Introduction

Hello Commander

You are here to be taken under the wing of one of X-Com's greatest commanders. You will study, you will learn, and when you are ready you will command the next wave of soldiers to fight the alien menace. Take this opportunity to become the best commander you can, as men and women's lives will rest in you hands, and your ability to lead, to manage, to adapt to a dangerous and changing battlefield. Many are called upon to help fight this war. Few are chosen for command. Do not disappoint the Council.

Welcome to the Definitive X-Com Commanders Guide

The goal of this LP is show players how to improve their game, to learn and become better at it, and hopefully to teach viewers how to tackle the higher difficulty parts of the game. I have played the game inside and out and I want to bring a quality LP to you that isn't just fun to watch, I want you to learn from it. I have several friends who play the game and either stick to Normal difficulty or get wiped out on Classic. These are the kinds of people I want to get the most from this LP. Anyone who struggles or thinks the game is too hard in places, I am here to help. That is my goal. On top of this I of course want this to be an entertaining and enjoyable experience for everyone else, including people who do not own the game or those that have no problem beating the game on Classic.

Joining me through the LP will be GuavaMoment. I would like to think between the two of us no-one knows more about playing X-Com than we do. Between us we have beaten the game countless times. With normal settings or extreme second wave handicaps. Guava is of course a good friend and whom I mostly owe my entry in LPing to.

Departing from our previous X-Com LPs this LP will not be narrative driven. I will not be making up my own story to put on top of the game. X-Com Enemy Within actually comes with its own plot. The three main exposition characters will try to narrate the over arching story of the war and its effects. The story is there, it's nice, but it is not the strong point of the game. However I will not be trying to circumnavigate it to try and place this game within the story of the narrative Guava and I have built upon the previous entries.

The Settings

I explain most of this with the first video but the set up for the LP will be very plain. I am going to keep it very simple for the purposes of staying true to the game and for teaching the core of the game with out having to branch off into explanations of second wave options or mods. The game will be played on Classic difficulty. Iron Man will not be enabled in the options screen because I have a history of problems and technical failures. However I will play the game in the Iron Man spirit. I will not reload for deaths or failed missions.

Mods
- None

Second Wave Options
- Not Created Equally
- Hidden Potential

All I want is the base, normal vanilla game. Honestly I find it weird that Not Created Equally and Hidden potential are not the defaults. Maybe it is just me, but the idea that all of your rookies start at the exact same stats and progress identically feels really weird and lame to me. It feels like a handicap or easy mode feature that ruins the flavor of things. These are the only two advanced settings I will be using. This is a guide for how to play and beat the game. I will of course allow for supplemental videos where I may pull up other save files with things like Training Roulette on just to show that off. Because it can be cool. Very cool.

The Commanders Guide

There are a lot of things to go into detail about the game, and only so much time in each video. For those interested I will be using the second post as a posting ground for putting my thoughts and strategies into text. I will type out and explain my decision making process in detail and explain the significant choices I make through the LP and how and why of it. Everything from base layout decisions to soldier skill choices, anything I feel worth detailed analysis will go here.

If I do not cover something you have questions for, ask! By all means post and tell me what you are unclear about, do not understand, or even disagree with. The whole point of the LP is to answer these kinds of questions so post anything you want to know and I will do my best to cover it. Keep in mind some questions may have to wait until a later point in the game or something, but I promise I will do my best to answer and reader questions.