[LWOTC] Early game strategic advice

[Torus the Infected]

TLDR: I'm a complete noob - what:
1) three technologies should I research first;
2) three buildings should I build first.

I started playing two days ago and the learning curve is obviously massive. I've watched some great build guides for soldiers (thank you Der Ava and Jorbs!) and I think I understand the tactical game now. I want to start a proper campaign, but I don't know what research and buildings to prioritise at the start.

Do I do a bunch of random research projects that can be completed quickly? Do I choose one technology, e.g. the next tier of weapons, and research that no matter how long it takes? Must one start with the resistance related research, or can that wait until after weapons and/or armor?

Should I immediately build the Guerilla Tactics School (GTS), or is the Resistance Communications building the top priority? What should be the second, third and fourth building priority?

Thank you in advance for any advice!

[Païtiti]

Luckily it's XCOM 2 not the first itteration so it really doesn't matter that much. You are not forced to follow a certain path because otherwise you lose the game. It is not like that. You are pretty free in your choices in my opinion.
So if you ask for three techs I'd say -> modular weapons -> magnetic weapons -> the first armor tech

Same is true for building. It is not Xcom 1 where you would have to build in a certain way to get all uplinks asap because otherwise you might lose. It is fluid. You can basicially do whatever you want. I do it always like this:
Your ships is 4x3 ->
X X X
X X X
X X X
X X X

I always build workshops in the middle section like that (W for workshop)
X X X
X W X
X W X
X X X

That way you get the max amount of gremlings and engineers out. I place buildings that don't need engis on the corner. So the GTS, which is the first building you wanna build, goes into a corner like that:
GTS X X
X W X
X W X
X X X

Other buildings that need engis ofc go into a possition they can be reached by the workshops. That is true especially for uplinks (UL). My first two rows in the beginning of the game thus looks like this

GTS Resistance Ring Trainingscenter
Power Workshop UL
The third row repends ofc on your playstyle and how fast you advance in the game.

Just a few comments: The GTS is important in the beginning for basicially one thing, namely squad size increase. You want to get that asap. The one soldier makes a difference.

In terms of research: You get these inspirations from time to time where you can rush a tech. Those are a double edged sword. If they are really worth it (like +1 dmg on all weapons of type X) you wanna do it. If it's something not very usefull (like having the next excavation free) you don't want waste time on it.

All in all you can try out a little bit. It is much more forgiving than Xcom. If you don't play on legendary or commander which you won't do as noob anyways it doesn't matter that much.

[megansweden]

While interesting advice, that seems like a mish-mash of XCOM EU/EW build order and XCOM2. By "Uplink" I assume you mean Resistance Comms, because uplinks are not a thing in XCOM2. Can you even build multiple Workshops? I have never even looked, unless I'm playing Covert Infiltration where the Workshop actually serves a real purpose I don't honestly recommend building even one unless you're severely lacking in Engineers.

But OP was asking about Long War of the Chosen, and that's a completely different beast. DerAva has a full set of tutorials for the strategic layer of Long War 2, I don't know if he did a fresh set for LWOTC but a lot of the strategic layer is basically the same so the old tutorials are still mostly valid.

[Païtiti]

Originally posted by megansweden:

But OP was asking about Long War of the Chosen, and that's a completely different beast.

Ah okay. I see. Then forget what I've said.

[99Random]

You are supply starved through most of the game with LWOTC with lower income and the huge expenditure with the requirement that you have to buy each individual upgraded weapon and armor. You also want maximum AP generation since some classes have multiple amazing high tier abilities and these get VERY costly.

So yes, the Ring as usual and then GTS. The only GTS training i buy ASAP is Vulture since this quickly pays itself back and then is really nice profit.

Only build 1 power module and 1 Radio (when you get it) since there are lots of opportunities to increase these with Ring and missions. You get enough engineers that Workshop is totally useless and a waste of supplies & power. Lab is not useless, but of so little value i usually do not build. Again, with supplies at a premium, bad investments like these are ones to skip.

Build more squads ASAP. I usually have 3 and building a 4th squad by the start of the second month with 5 by late game. You want to be sending these troops out on missions as much as you possibly can early when the basic ballistic weapons are still useful. So Intel all the way


I do research like this:
BioTech>>Trooper Autopsy: This gets me Proving grounds. Although I may not build it right away, my research will be very focused soon so I get this done to build when I can

Resistance Coms: Same as above as this is just to get it done

Now, all out weapon research until Advanced Mag Weapons is completed. I only build laser weapons as absolutely necessary (the +aim is nice for the low aim troops) in order to save resources for mag weapons

Once again for emphasis, you want as many squads as you can as early as possible and be sending them out as often as will stat allows. This allows level up with ballistic weapons, free engineers & scientists and Liberation advancement that has several bonuses.

[99Random]

Also, with Infiltration being an important new concept, i very highly suggest carefully reading this whole page (I missed the Officer effect until recently!)

https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Infiltration_(LWOTC)

[Heau]

This should've been posted in the long war subforum.

The first 3 tech order aren't that critical. It's the path after that's a bit more game defining. It seems people either skip laser weapons by rushing psi-ops and teching straight to magnetic, or do a more traditional laser opener in which case psi ops are very delayed and possibly not used at all.

for the psi ops rush its something like
comm
modular weapons
alien biotech
sectoid autopsy
psionics (I forget if it requires more tech)
trooper
officer
magnetics

Buildings would be
#1 GTS
#2 Psi lab

Minimal condition for this strat is to grab an elerium core and not destroy the sectoid corpse on gatecrashers and some high/very high intel rookies. It also requires at least 2 scientists so short of mission luck, you will have to buy the scientists from black market the first 2 months of the game. I usually do that regardless of psi ops rush but just to point ou there's another 200 supplies there.

I was completely sold on this strat early on when I began LWOTC and have since moved to significantly prefer the alternative below because the power curve is a lot smooter. With the above strat there's a window around mutons force level where you still don't have magnetics and basically need to 7 man all missions for safety or risk a game crippling failure.

2nd strat has much smoother power curve and its something like
comm
modular weapons
alien biotech
trooper
laser
advanced laser

Buildings would be
#1 GTS
#2 PG

I usually try to rush PG and build 3-4 Spark units ASAP. But every spark beyond the first is very resource intensive. I sell every basic PCS and weapon mods, datapad and excess corpse early game. Like psi ops, they are extremely strong when they are leveling on curve but kinda weak if you delay them.

I play on cmdr and I find the spark B/O runs a lot smoother than the psi ops B/O personally. Maybe on lower diff psi ops B/O is a bit more viable because psi ops training time is reduced a little and you get a few more days before advent force level increases.

I'm sure laser into psi lab works too even though it delays psi lab a bit longer but short of catching an early +3 avenger power mission bonus, I don't think you can plan around playing both psi ops heavy and spark heavy. It's either or.

In my personal experience, grenadiers are a lot weaker in the psi ops B/O while technicals are weaker in the spark B/O so I [commander's choice mod] more of one or the other based on my B/O plans.

While my tactical layer gameplay has changed tremendously over the few hundred hours I sank into LWOTC, I'd say my strategic layer is what held me back the most early on. After finding out about the conditions for retaliation missions, I started aggressively mission farming 1-2 areas at most at a time while essentially shutting down all other areas. I would often delay contact of other regions until the strength in starting region became too much to handle in order to delay other chosen contact/level progression. But as a result, I was always starved on intel and resources due to limited mission choice and would rarely do more than 6 missions per month. Nowadays I hardly ever shut down a region, I aggressively contact neighboring regions very early and leave intel running. As a result, I get to counter far more dark events too but have to deal with chosen retaliations nearly on cooldown.

[A Pebble]

You can do pretty much whatever you want in whatever order. The whole point of Long War is to break up the monotony of Vanilla and allow you to branch out in any direction. Building the GTS will allow you to train up some rookies to whatever you want earlier on and train up Officers sooner. But you might miss out on some important early game income without the Ring.

TIPS:
1. Much like in vanilla XCOM 2, I find rushing Mag Weapons is very beneficial. An important thing to note is that in LWOTC you have to actually build each weapon and armor piece like in XCOM 1. I personally end up skipping Laser Weapons completely to save my alloys and supplies on Magnetics.

2. You DO NOT have to do EVERY mission that comes up. If you have the manpower and the infiltration time to get in and do a mission, then by all means.. But don't throw your Squaddies into a Light-Moderate activity mission thinking you can do it without casualties.

3. You will be supply starved heavily in Long War. For the first few months you will likely find yourself instantly spending all your supplies right after collecting a drop.. For this reason it is important to Liberate regions and keep a soldier advising your havens to prevent spies destroying your income. (I didn't know this in my first playthrough. Imagine my shock when I collected 1700 supplies one month and it said "-955 Unknown Cause" in lost supplies...)

4. DO NOT SELL CORPSES. Especially Officer corpses. Almost every proving ground item needs a corpse to research it and a corpse to make it. The Skulljack being the most prominent. For this reason you should always try and do missions with the "Full Salvage" tag as well since these are the only ones where you can collect corpses.

5. Liberate a region as soon as possible. You will not discover the Avatar project until you liberate a region. The Project still continues even if you haven't discovered it yet... So the sooner you liberate a region the sooner you can start fighting back again the Death Clock.

6. Overall, Long War requires a lot more patience and planning than Vanilla. You will likely fail your first attempt (or several, if you are me). Don't let it discourage you. Long War is definitely the superior way to enjoy this game.

[Heau]

Originally posted by A Pebble:

You can do pretty much whatever you want in whatever order. The whole point of Long War is to break up the monotony of Vanilla and allow you to branch out in any direction. Building the GTS will allow you to train up some rookies to whatever you want earlier on and train up Officers sooner. But you might miss out on some important early game income without the Ring.

TIPS:
4. DO NOT SELL CORPSES. Especially Officer corpses. Almost every proving ground item needs a corpse to research it and a corpse to make it. The Skulljack being the most prominent. For this reason you should always try and do missions with the "Full Salvage" tag as well since these are the only ones where you can collect corpses.

I agree that the build order/tech order has some flexibility to it but I don't think any and all builds give you the same chances to succeed. Viable and equally viable aren't the same. I used to build the ring first in my early playthroughs because I felt it gave me the option to select reward to compensate what I didn't get via rng from guerrilla ops but it turned out to have more to do with my strategic layer gameplay being weak and offering me too little mission options. Ring missions yield less exp than guerilla ops for the time spent and average less loot if you can spare some advent loot grabs on guerilla ops.

I also vehemently disagree with tip #4. There certainly is a learning curve to knowing what corpses can be safely sold and which ones you should hold onto for crafting needs, but they are too important a source of early supplies to merely not sell anything. I used to hold onto all of my corpses in early playthroughs and my game and especially my early and midgame have substantially improved due to the extra supplies from corpse sales.

Always keep at least 1 for the autopsy research if you haven't done it already, there's only a handful few autopsies that can reasonably be skipped the whole game. But to give a few examples...

If you don't rush psi labs, you have very limited use of sectoid corpses beyond autopsy. Maybe keep 1-2 spare for mindshields in case you need to deal with the warlock chosen early but you can sell most of them until mid to late game. I only equip this item as a permanent fixture on templars.

Since you are resources (and esp. alloy) starved, you may find it best to delay alloy plating (+3 plating) for much later in the game, in which case you can sell all trooper corpses until you are comfy enough resource-wise to start crafting them. For me this sometimes happens only by september or october. I'll often have sold 50+ trooper corpses before then. I almost always sell the ~6 spare trooper corpses from a flawless gatecrasher upon initial contact of the black market in order to buy engineer/scientist/+whatever unit from the BM the first month. I've had games where chrysalid bodies harvesting was plentiful midgame and I skipped alloy plating entirely.

I'll sell all of my viper corpses until my health pools become large enough to warrant crafting nanomedikits.

I only keep ~2-3 spare officer bodies until skullmining is researched around midgame. They are easy to come by anyway. Note that they are easy to come by because if you skip the skulljack story mission until the very late game, not only do you spare yourself facing codex enemies a lot longer, but the game guarantees at least one officer on any given mission until quest completion AFAIK.

I could go on.

With that said, for common bodies like vipers, I'll try to hoard up to 10 for instant autopsy research before sellling the bulk.

[A Pebble]

@Heau

The tip is meant for someone who is saying they are new. They won't know the uses for each corpse on their first play-through hence that tip.

[Heau]

Fair enough. As I said, its also how I rolled early on and the reason why I reacted so much is because I feel it took me too long to move away from corpse hoarding for safety. Like to the point where I feel it held my learning curve back. Less front loaded power means more injuries, fewer missions, less snowball, crews behind on level pacing, etc.

It's certainly more frustrating to unlock a tech and realize you already sold the bodies you needed for that key item piece than it may be to slowly fall behind the curve and slowly drown against the power creep between your crews and the AI but I'm not entirely convinced it is necessarily better for the learning process itself.

Anyway, the wiki equipment and weapons page are really great to help speed up this curve and I also found "[WOTC] Show Tech Rewards" mod, a UI mod, to help alleviate some of that.

Like seeing that viper autopsy unlocks viper rounds and nanomedikits repeatedly eventually helps connect the dots of what items need what corpse. It's not entirely perfect, like the need for priest corpses for advanced psi amps is actually in the elerium research and whatnot but it covers a fair bit as a built-in interface addition that you can revisit every time you look for your next tech.

[Torus the Infected]

Thank you all for the detailed replies - it is much appreciated!