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

"and Floaters... are idiots" My beautiful, special little boys

7:40 - The way the aesthetics and mechanics in the Xcom series create that theme of moral compromise w/o overtly drawing attention to it is one of my favorite things about the series too. I love how in the og UFO Defense, strategies like "preemptively killing civilians in Chryssalid missions" or "becoming an indiscriminate arms manufacturer" can emerge solely thru mechanical interactions. When they release Xcom 3 in 2030, hopefully they won't screw that up.

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

I want to add a couple of things for anyone who might be discouraged by the campaign length/difficulty. This is, of course, directed to people that haven't played the mod and are discourage by its perceived difficulty and time requirement. This mod is a true jewel that nobody should be put off of because of difficulty: 1) the game doesn't have to be incredibly long. There is a Dynamic War Second Wave option that can be tweaked to cut down in mission numbers and research time significantly (I think default is 1/2, but you can set it to 1/8 or whatever you want, or you could even double the length if that's what you're after) 2) the game is certainly harder than vanilla, but it's not RIDICOUSLY HARD unless you want it to be. Nobody is forcing you to play Impossible/Ironman. Play Normal with reloads allowed, use the Training Config if you want it to be even easier. You can also significantly reduce the difficulty if you can't handle the default settings with Second Waves alone: crank those Cinematic War, Durability and Friendly Skies Second Wave options on and go to town. There's absolutely no shame in doing so. 3) the wiki is your best friend. It's really well done and complete, remember to check it out and it'll solve 95% of your doubts. For anything else, our community is small but helpful and welcoming. Post on Reddit or Discord and people will always help. Remember that what you see on RU-vid/Twitch is usually content made by people with thousands of hours playing at max difficulty and sometimes even modding the mod to make it even harder. If that's not your cup of tea, just don't do it. It's a game, it has to fun, and if really tough challenge isn't your definition of fun, just lower it, reload if things go wrong and learn at your pace. Hell, I have 1k hours at least and I still use Friendly Skies even when playing I/I and I know I'm not the only one. I don't like having to play Excel Sheets simulator to play the air game, and the air game gates all the fun toys I love to use, so why make life more frustrating when the solution is a simple button I can press at the start of a campaign? BTW, this applies to LWotC as well. I personally found it a lot of fun, I only have put like 100 hours in but I surprised me in a good way. It's certainly a completely removed experience from LW1, but it's not worse in any way, just different. I'm loving it, but LW1 still holds a special place in my heart.

I think the best thing i heard about this mod was the Devs themselves said the base game is a "30 hour tutorial for long war."

7:59 breaking the ice with enbies is always so easy. Ask them what their ideal robotic body and you have an hour long convo stacked up

I’m so glad you brought up the individual enemy AI. One of the worst changes in xcom 2 is that almost every enemy behaves the same. The one that gets me the most is that they always run suppression where as in Enemy Within only the psycho mechtoids would do that.

LWotC is the GOAT, my man. The. GOAT. Still being improved, tweaked, gradually reworked by its biggest fans years after its first beta release into the consummate tactical shooter. My bet is that we won't see a better one until the 2030s.

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.

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.

I got this video in my recommended 2 days ago. Last night I had the thought that I'd play Long War. You sold me on it. Today, I just 5 minutes ago beat the landed large ship early in the game. I've never had an XCOM experience like Long War 1. Thank you for making this video, and thank you for introducing not just me but many other people to this fucking masterpiece.

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

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.

Thank you for making an enjoyable, well thought out, and articulate video. I especially enjoy how you, unlike about 90% of RU-vid, sprinkle in memes as a nice comedic punch rather than shitting memes all over because if one meme is funny then, you know, a turd pile of them will be hilarious, right? Also, big props for leaving in natural voice over speech rather than editing out any spaces between words making it sound like you are doing it all in one breath like a lot of RU-vidr's do. Thanks.

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.

im a big LWotC fan, i do own xcom 1 but didnt play it nearly as much but ill probably go back to it just for long war

I'm not sure if I've ever heard the MEC death voice lines... Man I need to play More Long War.

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

6:12 - Excellent sound bite. Love it.

After a few years hiatus, I just installed this on my Steam Deck yesterday. Mainly I just want a save before Newfoundland and another just before Base Defence so I can play those two over and over. God I love LW Newfoundland.

Agree ! Ive never completed a single long war campaign but played more than 800 hours, probably more. Finally when muton elites show up my game starts spiraling down and i loose too many missions, objectives or soldiers. But the game itself is so much fun, so rewarding and yet so challenging. I did the early game so often i pulled off Portent without getting shot several times. Its really nice to see somebody else thinks this mod is jut simply amazing.

I love EW But being able to blow exalt with Duke nukem while predator runs around with a plasma katana being covered by MGS quiet with a kak98 is priceless

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.

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

Hey, not sure if anyone has ever brought this up, but there is a mod called "Squadrons Unleashed 2" that helps change the air combat to something more enjoyable if you prefer more content. Last I played (around a few months), it was integrated with LW well enough without many bugs or soft locks to function properly, just be mindful of hitting the ESC key when engaging UFOs.

4:23 "the banner saga" - PEAK story based game- if anyone was wondering, HIGHLY recommended but beware because after you finish all 3 games you won't find ANYTHING scratching that itch as of may 2024.

I have been playing computer games for 40 years, and Long War is my absolute favourite. I have probably racked up over 2000 hours on it, the equivalent of an entire working year! I have never managed to complete the game without save-scumming at least once, even on the lowest difficulty setting.

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

The part at 8:45 with the AI, good AI is supposed to be more believable than competent. You want the AI to make openings for the player or else it’ll just be frustrating

Ngl, seeing a guy wear a hat with a comm headset while wearing PSI Armor is some kind of Schadenfreude, and I like it.

I love this game mode too. But the amount of times I got bullied by it made me stop playing it. Especially because I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong in order to fix it. You certainly made me think about playing it again but quite honestly, I am scared of it... and emotionally scarred by it!

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.

Lost my 100+ hour long war campaign to a hard drive failure. I felt the fury of 10000 suns.

I play a new LW1 for each new kid I have. Just starting the campaign for #4. We will see if he survives! It is the best game of all time imo.

Xcom, titanfall and DnD ? A man of culture I see...

S-tier video man, keep it up, I beg you LOL!

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

This is a really well put together video that may have convinced me to try LW1 for myself, since I've never touched it or the associated base game. I did have a question concerning your feelings on LW2 though, more specifically, why do you feel as if it's a far inferior experience to LW1? This is a genuine question born of curiosity, as I've only ever played LW2 and am curious as to some of the fundamental differences between, on paper, similar mods. I'm sure that messing around with LW1 would probably pretty quickly answer my questions concerning the contrast between the two, I'd like to hear it from you first if at all possible, partially because subjectivity is fun, and partially just because I enjoy the way you explain things.

Oh boy time to reinstall and go for my 1500th hour of Long War 1

You've hit on most of what made me really enjoy long war, but I'd say the motion tracker bears specific mentioning. The worst thing by far about the base game is the pod system discouraging aggressive flanking (what if I activate more enemies?). Motion tracker fixes that, lets you know when you're at risk of uncovering a new pod, so you can actually decide whether it's worth it or try to finesse it anyway. The other things was dynamic war; I could not have played the mod without it, far too many missions for me otherwise. The customizability in general is a huge strength of the mod.

I'd be very interested to hear your opinions on LW2 and especially LWoTC.

You nailed it in the beginning. More characters is just BETTER. Same for RPG's, like the OG Baldur's Gates, Planescape: Torment, or Icewind Dale. I prefer running 6 characters to 4. The extra options in battle (and out of it) are just SO MUCH worth it. Probably my favourite aspect of Long War.

I’ll try it out now.

JA3 recommends to hire *at least* 3, but you always end up playing with 6 mercs and you can get 6 right from the start. It's also very easy to reduce the RNG to a bare minimum. In your overwatch clip at 1:48 you're simply running into an issue with objects blocking your shots, which is annoying to figure out, but also incredibly easy to avoid once you understand what's happening. Past the earliest stages you can play JA3 on the hardest difficulty while getting 100% chance to hit on every shot/melee attack that matters, because weapon mods, skills and other bonuses can easily get in the +30 to +50% bonus chance-to-hit range. Aiming in particular allows you to avoid reliance on RNG at the cost of either an extra shot or a bit of movement. Its weapon abilities and perks also combine into fairly significant move sets. The weakness of that game is actually how much realism and excitement is lost in order to reduce the RNG, e.g. weapons doing half damage per shot in burst or how filthy strong and low risk melee combat is - presumably in order to not relegate it to niche scenarios.

Bro you have listed it perfectly. I also have 1k+ hours in Xcom and ive beat chimera squad, played jagged alliance, and other titles blah blah. And theres just nothing like Xcom, I've tried so many clones and in the end, theres just nothing like Xcom. So I wait patiently for Xcom 3.

The only thing I hate about this game is that I don't have the option to fedex Vahlen to the mothership, so that the Ethereals can find out what I have to deal with in every playthrough. I strongly believe they would blacklist our entire solar system and never come back. My favorite mission to this day is without question the 'Newfoundland' council mission. That shit gave me PTSD for the first few runs before I learnt how to cheese it.

Спасибо, вдохновил!

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.

i too, used to play WAY too much Xcom 2 long war of the choosen, alongside a bit of covert infiltration, and other tomfoolery of big groups vs big groups

I'm hovering ~500 hours on Long War Rebalance. I mostly picked it because I actually like the Overwatch change. I have a nasty habit of optimizing the fun out of games and LWR is REALLY hard to do that with. Sure, there's plenty of options to make things piss easy, but you'll have to diversify your tactics if you want a hope of survival. Examples of some OP combos: Engineers and Shivs. 2 shots every other turn, assuming they've got a battle rifle, then use the cooldown to reload. Hollow Targeting to make it easier for the Shivs to hit. XP the Shivs acquire is distributed amongst the people. -This dies the moment Heavy Floaters start replacing Floaters and the point before that where every enemy is a Thinman. -Chrysalids are horror incarnate. They Corrode, and Deal damage bypassing DR, meaning they do like... 8-10 damage each and 15+. Shivs can easily die in 1-2 hits. Squadsight Exploitation. -Seekers will SPECIFICALLY target snipers if they're too far away. If you're running Respirators, they'll just flank you and force your sniper to use pistols alone. Overwatch spam. -Muton Elites, from what I've seen, never have their hit chance drop below 40% without some shenanigans or active effects like smoke, Enh Met, etc. They also shred on hit, so you WILL lose a battle of attrition with them unless you're set up better and have more people than the pod you activated. Combine that with you having to see the pod to overwatch them and you're not doing much to them. Basically, each Class has units that counter them, so LWR has an element of Rock Paper Scissors that prevents certain elements of exploitation. You NEED at least 1-2 people from most of the classes for each mission. Assault are your "Oh shit" button. They'll run halfway across the map to catch the one alien that's suffocating your sniper... or Get close enough to that Outsider to avoid Close Combat Specialist for capture. Infantry are the ones who lay out fire as LONG as possible stick to the trenches. These are the guys who will be under suppression from the 15 Mutons you triggered by breathing wrong. Rocketeers are the stalemate breakers. 1 rocket in the perfect place will clear a crap ton of overwatches on stubbornly dug in pods. Gunners serve more of a support role than anything. Either they paint every target within a country mile with Holo Targeted, or they're laying down overwatch after overwatch on Drone pods, Mechtoid pods, or Sectopods. Engineers either function as more mobile Hazing than the Gunner or a walking "You dodged 2 99% shots in a row. I say you die NOW." equipped with up to NINE grenades. Medics Heal, and either act as smoke and concussion central or are ideal for picking off all the little guys that your other troops softened. T Scouts are the godsend that'll let you prepare for the next pod. "Sectopods ahead" will keep you from blindly walking into a team wipe. Snipers are just damage incarnate. The glass canons of your team. If it's too chunky and you need it gone NOW, use a sniper.

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.

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

I love Enemy Within but towards the end I ignored all UFO events.

Can you talk about diffrences between LW1 and LW2?

alright, I've gotta ask. where do you get soldier names from? because... 6:20. the dude who gets panicked. he has my old twitch username????? did I sub to you at some point??? I'm deeply confused. are you even on twitch?

I personally would be very interested in more points in regards to Long War 2. I only remember one unfinished campaign for it compared to 1.5 campaigns for the original Long War, so it's a little hard for me to recall the issues that I could recall to understand your position.

the assault to alien ship actually is what i want to have in xcom 2. But it was not fit the backstory (alien already the governemnt). also turn human into mech actually was very very very......attractive. and xcom 2 alien are quite easy to predict. the concealment system can abuse this.

Have you tried UCross's Rebalance? It's so so much harder than normal Long War. Genuinely INSANELY fun to actually beat. I got to the point where I was about ready to take on the last mission, just batting command ships out the Sky to finalise my control over Earth before I went up there and then... well then I stopped. I don't even know why. Maybe I'll go finish that damn campaign! Also 3:14 was wildly visually pleasing. So much better than Xcom2's overwatch. That sequence was lovely.

My main reason for never getting as much into LW as I did EW, personally, is the sheer length and pace of it. And sure there's options to lessen that, but it kinda feels like a 'what's the point then?' thing for me, ya know ? Playing Long War to then make it not a long war, eh... I like just starting a quick little EW campaign now and then, playing it for maybe 20 hours (?) to get to the end, and be done. Especially as I've gotten older, with more work, more responsibilities, less play time... I'd basically have to play only XCOM for months, or a LW campaign would last me years, and I ain't got the endurance for that. I'd get bored. ^^' But on the topic of EW/LW vs XCOM2, I never could get into XCOM2 at all. I gave it a solid try, I've got over 50 hours in it as I recall, but I just wasn't as interested, in the actual fights but also in the rest of the game, which felt clean and solid in EW, but messy and convoluted in XCOM2. Compared to my 850 hours of EW+LW combined (nowhere near your time ^^), well it says a lot about how little the game grabbed me.

Been playing Alien Dark decent and randomly found myself here

I had a favourite character. I made them a medic, kept them in the very back in deep cover, they had another medic watching them, they had my best armour and all the defensive buffs I could give them. The game cheated. It ignored all my frontlines, ignored everything, over extended itself, basically threw the entire mission because I had no problem cleaning them up... But the game did this in order to kill my favourite character, down her, and then kill her again so I couldn't Rez them. I quit, uninstalled and never went back.

My honest opinion I really like the long war mods for both xcom games and I agree that they feel better to play But I also really like the smaller, shorter xcom experience if chimera squad (it also has the snake waifu so it's clearly superior)

Hello fellow tactician.

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

I like xcom... have only played base games on console of enemy unknown and xcom 2 but this looks bada**

Same reason I like xenonauts. Larger squads with more generic "soldiers". They are valuable and should not get killed haplessly, but loosing 1-2 men is not game ending.

Robo NB would be couple goals Also stay strong long war one players best strategy game for me

The bard will seduce Serious question, which is better in your opinion, LW or LW Rebalance?

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

You might try Xenonaughts 2 it has alot of the mechanics you've mentioned enjoying

when he played all the mech deaths it made me so sad :(

Peak

Hi, you are probably not answering comments here anymore, but I want to ask nonetheless: I loved long war, played it on classic difficulty, and the early game, while harsh, is soooo much fun. But whenever I would start to hit the later parts, with muton elites and heavy floaters, my fun would just dissapate. Gone were the fun and complex interactions with many different enemy types, gone the choices and options. Instead the combat seemed to devolve, into basically only very few different enemy types, and the ai trhowing plasma grenades over half the map, destroying cover and then slaughtering soldiers, forcing me to play a functional, but very unfun type of "break the line of sight" gotcha with em. Its been a while since I played it, and I ask myself if there was something about the lategame, that I was just not able to grasp, or if the game really started to loose its edge there.

AXAB includes Central

does lw1 fix some of the jank that xcom 1 has? i tried replaying vanilla and then quit because the game just felt horrible in comparison to x2

Where does it ever say that Jagged Alliance 3 squads should have a size of 3? By the endgame you could probably sustain 3 squads of six.

7:58 God youre just like me fr

SHEEESH

I think you would like xenonauts

I think the actual battle for North Africa was faster

I cant play this mode, the normal mode made me super nervous alr

Supposedly Phoenix Point was made by the people that made the Long War mods. What are your views on Phoenix Point? My #1 issue is if that it's true they were modders first I wonder why it seems like PP isn't very friendly to modders seeing as how there are almost no mods for it.

5Ywah I’m playing this shit

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.

With Nural Damping is simpel we schaut down the brain for a Moment end restart. If he Wells Patin How knows

:)

Do u like xcom 2?

>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

4564 hours

Errr, ever heard of terra invicta?

xenonauts?? :^^^)

Long war 1 rebalanced improves LW1, specifically it kills turtling and overwatch camping

Just play the original X-com ufo defense.

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

its not called the long war for nothing

7:40 never bringing attention to it? really? I didnt buy enemy within just because how inhumane and brutal those mech soldiers looked. Why buy a thing you dont want to use?

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

You have to play long war rebalanced