peregrine23

In this episode Mark Herman suggests that players will get more out of the game if they know more about the history. I am looking for a good book on the subject to accompany the game. Any suggestions? David Detzer's Allegiance seems to be at the top of the search results, is that the go-to book on the the secession crisis?

I think the main problem with XCOM 2 is that it doesn't explain itself well. I restarted the game twice after I felt I had made major strategic mistakes because I didn't understand the game. On my third play-through I have had a pretty smooth run do to the lessons learned in my abandoned games. On this third run, I have learned even more things that were not at all clear: Oh, I can only build one workshop and one lab? Although my lab has only 2 slots, my unassigned scientists are still speeding up my research? It takes time to open up the black market, but then it persists for the rest of the game? It really feels like a game that suffers because the people making decisions understood the game too well, so they didn't bother to clarify things for those new to the game. All that said, now that I understand most of the systems I have found it to be an excellent game and am already thinking of new strategies and tactics to try in my next play-through. XCOM 2 has some problems I think, but it felt like in the podcast they weren't able to come near the core issues because they hadn't were so tripped up at the surface level of understanding what was going on in the game.