XCOM: Enemy Within (DLC)

[Binnatics]

...Then levelling up a MEC takes about twice or three times as long as any other class plus the gear for the MEC is so expensive (uses rare Meld, and money, and research that requires time and other alien materials and so forth) that you're likely to have only one fully upgraded.

Can you use your crew members in a different 'extended' playthrough, like in Borderlands 2 where you could fight your way through the same campaign again with more challenging enemies?

[Art Blade]

no, they're unique to the playthrough.

[Art Blade]

Alright. I went through every possible EXALT covert mission and a few normal missions with Ghost and now she has finally reached the rank of a colonel. :)
[smg id=6697 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW Ghost now colonel"]
My guys are all genetically modified, you can tell by the look of their armour (more or less bare arms)
[smg id=6698 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW crew pic 05"]
Then I finally raided the EXALT base to put an end to that. The base was a cool map, a luxurious mansion on top of a skyscraper.
[smg id=6699 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW EXALT base raid 05"]
All in all, those missions were a nice diversion and a lot of fun to play. :) Helped racking up quite a few kills and XP.
[smg id=6700 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW EXALT base raid 06"]

Now it's back to the story missions, coming up next is raiding the alien base which is a turning point in the game because it introduces the phase of psi warfare and respectively a new wave of hardcore alien enemies. :-D

[Art Blade]

OK, Alien base raided. No problem. But now.. they'll seek out and raid my own base.

And they'll send stuff like that over. ???
It takes the combined effort of several soldiers to take one of those sectopods plus their defending and repairing two drones out.

[smg id=6701 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW sectopod"]

[Art Blade]

Here is Ghost on a non-covert mission. She can still ghost though, both with a mimetic skin gene mod (makes her invisible if she moves from and to cover without the enemy being able to see either one) and with her in the zone skill (she can keep shooting as long as she can kill with one shot any enemy that she either flanked or that is not in cover) -- which is a real killer.

See her in action here :)

She is still invisible but has got six big enemies right next to her. Red alien head symbols down right in the pic each mean "enemy in sight" (works both ways) while yellow heads each mean being flanked (more dangerous, hits are more likely critical/lethal)
[smg id=6702 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW Ghost in the zone 01"]
I was lucky I had a heavy in place who helped with a shredder rocket to soften the aliens up. Had to be careful not to shredder Ghost, too  :-D
[smg id=6703 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW Ghost in the zone 02"]
The enemy got stirred up by that and spread out
[smg id=6704 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW Ghost in the zone 03"]
So now there are five enemies in sight (one is down in that pit, out of reach) and only one is in cover. Going for a chain-kill  >:D
[smg id=6705 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW Ghost in the zone 04"]
mopping up.. note the sniper rifle symbol in the pic down right corner goes from blue to black which means I am draining its magazine.
[smg id=6706 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW Ghost in the zone 05"]
Finished with the last alien in that window to the right because he was in cover which ends the "in the zone" streak. Well, "done."  :-() No one left for her to kill. Also note that all that was in one turn, the enemy had to wait.. and die.  >:D
[smg id=6707 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW Ghost in the zone 06"]

[mandru]

You'd said something about wrongly accusing a county of harboring the terrorists gets them upset and they stop supporting your fight against the aliens.

I was wondering, if early on in the game you can set a save point then accuse each country in turn restoring to the save point (so you don't lose their support) until you've pinned the terrorist location down and then once you've got the muscle to wipe them out you know right where to apply the full effort of your forces.

[Art Blade]

That is possible. I actually did it in two guesses, Germany was wrong although it might have been just it, and my reload and retry hit it spot on. However, I found out that scanning the globe frequently for hidden EXALT cells reveals them and then they can't do anything that harms your progress in any way. So they only hit me once when they were introduced. Scanning not only prevents them from interfering with your progress, on revealing an EXALT cell it also gives you the opportunity to send someone on a covert operation to that cell and then extract said someone which all in all are very entertaining missions. Once know where their base is (usually after you infiltrated and eliminated all their cells) the raid of their base will be the grand finale which is what your suggestion amounts to. I knew it very early (after three extraction missions is the earliest possible opportunity to accuse a country) yet I decided to keep on infiltrating until there was only their base left. And raiding it was a nice mission. :)

[Art Blade]

Currently it looks more like this, however: Brute aliens up close and personal. And usually not easy at all any more.  :)

[smg id=6708 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW sectopod 02"]

[Art Blade]

I've finally got to play and finished the XCOM Base Defense mission.  :) :-X

However, it was a massacre and not exactly like probably most people play it. I started with my three oldest colonels (all with 43 missions each) which are those wearing fedoras, and got assigned four random "blue shirts" which are just office guys with a simple pistol, assault rifle, and thanks to one perk that I had unlocked, they got two rather than one hand grenade each which was really a big help. However, in the end, I only used both hand grenades of only three rookies, the fourth rookie didn't find the time to use them because once the mission got too hard towards the end, I just sent those rookies as far away from the battle as possible, to the back of the map, out of reach of the enemy.

In the middle of the mission I had ONE reinforcement from my unit, my second Assault "Werewolf" with 37 missions who was direly needed. As far as I knew you'd get the six top ranking soldiers of your unit, preferably colonels. If you had more than six colonels, then the ones with the most missions and then the ones with the most kills. If you had only three colonels and five majors, then the majors would be selected randomly. Well, I have seven colonels. You wouldn't believe the time I spent thinking how to get the 7th (Ghost) into the top six (I might have sent one colonel to the gene lab for 2 days just so Ghost would step up but decided to leave it as it was) So, first you get three at once, then the rest during the mission. What I didn't know was that you'd only get reinforcements IF your rookies got killed, replacements, if you will. My rookies didn't die. So I didn't get reinforcements, except that fourth guy which is apparently the maximum if no one dies.  :D

Which means, after the second half of the mission I had to fight so many and so tough enemies that I wouldn't want to put my rookies at risk to die, so I was left with just four of my soldiers. And they weren't the best, just the ones with the most experience as in most missions. They had comparatively lousy stats, my newer guys such as the snipers and the MEC trooper would have been far better but I had to cope without them.

Whatever, I managed. No casualties. Just four soldiers from my unit. Took several hours to complete because it was so difficult. You had to fight through three rooms, each room had one or more waves of enemies.

the start
[smg id=6709 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW base defense 01"]
in the middle -- after the third wave of enemies had been dropped..
[smg id=6710 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW base defense 02"]
..and after.  :-() I compared the first screenshot with my game screen so I could get about the exact angle for this one and it worked :) You see, I didn't even move Brittany, the highlighted rookie.
[smg id=6711 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW base defense 03"]
the end. It was an epic battle.  :)
[smg id=6712 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW base defense 04"]

[Art Blade]

P.S.

Actually there were four segments/rooms: Rear Guard Station, Command Center, each with one wave, and MEC Bay and Forward Access Tunnel, each with two waves of enemies.

And I started out with 2 rookies, the 3rd and 4th came with my 4th unit's soldier already after the first wave and still in the first section. So we had four rookies and four colonels.

And this was the only time I could use a rocket (which I made count  >:D )
[smg id=6713 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW base defense 05"]
[smg id=6714 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW base defense 06"]
The rookies chucked hand grenades on top to finish them off.  :-D
[smg id=6715 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW base defense 07"]

[Binnatics]

Excellent story mate, and cool pics all the way through the playthrough. I can imagine how entertaining the game can be and I also reckon it's quite complicated at times :-X :)

Well done on the playthrough and all the comments here. +1 for your effort! :-X  ;)

[Art Blade]

Thank you, Binnatics :)

I've not played through, though. This is about the middle of it  :-D

Here another new mission which I didn't know anything about except that it was supposed to become a DLC on its own but instead was incorporated into EW. I think it consists of three parts/missions. I played the first one already which wasn't really very different from other maps (had to eliminate aliens and find some special cargo but it wasn't there) and now the next part was spectacular from the views, a map located on top of a massive dam. And I found, err, rescued, a French lady there who has now integrated with XCOM. As a new soldier, if you will.

[smg id=6716 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW Deluge 01"]
[smg id=6717 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW Deluge 02"]
[smg id=6718 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW Deluge 03"]
[smg id=6719 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW Deluge 04"]
[smg id=6720 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW Deluge 05"]

[Binnatics]

Mr Blade: "Of course I will help you find the others"  :-()

Spectacular view indeed! Great mission :-X :)

Although you're not entirely through, you definitely earned that kudo with all the effort you put into your daily review of the game ;)

[Art Blade]

Thanks again :)

The second pic, by the way, is not a pre-rendered cutscene but a live cutscene triggered when my MEC trooper "Tank Girl" knocks out an alien counterpart. They have MEC troopers, too, which are called Mechtoid, a contraction of MEC and Sectoid.

Which reminds me. I wanted to add something regarding the XCOM base defense.
When I watched Zemalf's playthrough on YT and watched his base defense again, I realised a few things that were different compared with my defense mission.

He played it early, a few game months before I did, and therefore didn't have to cope with the heavy stuff like Mechtoids, Sectopods, elite mutons and so forth because each new month the game introduces a new alien enemy (until you know them all) so when I played, I had to cope with exactly all the heavy stuff he avoided. Then, he had rookies killed and got his own soldiers as replacements while I had to stick with what I got. And he had a MEC and a sniper in his defense mission while I didn't. He ended up with "just" 32 aliens while I had 42. However, he played it on the absolute maximum difficulty while I played it on easy.

The way I played it was bloody difficult, however, like using 4 against 42 and no strong weapons, and no sniper, no MEC.. and keeping all my rookies alive (that was my personal goal, see whether I could keep them alive until the end) and this playthrough I'm using my first soldiers all the way without exception which means that I couldn't "boost" them in any way. They're pretty low specs compared to what I could have used if I had used fresh soldiers that I could have levelled up with all boosts possible in order to get high specs.

All in all, I had a VERY tough mission the way I chose to play it, despite the easy difficulty level. I reckon it wouldn't have been possible on (much) higher difficulty levels. It was exhausting but at the time very rewarding. It does feel like an accomplishment and it should have been rewarded with an achievement but hey, it's still fine to know that I did it and that you know it. :)

Also by the way, in now more than 300 gaming hours, I have never lost a single soldier. Which is why I dismissed all the rookies after I had decided to stick with what I've got, my basic seven soldiers (six on any mission and one for the covert missions) The three other guys that I have on my unit had been rewards after accomplishing certain council missions, like that French lady.

Currently I have 10 soldiers. 7 colonels, 1 major and 1 captain. The French lady just added herself starting out as 1 sergeant sniper. :)

[Art Blade]

Just watched a vid by a different guy, ChristopherOdd, who plays XCOM:EW and only recently uploaded some vids. I watched his base defense and think he's clever enough to make his vids enjoyable  ;) So I checked his channel and yay, he's on a second wave playthrough on impossible ironman (maximum difficulty, no savegames, and the "second wave" are options that alter the gameplay) he said he'd not change his soldiers even if they're with bad specs,  keeps what he gets.

That is going to be interesting :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22-V86R7uNo&list=PLj_Goi54wf0cwE3cOxqk0Pw0KmFfXFNbY

[PZ]

A few posts ago - explosions!   :-X Now, that's the AB I know  :-()

[Art Blade]

I can't deny it and I can't stop doing it, either :-D

[Art Blade]

OK, I finished that Deluge and so on mission with that French lady, freed three more captives who added themselves to my unit. Was nice :) Only I didn't need them because I wanted to keep my veterans for the final game. :)

And it so happens that I just did that. YAY  ^-^ I just finished ("won") the game, got an achievement called Ain't No Cavalry Comin' which requires to "Have a soldier survive every mission in a full game" -- I had three. :)

Actually I had the whole old crew aboard except Tank girl because she can't turn invisible. Stealth or invisibility, however, is my strong suit for winning the ultimate battle. For the enemy it must have usually been as if a whole unit materialised in front (or worse, behind) of them and at the time the enemy would have realised it, they already had become extinct.  >:D

Well, it was great. Phew. Glad I managed it with my old crew :-D Again, no battles and no single soldier lost. :) However, it was on easy difficulty level but at least I've seen all the stuff there is, even got an achievement for researching everything and another one for completing all foundry projects.

Here the final screenies -- the last stage of the base management with late game facilities such as the Psionic Labs, Hyperwave Relay and the Gollop Chamber. Also, the final crew with Ghost being the "volunteer."

XCOM Enemy Within and Enemy Unknown are such EXCELLENT GAMES :-X I just downloaded the "Slingshot" DLC, new customisations, a new guy, and three new missions. Going for the next playthrough :-() :-() :-()

[smg id=6729 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW end game 01"]
[smg id=6730 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW end game 02"]
[smg id=6731 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW end game 03"]
[smg id=6732 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW end game 04"]
[smg id=6733 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW end game 05"]

[Binnatics]

Nice pictures! Good w@&k :) :-X

Curious how your new playthrough will be ;)

[fragger]

Well done Art :-X :) It's been an interesting and fun account thus far. Good luck on your next campaign!

It's nice when a game really grabs you, isn't it? 8)

A question - the XCOM games are turn-based, yes? So can you take as much time as you like to consider your next move? Because that's what I like about Civ V, another turn-based affair - there is no time pressure. I like to take my time to think and plan stuff.

[Art Blade]

Thanks guys :)

And yes, fragger, it's a turn-based strategy game so you can indeed take your own time which is why I like it very much. Sid Meyer wasn't exactly an active developer on the team but he served as the director of creative development.

I think you really should read about it on a regular (as opposed to a gaming) Wikipedia to get a comprehensive full overview. It is a very decent article and the reason why I don't write a review -- it's just too big a game to pack it into a tiny review and if I did, it would lack all the details that are important.. so, here you go. It is a good read and once you're done reading that, follow the UFO-wiki for more details related to the actual gameplay. All the most important links right here for you, enjoy :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XCOM:_Enemy_Unknown
http://ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Enemy_Unknown_%28EU2012%29
http://ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=XCOM:_Enemy_Within_DLC_%28EU2012%29

[fragger]

Thanks mate, I shall look into :)

[PZ]

 :-X +1 just for being so passionate about the game  ^-^

[Art Blade]

Thank you very much  :)

Currently I'm back to the base game (Enemy Unknown) for my second playthrough on that.

[Art Blade]

Back to EW, starting my 2nd PT here. Having finished games on easy and normal, I thought I might as well try and start a new one on Classic difficulty. :-D "An extreme challenge for experienced XCOM players only" -- Oh boy.  ??? :-()

First mission, I was a little tensed up but went straight through, not a scratch! My first mission on normal at EU was a lot more difficult, it all depends on the map you start your game on. I knew this one and was lucky, too.
[smg id=6745 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW 2ndPT fingers crossed"]
Operation Empty Grave. How fitting, nice omen :) They all returned home safely indeed.  :-D
[smg id=6746 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW 2ndPT fingers crossed 2"]
You really have to start from scratch, there's almost nothing.  ???
[smg id=6747 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW 2ndPT starting base"]
Winning a mission with a female-only squad is rewarded with an achievement called "Flight of the Valkyries" -- I sacrificed my valuable sniper (left him at home) in favour of a female rookie so I might get that achievement and I did  :-D On top, I got a second sniper, nice. ^-^
[smg id=6748 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM EW 2ndPT valkyries"]