Long War - Benefactor is NOT the Best

Mexico's Wealthy Benefactor is an incredible patron. Choose this bonus, and you are gifted Air Superiority in March, a full Hangar in April.

EDIT: I no longer feel this is the best starting bonus. It is far more possible than I originally supposed to launch 2 satellites by the end of March without this bonus. I am leaving this post up for the time being, but no longer feel it is good guidance.

The first step to winning Long War, is winning the air game. Once you have a sizeable air force, you can negate bad luck by just throwing more birds at the enemy. This means you will down UFOs, which strengthens your economy, so you can purchase more interceptors, and keep downing UFOs, and so on, in a virtuous cycle of alien carnage.

But if you miss a few UFOs in April because your air force is weak or because you draw a nasty schedule filled with Raiders bunched together, or whatever, then your economy is going to be even weaker than it would be otherwise, which means you can’t purchase as many interceptors as you need, and so things start circling in the other direction; down the drain.

Shooting down UFOs is important for another reason. The same dynamic of strength begetting more strength, occurs in your barracks. More missions means your troops will gain ranks more quickly, which means you will reach squad size increases sooner, and with more troops and at higher ranks your squads will perform better at the tactical level, and thus suffer fewer casualties, and so your barracks will get even stronger, and so on, the virtuous cycle again, but this time on the battlefield. If instead you have a weak barracks, squad size increases will occur later, and your soldiers will be more likely to die, thus weakening your barracks further.

What I am getting at, is that a strong start will yield cascading benefits throughout the campaign. It is the difference between riding the wave, and being swept under it and rolled. With that in mind, let me introduce you to Mexico’s Wealthy Benefactor; Its very simple, you get an extra $500 at the start of the game. With this cash you can buy a satellite uplink and 2 satellites on March 1st, guaranteeing the Air Superiority bonus by the end of March, as well as a fat pile of cash from those 3 countries. You can also buy 3 motion trackers and 2 SHIVs, making March a bit easier, too. The extra money and reduced price of interceptors will allow you to fill your hangar with beautiful birds in anticipation of April, and the raiders to come.

Sometimes it is possible to launch 2 satellites in March using a different starting country, but that is unlikely. You will need at least one mission before the 6th of March (to obtain the funds for the 2nd satellite), and probably another 2 missions before the 11th to build your uplink. Looking over my journals I find that only 14 out of 36 campaigns (~39%) met that criteria. Before I switched to Wealthy Benefactor, I would forego Motion Tracker and SHIVs until after the 11th, which would weaken my squads in the early days of the campaign. Not good. And worse, I was often tempted to restart if the mission schedule didn’t play out as I had hoped, which was very disheartening, and not in the spirit of XCOM.

I really enjoy playing with the Benefactor bonus because it removes that awful randomness from your March satellite launches and diminishes the likelihood of disaster in the April air game. For those reasons, Benefactor should be valued much more than $500. To quantify exactly how much more, first lets count the money saved by launching 2 satellites in late March: $40 in upkeep savings for the existing 4 interceptors, and $50 per interceptor purchased before the next satellite launch (3-5), and ~$60 for the extra country income: $300. Then we multiple that by the likelihood that Benefactor enables that outcome, which my journal estimates to be about 61%, ~$180. But the biggest benefit would accrue from the additional UFOs shot down in April. An extra Raider is worth about $200, a scout about $100, not including the experience gains, which are probably worth about $120 or so. A full Hangar and the ability to immediately replace any damaged birds with new ones, is likely to mean an extra UFO downed in April. I would guess that should be valued at about $250. Add back in the initial $500 and that puts the value of Benefactor at about $930 on average by the end of April. There is still more value, but it is harder to quantify. Benefactor will probably improve your air game in May considerably, and reduces the chance of one of your satellites being shot down in April or May, and allows you to fund the purchase of Motion Trackers and SHIVs immediately, as well as OTS upgrades in April without compromising on the air game.

There is one big downside to choosing Benefactor; it means you will not get the regular Mexico bonus (+10% Psi training chance), which is quite good. Still Benefactor guarantees a great opening by providing the XCOM project with a huge boost in funds on March 1st, which will jump start the Hangar, propelling your campaign into the virtuous cycle of air dominance. Viva Mexico!