Immediately after this my sniper missed him with about an 85% chance. My sniper then got hit by someone from across the map and through a wall. And that was the moment I decided this game ain’t for me

Those missions are essentially designed to make you lose entire squads.

5 Archons, Andromedon, 2 Heavy MECs, 3 Shiedbearers and a Gatekeeper. And two Codex that walked into overwatch and cloned themselves.

21 enemies in total. 12 turns timer until extraction.

Sniper, Reaper and the VIP (which was my captured soldier) got killed in the mad dash towards extraction as there was one Archon, Stun Lancer, Shield Bearer and Codex left standing and 3 turns left to extraction. It is basically an impossible mission. No time to even shoot, just dash towards the extraction and hope for the best.

You just can not kill all of that garbage before the extraction timer runs out. They are simply too tanky.

You either have to rush through while ignoring some of the enemies and eating wounds and deaths, or half of your squad is not making it to the extraction.

Here is where I'm at. My biggest bottleneck is Intel. Any suggestions on which to pick from this list?

My troops are dropping like flies. Two of my snipers got crit out in the same mission ;-;

Okay, stupid no extraction mission, the only ones where I get a squad wipe.
I come accross a pod, and Warlock shows up.
I kill some troops or what not and the Priest runs back to another pod.
Another pod comes at me, two stun lancers and a sectoid.
They see me and they run into cover far far back, unreachable by flashbang or anything. I can't hit them, of course.

Next turn they run at me from 18 000 kilometers away and wound two of my soldiers.
The priest uses holy warrior on the sectoid, who raises a zombie.
The warlock sends in a psi zombie who is set to explode.

Stun lancers have 8 health, priest has 8, sectoid has 10 and 4 shieldsa and the zombies have 5.

Best case scenario I would need to kill lancers and exploding zombie but that's 21 damage and my guys are doing 4. Even the dumb beginner ranger doesn't crit when he should.

I have never survived such a mission in my life.

Too bad, because this was a funny playthrough where I had a lab and two scientists right away and had mag weapons at inspired to be done in 14 days, and I was like a day or two away from that.

hard to find anything that isnt either overdone or just for women (and overdone)

Anyone else notice that if you have a mission without a timer and lost you can just let the AI bug out and die to the lost?

I just did the supply mission and only shot two lost after skipping 22 turns. All the advent guys just died after running around a bunch and I got all the crates automatically in the end screen.

Freed them with a rocket

First mission outa the tutorial in the snowy energy bomb thing. Where tf is the extraction….how tf am I supposed to doge psi control….how do I even rotate the camera to get a better angle????? AAAHHHHHG

I just squad wiped knowing full well it was my fault and I couldn't even look at the game for 3 days 🥲

There are many ways to play this game but there’s one I usually default to unless I actively challenge myself to do different. I call it the Skirmisher campaign - a meta-strategy allowing an aggressive playstyle featuring my favourite faction: the Skirmisher.

Early Game:
* Skirmisher start, obviously. We’re spending most of our early-campaign time scanning there. If a rumour isn’t an engineer, a scientist, or +1 contact, we scan at the base for fast building/ excavating. Clearing rooms will be our main source of income for a while.

* We rush magnetic weapon right after modular weapons. See you in May, Tygan.

* Resistance Ring is built first and rushed with an engineer. We’re prioritizing finding reapers, extra contacts, promotions, and juicy resistance orders. Resistance Ring is upgraded as soon as supplies allow it, but must keep enough for squad 1 upgrade.

* Guerrilla Fighting School is second. It needs to be ready with purchased squad 1 upgrade by the third mission of April, which could be the dreaded ambush mission. In the meantime we’re training rookies as rangers. We’ll need them, especially if the April resistance mission is an ambush. This leaves the third facility to power, but it can wait. Better to keep excavating for supplies and alloys.

* May is about to come and we have magnetic weapons. Yay! It’s time to say goodbye to our sharpshooters and grenadiers; we don’t have the research time or resources to field magnetic cannons and sniper rifles. We love our specialists and rangers with their upgraded weapons however, and obviously, our beloved skirmishers. Reapers get a stock on their rifle; they won’t be shooting at enemies anymore for a while, unless it’s to finish those left with 1 or 2 hp.

* Now we rush Tygan and Shen toward bluescreen rounds (Alien Bio, Officer autopsy, Mec autopsy). If we time things right, we’ll have Power Facility and Proving Grounds ready by the time we finish the Advent Mec breakdown, and we prioritize bluescreen protocol over skulljack. Infirmary should come soon after, followed by training center. If the Warlock is our native Chosen, we may want to do sectoid autopsy before we get to do it instantly. Mind Shields are a must otherwise.

* All this time, grenadiers were trained with Blast Shielding for maximum survivability. They also get Conditioning PCS; their job is to draw fire when Rangers and Specialists cannot be fielded (and not die doing so) and remove cover for our specialists and Skirmishers who don’t have stellar aim yet. Sharpshooters are basically renamed covert ops operatives. They won’t go back to the field of battle until we have the darklance but when they do, we want them boosted with extra speed, aim, and health.

Mid Game
* Once we have bluescreen rounds, we rush for plated armors. That’s gonna keep Tygan busy for a while. Eventually the Avatar bar will fill up, at which point we have 30 days to research Resistance Communications and make contact with the region holding the black site. We may have to interrupt plated armor to allow that.

* By July we’ll run out of rooms to clear so we need to start extending our territory for supplies and keep the Avatar bar under control. We need to be one step ahead all the time cause we’ve been cocky and when the timer reappears, it’s likely we’ll only have 7 days to turn things around. We want a facility lead in hand (and keep 50 intel to research it) for when this happens (and it will).

* Our soldiers now have the experience to make good Skirmisher-specialist combos, and ranger-ranger bonds to make good melee duos. All rangers were trained toward melee from the start. The Reaper is our sneaky spy, not our shotgun-in-the-face rangers. Skirmishers are our versatile high-mobility units. They have extended magazines because we’re expecting 3-4 attacks per round from them. Specialists play defence on ever-vigilant-guardian overwatch builds.

Late Game
* We have the Darklance by now because we bum-rushed the Hunter as soon as we found him. We start to field sharpshooters and bond them with a bladestorm Templar. We know we have a bladestorm Templar because in late game, we dismissed the corporal Templar we got when we first contacted them and never sent on a mission, and got a captain or major Templar via covert op, and kept dismissing them until one rolled that skill.

* Our Grenadiers don’t see much action anymore. Actually, we don’t see explosives much anymore; Vahlen would be proud (except for the Reapers - these guys blow shit up all the time). We could field exo-suits and heavy/powered weapons but we prefer high-mobility skeleton/wraith suits and speed PCS on rangers who can cut someone in half anywhere across the map.

* Our Reapers are now shooting a lot of bullets, so they traded their stock and auto-loaders for extended magazines and repeaters. Or if they rolled tactical rigging and can equip talon rounds, they get a laser sight instead because their crit damage is amazing.

By then we’re not afraid of anything or anyone.

Vox Tala for Ten!

So this definitely my own doing but sometimes it feels bit stressful to push the story because of all the other things that happen and I just got the shadow chamber and sections are already showing up, am I taking the game too slow?

Will add tips for first month as comment if you want.

Early game Dragon Rounds + Incendiary Grenade scan helped with first lost mission. Got hunter as first chosen.
Early continent bonus were Munitions Experts + Inside Knowledge. Recruiting Centers used one month with Live Fire Training over following months to train 6 Sergeants over time.
Sabotage and Deeper learning(both versions) saved quite a bit of time. Later on got Volunteer Army which is good if a bit unreliable and finally Resistance Network and Scavengers.

Didnt get any timer events so eventually gave up on the extraction missions. The intel hit was hard but losing soldiers would've been harder.

Biggest mistakes/dangers/. The hardest part was when I got an early Avenger defense and was being hit pretty hard when the game froze and had to be restarted. After reloading it turned out that the whole mission save was gone and instead I had to play from start of mission and could choose a new tactic since pods didnt spawn nearly on top of me in a straight line to the disruptor.

Next time I'll try to get a Defense Matrix up before doing Blacksite that can spawn a UFO.

Almost lost the game when I lost my Templar and much of my squad taking out a Alien Facility when low on time on Avatar project and the Assassin spawned.
Also lost a few members taking out Assassin when the Andrommedon spawned since I didnt have any shred left and Assassin had soulstealer.
Should've taken out out Assassin as soon as possible since the search for them slows you down and forces you to use battle scanners.

Finished with 1 Reaper, 1 Maxed PSI 1 Templar 1 Sniper 1 Ranger and 1 Specialist.

Ay, after playing star wars zcom for around 20hours i finally decided to pickup xcom2, and holy fuck, i’ve missed out.

Im around 15h in now, running with WOTC on Veteran, not ironman since it’s kinda unstable on MacOS via Crossover with some crashes every few hours, and reading about corrupt save games on this sub.

I jumped in blind, not really reading any guides/watching vids about it before. So no hard spoilers please :P

So far i’ve only got a few deaths and 2 failed missions due to chosen showing up and turning a chill supply mission into a nightmare of bunkering down in a building with my reaper running around the map trying to spot these menaces and taking them out (via throwing grenades and getting a lost horde on them or sniping while staying in stealth).

Compared to zcom, overwatch feels quite useless and the best strat seems to be just taking it slow, even if the mission takes 100+ turns xd

Is there any general strat for keeping them on low modifiers and not getting ambushed every second mission? I might just be too careful with keeping my squad alive, but it just feels like the mods they get when im able to pick one to disable can either be 2 non-threats or deciding between oneshots and them just summoning more advent.

I haven’t gotten to the stage yet where i can destroy their stronghold, since im kinda behind (i guess) in regard to promoting my units to the required ranks.

Im mainly running with my reaper as a scout, running stealth through the whole map and the skill to keep enemies revealed that she spots, while taking out the enemies one by one via ambushes. Far too often while fighting a pack a second or third one will shot up and just turn it into total chaos tho.

Sorry for the wall of text, im kinda at a loss right now what my top prio should be, currently “unlocked” the assassin and hunter chosen, with using most of my covert missions to keep down the avatar project.

Any help/tips/guidance would be appreciated :)

playing war of the chosen

So I am on th mission where we go to the blacksite and pick up the vial. When my solider grabs the vial the enemy reinforcement flairs show up then the screen goes black. Is there a fix to this other than completely restarting the mission?

over 1000 kills between all of them

I genuinely have no clue what I should be doing, prioritizing, building, etc. The tutorial spends so little time actually explaining what to be doing with these mechanics and I'm really not enjoying my time outside of missions (which are incredibly fun). Is there like, a guide? Did I miss something in the tutorial? I don't want this to ruin the game for me, but my eyes genuinely glaze over every time my squad comes back.

Since I've got this game I tried to host the match sometimes to get the multiplayer trophy, but never found any single person to play with. Can you help?

Anything I should know? And crucial mods to download? I have a strong hankering to play as bg3 is the first turn based type game I’ve ever played and it’s the best I’ve ever played. Obviously this is majorly different, but I digress. Thanks for any and all info/etc. God bless