you are used to IESS ABA and other mods that made you fight multiple pods. or you are used to triggering in vanilla multiple pods and win.

I would recommend rookie. cause reinforcement atleast have a marker.
On veteran the marker is removed.

[terminal_]

Start on rookie and work up from there. As a XCOM/EW/XCOM2 player on Veteran and Commander I can tell you the tactical combat is quite challenging on rookie, while the strategic layer seems to allow for the inevitable mistakes that you will make on your first playthrough.

You could start on Veteran, but will most likely have to play a couple dozen hours in a sacrifice campaign first and restart after you get the hang of things.

[Bullett00th]

Well the fact that I lost none of my soldiers on gate crasher Commander gave me a confidence boost, but I guess it won't be for long.

Too proud to try rookie, probably will downgrade to Veteran and probably will regret not having put rookie in the long run)

[terminal_]

Gatecrasher is relatively easy because you have concealment and a bunch of soldiers. The real difficulty comes from the large amount of missions available, the infilitration mechanic and the long time wounded soldiers stay out of action (without the AWC). This will restrict the amount of soldiers you can take in a mission and can snowball easily into having half your force inactive and the other half stretched thin to cover important missions, leading to even more casualties because you don't have enough people to go in with comfortable firepower.

But good luck. Maybe you can make Veteran work. Myself, I prefer a slightly easier game than having to restart mid-way through - I don't really have the time for more than one LW campaign.

[drake_hound]

Originally posted by Bullett00th:

Well the fact that I lost none of my soldiers on gate crasher Commander gave me a confidence boost, but I guess it won't be for long.

Too proud to try rookie, probably will downgrade to Veteran and probably will regret not having put rookie in the long run)

Well you should be fine. just don´t worry about it then. as said you will be in for a rude suprise later on.

But as said nothing people can´t handle who are used to trigger multiple pods and eliminating them.

[happy]

personally i went for commander on my first run.

combat was ok but i totally failed strategy wise.

so i restarted on veteran, and things are going as they should i think.
i'm in september, i m starting to lose soldiers, and i have made decent progress story/strategy wise.

your first run will fail, so you can even try it on impossible, your second run is going to be your real attempt but you ll have a few surprises still.

so dump any ego, play veteran(or whatvever the second difficulty is called, i always get mixed up).

overall; lw2 is one notch easier than lw1, you , being a decent experienced lw1 veteran, have solid hopes to eventually beat it on impossible.

but that is eventually, for now, diff 2 seems perfect for a first date.

diff 1 is simply too cheesy for you to have fun , imo.
having the game cheat in your favor is just too much, you deserve better, you deserve fair odds, go veteran.

[76561198322429733]

Fights would be okay at the start but I'd expect you'd be bogged down by DEs, rising advent strength and general lack of resources compared to vanilla.

I think it's not a matter of tactical skill but lack of LW2 knowledge and mechanics that would challenge you in a blind run.

[merccobb]

I play vanilla on Legend, but dropped down to Veteran for my first LW2 campaign. It was a miserable failure while I learned the new mechanics (especially on the strategy layer.) So I am currently doing quite well in my second campaign on Veteran, and will probably bump up to Commander if I do a third run. Veteran is a fun difficulty level, the tactical layer is still very dense and probably just as hard as Legend on vanilla, but at least with the slightly easier strategy layer (if you know what you are doing) you can leverage that into more success at the tactical level.

[Bullett00th]

The thing with LW1 was that at least on normal, I managed to scramble my way out of a very, VERY bad strategy situation. If it's possible in LW2, great. If not, second run it is then)

[Taxidermy Minotaur]

honestly im not very good at strategy games but i like 'em and i can handle the increased number of enemies to deal with but its the timing that i cant handle, whenever i play a mission where i have to get from point a to point b is just too short in my opinion, if it was 3 turns longer then i wouldn't be complaining but its the slow whittling down of the hostile numbers that takes my time. obviously i cant get too close otherwise my squadmates will get picked off 1 by 1, and if i get too far away i only have around 25% chance of hitting. All in all i agree with what the mod creator was trying to achieve but i think he failed to compensate the enlarged numbers with time.

[happy]

Originally posted by warden1221:

honestly im not very good at strategy games but i like 'em and i can handle the increased number of enemies to deal with but its the timing that i cant handle, whenever i play a mission where i have to get from point a to point b is just too short in my opinion, if it was 3 turns longer then i wouldn't be complaining but its the slow whittling down of the hostile numbers that takes my time. obviously i cant get too close otherwise my squadmates will get picked off 1 by 1, and if i get too far away i only have around 25% chance of hitting. All in all i agree with what the mod creator was trying to achieve but i think he failed to compensate the enlarged numbers with time.

pavonis actually have totally succeeded at that:

officers.

[drake_hound]

Originally posted by warden1221:

honestly im not very good at strategy games but i like 'em and i can handle the increased number of enemies to deal with but its the timing that i cant handle, whenever i play a mission where i have to get from point a to point b is just too short in my opinion, if it was 3 turns longer then i wouldn't be complaining but its the slow whittling down of the hostile numbers that takes my time. obviously i cant get too close otherwise my squadmates will get picked off 1 by 1, and if i get too far away i only have around 25% chance of hitting. All in all i agree with what the mod creator was trying to achieve but i think he failed to compensate the enlarged numbers with time.

You can mod LW2 anyway you want just like LW1 most people in the end just mod it their way.
Base LW2 have issue with dark events and other stuff and is still being patched.
New content patch is coming next patch. so different missions.

I am still in my first playtrough and doing well. but I already created a snowball effect. cause I was fighting swarming mission from the start, on commander even.
Cause didn´t understood infiltration and advent str at start.
So I don´t have intel and do not have supplies problems (well supply is the grind)
50+ troops managed to control the avatar countdown. all enemies are in there final tier with tons of dark events upgrade. but I think I will finish it.

After that it is simply mod LW2 my own way and have fun.
LW2 is definetly a addition to Xcom 2, and I am gratefull that Pavonis made it.
The troop upgrades in AWC and Officer school is excellent for soldier grinding.

If timers are the problems. just adjust the timers same for the avatar countdown.
Most people play with console or mods on LW2. they already adjusted the timers for veteran and rookies. if that is not enough adjust it again with ini edits.

They support both nexus and workshop. if you hate to everytime update the ini cause steam workshop restores it. then download nexus version. (it contains even more modding variables)

But all in all it is a really good mod, beter then Beta 1-10 LW1 (not the final product)
But in time it will get there too.

[Bullett00th]

one important question before I move on:

is evacuation mid-mission a viable tactic or will it hurt my strategic game too much?

[merccobb]

Evacuation mid-mission depends on the goals. For most guerilla missions, you actually must evacuate after completing the objective (unlimited, ridiculous reinforcements start dropping to force you to leave, and it is no use farming them as kill experience is very small compared to mission experience.) Evaluating whether you can afford to fail an objective and jet out early is both a tactical and a strategic evaluation. Very few goals are worth gambling losing a squad over, but some of them may be worth losing a soldier or two. You are hurt by evaccing early in the same ways as being hurt by skipping the mission entirely. Do it too much, and you will fall way behind. Do it not enough, you lose soldiers and equipment.

If you commit to a supply raid or troop column, which are your major sources of corpses=money, evacuating basically defeats the goal of the mission so you would have been better off to not go in the first place.

One thing to keep in mind is that Evac is not instant. I usually throw out the evac flare the turn I go loud, just in case, because it can take 4 or 5 turns to appear on large squad, low infiltration missions.