Read the Nexusmods page
Enemy Within is effectively an incremental upgrade for Enemy Unknown. It's also required for Long War.
Slingshot and Elite Soldier are not as essential as EW (click on them if you want to know more!)
The Aliens will automatically take a country at the start of the game to build their first Base. This can happen again if they are rich, but any lost country can be retaken if you assault the alien base in it.
The first month landed large is a reminder that not every battle is supposed to be won in Long War. It's safe to ignore it, at least for now.
No. You're going to miss out on the XP, corpses and UFO salvage.
As many Specialists as you can get. Ideally, you should only take PFCs, but if you are expecting a hard mission, bring a babysitting SPEC.
Meld indicates how many resources the Aliens have. The minimum they can have is 5, the maximum is 30.
| Meld | Commentary |
|---|---|
| 5-12 | You're fine. |
| 12-20 | Something is wrong. Improve your airgame and shoot down some UFOs. |
| 20-30 | Get ready to defend your base. |
There are three strategic variables in LW:
This dictates the types of aliens you'll encounter, as well as their upgrades (perks, health, aim, etc); it also dictates the types of UFO they send, as well as UFO upgrades (aim, weapons, health, etc). They aliens gain research in the following ways:
This dictates the amount of missions you'll get, their type and the amount of aliens in them. The aliens gain resources in the following ways:
The Aliens LOSE resources the following way:
This is dictates the types of mission you'll get. It's increased by shooting down UFOs and assaulting Alien Bases. This page has a good explanation on the Alien Mission Matrix.
A popular XCOM YouTuber and streamer. Also ocasionally visits /xcg/.
Most of the times you can edit DefaultGameCore.ini to your liking. If it's not there, it's likely you'll need a UPK patch.
Introduced in b15, each country gets extra starting bonuses. These bonuses are not meant to be balanced against eachother, but are simply a way to customize your game. Once you get to the point where you launch satellites, you'll get weaker versions of these bonuses.
There's no single best one, but here are a few good ones:
When you have a solid presence (read: 5 interceptors with good weapons) in your starting continent.
Around the time you get MECs and Gauss rolling out.
Gene mods are a complement to currently existing soldiers (like Psi); they'll make a good trooper even better, but unlike MECs, they will not radically change they way these troops are used.
As soon as possible. Since Psi level-up is chance-based, you will probably have to send the same soldier multiple times to the Psi labs to rank them up.
Edit Xcom-Enemy-Unknown/XEW/XCOMGAME/Locatization/INT/XComGame.int with your favorite text editor.