Overall, the rest of document is not a great resource for brand new players. It’s my own collection of notes to help myself in future campaigns, and I know the core systems quite well.
But I want to provide some info for people who may be looking at it because they just downloaded the mod or are curious to try it.
This isn’t a strategy guide so much as a few points that players new to Long War should keep in mind. Some of the mechanics can feel like gotchas if you don’t have any idea how they work.
You should not have Long War be your first XCom 2 experience. Play the base game first. It is a fantastic game! Once you get into Long War, there’s really no going back, but it is far too dense to start with.
Likewise, if you have not played with the War of the Chosen expansion, definitely play a campaign or two of that first. It introduces a lot of new (and very fun) mechanics. Trying to learn the War of the Chosen stuff alongside the Long War stuff is a recipe for feeling overwhelmed and confused.
I have some links to articles and videos at the bottom of this page. I extremely recommend looking over some of them before you start your first serious campaign (If you want to start a throw-away campaign first just to get the hang of it and have fun, you absolutely should. It’s what I did! Just be aware that if it seems totally unfair and punishing, taking a look at these resources will get you on the right track).
Long War is hard. It is not hard just for the sake of being hard, but the added strategic depth benefits from a high difficulty level. It is recommended that you play 2 levels below your usual level. There is no shame in playing on Rookie. If it is your first time out, Rookie will still be plenty challenging. You can always increase the difficulty mid campaign or start a new one with whatever strategy knowledge you gleaned from your Rookie campaign.
I had an Legend/Ironman campaign in War of the Chosen under my belt, and I wrote the first version of this doc just attempting to win a Commander difficulty LWotC campaign. It took me many tries.
It is my personal opinion that XCom is meant to be played on Ironman (actually Honestman—more on that in a sec). The stakes of the decisions are what makes it truly compelling. I do not mean this in a “git gud” sense. I think a campaign on a lower difficulty setting, but where you do not load your saves will feel much more satisfying than a harder setting where you load. It’s a single player game, so play how you want, but some of my most memorable XCom experiences have come from clawing my way back after a near squad-wipe. That’s XCom baby.
It is generally accepted that playing on ironman is a bad idea. The base game is already a bit unstable. When you add a bunch of mods into the mix you’re begging for trouble. Years ago I had a Long War 2 campaign save file get corrupted, nuking about 30 hours of gameplay.
The challenge of ironman is the way to play the game, but you cannot trust the single save, so play “honestman” where you make regular saves but only use them when encountering bugs.