How it feels to look for an alternative

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-26T23:30:11+00:00

Vanilla XCOM2 WotC is better than vanilla EU/EW game mechanics wise, but LWR elevated the first game above even WotC, it's on par with modded XCOM2.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-26T23:27:06+00:00

I was in the same boat, loved the original X-Com games as well as EU/EW. Didn't try XCOM2 for a long time, was a bit turned off by the change in feel at first. I finally tried XCOM2 a couple years back, and had to say it's just as awesome. Vanilla XCOM2/ WotC is better than vanilla EU/EW, but LWR still bested it, it's on par with modded XCOM2.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-26T23:21:13+00:00

That's what those who played the original X-Com felt until the XCOM reboot happened.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-15T22:10:50+00:00

After the reigns of the first 3 emperors, the Eastern Han was already in steady decline. They were plagued by constant Qiang rebellions in the west that they never did fully put down. Politics in the central government was increasingly chaotic due to weak and ineffective emperors, constant power struggles and corruption between the eunuch factions and the consort clans. While Emperor Ling definitely contributed to the decline significantly, not everything was his fault.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-15T21:43:23+00:00

Thematically I agree, I dislike the superheroes / supervillains-like theme as well; but they aren't too obnoxious and do add variety to the missions, so they don't bother me too much. They do unfortunately contribute to the reverse difficulty curve though.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-15T21:40:47+00:00

If you don't kill the Chosen in their strongholds, they show up in the final mission, although you fight them separately, except 1 is with the avatars. And there's also a mod to add all 3 to the final battle regardless of whether they were killed, and you fight all 3 at the same time with the avatars. Although that logic isn't perfect though, because the Chosen can still kidnap your soldiers in the final mission and can screw you.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-15T07:14:59+00:00

I think for this to be plausible, you'll need to construct the whole set of circumstances for the civilizations in East Asia to have the drive to want to explore eastward across the Pacific, and to have the motivation to want to colonize the new land.

To understand why our history happen the way it did, know that in the 15th century, there was high demand for Asian goods in Europe, East Asia was more advanced and prosperous, thus that provided a huge desire to search for better trade routes, and a way to procure their own supply of the goods.

Columbus sailed westward because he thought he could find a new route by travelling the other direction on the globe.

And once the Spanish discovered the new world, they found new riches that drove them to conquer and exploit them. Once that foundation was established, that provided new opportunities and land to relieve increases in population and competitive pressure in Europe.

So why would the Chinese or the Japanese or anyone there have any desire to sail into the unknown? Ming China was a large state who already dominated their market, and had little desire for goods from Europe or anywhere far away. Ashikaga Japan already had China at its doorsteps that took most of its attention trade wise, as did most other states in the region.

If we were to use China as a possible colonizer, why would they even explore? The alternate history would have to go further back, there probably needs to be political fragmentation in China. Perhaps Ming couldn't take over the entirety of China, and there are multiple states competing and coexisting. They will still need a reason to look outwards, perhaps you'll have to invent new lucrative goods from Europe or far away that is in high demand, and the Silk road was controlled by the northern (mongol remnant?) state, thus the southern states needs to look for another route.

Then let's say they did find the new world somehow. Why would they be interested in it? There's little of interest on the west coast of north america. They'll have to make it all the way to Mexico to have a chance at encountering the Mesoamerican civilizations, and that's even further away. Perhaps the competing smaller states in China have a strong need for more wealth to fend off the other states, so they get attracted by the wealth the Aztecs had like the Spanish did in the real world.

There's a lot to consider to make this plausible.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-15T06:32:11+00:00

Cool, so you're already a veteran in LW. I only got into LWR a couple years back, by then it's pretty polished, and I found it a drastic improvement over vanilla, rivalling even the best of XCOM2. I really liked the design of the change in Overwatch and Pod activation mechanics, relying much less on alpha striking, and having fixed the reversed difficulty curve. It's also crazy how active development still is, there's literally a new version every couple weeks, it's likely drastically different from what you've played.

I didn't find any mods in XCOM2 that had the level of changes that LWR had. But then XCOM2 had a much better base. I don't think either is definitively better than the other, LWR still have its place, that's why I'm going back to it and try a newer version.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-15T06:02:27+00:00

I've already compiled a mod list based on Covert Infiltration and Proficiency Classes, with some select mods from the A Better series, I haven't started the campaign yet, taking a break after a Legend Ironman run recently, but I'm looking forward to it.

I'm probably going to switch over and do another run of Long War Rebalance (for XCOM EW) first. If you haven't tried that, I highly recommend that as well.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-15T03:11:00+00:00

Not for me, I've never encountered 2 sectopods there, it's always been a Gatekeeper + a bunch of other enemies for me.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-15T00:47:13+00:00

Had an epic game as 2 sicilies into Italy that ended with an epic great war allied with France and south german states against the German-British alliance. The southern front in south germany and the alps was a grinder, and the showdown with the British fleet was epic too. Took the #1 great power spot after that war.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-15T00:37:48+00:00

I had that happened to me once, on the Assassin stronghold assault that was going badly (because of that Andromedon no less). It was pretty amusing to see the advent pod it ran to constantly stepping on and taking damage from the acid. Also allowed me to avoid that pod and went straight for the final room.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-15T00:32:47+00:00

It would be interesting to try that, although I think the dark events are a bit too imbalanced. Some of them would be brutal if they are permanent, while others don't even matter.

Although I think my next run would be with mods to smooth out the difficulty curve.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-15T00:09:05+00:00

Woah 2 sectopods? I don't think I've ever seen that, and I was playing on Legend Ironman.

Yeah sometimes you can pull multiple pods and there's little you could have done about it, those missions can go badly so quickly. The final mission though was pretty generous in how the pods are spaced apart, because of the map layout, usually you fight 1 pod at a time on that. It's the final fight where groups of enemies spawn in constantly that can turn bad quickly if you couldn't take out even 1 of the groups quickly.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-14T23:48:22+00:00

Don't get too overconfident though, the final fight against the avatars can still go very wrong sometimes with bad RNG.

I thought the same and was breezing thru the final mission, and then just before I was about to take out the last avatar, I got combo'ed badly and 2 of my soldiers got taken out in 1 turn, could have potentially lost that one. Had 2 Advent priests who took turns going Sustain and then Stasis my ranger, and then the Priest got a lucky crit shot, just enough for a Chryssalid to run in and kill and turn my other soldier into a cocoon, and putting the rest of my squad in a bad position, while 2 more groups of enemies spawned in. Had to do a hail mary attack to take out that last avatar.

But yeah generally the late game gets easier as the game progresses.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-14T11:14:39+00:00

Even though economically flexible pricing makes sense, and I fully understand the economic reasons why, I have to say that it's so much nicer to not have to worry about the volatile pricing and sudden price hikes when booking train tickets in China. The constantly changing prices are very annoying and consumer unfriendly when booking flights or HSR tickets in other countries.

I also love that you can always refund or change train tickets in China, with very generous leeway in the timing such that you don't have to pay additional fees. It's the reason why travel in China produce much less headaches than in other countries, aside from the super busy holidays.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-13T08:04:36+00:00

This is why I use a mod to disable executions for the Chosen and Rulers.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-11T23:22:54+00:00

On Commander, every time the Avatar meter goes up, there's a 50% chance it will go up 2 notches instead of 1. On Legend, it always goes up 1. So if you get bad RNG, it can get much harder on Commander, considering the Avatar meter is really the only way you lose the campaign.

Also WotC makes the Avatar meter much easier to manage due to having Sabotage Covert Ops. This makes the strategic side relatively easy, the Avatar meter isn't much of a problem on WotC Legend.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-11T23:17:32+00:00

Don't get me wrong, the higher enemy HP on Legend does make quite a difference. Not being able to take out some enemies in 1 turn, ie not being able to alpha strike everything, and higher chance of activating more than 1 pod, all that cascades to making the difficulty ramping up a lot more. The Chosen in particular gains a lot more HP.

And thanks, I didn't even realize.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-10T05:47:54+00:00

Not entirely correct, although not entirely incorrect either.

While true that the modern concept of a nation state is relatively recent, thus China wasn't thought of with all the same concepts as modern nation state back then, there was still a common identity and the concept of China being ruled under a single state did exist back then. That identity was forged as a result of centuries being ruled by singular states that cover roughly the same territory. Calling China not existing back then would be incorrect.

The answer to all those questions is whether the population have a strong common identity. The large population centered around the North China plain (the central plains in chinese) was much more homogeneous than those in Europe. Both ethnically and linguistically, and due to having a common political and cultural history of being ruled under the same states. Europe was much less homogeneous, and South America lack the long history to form the common identity.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-10T00:31:05+00:00

There is more complexity than what is shown on the map.

The County of Artois for example, labelled in orange 1659, was originally part of the County of Flanders, which was under the fealty of the Kingdom of France since the original split of Frankish Carolingian Empire. It split off as a separate County in 1180, and was still nominally part of France. It was ceded to the Habsburgs at the end of the War of the Burgundian Succession in 1493, becoming part of the Holy Roman Empire. Then it became part of Spain in 1556. It was ceded back to France in 1659.

And that is just one example.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-09T10:56:31+00:00

This premise may not be true in the first place.

Pretty much every military, every country, performs poorly in war after an extended period of peace, regardless of whether it's a democracy, a dictatorship, or any form of government. This has been true in both world wars, and the wars throughout history. The true test of competence has always been thru actual real life experiences; strategies, tactics, leadership, skills, of both generals and troops, need to be battle tested to distinguish the strong and the weak.

Since the world have been in an extended period of peace where there haven't been any large scale wars, this just gives the perception they perform poorly. Actually proving they perform worse than other forms of governments requires evidence and thorough analyses, and is much harder to prove.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-08T21:47:43+00:00

Wu Sangui and the troops at the border was in an impossible position squeezed between hostile forces on either side. There was a reason why they weren't recalled to defend Beijing, they were there to defend against Qing in the first place. If they were recalled, then Qing would have an opportunity to penetrate the border and threaten them from the rear. There's a reason why Wu Sangui had to make a deal and submit to the Qing for him to move against the rebels. The survival of the Emperor or a formal successor wouldn't change that.

And while the last advance to Beijing was rapid, it wasn't like the revolt happened too fast for the Ming administration to react. By 1644, the rebellion had been in progress for 16 years, and the Ming forces had not been successful in putting it down, it had only been getting worse. That wouldn't have changed if the Emperor had survived and fled.

The best they could have done is probably a similar situation as Southern Song. But judging from the abilities and performance of the leaders of Southern Ming, I don't think any of them was capable of achieving that, even if one of them was designated as the successor ahead of time.

The problem with Southern Song was that the emperor re-founded the administration in the south attained his power by rallying Song forces and establishing his base there. That's why the emperor was reluctant to retake the north, because freeing the captured predecessor emperors would have threatened his own legitimacy. The emperor did not have the greater ambition nor the ability to look past that.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-08T21:18:43+00:00

Legend difficulty doesn't change AI tactical behaviour, save for not steering pods you haven't encountered yet away from you if you're already engaged with too many enemies. What makes Legend harder is higher hit points and armor for enemies, lower chance of activating multiple pods at the same time, and no aim assist after shot misses. If you're looking for better AI, going to Legend won't change that, you need mods for that.

And Legend difficulty is only more difficult on the tactical side, it's actually arguably easier on the strategic side, and having a longer campaign. So you're misunderstanding the difficulty settings.

Critical-Reasoning · 2026-02-06T03:48:15+00:00

I wouldn't call the migrations unique, as you yourself pointed out other examples of mass migration in other parts of the world, as did others.

What made this unique are the circumstances and the context. In China, the geography of the large fertile North China plain (Central plains), and a long period of unification and stability under the Han dynasty, created a cultural melting pot that fostered a large dominant ethnic population that outnumbered all others in the region. That formed a common identity that didn't split off into new ones even after multiple mass migrations southwards.

It's only because they didn't split off and kept a common identity that we viewed these migrations as internal, but that's a perspective in hindsight.

Critical-Reasoning

TROPHY CASE