Thank you for making this video man, it's awesome! My first experience with XCOM was Chimera Squad. While looking up information for that game I found Cassius Critique's two videos about having 1400+ hours in Long War 1. They're both great, then I searched for "XCOM Long War explained" and found this video. It wasn't the first video, I had to scroll a bit to find this video, but when I saw the run time I knew I found what I was looking for. This vid is great! Keep up the good work! 👍

I'm surprised that when you lost those eight soldiers to a bug you reacted so calmly 😂

Chapter 4 really nails why these kinds of games are so beloved. That and Chapter 1 make this a great video about X-Com as a whole, with The Long War serving as just one example. The best treatment of the series I've seen.

You forgot the Scout in the class overview!

this video is 7 months old, but i agree that the Long War air game is so fundamental and such a huge resource sink and top priority that it kind of defines the game.

at first i quite disliked that, but after playing everything from normal mode to ironman impossible ballistics only, i have concluded that i like a few things that it does. Firstly, it makes most countries feel quite unique to start in. When you're spending most of your earlygame money buying more planes to keep up with the flood of early missions, you're definitely going to feel the unique aspects of each start. Second, it prevents you from simply overgearing your squad immediately. Long War gives you a TON of new fun toys, but applies brakes on how fast you can get those toys by forcing you to light money on fire in the air game. Third, it asks you to make sacrifices and prioritize what items you'll keep for research. Knowing how much of your elerium, alloy, corpse, or meld stores to sell really gets you thinking about what you need as you build out your squads. This all has the downstream effect of making your soldiers really shine on the battlefield; often, their abilities matter much more than the gear you've bought for them to carry.

also, if you're ever itching for some lesser-known but very fun starts:

Brazil - Jungle Scouts (+1 equipment slot on early game armor). Research Xenobiology (it's the best first tech because it gets you sectoid corpse trades for scientists) -> Alien Materials -> Improved Body Armor and build every soldier a set of Kestrel and an Alloy Plating. These combined give 5 HP and +1 movement, which is the exact same as Carapace Armor. No other start gets your soldiers deployed in Carapace-equivalent gear by the third tech in the tree, which can save you from many, many earlygame deaths when the game is at its most vicious.

Britain - Their Finest Hour (start with Penetrator Weapons) - Rush for Advanced Beam Lasers like a typical Long War Laser -> Gauss run. Spend most of your money building Laser Cannons, and send up your interceptors on Defensive, transforming the air game from an enormous resource sink where you constantly lose to an easy source of scrap and resources SUPER early. The most game-warping part of the Long War is the air game. The most game-warping part of the air game are Destroyers*. Destroyers have 1600 health and 90% armor. Without Penetrator Weapons, Avalanches are completely useless against Destroyers, Stingrays require an average of 3.4 full-length interceptions on Aggressive, and Laser Cannons require 1.9 interceptions on Aggressive to down a Destroyer. Unfortunately, those are full-length interceptions, and a destroyer will kill an interceptor LONG before it gets out its full DPS. So often, having a Destroyer show up is a fast way to put an entire continent's air force up on blocks for a month. But Penetrator Weapons changes the calculus *drastically*. Suddenly, 2.0 interceptions on Defensive are all it takes to bag a Destroyer, while they have very low odds to hit your ships in return. Your efficiency shoots way up, and your air force can suddenly go up on Defensive all the time while taking almost no return fire and *shredding the alien Scouts, Fighters, Raiders, and Destroyers that used to be the biggest economic drain on your run.

Egypt - For the Sake of Glory (start with Advanced Repair) - Yeah some of the "start with an late midgame / endgame tech" starts are awesome. 40% faster repair times on your fighters saves you SO much money in the air game and translates to much better uptime on your defenses. A simple bonus, but INCREDIBLY overlooked. Very very very good.

How is this 12 subs and 1400 views? Deserves way more.

Also, dunno if it was mentioned in the vid (only like half an hour in, yet) but any chance for long war rebalanced at some point in the future?

PS: it seems there is some stream footage in there, but I can't seem to find any linked stream channel/past livestreams on your channel.

33:50 I actually quite enjoyed the air game, however, I only did so once I found a spreadsheet breaking down the types of missions being done.  As then I actually had information on what is worth intercepting or not, plus depending on the UFO and height it could be doing multiple things so it still was not a certainty.  Though I also did find the air game was pretty much always a losing battle unless I maxed out the interceptors.  So I focused all my efforts on about 2 continents and the rest I only kept enough to mostly intercept satelites.  Plus, even doing all that, you do need those backup satelites.  As sometimes the aliens just say screw it and spend a bunch of resources to send a big ship to take one out, and those just are not worth intercepting.  

Oh one other thing, you actually don't need to shoot down the UFOs.  If you damage them it reduces their chances of the mission being successful.  If you get them below half (explosions start happening), they cannot succeed.  A lot of my interceptions were not focused on shooting them down, so much as causing them to fail.  Only really tried to shoot down small targets when I had the interceptors to spare and it had no chance of landing instead.

great video sir

Awesome video! Well done!  Where can I see your whole campaign?

Whats funny is after 20h I realized the foundry even existed lol made the game a lot easier, and wait to try lw after my normal play thru

What do you think about xcom 2's long war?