XCOM EW Long War Guide for lighthearted play through

Overview

Starting information to players, especially for ones who are new to Enemy Within Long War (LW) or are willing to enjoy tactics/strategy without extreme difficulties/annoyance

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide sufficient starting information to players, especially for ones who are new to Enemy Within Long War (LW) or are willing to enjoy tactics/strategy without extreme difficulties/annoyance .

As you may already be aware, the tougher part of LW is the early game, so the guide would be mostly focused on that part.

Assuming to play on version 1.0 so it might be obsolete when you read this guide.

Starting new campaing in LW

1. Difficulties
   “Normal” difficulty is recommended for your first playthrough, and even for the second or later. You can change difficulty while you are playing.
   “Normal” in LW are definitely harder than classic or even impossible in Vanilla, mostly due to air-management and increased number of missions.

   For players who want to play with lesser effort, LW support additional “Easy levels” since Beta 15e. Line-up of “Easy levels” might be equal (or close) difficulties as in Vanilla. Impossible of “Easy levels” is said to be easier than Normal in plain LW.
   You may have to install it before starting new campaing.

2. Starting Options
   Ironman : Not recommended for players who read this guide.

   If you have following DLC, you can turn on/off the DLC in this menu.

   Slingshot : If you turn on this, you need additional strategy and extra efforts, but it’s not a big deal if you follow this guide.

   Operation Progeny : You need less extra strategy than Slingshot DLC, so feel free to turn on this DLC.

3. Second Wave Options
   Note that, the effect of parameters are less than Vanilla XCOM in general; Hidden Potential increace some paramaters slightly but decrease the other parameters in same degrees at the same time, for instance.

   Recommended Second Waves :

   • Save Scum
   • Cinematic Mode
   • Commander’s Choice
   • Aiming Angles
   • The friendly Skies
   • We AreLegion
   • Perfect Information
   • Recon.

   Be careful that WeAreLegion just expand your squadsize by two from the outset. To keep decent game balance, the two additional members are supposed to support troops, they are supposed to bring supporting equipments such as medikits, Motion Tracker, and HE grenades just for causing environmental damage, no-shooting, no-killing, Their other roles are to open a door or collecting melds. This rule should remain until the time you would have squid size expansions in OTS without WeAreLegion. This helps you to feel your squad more tactical and neat during missions, but above all this could help you deal with some special missions such as Friends In Low Places.

   Other Second Waves which should be noted :

   • Dynamic War : Shorten your real playing time, but still longer than marathon in Vanilla.
   • Quick and Dirty : Many missions will have kind of fewer aliens, that might mean you have chance to trigger all 3 pods instead of all 4 pods at onece. At any rate, the effect would not be bigger than you thought.
   • United Humanity : EXALT is inactive, this makes game shorter.
   • Absolutely Critical : Quite dangerous. It is just said that the parameter is exactly same as Vanilla EW, but if you turn on this option, you must have critical problem with your own soldiers when some aliens fire reaction shots to your troops.
   • Training Roullette : Not like in Vanilla, TR is not useful to drastically change tactics. Ability trees in LW is complicated so that if you turn on TR, possibly end up with being just messy. Are you happy if you have choice of Tandem instead of Sprinter, and if an overwatcher doesn’t have choice of opportunist? TR also disable stats bonuses attached with some perks, that is a big downside.

4. Starting country
   Anything you want.
   Some bonus offer juicy effect that you can never achive later, like Patriae Semper Vigilis in Agentina.

   Note that alien abductions occurs one country, not offering selection between three countries as in Vanilla. And continent bonus is not offered at the outset. With these difference, choosing any country at the start affects your panic-dealing strategy less than Vanilla.
   I personally recommend countries in Europe, Asia or NA. In LW you’ll easily notice the importance of number of intercepters. It costs a lot so that you may want to launch additional sattellite in same continent on the early game, or to reduce airplane costs.
   But note that you do lose one country in March, that could be USA, in that case, your initial plan may fail.

5. .Ini-file modding
   You need extra effort to mod .ini file, but if you have skills and times, editting ini-file is recommended to lessen frustrations in game.
   I personally recommend to:
   • reduce time of fatigue/injury
   • reduce aircraft’s equipping time, recovering time
   • increase fundings
   • increase resource gains
   • change range restriction of sniper’s reaction shot as in Vanilla
   • modify order of ability trees in some classes
   • Increase starting number of soldiers in Barracks or decrease hiring cost

   If you want to do ini-modding but have no skills, try alternatively “Easy levels” file mentioned in Difficulty section.

1. Options
   Show alien health: Uncheck this if you don’t care alien’s health.

Just after started new campaign

1. Before starting Base Management
   Reading online manuals is strongly recommended.
   Things are totally different from Vanilla.
   For instance, you can get ghost grenade early in Vanilla, but not in LW, research tree is altered and restrictions are added, you can get available a shadow device (that is ghost grenade in LW) in late game, and that is not counted as grenade any more, not able to be equipped except by a psion. That is just one example in huge list of difference between Vanilla and LW.