4784

Because there’s no Asian language and the Polish language was the most underutilized. ie. variety - I wanted to assign “something” besides English to Asian nations.

4785

Ah, gotcha. Yeah, I guess if you just want to give Polish more playtime, that’s the way to do it.

Personally, I’m in with the folks that think it’s a shame that they couldn’t get any Asian folks to supply some lines. Hell, I’d even prefer a little accented English as a choice.

4786

Me too. Frankly I’m surprised they did Polish as opposed to any Asian language since Asian languages are by far the largest subset of people in the world.

4787

They didn’t record anything new for those… just made available the speech from the localizations they already had.

4788

Odds are they picked the languages based on which countries purchased the most XCOMs.

4789

Having read the full list of changes on the wikia, I did not have high hopes. After having played a campaign, I was amazed at the impact all the changes had on campaign (classic ironman) gameplay (haven’t tried multi ew yet). Like others, I felt the difficulty had increased. I now account for the impression as my having played EW as I played enemy unknown. I was on a mad dash for satellites and a rush to the end of the tech tree. Beam weapons, foundry projects and weird grenades? You must be joking. I planned on getting an MEC or 2, but assumed I’d sign up a couple of colonels for that duty (mec troops apparently inherit the will and aim of their former selves).

Got my ass kicked. Seems to me they’ve made intermediate techs and suboptimal choices (squaddie mec’s) worthwhile. That’s a big deal to me, as so many of the options in enemy unknown struck me as useless in classic and impossible. I’m sure narrow optimal strategies will emerge in EW, but the mere fact that they haven’t already puts it ahead of EU in that regard. Now I’m using MEC’s, the occasional impactful but not game breaking gene mod, and all sorts items. Losing a few countries will no doubt be the result, but surely that was always the idea on the higher difficulties? Anyways, I’m really happy with it thus far. Was not expecting such an expansion from the makers of the pitiful slingshot expansion.

Regarding slingshot: I own it, and when I set the options in my solo campaign I have the choice of enabling/disabling it. Dunno if that answers questions about whether its included in EW. For those that don’t have it, I thought it was pretty poorly done. POSSIBLE SLINGSHOT SPOILER [SUB][SUP]It gives you a tension easing leg up in the campaign however, which some may appreciate, others not.[/SUP][/SUB]

4790

A few UI nitpicks I’ve been having that I was wondering if anyone knows a workaround. Is there a way to save your second wave/advanced option selections at the start? As having to constantly restart Classic ironman it’s annoying to have to reselect everything. And is there a command to order group wide overwatch? I know backspace ends your turn but it would really save time to have one command do it. Lastly, is there a keyboard shortcut to activate items/pick up meld? As I find that the camera shifts sometimes when I’m mousing over just enough to give a walk command and get someone screwed.

4791

I would love a all go to overwatch key. I’d especially love it if you told a sniper to go to overwatch after moving and they automatically pulled out their pistol. Or at least made the switch weapon animation faster. I think I spend more time watching snipers switch between pistol and rifle than I do watching my soldiers shoot.

A tip on overwatch, though- After pressing overwatch, you can immediately switch to the next soldier and tell them to overwatch as well. This way you can OW, switch, OW, switch, OW, switch super fast.

4792

I’m finding things a lot harder this time around playing classic than I did in the original. The law of averages must not be on my side as I’m having characters getting crit under full cover and just now a sniper missed at 95% accuracy. I don’t remember things being this hard, at least before I could at least get to the first terror mission before seeing if I should continue on.

4793

Yeah. I had full squad wipe on the first mission 4 or 5 times on classic. Eventually did ok on try 6 (only lost HALF the squad). Going to be interesting to see if this keeps up. Will lose quite rapidly if so.

Diego

4794

Believe it or not, that will happen one out of twenty times! It might be a bug.

-Tom
4795

Hmm. It seems like a lot of people here are saying that the game seems harder. Does anybody know what has changed to increase difficulty? I thought that the main (or only) difficulty related changes would be from the new alien types, but those can’t be killing people in the first missions.

Are you guys suffering because you’re experimenting with all of the new 2nd wave options, or did some of the basic math (i.e., alien hit and crit chances) change?

4796

For me, I’m using most of the 2nd wave options (unlocked at classic difficulty) except for attack roulette and the save one. It’s weird, the first time I played on classic, I rarely got critted and it wasn’t until a special mission where I had my first death. Since then I’ve had people die to crits before completing the first month.

4797

Well I lost my first classic ironman campaign. We’ll see if things go any better next time around.

4798

How does the timer on meld work? I understand that there are two meld containers per map, is that correct? When does the timer start - at the beginning or when you actually see a meld container? And how long do you have to secure it? Just wondering how exactly it works. Thanks.

4799

I believe they start counting down immediately. One is set to 4/5 and the other is set to 8/10? Depending on difficulty. The idea is to force you to move fast from the outset.

4800

2 meld per every map . It tells you in upper right. Some missions including council missions don’t have meld. Timer starts when missions starts. You can lose the meld before you even see it. You won’t know the time left till you discover it, but the icons in the upper right will tell you if you’ve lost it (even if you never saw it).

4801

I’m using the 2nd wave options for the first time, so expect that could be part of it.

Diego

4802

You don’t necessarily have to put squad members at risk to get Meld. When you finish a mission, you get all the Meld on a map that hasn’t expired, even if you haven’t found it.

Note: This is on Normal difficulty, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it works differently on higher difficulty levels.

4803

I don’t think the game is harder in general. There seem to be a bit more enemies and the new ones are introduced early on too, but I think it’s balanced out by the improved benefits. That initial jump to your first mec soldiers can be huge in the early game – they immediately gained 6 HP, an attack that destroys enemy cover and does 1-2 damage with 100% hit at fantastic range, and a normal gun that is almost as good as laser, right away. That little AOE attack is crazy powerful if you aren’t in a rush and can afford to reload after it – anything with guaranteed damage is great. I didn’t have carapace or laser at the time so the introduction of the mecs was quite a jump in power, and without making the game a bit harder it would be have quite easy. Also you get the medals early on and they are nice little bonuses. The one that reduces panic seems almost too strong.

What IS different is longer soldier recovery times. This is a hugely positive change in my opinion as very little encouraged players to have more than a single super squad in the original – I currently have 12 soldiers and I use them all because I’m having to constantly rotate them in for injuries and covert ops (another way to take a soldier out of the action.) It could happen during an augmentation I suppose but those are fairly short. I hope when you research all the improved recovery time stuff this aspect doesn’t go away entirely!

Also, at least one of the new council missions can be a real gotcha. I survived as I was suspicious the game would pull something like it, but I can see it wiping a lot of people.

Some of the new upgrades are cool. Ghost grenades sound amazing just can’t afford them. Tried poison grenades, seem pretty useless – you can’t wait around for enemies to die.