u/28-3_lol

Hey guys, long time XCOM fan, and just completed one of the most satisfying victories in my gaming history and thought I’d share the path in case anyone else ends up in a similar situation.

So I’ve played through XCOM 2, LWOTC and Long War a few times doing bronzeman (you can restart the entire mission itself but nothing else), and decided to try my first Long War Impossible difficulty playthrough. Since I wanted it to go faster, I used Dynamic War, and that’s where my troubles began.

On impossible all nations start with half full panic, so it is quite easy to lose them early to terror missions if you don’t have a full shield, which I knew going into it. I did not fail any missions the first few months, but lost enough civilians in terror missions that I lost a couple countries by June, no big deal. I seemed to be doing well: no failed missions, a few soldier deaths, and had a pretty good Air Force with multiple continent coverage: shooting down all small UFO’s and Raiders and always completing the mission when they crashed. However in July, things took a turn.

It all started when halfway through the month, a country with a satellite and no panic whatsoever suddenly left the council. This was when I learned about the dreaded Infiltration mission. These, if successful make a country automatically leave XCOM, even if they have no panic. It is why you lose the scripted country in month 1. In my previous beginner and veteran long war runs, I had never had this mission occur besides the first month, so I was a bit taken aback. It wasn’t terrible, I only had lost 4 countries, but I was concerned if more left things would snowball.

August, the same thing happened. A 0 panic country suddenly left XCOM, and then the same thing happened in September and October. On paper it seemed like I was doing well: I still had not lost or even skipped a mission. My soldiers and tech were advancing well, and I even had satellite coverage over 9 countries and 3 continent bonuses. But the aliens had 7 countries, and it looked like I was guaranteed to lose one a month going forward.

I still wonder if there may have been a glitch or issue with Dynamic War’s resource or threat levels, because it seemed weird I could be doing so well, but the aliens would have the resources and lack of threat to run an infiltration mission monthly. I also read on the wiki that it tends to target high panic countries, but this was not my experience, I was frequently losing countries with little to no panic. After several “am I cooked” posts on here. I debated restarting with dynamic war turned off, or trying to tough it out and finish the campaign. I ended up putting the game aside for three months and beat Mewgenics lol.

After a few months, I returned to my campaign and made a plan for the come back. As it seemed like I was doomed to lose 1 country a month, I decided I needed to do my least favorite mission: Alien Base Assault monthly to even the score, and eventually knew I would need to take multiple in a month to turn the tide.

What followed was the most grueling XCOM experience I’ve ever had. I won my first base assault in November. Played very methodically and only lost 1 scout. However by the end of the month, the aliens took yet another country, so I was back to having 7 alien bases. December was the turning point. I played all mission near perfect: taking no losses, and was able to barely scrape together the teams to take 2 bases that month. I lost a couple MSGT’s which hurt, but I knew that getting back multiple countries was worth it, and hopes things would snowball in my favor.

I still lost the expected 1 country in January, but with having the resources from 3 successful base assaults, my MEC program went into overdrive and I churned out Pathfinders. I also skipped pulse entirely to rush plasma weapons, and continued taking a bases. I took 2 bases again in February, and for the first time, they did not take a country, leaving the aliens with a more manageable 5 bases. March was the XCOM base assault so no infiltration missions and then I took a base back in April and May, leaving the aliens with only 3. The infiltration missions had stopped, and I was swimming in resources from all the base assaults, so at this point I just rushed to the end of the game, lost a couple countries in the process, and had the easiest Temple Ship of my life, with a full squad rocking plasma weapons and tons of Pathfinders in MEC-7 armor. I even had 2 Rocketeers with Blaster Launchers. Defeated the Uber Ethereal without a single causality.

Tactically, the biggest thing that won me the base assaults was spamming hit and run on my pathfinders. I would run one into a new area with lighting reflexes, sometimes he would take a hit from ITT when pod activated. He would take a shot at a flanked enemy, then run back to my team out of LOS. Breaking LOS seems to scramble the enemy AI, so while sometimes they would rush my and my overwatch trap would cut them down, they often hid or ran in circles, and when the pathfinder left my ranks to go run out again, they would be flanked and he would get another free shot. I also had an engineer with 12 dense smoke grenades and always ran a battle scanner scout, which made a huge difference.

I hope this post is helpful to someone who is debating restarting due to how many countries they’ve lost, and if anyone knows if Dynamic War screws up threat and resources, I would be curious, because getting a monthly infiltration mission when I was doing quite well didn’t seem right.

This was a fun project, her favorite wood is oak, and our boys just broke her jewelry box she had had forever. It was a pretty easy project, just used a bunch of half inch thick red oak boards, a miter saw to make the corners, and then my router to make mortised hinges. Finish is pure Rubio monocoat for the body and dark roast Rubio monocoat for the lid. Finished it by applying some adhesive felt to the inside bottom of the box.

I decided to up my game by finally getting around to making a proper work bench. This thing’s a unit, supported by 6 4x4’s and 5 inch lag bolts, and it’s 8 feet in diameter. Used dimensional lumbar for most of it, then some SYP for the top. Finished it with an oil based stain and a few layers of polyurethane.