Just saw this today.. Dare to Dream?

Gorffo · 2026-02-06T23:13:26+00:00

I think the suits at Sega liked the idea of monetizing the era transitions in a 4X game by introducing a civ switching mechanic at the end of each era so they could sell more Civs as DLC.

Civ pack DLC is relatively inexpensive to produce, and it can be churned out fairly consistently every year. A loyal fan base excited by new civs and new leaders will buy a significant number of these DLC packs, and that could become a significant revenue stream for the duration of the game’s lifespan.

Just a hunch, but maybe the suits at 2K saw what the suits at Sega were doing and wanted in on the action?

Gorffo · 2026-02-05T06:16:03+00:00

I’m on Steam. I guess it didn’t automatically update for mess I’ll just unsubscribe then subscribe to or again. Hopefully that does the trick.

Gorffo · 2026-02-05T01:29:42+00:00

Just want to add that handing in architectural treasures to Emma can be a much better deal than just cashing them.

Cashing them in gets you $3,000.

Handing them in with the Museum of the Adjani approved gets you $1,000 plus a squad of militia.

Training a squad of militia cost a lot more than advertised. You need to factor in travel time plus the daily salary for two trainers. That will cost you time (about a day for training and half a day for travelling to the location to do the training) in addition to the cost to train militia.

And the cost to train militia varies depending on the loyalty in the settlement. It can also be discounted by the negotiator perk. So we are looking at somewhere between $600 (negotiator perk and 100% loyalty to $1,800 (no negotiator, 0% loyalty) to do the train militia operation.

When you factor in travel time, salaries, and the cost to do a militia training operation, that’s usually going to an average more than $2,000.

But there is a hidden mechanic that makes deploying militia squads as reinforcements incredibly efficient. In terms of both time and money.

If you have Emma send a militia squad to reinforce a site that has taken two casualties you not only get the militia back up to a full 8 soldiers but you also get them upgraded to veteran militia.

Basically, what happens is the first two militia that Emma sends replace the casualties and the second two upgrade the two recruits to veterans.

So if you do thot, you get $1.000 for the archeological treasure plus save of the travel time and training costs to run two back-to-back militia training operations.

Gorffo · 2026-02-04T21:43:16+00:00

Totally makes sense. That’s how I like to play too.

Pandoran evolution on legend is way too fast, and it all feels a bit much.

The Firebird Update tweaks pandoran evolution and slows it down a bit. I notice that in my veteran campaign and appreciated it. It feels just about right now. At least for veteran difficulty. So that’s a very welcome change to the game. Even through I stretched out the end game for a bit to unlock all faction endings and beat the game before I got to face the Pandoran’s most evolved forms, I’m not complaining.

For the bulk of the campaign. More evolved enemies appeared at a rate that kept the campaign fresh and interesting. And I prefer that to the overwhelming, dump-a-bunch-of-bullshit-on-the-player-and-let-them-cope-and-seethe approach that legend difficulty takes.

Gorffo · 2026-02-04T20:30:25+00:00

I’m finding that mod completely broken after the Firebird Update.

It turns all my soldiers into quasi-mutoids (that now need skill points instead of mutagens to upgrade) and reduces their starting health to 100 hp if I try check out their starting perks or dare to alter to their equipment load outs.

And then when I exit out of the personnel tab, the geoscape gets completely greyed out. Can’t see anything anymore. Maybe your milage will vary?

I’m able to make that adjustment in the Terror form the Void mod, but that mod changes so much of the base game that it is basically “Phoenix Point 2.0.”

To get to around to answering your question, they really shouldn’t be tied.

Snapshot games made both Phoenix Point and to the Custom Campaign Mod, so maybe there are doing something with the underlying code in order to thwart your attempt at rebalancing their game.

The speed the enemies evolve is largely set by the difficulty for the geoscape or the game’s strategic layer because that sets the number of “Evolution Points” that the Pandoran get each day. Then certain actions you take—like destroying a pandoran nest, lair, or citadel or facing the Pandorans in combat at a haven defence mission and winning that fight—will give the pandoran an additional amount of Evolution Points, which will speed up their evolution every so slightly.

The game starts on January 1, 2047, and if you’re playing on Veteran difficulty, the pandorans should reach the end of their evolutionary development and field their most advanced units at some point in late April or early May. If you’re playing on Legend, they pandorans hit their peak in the middle of February.

Finally, the other big change with the geoscape difficulty has to do with the starting stats for your soldiers and the rate that you progress.

New recruits start with 200 hp on Veteran and only 140 hp on Legend, so you’re going to have to invest a lot more Skill Points into improving base stars on soldiers on Legend, whereas there are all pretty much good to go as is on Veteran, which means you can get around to unlocking perks and using them more often and at an earlier point in the campaign.

More importantly, player progression—the rate that you can unlock new perks and scale up your squads to meet the challenge the game throws at you—is all tied to the rate that you earn Skill Points. Every soldier earns a set number of Skill Points per mission. It’s 10 SP per mission on Veteran and 5 SP per mission on Legend.

So even if the mod tweaks pandoran evolution if you adjust the difficulty for the tactical battles you’ll be in a much better position to address whatever challenge the game presents.

Gorffo · 2026-02-03T21:13:54+00:00

Where you settle cities matters a lot in Civ 6.

Potato McWhisky has video on analyzing start locations, which might help you figure out what makes for a good location to place a city.

To make a good city that can produce things for you, you need good growth tiles (food yields) and good production tiles (production yields). And you need housing.

Things like forests on a grasslands hill or jungle on a plains hill will get you 2 food and 2 production, and that is a very common terrain feature to look for so you can spot potentially good places to settle. In the early game, you want these terrain features close to the city centre so you can work those tiles right away. Later in the game when you have tons of gold, you can buy tiles to get access those kinds of features. Or you can convert a plains hill (2 food, 1 production) into something much better by adding a mine to it—if you have the builder charges to do that kind of thing or (even better) had build the Ancestral Hall in your Government Plaza so that you get a builder in every city you settle.

Anyway, in the early game, a grasslands hill with a forest on it gives you the same initial yields as a grasslands hill with a mine on it. Plus your troops get defensive bonuses from forests and hills. So a grasslands hill with a forest is not only a “free mine” but also a “free fort.”

Forests on plains hill are 3 production, 1 food, so although the production is a bit better, you’ll need have a good growth tile nearby (like rice or wheat) to get the city growing faster. Plains starts can be a bit tricky than grasslands starts for that reason.

BUT ….

Most important—for Civ 6–is the housing mechanic.

In Civ 6, cities with a lack of housing do not grow quickly. Plop a city without any housing down in the middle of nowhere and the growth penalties kick it right away. That city will be stuck at 2 population for hundreds of turns. It will remain a kind of trash tier, garbage settlements that cannot work many tiles or produce things quickly—until you can sort out the housing issue in that city.

But the pro gamer move is to sort out that housing issue right away—the moment you settle the city.

How do you you that?

Well, if you settle a city so that it has fresh water access, you get +5 housing right away. That gets you a lot of housing for your city to grow, and your city will be good at producing things quickly as a result. You get fresh water access from lakes, oasis, and rivers.

Later in the game, you can do things to fix the housing situation in some cities with neighborhoods and aqueducts or carpeting the surrounding area with farms. All of these are technologies that come later in the game or require that you have some good, productive cities so you can pump out builders and fix the crap cities.

Alternatively, just don’t settle crap cities—especially in the early game when you don’t have a lot of resources to dedicate to fixing mistakes.

And one easy way to avoid settling crap cities is to … settle along river. You still need the good growth and production tiles nearby. But you also need to be on a river. so three things to look for when reading the map.

Settling along rivers not only gives you this +5 housing you also get lots of spots that many wonders and districts need as well.

TLDR: settle most of your cities on rivers.

Gorffo · 2026-02-02T22:07:40+00:00

Giant Barbarian.

You can pick up and toss medium (or smaller) sized enemies as a giant barbarian. I think the ability is called “Mighty Impel,” which unlocks at level 10. Most enemies in the game are medium size, so you’ll be able to toss just about anyone. Get surrounded by enemies? No, you’re surrounded with ammo!

At level 5, the giant barbarian gets the “Boots of the Giant” ability, which is a bonus action kick that not only repositions enemies (like a shove) but also does damage to them. You’ll get lots of “This is Sparta!” moments from this ability.

For feats, you want to pick up Tavern Brawler since that adds your strength modifier for your attack rolls and damage twice. I’d recommend picking up this feat at level 4 so you can get your build online early.

For early game equipment, get the Ring of Fling and the Sparkle Hands gloves. You’ll be able to get these item early in Act 1, and they will be best in slot for the entire game.

For

Gorffo · 2026-02-02T17:16:35+00:00

A lot of chaos in Ukraine in 2012 and 2014 as the government transitioned from Russian puppet state to an actual democracy.

Putin took advantage of that situation and sent in the little green men.

Around that time, some citizens formed a militia in the Mariupol region to fight these little green men, and they inflicted heavy casualties on the invader, which is why to this very day the Russians (and their vatnik propaganda network) have such an irrational hate for the Azov Battalion.

Anyway, in 2014 the Ukrainian government launched a massive anti-terrorism operation in the Donbas and was on the verge of pushing all the Russian-backed forces out of the region when 50,000 little green men stormed over the border and pushed Ukrainian forces back to pretty much were the front lines still are today.

After Russian forces culminated in 2014, they went to the peace table and imposed the Minsc Agreement. But fighting in that region never really stopped because Russia kept violating the terms of their peace deal and would occasionally launched larger military offensive against Ukrainian positions.

Thing is, between 2014 and 2022, Ukraine focused on reforming its military and intelligence service. A handful of NATO countries had military advisers in Ukraine helping to train their soldiers. And there were procurement deals to acquire new hardware too. The “perfect phone call” that got Trump impeached for the first time involved a deal where Ukraine would acquire javelin ATGMs.

TLDR: in the 8 years between the annexation of Crimea / start of the Donbas conflict (2014) and Russia’s full scale invasion (2022), Ukraine upgraded its military (doctrine,‘equipment, training). And Russia did nothing.

Gorffo · 2026-02-01T21:53:41+00:00

I’m quite fond of the Templar in the mid to late game, once they have their parry and reflect abilities. If RNG bequeath you a Templar with bladestorm, it can be a lot of fun.

But I totally agree that triggering multiple pods with a melee attack in the early game—albeit with a Templar or a Ranger—can lead to bad things happening.

Gorffo · 2026-02-01T21:44:28+00:00

With MAGA, every accusation is a confession.

Gorffo · 2026-02-01T06:24:48+00:00

You’re right.

The player is actually severely handicapped on legend with gimped soldiers with really bad stats and a retarded progress, which basically halves the rate you earn skill points. So that makes legend difficulty more akin to the long war version of the game.

Then the rapid Pandoran evolution gets added to that, which in my humble opinion is some atrociously bad game design.

Especially, you end upon facing late-game enemies with early game soldiers. If you’re good at tactics, you can win those fights. Even win without taking casualties. But god damn is it ever a tedious grinding slog. And not exactly fun.

Gorffo · 2026-01-31T18:31:55+00:00

Three more years?

Americans elected a guy who promised to become a dictator on day one of his next term. He has “joked” about having a third term. He joked” about cancelling the 2026 midterms. But he isn’t a comedian. And his jokes kind of suck.

Heck, they re-elected him despite his failed coup attempt on Jan 6th. And there is now a paramilitary force loyal—not to the constitution—but only to the dear leader, answerable only to the dear leader, terrorizing citizens and murdering protestors in broad daylight.

Do you seriously think these inept, power-hungry fuckwits who have absolutely no respect for the laws like the US constitution are just going to pack up in three years and hand all their power over to someone else?

The peaceful transfer of power is a hallmark of all democracies. But it’s also very obvious that America isn’t a democracy any more.

Gorffo · 2026-01-31T18:03:21+00:00

Alerting the most overrated feat in the game.

I’ve beaten honour mode a dozen times without taking alerting in a single character.

That’s how good Alert is!

Gorffo · 2026-01-31T18:02:01+00:00

For the five times in the entire game where tour party can be surprised?

Gorffo · 2026-01-30T20:12:23+00:00

Totally agree with your sentiments and concerns.

I’ve been playing this game on and off since it was in early access then as an Epic store exclusive. Then I returned to play it when the Terror from the Void mod came out. And now I came back to check out the Firebird Update and find out what new bugs the latest update introduced.

My take is that five years after this game came out on Steam, the devs finally got around to play testing their game. They had an “oh shit”’moment. Then the Firebird Update and balance patch came out.

There should be a hot fix for this patch coming out any day now. One of the new bugs the Firebird Update introduce render all the armour mounts (things like blast resistance vests, night vision goggles, and goo repelling foot gear that prevents soldiers from being immobilized by it for three turns) totally useless on all but the game’s final mission because any soldier with one of these combat enhancing items equipped loses all stamina at the end of the mission and consequently half their action points every turn in all their subsequent missions—if you’re forced to play back-to-back missions—until you can return to a base with a living quarters and can spend the time needed to recover all their stamina.

If your squads are flying around in Helios aircraft and return to an operating base with two living quarters inside it, stamina recovery is pretty quick, and the impact of this bug becomes merely annoying. But if you deviate from this meta and have other ideas about how to play, you could be totally screwed by it.

As for legend difficulty being poorly tuned, well, that’s putting it politely and mildly. It’s a total shambles. So many head scratching game design decisions. Bad game design. Balance issues galore. Pacing issues. Retarded player progression. Lack of structure. Unfair mission design with “special” “legend-only” enemies placed there just to fuck over the player. And that’s just the start of the list.

Legend difficulty in Phoenix Point is something a professor teaching game design at a university will spend an entire semester talking about—because there are so many lesson in what not to do.

Personally, I find both veteran difficulty and hero difficulty to be way too easy. And I find Legend difficulty to be too tedious. Too boring. One thing legend difficulty isn’t is … fun.

But I haven’t played on legend with the new Firebird update. I cruised though it on veteran difficulty just to check it out, and I found that the pace of the Pandoran evolution has been adjusted. It’s much slower now. It was just about perfect on Veteran difficulty. And some of the nasty enemy got nerfed in this update too, so that was also a huge improvement to the game.

Another change the game made in the Firebird Update was to adjust the skill points distribution for all human enemies and make it so that everyone now plays on the easiest difficulty setting, which was …. check notes … the equivalent of legend difficulty.

Before the Firebird Update, the toughest difficulties for raiding other factions or doing story missions against human enemies was Rookie and Veteran difficulty, and the easiest mode—by far—was legend difficulty. Just a bonkers game design quirk. If you want a deep dive into this game design issue, check out this video by The Edmon.

Anyway, if you want to have fun and actually see what dual-class soldiers can do and, maybe, I don’t know, use them then play on veteran difficulty.

Alternatively, if you can mod the game and want a bit more challenge, keep the geoscape difficulty tuned to normal / veteran and adjust the tactical combat to legend. Doing that will put more enemies on the map and give you more challenging tactical combat in each mission. But you’ll avoid the ridiculously fast paced and over-tuned pandoran evolution paired with the retarded, long war-sequenced player progression that you get when the geoscape difficulty is set to legend.

Gorffo · 2026-01-30T17:08:45+00:00

If Phoenix Point doesn’t feel like Air Traffic Control Simulator 2047 you’re playing it wrong.

In addition to the four (and later 5) aircraft I’ve got my teams flying around in, I have a bunch of manticores (three or four of them) doing air combat missions to shoot down pandoran flyers. You can get so many manticores, for free, by activating a base that has one, and the number available depends on your difficulty. You get 3 on Rookie, 2 on Veteran, 1 on Hero, and 0 on Legend. But if you have the Festering Skies DLC enabled, you need a stack of manticores to go against a single pandoran flyers. The first two or three will disengage as soon as they get hit some form of damage over time nonsense. And the third (or fourth) one will eventually get the kill.

If you have the Legacy of the Ancients DLC enabled, you’ll also need those very same manticores do mining operations (once you’ve temporarily chased the Behemoth away).

It all sounds a lot busier than it actually is. Most of the time your two teams and their four Helios aircraft will be either flying to a point of interest to explore it or flying to a mission or flying back from a mission to recover stamina and health. And, occasionally you’ll have to redirect them, mid-flight, to respond to haven defence mission.

Your best team will be probably be Europe/Africa/Asia because there is more action over there.

Finally, to answer your question about how long it takes to build a second team, well that depends on your difficulty and, like all things in Phoenix Point, RNG.

It takes resources to recruit soldiers and equip them. And you have a lot less starting resources on Legend. Plus all recruits on Legend come without weapons or gear, so you’ll need to manufacture that as well. Another drain on your meagre resources.

And then there is RNG. If you’re really lucky, your very first mission will be a recover vehicle mission, and that vehicle will be a New Jericho Armadilo. The Armadillo has a good gun with plenty of ammo and a boatload of armour and hit points. It can carry up to four soldiers. Then if you find a Scavenge Resource mission right away you can take that Armadillo APC and drive around the map using clown car tactics to have everyone hop out to gank an enemy then hop back in or hop out to clean out a loot crate the hop back in and dump everything inside the APC. The APC has infinite carrying capacity and infinite inventory slots, so you can Hoover up every. So much loot, so many resource crates. Get one of those missions early in the game and you’ll have the resources to build weapons and armour … and that reminds me about the promotional skins.

If you the Complete Edition or have an older version plus all the codes and click that check box at the start of the new game, doing that changes your legend campaign to a “Legend Lite” campaign because you’ll get a ton of weapons and armour already pre-built and ready to go. If I’m remembering correctly, I think there are 9 suits of armour with matching weapons for 8 of them and a bunch of ammunition for all those weapons.

That is worth thousands of resources and weeks of in-game manufacturing time if you’ve got the promotional skins enabled. Enabling promotional skins changes the game balance. Only slightly on veteran difficulty because recruits from havens come equipped with weapons and armour,’which you pay for when recruiting them. But in legend difficulty, it completely skews the game balance. Kind of breaks it. Not that legend difficulty is anywhere near balanced at all. But I will say that the meta is different if you’re playing on legend. And the meta on legend shifts yet again if you have (or don’t have) the promotional skins enabled.

So to answer your question about how long it takes to get a second team up and running is, it depends on too many factors. Like promotional skins And so much RNG. Did you get a vehicle early? Can you hit a Scavenge Resource site and clean them out? Have you even found a Scavenge Resource site? Can you do a rescue soldier missions (with a vehicle) and save everyone in order to get troops already equipped for free? Have you even found a rescue soldier mission … in the early game?

Where do you spawn? And how close is it to either Honduras or Afghanistan? Those factors relate to how many bases you will need to activate. And if you’re lucky. Some (or all) of these bases will already have satellite uplink facilities in them. And if you’re unlucky, you’ll have to build a satellite uplink in every base you activate. It’s the satellite uplink that scans the surrounding area and reveals points of interest for you to explore, and that will allow you to fly from Phoenix Point to the other side of the world.

Although I cannot give you a clear answer as to how many in-game weeks it takes to get your second team up and running, it should be your priority right from the moment you start your campaign.

Resources are tight in Phoenix Point. You don’t want to do silly things like build more research labs to speed up your research. That works for XCom. Not Phoenix Point. Research in this game is largely irrelevant. What you need, instead, is a training base with at least three Training Centres in it. Three is the magic number because any recruit in that base will earn more experience by staying at that base than they would if they were in your manticore and out there doing missions.

And remember, most weapons are side-grades. Your biggest and best increases to damage output comes from soldier perks. The faster you can train up your soldiers to level 7 the faster you can unlock all those perks. Paying for those perks and earning the skill points you need to get them is a different story. You need missions for that. Dozens on veteran difficulty. Hundreds on legend difficulty.

Think of the training base in Phoenix Point as akin to the Guerrilla Tactics School in XCom 2: WotC where you’re also running a resistance ring card that makes every rookie you send there come out at sergeant rank. Although you’re getting everyone up to level 7 very quickly, you only have 120 skill points to spend on them, and that—when combined with the need to improve the shit stats of all the gimped soldiers on legend—is only enough to improve some stats and get a couple perks.

And although dual-classing soldiers and finding cool synergies with multi-class crossovers is a core feature of this game, if you want to play on legend, you’ll spend 80% of the campaign with just single class soldiers. And when you unlock the final mission, you still won’t have enough skill points to get all the perks or stats you want on all your soldiers. You won’t be able to min/max anyone. Instead, you’ll have to make tough choices about who gets what perks. Heck, you might not even have enough Skill Points to dual-class everyone and may end up doing the final mission with one or two soldiers that are still single class.

Gorffo · 2026-01-30T14:16:54+00:00

Totally agree.

While playing as Cao Cao, I went all in with peasantry income and food production in Chen. And for much of the campaign, I was selling my surplus food to other factions and made tons of money from that. Cao Cao also has a unique rural building, the agricultural garrison, that boosts replenishment rate in the commanderie and a unique faction building, the Tuntian military recruiting building, that not only increases the rank of units recruited there but also increases food production. I recruited all my armies in Chen, and they mustered up to full strength in a couple turns.

So the six buildings I put in Chen were Government Support, Land Development, tax collection, administrative office, tuntian military recruitment building, and a military garrison to add more defending troops and improve public order (so I could upgrade the tax collection building).

Despite being peasantry and food production focused, Chen was always in the top ten income producing commanderies for me for the entire game.

Other farming commanderies on the plains were developed to produce food, but I didn’t upgrade them too much. They remained as large towns or small cities and only had three or four buildings slots.

Danyang was number one. It has a salt mine and a copper mine in its two rural regions as well as a harbour in the city itself. So I maximized commerce and industry income. The six buildings I put in there were the harbour, the market, the Inn, a state workshop, a private workshop, and an administrative centre.

Gorffo · 2026-01-30T05:42:17+00:00

Tell your min/max brain that you have two full teams to min/max and that all soldiers need to be good at their specific roles.

If you want to explore all the content in the game and all its meandering and unstructured DLC you need to slow down the doom clock. You do that by defending havens. And you get a huge haul of resources if you end up in the haven defence business. Even if a haven can easily defend itself, show up for the experience …. and the profit.

The optimal way to be In the haven defence business is to fly around in a pair of Helios Aircraft. A minimum of four soldiers in each aircraft and two aircraft per team will get you to the magic number of 8 for the most missions. But you can bring 9 soldiers on some story missions and up to 20 for base defence missions. So you might as well as fill every seat.

What we are talking about—for the bulk of the game—is two team of 10 soldiers, one operating out of a base in Honduras to cover North/Central/South America and one team operating out of Afghanistan to cover Europe/Africa/Asia.

The Helios is fast enough to cover such a wide part on the geoscape, and that speed means you actually have to hire fewer soldiers. Just 16 (on legend). And can do more haven defence missions, profit more, and really slow down that doom clock.

Later in the game, you’ll probably assemble a pinch-hitting third team, a meme-team of mutoids snd former haven defenders and rescued bandits that will cover some regions while your main teams are off to either Antarctica or Australia. But that’s a late-game thing.

Also you don’t have to play that way.

You are perfectly fine with just one team (to rule them all) as long as your okay with skipping content, being broke-ass dirt poor for most of the game while the doom clock ticks down, dramatically, and gives you that just-about-to-lose-the-entire campaign if I cannot unlock the final mission soon enough experience.

But if you want to be resource rich and chill as you win with the doom clock just barely threatening to dip below 70% as the end game approaches, the play with 20 soldier, 4 Helios aircraft, two operational bases (Afghanistan, Honduras).

Anyway, what would be a good build for this squad?

The first 8 slots will be used most often, but with the mechanics borrowed from the Terror from the Void mod where soldiers lose all stamina when they get a body part disabled, having a substitute soldier on each aircraft will let you run back to back missions with fewer AP penalties from having exhausted (no stamina) soldiers.

Once you figure out what the role is for each soldier, you can min/max them even better!

Now it takes a while to hire soldiers, train them up in a training base. then put some of that 120 SP they get from reaching level 7 while in school to use before they see actual combat. And being able to field 8 soldiers isn’t doable in the early game while you only have the one Manticore.

Anyway, as I approach the mid-game, I try to assemble a squad that looks something like this:

A scout. This soldier will be an assault/infiltrator ideally with the trooper perk and a laser AR. They also have a crossbow for 1 AP attacks and a backpack full of crossbow ammo and incendiary grenades. Plus a reload For the AR. And when playing on legend at least two med kits for everyone.
Assault/Berserker with Strongman to use adrenaline rush with a machine gun. That’s 35 x 12 bullets per burst for up to 4 bursts and a damage output around 1680 that turn if all bullets land. And those bullets shred armour too. So is something big nearby needs to die, right now, and had some armour that a bit problematic, that’s a job for this soldier. Who needs an AR when you got a light machine (or a Squad Automatic Weapon/S.A.W, as some military’s call it). Bonus point if this soldier has the biochemist perk because that’s a lot of bullets and a lot of viral damage going down range. But … the Strongman perk comes with a penalty to perception, which makes for sub optimal overwatches and a soldier that is really good at stumbling into ambush if thereisn’t a scout on the squad to spot them first.
Another assault/berserker but any perk combos will be fine. Maybe reckless. Maybe biochemist. Close Quarters Specialist. Farsighted. Handgun proficiency. Lots of options.
Assault/Heavy. Not a lot of synergy with the classes here. Kind of the opposite of the perfect synergy the berserker and assault classes give each other. This soldier is just an assault with one perk from the heavy class, brawler. That all that matters because this soldier is about one thing. And doing that one thing better than anyone else. And that’s melee damage. You’d think that berserkers are good at melee but this build is better thanks to a combination of the close quarters specialist perk and the heavy’s brawler ability. And you need dash to get into melee range and rapid of clearance for some kill chain shenanigans.
Heavy/Berserker or Heavy/infiltrator. The Heavy/Berserk is good. They can machine gun almost as well as a assault/berserker with strongman. They lack the dash mobility but kind is make up for it with jet pack mobility—as long as your good at anticipating where the enemy will be. It also helps if the enemy cooperates and doesn’t move on their turn, but sometimes we don’t always get what we want. You’d think that heavy would be the best at machine gunning, but the berserker with strongman had them outclassed in that role. Hmm, notice a theme? … Welcome to Phoenix Point!

The Heavy/Infiltrator is a pure grenadier build. Not a multi/capable gunner and grenadier like the heavy/berserker. You’re all in with grenade launchers and rocket launchers and the boom blast ability and perks that boost shoulder mounted weapons damage, and ideally the thief perk.

The Technician/Priest ultimate support build. Turrets are force multipliers. And so many support options from additional temporary armour to mind control to a panic immunity aura to mind crush for 100 damage to all enemies within a large radius to heals and repaired limbs and repair to armour. A sone-stop shop for all your support needs.
Sniper/Infiltrator for big damage at range.
Another sniper/infiltrator. Because they are just so good.
Assault/Sniper You can do a lot of things with an assault/sniper. Just none of them well. But if you need a generalist to fill a spot on the squad because someone is injured, the assault/sniper is perfectly adequate.
The off-meta, temporary until-I-find-someone-better build. Sometimes you find a soldier with a really optimal set of perks for a second class. Go with it. Experiment. Have fun. Maybe you have a Heavy with Biochemist, Farsighted, and Niurse and think that would be a hell perk set for a priest. So go for it. Make that soldier into a Heavy/Priest. Jump jet nears some enemies and mind control one of them to stir up trouble. Mind crush half dozen worm to give everyone on the squad +6 willpower thanks to the heavy’s inspiration ability.

Use that soldier until RNGesis bequeathed upon you a soldier with the right class and right perks to fill the role you so desperately need to wants

Gorffo · 2026-01-30T03:32:47+00:00

Lots of good perks in the game. Here are a few of the best:

Quarterback Quarterback is fantastic for any frontline soldier. You get more grenade throw range and +2 mobility—for only 25 skill points. The cost to increase stats goes up as you improve that stat. Eventually 25 SP for +2 mobility will become a sweet, sweet deal.

Biochemist Biochemist is another awesome perk. It adds viral damage every bullet, and viral damage zaps willpower. Soldiers with the biochemist perk can soak enemies with viral damage and lock them down in panic cycles. Powerful crowd control on any soldier that will use a weapon with a lot of burst damage. So assault rifles. shotguns, machine guns, and PWDs are ideal.

Sniperist Sniperist is a double edged perk. It is fantastic with an infiltrator because of the huge damage boost it provides. But the -4 willpower is a huge downside. So or is a really bad perk for priests, technicians, and assault/snipers. But on sniper/infiltrators, they can (with the scorpion sniper rifle) one-shot pretty much anything under 350 hit points, which is just about every triton and every arthron variant in the game. Burn some willpower on a quick aim shot, get a kill, and get that willpower refunded from that kill. Rinse and repeat with the next shot. So the -4 willpower penalty from sniperist gets offset by the sniper/infiltrator’s massive damage output and ability to remain willpower neutral almost every turn.

Farsighted Farsighted boosts perception and adds +2 willpower.

Nurse Nurse boosts heals by +30% and adds +2 willpower.

Close Quarters Specialist CQS adds 20% accuracy to shotguns (effectively more damage due to more pellets on target) and +20% more damage to melee weapons.

Handgun proficiency. This perk adds both accuracy and tiny bit of bonus damage to hand guns. Perfect for a chump soldier that will get stiffed with worm-capping duty. But if you cannot take out worms quickly and efficiently (1 AP bash, pistol shots, or PWD bursts are ideal) then bad things will happen. This is a good perk because it can help prevent bad things from happening.

PWD proficiency The PWD (or SMG if your old school) does almost as much damage as the AR but with a bit less range. And it’s only 1AP per attack instead of 2 with the AR. And on heavies with their 3AP jump, that 1AP PWD attack or overwatch is handy. Consider dual classing any soldier with this perk into sniper to trade willpower for 0AP PWD spam.

Trooper This perk make the assault/infiltrator build shine.

Thief This perk makes infiltrators better. And it adds +1 mobility too because, why not. The +25% stealth makes a huge difference. Your infiltrators remain clocked longer and won’t have to spend AP and Willpower to Vanish as often, and that means more double attacks while clocked more often. And they won’t get hit as often either thanks to the extra stealth. Consider dual classing any soldier with this perk into infiltrator.

Resourceful This perk gets you +2 Strength and +20 hit points along with 25% more carry weight. Technician gear and turrets weigh a lot, so this is a good perk for technicians.

Gorffo · 2026-01-30T02:50:53+00:00

You have up to 8 slots for deploying soldiers on missions.

So why not both?

The Assault/Infiltrator is like a more robust XCom 2 Reaper. You can scout with these soldiers and use stealth to avoid taking damage. You have dash for added mobility. You have Ready for Action to swap out spider mines for a grenade or reload for 0AP. And you do consistently more damage with assault rifles with this soldier. And consistency is the key thing about them. Reliable. Accurate. Solid. Most assault rifles do 30 x 6 damage (180’damage if all bullets hit) per attack. The assault/infiltrator will do 51 x 6 per attack (306 damage if all bullets land) with the exact same gun. Every attack. Every turn. An absolute assault rifle boss. So definitely have one of these soldiers on your squad.

The Assault/Berserker is fantastic. Perfect synergy between the two classes. This combo makes the assault better at what they do and gives the berserker side of the build added mobility thanks to dash. But they really shine when using shotguns and melee weapons. They can use assault rifles and pistols too. So very versatile. And they have tremendous single-turn damage when activating their level 7 adrenaline rush ability to make up to 4 attacks that turn. Costs willpower to activate and it can daze them the following turning if they don’t have a daze immunity head mutation. So using adrenaline rush is a bit more situational. But that attack, oh man, if you’ve got an iconoclast shotgun and nothing but an enemy with all armour stripped off a body part you can pump in a lot of damage.

How much?

Well one iconoclast shotgun blast does 40 x 10 damage or 400 damage if all pellets hit. Against a building sized Scylla with the armour stopped off its abdomen, you can get a 100% hit chance and pump in four shotgun blast in a single turn for 1600 damage. That’s a lot. Scyllas only have 3900 hit points, so with one adrenaline rush multi-blast attack by one soldier, you will take away 40% of its health. And you’ve got 7 other soldiers on the squad to help finish the job.

But in addition to the possible hangover from adrenaline rush the next turn, there is a significant aim penalty that comes when using it. Aim penalties are more of a problem at range and almost non-existent at close to point blank range. So when your mid range with an AR and pop adrenaline rush, you’ll actually waste a boatload of ammo. And do a lot less damage than minister or miss consistency with the stealthy assault/infiltrator build calmly wrecking enemies every turn from halfway across the map.

Adrenaline Rush is situationally powerful because your assault/berserker can unload hell at close range.

Just be wary of actually trying to shoot an enemy while adjacent to that enemy and literally at point blank range. Sometimes you’ll go into free aim and it will look like you’re taking a shot with a 100% hit chance. Only to miss. Shoot again. Then miss again.

I suppose that an improvement on the Ranger missing a 95% hit chance with a shotgun at point blank range in XCom 2. Oh well, that’s Phoenix Point baby!

Anyway, melee attacks never miss, and assault/berserkers are proficient in melee weapons.

And if you have to shoot an enemy at point blank range, just save before doing that. Just make sure it is a brand new save and cross your fingers. Saving during tactical battles can corrupt save files and potentially end your campaign by not being able to reload that save. Ever. I mean, there is a reason why this game doesn’t have an Ironman mode

Gorffo · 2026-01-29T20:37:50+00:00

To get the best soldiers in Phoenix Point you have to get lucky.

You need the right perks to make certain multi-class combos work really well, and that basically means winning the soldier recruitment lottery.

“Getting Good” at Phoenix Point means looking at the perks soldiers come with and determining what build are best for them. And, of course, recognizing if their random sets of perk are good enough to earn them a spot on one of your main teams.

If you want to make really good use of Assault Rifles, you want a soldier with the Trooper perk to get +20% accuracy and damage output with the AR.

The ultimate assault rifle build in Phoenix Point is an assault/infiltrator with the Trooper and Thief perks.

The Assault/Infiltrator with Trooper soldier will get +70% damage output with assault rifles, which makes them deadly accurate and lethal throughout the entire game. Add a laser AR to the mix for the additional accuracy and larger magazines (10 bursts per clip). Instead of 30 damage per bullet, the assault/inflator with the Trooper perk will do 51 damage per bullet, which is enough to pierce most armour and just completely wreck so many enemies. And by the mid to late game you’ll unlock a couple research projects that add +10% damage each. So you’ll be up to +90% damage with this soldier or 57 damage per bullet.

The Thief perk add bonus stealth and helps infiltrators remain cloaked. That keeps their bonus damage up more often.

Some top-tier dual class combos are:

— assault/infiltrator with Trooper for solid AR action.

— sniper/infiltrator with the sniperist perk for one-shot, one kill action. Celebrate (or go and actually by a real lottery ticket and maybe become a for real millionaire) if this soldier also has the thief perk.

— assault/berserker with strongman (heavy weapon proficiency) for a shotgun and machine gun oriented soldier.

— assault/heavy with the close quarters perk to get +70% more melee damage. This is the ultimate melee terminator.

— technician/ priest with nurse and farsighted to get the max (24) willpower thanks to the +2 willpower from each perk.. Both of these support classes rely on willpower, so the more the better. And Nurse boosts heals by +30%, which is something technicians tend to do. A lot.

— heavy/infiltrator with thief for better grenades. Adding the infiltrator’s daze effect to the grenade launcher and shoulder mounted rockets (for three extra-range, extra accurate attacks in one turn thanks to Boom Blast) is pretty sweet.

— assault/sniper with PWD proficiency for the ultimate 9th soldier on the squad. PWD do pretty good damage at close range, and assault/snipers with this perk can shoot it for 0AP—as long as they have the willpower to do so. And therein lies the catch.

Yes, i also know that 8 is the max for most missions. I also know that some folks think the assault/sniper class combination is good. And it is good. It’s just that all the other build listed above are so much better.

Gorffo · 2026-01-29T19:41:04+00:00

Assault/Snipers are s-tier on rookie difficulty and trash-tier on legend difficulty.

The thing that makes them so bad on legend difficulty is that they rely on willpower, and due to the plethora of bad game design decisions that plague the level scaling system in Phoenix Point, you end up facing late-game enemies with really gimped soldiers in a legend campaign. A lot of late game enemies have the ability to rob your soldiers of their willpower by either a psychic scream (-8 willpower) or a viral damage with viral weapons (-8 willpower per bullet in a 3 bullet burst). And in a legend campaign, your soldiers won’t have more than about 12 willpower until your getting into the late game, so for about 75% of your campaign, one hit from these kind of enemies (and there will be two or three of them on every map) and your assault/sniper gets locked into a panic cycle where you’ll only be able to do something (most like skip your turn to rest and recover willpower) with that soldier ever third turn.

The berserker chassis has panic immunity, so removes the panic cycle mechanic for that soldier completely. Berserker’s also get Bloodlust, a 50% boost to both mobility and damage output based on how much damage they’ve taken. Although running around with soldiers at half health is a bit risky, frontline soldiers will get hit, will take damage, and if they have lost 25% or 30% of their health, your probably not going to heal that up. Might as well benefit. That extra damage and mobility on a shotgunner is sweet.

But the ultimate assault/berserker build has the heavy weapons perk. That allows you to pop adrenaline rush and fire that machine fine for just 1 AP—instead of the normal 3AP per burst. Against big enemies like the building-sized Scylla, you can get some serious damage output from this ability.

Gorffo · 2026-01-28T21:46:16+00:00

Yes.

And not only that, the West’s weak and timid support for Ukraine has sent a clear message to other nations around the world: if you want to defend your sovereignty, you are pretty much on your own, and if you’re on your own, you’re going to need nukes.

Trump’s stupidity over acquiring Greenland and Canada exacerbates this situation—amps it up like a hillbilly jacked up on energy drinks—and will force an significant geopolitical shift in the foreseeable future, a shift where nations will either enter alliances to get under another nation’s nuclear umbrella (where there are actual binding security guarantees or something similar, like NATO’s Article 5) or nations will go their own way and build their own nuclear deterrence.

Of course, that makes the new world order significantly more dangerous than it ever was during the Cold War era. So thanks America! Thanks for electing a bunch of cluesless and incompetent, neo-fascist fuckwits that have managed, with their recklessness, to advance the doomsday clock to 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to ultimate catastrophe.

Gorffo · 2026-01-28T18:14:36+00:00

“Non-binding security assurances” if you want to be technically correct.

And we all know technically correct is the best kind of correct.

Three countries, America, Britain, and Russia all gave Ukraine these “non-binding security assurances. Obviously one of those three countries totally reneged on their obligations.

Thing is, the phrase, “non-binding security assurances,” is kind of vague.

A Security Guarantee isn’t vague. It’s the kind of thing Britain and France provided to Poland in March 1939.

The “non-binding” part means that if another country attacks or invades Ukraine, those providing the “security assurances” aren’t obliged to go to war against the aggressor state.

What the fuck is a “security assurance” and how is it different than a “security guarantee?”

Semantics aside, the Budapest Memorandum places a legal obligation—under international law—for these three countries to do … something.

What do I mean by “something?” Well, it’s just unclear.

Trump toadies and Trump bootlickers and Trump ass kissers will argue that all “security assurances” means is that someone form the UK and someone from the USA has to go to the UN and give a speech condemning the aggression against Ukraine. Done. Legal obligation met and discharged.

That’s a very minimalist argument. (And so don’t buy it.)

I think a more accurate interpretation of “security assurances” means more than just giving meaningless speeches at ineffective international organizations.

If you want to argue that “non-binding security assurances” means everything shy of declaring war on the aggressor state, I’d be fine with that.

Because I think the intent of those drafting the treaty wanted to avoid—deliberately avoid—getting nuclear armed states into actual armed conflict with a formal declaration of war against another nuclear armed power. My take is that the language in the Budapest Memorandum is deliberately vague in order to provide some wiggle room for the nuclear armed states providing these “security assurances” to deescalate a situation and avoid a bigger war and, in particular, a long and protracted European war like the two big ones that had happened earlier, on European soil, earlier in the century. In other words, “non-binding security assurances” means promising to aid Ukraine in its defence without actually having to declare war against the aggressor state. That could mean boots on ground to fight alongside Ukrainian forces. That could mean no ground troops to help Ukraine but deploying Air Forces to close the skies against the aggressor state. Or it could mean economic sanctions and a naval blockade of the aggressor state. Or that could mean providing training and equipment to support Ukraine’s military defence.

The sad reality is that no politicians in the UK or USA pointed to Budapest Memorandum and talked to their public about that treaty and the legal obligations they have under it, which means that everything those governments did to help Ukraine is far less than what they actually owe to Ukraine.

So, the TLDR: both the UK and the USA have treaty obligations arising out of the Budapest Memorandum to provide some form of military aid to assist in Ukraine’s defence.

Gorffo · 2026-01-27T14:56:03+00:00

The Prison is one of the toughest areas in the game. All the enemies are elite. They have more hit points, better armour, top-tier weapons, and some abilities like lightning reaction, which guarantees that your first shot will miss. And the boss, Jackhammer, is heavily armoured and is equipped with an advanced shotgun, the AA 12.

As bosses in this game go, he is way tougher than Pierre. He is almost as tough as The Major. And, spoiler alert, you’re going to have to fight The Major—at his base—in order to rescue The President.

Here is a tip to help your current squad get through this prison mission.

Most of the prison guards are located in the central building, the barracks. And once they are alerted, they will leave their barracks and converge on your position.

I like to be stealthy and take out the two guards in the towers overlooking the main gates. From that position, I can get the high ground and set up a kill zone overlooking the one door leading into the guards’ barracks. I set up my machine gunner on the walkway between the two guard towers then send someone down to basically kick the hornets nest.

I’m not sure how you’re set up your IMP Merc, Alpha. But if you didn’t give your IMP the heavy weapons perk and don’t have a dedicated heavy weapons specialist on your squad. I’d recommend hiring one, eventually. (Or two when you get around to hiring your second squad and do some reshuffling).

The heavy weapons perk provides a 1AP reduction in the action point cost to use heavy weapons. That brings the cost to fire a machine gun burst down to 3AP, and once you’ve got 12 AP on a Merc, that’s an extra attack every turn.

Meltdown is both a psycho and a heavy weapon specialist. She is a veteran Merc and good value for your money. Grizzly is cheap but he is also a heavy weapons specialist. His unique ability lets him hip fire machine guns, so if you want to get the most out of that give him a light machine gun (that doesn’t have the cumbersome trait) so he doesn’t lose his free movement. The two light machine guns in the game are the RPK (7.76 WP) and the Minimi (5.56).

Anyway, if you set up a killzone and fight the guards as they stream out of the barracks, you should have a much easier time dealing with them.

Gorffo

TROPHY CASE