Legendary Oct/Nov, How do I deal with Advent strength

[LeaderEnemyBoss]

This thread will be a bit of a rant, but I am about to lose (again) so please bear with me :p.

Yesterday I was still hanging in fine, or so I thought. I liberated my second region to generate more moneys, I had enough predator and exo suits to fully kit out 20 men. Some soldiers have Magnetic weapons and coil guns arent too far off. Two of my contacted regions had 8+ Advent strength, so that most rebels in these regions just hide (I learned that Retaliations in high Advent strength regions are a miserable experience). All in all I feel pretty secure, I have enough soldiers, a steady income and still plenty of easier missions to trian my young'uns.

About a month later: Several dark events hit, raising the hp across the board, making stealth missions nearly impossible (scanners), show of force. My second liberated region got invaded despite me putting 6 rebels on intel. I won the invasion but with 3 rebels left, this region has to rebuild for a long time. Since all my contacted regions have too high strength for good missions now, I decide to expand. I contact 3 regions in different ends of the world back to back. All of them have 6 or more Advent strength. Sectopods begin to appear, enemies rarely have less then 15 hp now. How am I supposed to deal with this? Since my best men + equipment are busy with infiltrating a facility, I feel no longer able to do any missions. A mix of lasers with some mag weapons dont cut it anymore vs swarming or even heavy. Also how can I train weaker soldiers, when there are no "easy" missions anymore? The only missions I feel comfortable doing now are stealthy type missions and the occasional high infiltration time column.

I am thinking about restarting, maybe with red fog this time to help myself out a bit, may even go down to commander. But before I do that: how am i supposed to deal with rapid growth of advent strength? Did I do something wrong? I guess I should beeline coilguns faster to keep up in the damage department. Also "accidently" unlocking the tower mission in a region i didnt intend to liberate was probably a bad mistake (advent strength there is at 12 for months now despite all rebels on hiding). Is there any way to lower strength in a region that starts out at 8 strength? I guess i could put all starting rebels of that region on intel and scan there, gamble that I do not get invaded and get easy columns. Any tipps from legend players? Also: are there any good strategy videos out there? I feel i can monstly keep up in the tactical department but i fail at the strategical game. I would love to watch a condensed strategy guide, but i have no time to watch hour longs streams.

[aimlessgun]

I'm no expert but here's stuff I've learned from my one and only campaign (Legendary, currently Nov24th)

Sounds like your research was behind for some reason. I got coils in September and plasma rifles and cannons by mid-November, Warden armor in October. Very hard to trace the cause of something like that though. Maybe you didn't get enough scientist rescues early game, maybe you didn't build a lab fast enough, I'm not sure.

On the resource front, getting good at supply raids and troop ambushes is very helpful. I know there is a lot of talk right now about how to nerf supply raids but you might as well use it. They can turn out very challenging too, not like it's free money. This will help with gearing up your B team and maybe buying scientists from the Black Market if you are lacking them.

It also sounds like you might not have expanded your contacted regions fast enough. More contacted regions means more chance to stop Dark Events, more intel collection, more chances for supply raids/troop ambushes and rescues of scientists/engineers, lot's of good things.

Training up new guys can be hard at this stage in the game. If you are ahead of the game techwise you can bring new guys as the 10th/8th man on big missions and let your MSGTs carry them, but that might be really hard in your situation.

[Jadiel]

I think you're probably just experiencing the game pushing you into doing the final mission. Global Advent Strength just rises very quickly on Legendary, and I'm pretty sure Joinrbs finished both of his campaigns around December, precisely because Advent just gets to be overwhelming. How far are you through the story missions? Have you done Black Site or Forge?

I think you have two choices with Legendary. You either make a concentrated effort to keep Advent under control (hunting for and doing lots of Troop Columns, liberating multiple regions early), which will give you more time to gear up a squad to beat the final mission, or you prioritise the Golden Path and building a squad to beat those missions and try and keep up with as many strategic objectives as possible so that you have the resources to do that. It sounds like you're being overwhelmed by Advent, but haven't made sufficient progress through story missions, leaving you in a bad position.

Do you have Warden Armor? Do you feel like you're behind in Tech? I'm currently in mid-July in my playthrough, and I feel like I'm in a similar tech position to you (Laser/Mag, Predator armor)...

[LeaderEnemyBoss]

I think you're probably just experiencing the game pushing you into doing the final mission. Global Advent Strength just rises very quickly on Legendary, and I'm pretty sure Joinrbs finished both of his campaigns around December, precisely because Advent just gets to be overwhelming. How far are you through the story missions? Have you done Black Site or Forge?

I think you have two choices with Legendary. You either make a concentrated effort to keep Advent under control (hunting for and doing lots of Troop Columns, liberating multiple regions early), which will give you more time to gear up a squad to beat the final mission, or you prioritise the Golden Path and building a squad to beat those missions and try and keep up with as many strategic objectives as possible so that you have the resources to do that. It sounds like you're being overwhelmed by Advent, but haven't made sufficient progress through story missions, leaving you in a bad position.

Do you have Warden Armor? Do you feel like you're behind in Tech? I'm currently in mid-July in my playthrough, and I feel like I'm in a similar tech position to you (Laser/Mag, Predator armor)...

I have done the blacksite and i got the codex brain, so there is still quite a way to go. Mid december is probably impossible by now.


@aimlessgun
Yeah I think I need to focus way more. There are lots of tech and proving grounds projects that i tried out when they came that turned out to be mediocre at best (-> wasted ressources/time). Also I read that a laboratory is essentially a cheaper way to get "more scientists", so i probably should build that earlier.

[Jacke]

AFAIK, you can adjust the Campaign and Long War 2 options and though the changes won't be retroactive (except for Not Created Equally), they will change things going forward. You can turn on Red Fog now.

[trihero]

This video I would consider mandatory watching

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Px0bIe6cQ

It does not *directly* tell you how to deal with advent strength, but it actually tells you indirectly.

The answer is to "bounce between regions" in order to pick up the most valuable/rewarding missions early on (rescue scientists/engis), and to capitalize on troop ambushes which are a massive source of exp, resources, and advent strength reduction.

And like the other people have mentioned before, advent strength just goes up very quickly globally on legend. I expanded into an area I never touched, and it was level 5 already. It is the nature of legend. Legend balance is based on people who have already been playtesting LW2 for a year (xwynns, joinrbs) and they are sadists who want to be deeply challenged.

If you watch xwynns video, he just doesn't even try to do any liberation missions at all once advent strength hits 6-7 in a region, he just ignores it and moves on. My guess is you probably aren't doing anything particularly wrong, because even when you are doing things very right (xwynns for example is doing well on legendary, but his avatar meter is getting close to doom despite his many victories) the game is meant to feel like a challenge from beginning to end. You probably just need to tighten up your game by having some "insider" knowledge as in the video above.

You also need to keep the goal of the game in mind - to slip through a team that beats the storyline missions. The goal of the game is NOT to contain advent strength and be able to farm them at will. You are supposed to handpick a strong team that you keep updated, beat the story missions in time without losing too many regions while your team is away, while everything else is expendable and just a support to that. joinrbs for instance has mentioned in his writeups that he has no resources to keep anything besides his "A" team with the best gear, and that includes a lot of turnover in the "A" team.

You get no bonus points for liberating a bunch of regions, no bonus points for winning invasions, no bonus points for sadly watching level 8+ advent strength regions getting stronger. You try to hit the enemy where he's the weakest and would give you the most resources and get together a team that is just strong enough to make it past the many story missions.

[LeaderEnemyBoss]

This video I would consider mandatory watching

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Px0bIe6cQ

It does not *directly* tell you how to deal with advent strength, but it actually tells you indirectly.

The answer is to "bounce between regions" in order to pick up the most valuable/rewarding missions early on (rescue scientists/engis), and to capitalize on troop ambushes which are a massive source of exp, resources, and advent strength reduction.

And like the other people have mentioned before, advent strength just goes up very quickly globally on legend. I expanded into an area I never touched, and it was level 5 already. It is the nature of legend. Legend balance is based on people who have already been playtesting LW2 for a year (xwynns, joinrbs) and they are sadists who want to be deeply challenged.

If you watch xwynns video, he just doesn't even try to do any liberation missions at all once advent strength hits 6-7 in a region, he just ignores it and moves on. My guess is you probably aren't doing anything particularly wrong, because even when you are doing things very right (xwynns for example is doing well on legendary, but his avatar meter is getting close to doom despite his many victories) the game is meant to feel like a challenge from beginning to end. You probably just need to tighten up your game by having some "insider" knowledge as in the video above.

You also need to keep the goal of the game in mind - to slip through a team that beats the storyline missions. The goal of the game is NOT to contain advent strength and be able to farm them at will. You are supposed to handpick a strong team that you keep updated, beat the story missions in time without losing too many regions while your team is away, while everything else is expendable and just a support to that. joinrbs for instance has mentioned in his writeups that he has no resources to keep anything besides his "A" team with the best gear, and that includes a lot of turnover in the "A" team.

You get no bonus points for liberating a bunch of regions, no bonus points for winning invasions, no bonus points for sadly watching level 8+ advent strength regions getting stronger. You try to hit the enemy where he's the weakest and would give you the most resources and get together a team that is just strong enough to make it past the many story missions.

Thank you for this thought out comment. I already watched that video yesterday after my initial saltiness leveled :p. I restarted now on legendary with red fog to make it a bit easier and more interesting. Sop far evberything works fine, didnt even lose a rookie in the first missions. But its the early game, its usually pretty easy (almost comforting after getting punched so hard :p). When can i expect the first supply raid? Does the chase for suipply raids work similar to the chase for columns? Do you scan a region hard, do you raid, its on cooldown now so you scan the next region hard?

[trihero]

Supply raids are very difficult to detect, but you should be able to see one by mid to late April. Even with 13 rebels I still get some of them that have 1 or 2 days left =.=

They are on a cooldown, but it's not quite like troop columns. Supply raids depend on where the enemy is redirecting their forces (where they perceive you to be a threat). On legend it seems like they're moving supplies through virtually every region but it's mostly wherever you spiked vigilance the highest. Your "hottest" region should have a lot of people on intel anyways.

Recognize that legend is actually steadily getting harder due to xwynn and joinrbs complaining that things are too easy (for instance the cavalry on avatar missions used to not exist but they were abusing cooldowns so now the game essentially wipes you 20 turns after you blow concealment).

[LeaderEnemyBoss]

Supply raids are very difficult to detect, but you should be able to see one by mid to late April. Even with 13 rebels I still get some of them that have 1 or 2 days left =.=

They are on a cooldown, but it's not quite like troop columns. Supply raids depend on where the enemy is redirecting their forces (where they perceive you to be a threat). On legend it seems like they're moving supplies through virtually every region but it's mostly wherever you spiked vigilance the highest. Your "hottest" region should have a lot of people on intel anyways.

Recognize that legend is actually steadily getting harder due to xwynn and joinrbs complaining that things are too easy (for instance the cavalry on avatar missions used to not exist but they were abusing cooldowns so now the game essentially wipes you 20 turns after you blow concealment).

So in my new game in late april now within one week i got: a troop column, a landed ufo (!), a supply raid and a haven defense retaliation (thank god not the other one, also killing three faceless kinda helps). Fortunatly lasers were just finished. Managed to do every single one of them with only minor losses. I never was so rich so early in the game. Now i have lib2 available but i'm thinking about waiting for the next, since only about half my soldiers arent wounded atm and I dont like the tower standing around and raising advent strength. Lets hope this start translates betrter into the midgame .

[trihero]

You make me proud, son.

Yeah think carefully about liberating, but realize that things don't really get any better by waiting too long either. You want to have a region or two with 13 rebels on supplies where you don't have to worry about retaliations, and liberating is the way. Invasions can happen but they're on a long cooldown, vastly overrated in terms of difficulty, and you can get corpses them at least which helps offset the 8'ish rebels you'll lose.

When your best troops are on long infiltration missions, you can always reduce the number of workers you have to avoid retaliations and simply just ignore missions, there's no direct penalty for doing so.

[LeaderEnemyBoss]

You make me proud, son.

Yeah think carefully about liberating, but realize that things don't really get any better by waiting too long either. You want to have a region or two with 13 rebels on supplies where you don't have to worry about retaliations, and liberating is the way. Invasions can happen but they're on a long cooldown, vastly overrated in terms of difficulty, and you can get corpses them at least which helps offset the 8'ish rebels you'll lose.

When your best troops are on long infiltration missions, you can always reduce the number of workers you have to avoid retaliations and simply just ignore missions, there's no direct penalty for doing so.

My invasions so far didnt work out too well. I completed them but i didnt manage to save a whole lot ov civs. For this run i raised the allowed soldier count on these missions to 12, because 1.2 will do that anyway (and because im a scrub!). Also: making a mad dash with a valuable soldier to 3 clumped civs and none of them is a rebel is infuriating! At least there was no faceless i guess...

[trihero]

Well like you said 12 could be the magic number. Invasions also reduce advent strength ironically by 2 points (from the region that sent the invasion at you).