XCOM EU Long War Difficulty

[biochembri]

I have been trying to play Long War for x-com many times, it all ends up the same, the economy and advancement of the enemy always out pace x-com. No matter how I change my strategy, it always comes down to a series of unlucky misses, sometimes like 6 in a row with % 50 and over. Enemy moves up and kills everything. I don't think the listed numbers are accurate for x-com. How many people have actually played and beaten the game. If this is a strategy game, then there should be some way of beating it. Giving up, to much frustration watching guys die because they couldn't hit anything.

[Wouter445]

their are always people that beat something. they are likely rare but they are.

also just wanna add that when luck is involved like X-COM then the Strategy is gone from the game play.

 

their is a mod called medium war that gives you space for breather.

[UhuruNUru]

Simple problem here. You should have Retreated, maybe even aborted the mission.

If you ever sqaudwipe, you made a big mistake in the tactics.

 

Regardless of RNG or being out paced with tech.

Each new month you need to counter the advances of the Aliens before any of your resources.

Easy Long War is like Vanilla Impossible.

Impossible Long War really means impossible for 99% of players. It has got harder with each update.

 

I know of nobody whose beaten beta 15e or the final release on ironman impossible, few of us ever will. Even if you playedy thr perfect stategy and tactics you can still lose.

That's what XCOM has always been, even more so with Long War.

It's not meant to be fair, it's impossible and when a mod claims to be impossible, it will be. Publisher's think impossible=bullet sponge.

[Vangar]

(...)

It's not meant to be fair, it's impossible and when a mod claims to be impossible, it will be. Publisher's think impossible=bullet sponge.

 

To be fair, though, this is exactly where Long Wars difficulty comes from. You're simply vastly outnumbered and the NPCs become bullet sponges. It is true that they have vastly adjusted and improved the AI behaviour and how the campaign works overall, but the actual difficulty really isn't the economy or timegates that slow you down, in the end it comes down to sectoids with 8 health and outsiders with 25 while, on the higher difficulties, the aliens will pretty much one-shot you every time.

 

Long war is indeed best enjoyed on "normal" or "classic", and even then it needs some adjustment. Anything above that is just ridiculous, but to each their own. I personally don't find an EXALT mission "realistic" or "enjoyable" which pits 4 agents against dozens and dozens of EXALTs. While hard or borderline impossible to beat you really start to ask questions that cannot be answered except with "we need it to be super super hard".

[cmdrcopy]

Yep, I'm f***ing done with the mod. I love the basics of the mods, better soldier specialties, more diverse skill/ability sets, better research, country benefits, blah blah blah.

 

But after 6 months of play, the ridiculous mother f***ing mission difficulty takes all enjoyment out of the game. Yes, I want something more challenging. Sure, I can't make it through the original in iron man at the most difficult setting. But Jesus, every mission in Long War is so ridiculously lopsided it's not fun. Every mission your squad (regardless of size) is out number 4 or 5 to one. Really, that isn't an exaggeration, you only need to check the end of mission summary on kills. I just hit my limit on a supply ship that had a combination of aliens and collaborators on it. I finally gave up after having to replay every turn 4 and 5 times to avoid having half the squad wiped out; that was before I confronted the 3 additional cyberdisks. I say "additional" because I had already killed one, and one of the three remaining had double the hit points.

 

Mind you, I end up on this mission, because I abandoned my effort to raid the collaborator HQ after 4 hours of play. I gave up, wanting to believe it was because I picked the wrong combination of soldiers because my top crew was exhausted or wounded. But after another 2.5 hours of play on a supply ship and the aforementioned super cyberdisks (I hadn't killed the entire crew compliment of elite and regular mutons, or all the collaborators yet), I give up.

 

Bear in mind, the shear imbalance of squad size doesn't fully explain the lengths the Long War coders took to squelch all fun out of the game. Their clever effort to alter general probability was just the icing on the shitty cake they baked. The likelihood of missing a 98% shot about 40% of the time is statistically improbable. Look, if you want to make a game where every shot has a 33% chance of hitting unless the target is at point blank range and without cover, please do so. Just don't rig the graphics to over exaggerate the odds of success so you don't waste turns at poor shots.

 

B+ for effort to increase the depth of the game with classes, skills, and mission variation (multiple alien bases, etc.) F for wringing the enjoyment out of the game for people who don't play X-COM as a full time job.

 

Double FU. Jerks.

[saben787]

I think that this might be a programing glitch. I have played many encounters where the shot odds were hitting within a statistical range. Other encounters, like the man said, 60% plus hit odds with 6 to 9 misses in a row. It might be a longer stretch than that, but at that point I reload the mission and try again. Straight stacked odds would show up every time, and this does not seem to do that. I was checking the forums to see if this was only happening to me. Guess not.

[Edgetormcrow]

Managing risk and percentages is the name of the game. Sometimes you'll miss six 55% shots in a row, but if most of your guys are in full cover, you can shoot all day in relative peace. Otherwise you'll have to use a frag to blow their cover off or use another avenue. You can always retreat your squad from sight and overwatch spam camp.