Long War of the Chosen is a port of the original Long War 2 mod by Pavonis Interactive to XCOM 2's War of the Chosen expansion. It is a complete overhaul of the vanilla game that attempts to make campaigns more engaging, longer and more challenging. Here's a quick summary of the major differences from the vanilla game:

• Build up the resistance by contacting regions and recruiting rebels in their havens
• Use those haven rebels to detect missions for you, which you must then infiltrate before they expire
• Send out multiple squads at a time, adjusting the equipment and composition to make sure they can infiltrate in time
• Watch as ADVENT reacts to your actions by strengthening regions (making missions more difficult) and sending retaliatory strikes on your havens
• Deal with the Chosen on both the strategy layer and in tactical battles (the Chosen need to be enabled in the campaign Advanced Options/Second Wave Options)
• Discover a new research tree with a few new techs and new Proving Ground projects
• Make use of 8 new soldier classes that have 3 ability choices per rank and an extra rank (8 instead of vanilla's 7)
• Train up officers that provide powerful buffs and abilities for your squad
• Make use of SPARKs with a new ability tree and hunt the Alien Rulers if you have the corresponding DLCs
• Prepare for tougher missions with more numerous and challenging enemies, but with more tools at your disposal
• Encounter entirely new enemies that force you to adapt your tactics
• On top of the existing vanilla mission types, you will also have a chance to take on a few new mission types, such as Smash and Grab and Jailbreak (rescue resistance contacts)
  

As Long War of the Chosen is a more challenging experience than vanilla, the general recommendation is to play at a difficulty level at least one less than you're comfortable with in vanilla. So Commander if you're a Legend player and so on.

Installation

Download the mod from Nexus Mods and then follow the installation instructions on our wiki to get started.

Announcements and updates

Keep an eye on our r/LWotC subreddit to keep up to date with news and new versions of the mod.

Questions and troubleshooting

Our wiki has some useful information for new players, and you can also join our Discord Server to ask people questions in real time or simply chat about the mod.

What's different from Long War 2

We have largely tried to keep as much of Long War 2 version 1.5 intact, but some things have changed to incorporate how WOTC works and we have also made some balance changes that we felt were worthwhile. Significant changes include:

• The starting haven no longer has a Faceless in it.
• Missions can now have sit reps attached to them.
• AWC training no longer exists. Soldiers now gain ability points that they can spend on abilities once the Training Center has been built, while the Infirmary handles the healing job.
• Dark events that directly affect tactical battles, such as Rapid Response and Sealed Armor, now have a chance to apply the effect as a sit rep to the mission. This means they no longer apply to every mission (which can get monotonous and frustrating), but the dark events last longer.
• Kubikiri has been replaced by a stunning ability that stuns for an extra turn if the soldier crits (but it doesn't do crit damage).
• Mutons have a cooldown on their bayonet abilities now (so Combatives can only lock them down for a single turn).
• Enemy units have a slightly increased detection range when on yellow alert and a bit more on top of that when on red alert.
• There have been quite a few AI changes to enemy units to make them more challenging/less open to abuse.
  

Credits

We're very grateful to the following for allowing us to use their work in LWOTC (more to be added to this list):

• Veehementia for the Dedicated Pistol Slot mod, which is partially integrated.
• NotSoLoneWolf for the strike rifles from his Wolf's Asset Pack
• Musashi for the throwing knives from his WOTC Combat Knives mod
  

We have also integrated Tzarnal's New Promotion Screen By Default mod

Also a big thank you to tracktwo, one of the original Long War 2 developers, without whom this mod would never have progressed beyond the early stages. And as seems inevitable for any XCOM 2 mod, many thanks to the folks on the XCOM 2 Modders Discord for their help and their work on the Community Highlander, in particular robojumper, Xymanek/Astral Descend, Musashi, Mr. Nice, and Iridar. Apologies if I've forgotten anyone.

Lastly, many thanks to twitch.tv/Kaen_SG for braving the early builds of the mod, providing much-needed bug reports and feedback.