Finally decided to lock in and finish a run, took a few attempts to get going.

So, I'm doing a vanilla classic ironman playthrough, and ai'm doing the base defense. First time doing it so not really sure what to expect. I get to the second wave (the flying enemies one) and I see two cyberdiscs and two drones roll in. I think "shit, cyberdiscs are scary. I'll stay back on overwatch though I think it'll be fine." Kill the remaining berserker and stand back, and then from the direction they were in, a cyberdisc rolls out and kills my corporal heavy who was apparently not in cover anymore (he was before.) Second cyberdisc comes in, shoots my mec for 9. Then,

a third and fourth cyberdisc show up and kill my mec outright.

I'm willing to believe this was intentional (they really love cyberdiscs even though they are way fucking worse than every other enemy of their class) but it sure did feel like a bug, in that exactly twice as many discs as it showed me appeared.

Finally got around to paint the Muton I made and printed last year. Not as satisfied as the previous figures I made but it was fun enough. Painting probably took me an hour or two a day for 2-3 weeks. I would probably improve the pose and do Catmull-Clarke for the subdivision surface next time. I still have a few more figures in the works to paint in the next few months. Suggestions?

Fuck these things and whoever made them

Every now and then, I'll go on an XCOM 2 run, and I always finish it with mixed feelings. It's easily my favorite turn-based tactics game, but good lord, some of the design decisions are just baffling.

My biggest pet peeve is the time-gated missions. I get why they're there, they're supposed to create urgency, and yeah, you can extend the timers, but why does the game insist on limiting my fun this much?

I can't even go on a supply run in peace. In the 3 days it takes, 5 new target missions pop up, and it's just... exhausting. Let me play without constant interruptions, please.

However, the good in the game outweighs the bad, in my opinion. I love how unforgiving it can be while still letting you turn a bad RNG streak around with good strategy. It's by far the best combat system in its genre, even though the RNG can be a pain in the ass sometimes.

I just can't play it for longer sessions, otherwise I'll feel like getting an aneurysm.

I’m stuck on this construction map fighting EXALT, the areas I need to protect are tiny and have barely any cover. There’s a ridiculous amount of exalt, like forty of them, enough so that the ai somehow learned to chain grenades and kill my entire squad in one turn

Is there literally any way to cheese this? My only other option is to just cut my losses and let the squad die

Wish I'd recorded it.

In this run, did my first blacksite mission with an alien ruler. Was running with a weaker crew but got unlucky with advent progress so had to run the blacksite.

End my turn, and the Viper King darts out from an unrevealed area, right toward a squaddie and another injured solider.

Overwatched squaddie hits him with the shotgun, Viper King dies instantly after the repeated triggered. It feels so rare I get the "Executed!" popup so I couldn't believe my luck!

Finally managed to scrap together the time to finish the game... With a child and full time work, moments to play are scarce, but I forced myself to push through. It was... An experience. Lots of reloads early on, because I forgot how to play. But after the first month, when I finally had the laser weapons and carapace armour, it was a blast. I also somehow forgot, that you need more than Titan Armour to get the Archangel.

My thoughts for now are: Grappling Hook is bugged to all hells; I don't know how to properly fly my Assaults, but I am learning; Chrysalid Port mission is peak design and experience.

So there I am after shooting down a small USO expecting the usual suspects of Gillmen or the Aquatoids.

Lo and behold these absolute twatmuffins that tank a torpedo to the face popping out vaporising one bloke with a blaster thing.

Luckily they only pop out one at a time allowing me to focus fire ( which included one of my squaddies blasting a hole in her mates head obviously he stole her sandwich before the mission)

I guess I need to get in melee with these chaps but I don't have any outside of an ungodly amount of tasers.

Took me right by suprise.

Got my research on sonic weapons going ( my first time playing Terror from the deep hell its my first time playing one of the classic xcoms via the open xcom application so I'm just messing around)

Is it viable to play through the game with only conventional firearms? This is my first time playing EU/EW and the basic conventional firearms are really cool

I recently got hands on my brothers old PS3 and would like to get my first XCOM game. But which one is better?

Enemy unkown or enemy within?

Ok this is making me grumpy and what I've searched and read so far isn't making it better.

I've got my "old" S22+ with Xcom EW and it runs well (occasional crash). Can't remember how i installed it from my previous phone (4years ago) but think I copied the main 3gb file onto/off PC. Android 16.

Just got a new phone, Redmagic 11. Tried the same trick, big file in obb folder, move apk over (with Xender) but it won't install.

Anyway to force it? Trick it? Love this new phone, and love this old game but currently can't have both. Send help :(

After many, many missions the campaign is complete. Probably didn't help that I tried to do every mission until the endless horde of Hybrids ground me down. I played my first campaign until around October 1997 but then restarted as I thought wasn't doing very well due to the difficulty of the manors. In retrospect I think I was actually in the intended position. On this, the second attempt, I was able to plan a little better, and combined with a very strong run of luck in the early months I was able to get into a commanding lead which never really let up.

The mod has a lot of different mission arcs which really helps in stopping the experience from getting samey (Well apart from the Hybrids as previously mentioned). The tech tree could perhaps do with being tweaked as there was a tendency for the same equipment to be used months on end. Then when something new was researched there would be another immediately available for research after resulting in some tiers of equipment being redundant on arrival.

Most importantly, what everyone has said about the ninjas was true.

Various observations (Probably very spoilery):

Past a certain point I just ended up relying on one agent (Actually the first in the list of the original six) to do most of the work with everyone else running cover. They ended up with just over 2000 kills by the end (About 1/6 of all kills). Due to having so many commendations of all types their stats were still much higher than veteran Spartans despite being Kyberi. 160 action points combined with the Kukri meant that clearing UFOs became very easy.

Didn't encounter a single Chryssalid during the entire campaign

Most of the HWP chassis seem pretty pointless. The Scout/Medic drones in the early game didn't add much while taking up a valuable slot with the early craft. The Outrunner's weapon was already too weak by the time I got it. The Tank was useful during the second half of 1998 but once the aliens came then it wasn't good enough against plasma. The Hover and Sectopods came far too late and couldn't justify themselves against four agents in Flying/Juggernaut suits.

The MiB barely showed up, I got MiB Activities in December 1998 thanks to the David Vincent mission but then I got a coverup in the following January then two Weapon Distributions and a MiB/Alien meeting over the next two years. I was only in November 2000 when I finally got another coverup, at which point I could easily shoot them all down to provoke a response to get a Commander. Of course I then get two retaliations and a reactor attack in the same month just to rub it in.

I appreciate that there are a wide variety of weapons and that there is use in taking weapons from one mission chain and using them in another. For example, the Katapeltes Spiritus was very useful on the T'Leth missions until I could develop Sonic weapons.

The MiB are working with the aliens but are ultimately loyal to MJ12. The Hybrids are bred and brainwashed to be loyal to the aliens. So the aliens give MJ12 plasma weapons and the Hybrids get glorified Super Soakers.

Worst mission was easily the Commissioner defence from the Syndicate line. I had the misfortune of arriving at night so my agents were lit up while they couldn't be seen. Best mission was the VAST Lunar Base as fighting through the demons to reach the portal on the 3rd section was a lot of fun.

The Golden Academy appeared in early 2001 and were far past outclassed at that point. Despite this they seemed intent on invading my Vietnam base. At the peak they attempted 7 base attacks in the same month but I was just destroying them all before they arrived.

As we come close to the end of this long road we are forced to talk about the worst designed enemies in this game, the Alien Rulers! 

There are three contexts in which they appear. If you have integrated DLC turned on, they show up guarding alien facilities and so you can stall fighting them for a loooong time. If you have it turned off and have the Alien Nest mission turned off, they will just…show up when their FL pops. That’s FL 4, 9, and 14 for the Viper, Berserker, and Archon respectively. And if that sounds stupid early for such evil monsters, you’d be correct! If you have the mission turned on, they won’t show up on random missions until you do that mission, which ends with you fighting the Viper King. If you have integrated DLC or the mission on, just…just stall fighting them for as long as you can. If you don’t, well, um, buckle the fuck up!

Next, let’s talk about what they have in common, they all have a mechanic called Ruler Reactions. Where every time you take an action (mostly, but we’ll get there) they take an action. They can move, attack, do one of their stupid OP special moves, anything. This fundamentally breaks the way XCOM 2 normally operates, you don’t have an entire turn to handle them, they will react immediately and fuck your shit up. There are a few ways around this, however. They don’t take actions against free actions (and this includes if you get your action refunded, via hair triggers or Reaper or Serial), reloads, or if you are stealthed or out of their Line of Sight. Additionally if they are stunned, they lose actions based on how many they are stunned for. The frost bomb freezes them for either 3, 2, or 1 action depending on the ruler (in order of how strong they are, obviously) and that can give a bunch of time to reposition. Additionally, things with a stun chance (the bolt caster and tier 2 melee weapons in particular) that have a chance to stun have a boosted chance to stun them, so that gives you some actions back. Only a few, but hey it helps. Additionally everytime they take an action they take damage from poison, burning, or acid. Which can really add up. And they have one true counter, stasis. If you stasis them, they are fully shut down until your next turn. You can’t hurt them, but they can’t hurt you. Now you need a psi-op for that, but hey, it works. Additionally, you actually don’t want to bring templars or someone with implaccable on missions with Rulers, because the extra actions they grant you trigger Ruler Reactions and Rulers are under no obligation to attack the guy with parry active. Now a Templar with Fortress and/Bladestorm might be OKish, but still, those extra actions hurt.

And lastly, they will make a psionic portal and try to bail after they lose between a third or a half of their HP. You can try and stop them with frost bombs or whatever but honestly if they are leaving it means they are done trying to murder you so whatever.

That’s all the general information about them, but what about how to fight them?

Well I’ll go over each Ruler individually, but in general, here’s how to fight them:

Plan A: Have a Reaper with banish and a repeater and execute their bitch ass, failing that, go to step 2

Plan B: Frost bomb + lightning hands loop them to death, failing that, go to step 3

Plan C: Take as many actions from stealth or free actions as you have and throw every single status effect on them that you can and hold on for dear life

Plan D: idk…just…try your best.

Alright so let’s go over each step. Step 1 is simple, banish and repeater executing them is the easiest way to handle things. You have a very high chance to simply eliminate them with ease. Now you gotta get a little lucky for that, but even if you don’t outright OHKO you can still do a shit ton of damage and get them to fuck off. Now if that doesn’t work, well, there’s always option 2.

So normally if you end your turn manually the ruler will take actions for each character who hasn’t moved yet and you’ll get mega punished, but if they are frozen, they will stay frozen. So if you have someone with lightning hands, you can freeze them, click lightning hands, end turn, repeat until they are dead. Now you have to not be on a timed mission or have other enemies nearby, but hey, it works. It’s also definitely an exploit but…I mean…it’s in the game.

Otherwise the plan is simple, throw fire, acid, poison on them to nerf all their attributes and do a shit ton of damage to them and then just…smoke em if you gotta em. They are immune to mimic beacons and flashbangs so it’s just all DPR all the time. And if that doesn’t work…idk man try your best, but for specific rulers, here’s how to fight them:

Viper King

Aim: 75
Health: 69
Armor: 3
Mobility: 14
Dodge: 25
Attacks: Bolt Caster (4-6 damage, +2 critical damage), pierces 1 armor (why?)
Abilities: 

• Bind and Crush, Just like a Viper Bind, but the damage ticks every action you don’t deal damage to them
• Tongue Pull, also just like a Vipers
• Frostbite, freezes any unit caught in it for two turns

Immunites: Poison, flashbang, mimic beacon
Behaviors: They will do their special moves if they are off cooldown, will try to move to new cover

The first ruler, and the least annoying! Their frost breath is annoying but can be used to your advantage, sort of. If you trick the Viper King into freezing your two lowest impact units, well, now they won’t get ruler reactions off them! Hooray! If they freeze your high impact units, um, well, you die but whatever that’s how it goes. Other than that, the frost bomb, banish, getting lucky with repeaters all that works. This is the only Ruler that takes cover so you can use that to force it to move or flank it for big damage, but yea, not too bad. Even at FL 4 you can probably tangle with them if you are well prepared. It’s generally advised to rush sparks if you let them wander around because then you have a rocket and overdrive ready for them.

Berserker Queen

Aim: 75
Health: 100
Armor: 4
Mobility: 14
Attacks: Punch  5-8 damage (+2 critical damage)
Abilities: 

• Quake: Deals 1-3 damage in a 4 tile radius, has a chance to disorient, stun or knock unconscious
• Faith breaker: forces a will check on all units to see if they panic

Immunites: flashbang, mimic beacon, mind control
Behaviors: Will run at you and then punch you to death. Will use Quake or Faith breaker if it’s off cooldown

This is the Ruler that has the most exploitable AI. If you are on top of a taller than 4 tile building and just block the ladders up, the Berserker Queen literally cannot hit you, they will just run around like an idiot. Now if you can’t do that, you want to take actions back to front. Start with your units in the back of your team so they constantly have to burn actions moving to whoever acted. And as always, the same “frost bomb and banish” strats work as always. But also they can just…punch you to death. It does happen.

Archon King

Aim: 75
Health: 120
Armor: 5
Defense: 25 (fuck you XCOM)
Dodge: 35 (also fuck you)
Mobility: 14
Attacks: Archon King Staff: 7-10 damage (+3 critical damage) 2 shred 
Abilities: 

• Devastate: does 2-6 damage in 4 3x3 spaces as soon as the next Ruler Reaction triggers, can cause disoriented, stunned, and knocked unconscious 
• Icarus Drop: grabs a unit and on the next Ruler Reaction (if you don’t deal damage to the ruler) they will drop them and deal 3-9 damage

Immunites: flashbang, mimic beacon, mind control
Behaviors: Will use the special moves if they are off cooldown, otherwise just moves around and shoots you,

This is it, the most dangerous enemy in the game. This is the Devil made manifest in XCOM 2s code. Everything about this fucker sucks. 25 defense, 35 dodge, an AoE ability that unless you pack stasis or a fuckton of grappling hooks you just get owned by, the frost bomb barely works, they can deal 13 damage on a crit and one tap your ass. They are evil in its purest form. They ended 3 deathless attempts from me! Asshole unit. Short of banish, stasis, and getting lucky with Repeaters I don’t have much advice, just…just hope you don’t get absolutely owned. 

And that’s that for the Alien Rulers, as sort of implied I hate these stupid things and think they are terribly designed. But they are in this game, so we gotta deal with them. Best of luck!

An index to every part of this guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/1sp0ypy/an_overly_complete_guide_to_xcom_2_war_of_the/

Complete immersion... 😵

Hi y'all,

I just finished up with 2 playthroughs on EW (training roulette is fun).

What tips do you have for someone entering XCOM2? Last time I played XCOM2 years ago I recall getting gibbed by the first muton's appearance in a mission and nearly everyone got wiped.

Thanks in advance!