Pavonis Interactive Forums

I have started 67 XCom 2 campaigns. I have won 2, lost 1 and aborted 63. Probably 40 of the aborted campaigns were abandoned in-mission during Gatecrasher after suffering unacceptable losses (not wanting to start campaign behind the 8-ball).

That leaves about 20-25 campaigns where I finished Gatecrasher and got back to the Avenger. Of those, my starting region has been in North America twice and Africa once. Every other time I have started in Asia, more often than not in New Artic. I have never once had a starting region in Europe, South America or Oceana.

Is this by design?

I do believe there's a heavy weighting, if not outright disallow on those three continents being your starting locale, due to their 2-region 1-tower bonus structure. That said, re: weighting, I see a TON of Africa, a lot of Asia, and my first 1.3 campaign is literally the first time I've ever been allowed to begin in North America. As an American, I was quite happy, to say the least.

Only valid starting locations are in Asia, NA, and Africa. If you wanted to, you could actually go and disable all the start regions except those you prefer. Look for PossibleStartingRegions in XComGameData.ini in your My Games/XCOM2/XCOMGame/config folder, or edit the base files in your install directory.

I really think it should be NA or Africa only by default. Starting on a two-country continent makes obtaining the CB trivial, but requires a Comms Room or lucky POI if you start in Asia. NA and Africas three countries and reasonably well connectedness makes them the best places to start. Starting in any country might be more acceptable if continent bonuses were 'multiplied' based on the number of countries in them, or if continent bonuses were specific to certain sizes.

One sure way to deal with such strange (by default) HQ locations is to install a perfectly fine MOD;
(( http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =635253356 ))

It works properly with LW2 and every games i start now do so in the exact conditions (via INI settings) i prefer -- which is anywhere at will by choice!