Ok, I've tested this mod.

1) It works when activated during 1st phase (before gate).
2) It works as described. Chosen is healed faster. Significantly more units are spawned.
3) The main problem: level ends immediatelly after chosen death. Even if more enemies exist.

For maximum challenge you have to kill Chosen last. Focusing it and killing it first invalidated the challenge.

Paradise for Bladestorm classes

all the enemies at the same time can get pretty nerve-wracking, but its fun

I have modded classes like Samurai, Doom Slayer, and Duke Nukem and my endgame squad size is ten.

LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

*Stares at the 4x pod sizes I play with*
*Stares at this mod*
*Cackles*
My men may die. But they shall line their graves with the enemy, before they rest.

@68Guns I watched a campaign by Christopher Odd that used this mod. He managed to get through all three chambers, but he is a very capable player. I think this mod was designed with the very best players in mind, which does not include most of us.

Diverse Aliens by Force Level has a default setting that excludes the Chosen Showdown portion. So I'm guessing this mod can affect that stage of the assault while DABFL will already affect the first part of the assault. (Took down the Assassin today, thinking of adding this mod to affect the showdown stage when I take down the other two.)

spawns 2 pods of 3 at a time

I find this way too hard, enemies stack up and everyone dies

Would be cool if those mods could allow filtering by mission.
Nothing I can do on my end ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Word of advice to everyone, DONT USE THIS WITH THE INCREASE POD SIZE MOD! It spawns 2 pods with 6 units for each. Every...time.... I like a good challenge but good god its basically impossible

No. It only affects Chosen Showdown missions.

Does this also affect the Waterworld Reinforcement summons? Because now I'm getting absurd amount of reinforcements there, even when I temporarily turn off the Increase Pod Sizes mod

Maybe check if the mod allows you to ignore this mission.

So I'm using Increase Pod Sizes by Force levels and the game is spawning fulls pods of 6 enemies when portals appear, is there any way to make that not occur without getting rid of any mods?

Mid-campaign yes. I wouldn't be so sure if the mission already spawned or if you're in the first part.
From my experience it was always 1 leader and 3 followers yes.

Does this work midgame? As long as I'm not currently in the Chosen Stronghold? Also does pod spawning function like normal pods in the game with 1 leader and 2 followers? Or can you just get 3 archons from a single pod?

@Boundir Sweet thanks a ton for doin' that. Much appreciated, You Rock!

@Nazkai
Done. Rookie and Veteran are now with the same parameters as Commander 👍
Good luck Commander.

Hello @Boundir and thanks for getting back to me on this. I would just like to be able to have all of your level 3 difficulty settings working on my level 2 (Veteran) game play through really. (I like how you have level 3 configured but I am not wanting to have the resource and other base game changes at level 3 difficulty yet.) I'd like to enjoy the more challenging Level 3 Pods and extra healing of the Chose while playing the game on Level 2 Veteran is all.

If you tell me the options you want I can either update the mod or put the lines you need in a discussion.

What would I need to change if I wanted to add this to Veteran level?

Damn, some things are indeed difficult to find a way to edit. Oh well, I guess I can solve the problem by changing weapon damage numbers instead (those need to be lowered anyway now that multiple damage boosting breakthroughs exist).

No. These values are not at ini range.

1 more thing that came to mind. Does this mod ini contain a way to edit the chosen sarcophagus health? Because with certain abilities Xcom can put out a stupidly high amount of damage in 1 turn.

The fact that warden and plasma are now basically a requirement also makes sure that the chosen stick around long enough in the campain to feel like real nemesis enemies. And even if you never do the stronghold assaults, doing the chosen hunt covert actions isn't pointless since you gain benefits for doing the first 2.

So thank you for this wonderful mod. Thanks to it, I am now very close to being able to fully replicate LW1 in Xcom 2 format :)

This is something I have wished to see a mod for ever since I first saw the chosen stronghold mission.
It made zero sense for the chosen to fight you solo in their own base, especially since they see you coming long before you reach the bossfight chamber.

This makes the chosen strongholds into what they should always have been, a chance to eliminate a nemesis, but a HIGHLY risky chance that you aren't sure you should really take.
These missions should not be something that you just do because you can, it should be something that has a very real chance to fail and you should fear them.
Kinda like base assaults in LW1. After doing the mandatory one for the story objective, you CAN do more, but you're not sure you really SHOULD, because they are so high risk.

Thank you for your feedback again. I can see where you're going and I agree at most parts.

There are many types of players. I've always kept the Chosen for last because I like having them appear on mission, and the game tend to be way easier once you have the Chosen weapons.
But I know some players like to quickly assault the strongholds to get rid of them. For that reason I strongly suggest people to edit the ini file to their liking.

This is why this mod is there for in the first place. Giving the player the way to change those specific settings without having to modify his game files.

I understand you may think you shouldn't consider other mods into your balancing act, but I pray you to consider the audience of your mods is mostly comprised of people who will sub to quasi-mandatory mods that enhance the experience (and difficulty) exponentially. The game is also old now so the possibility of someone using this mod in a vanilla experience is barely null.

And I only make this feedback because I believe in my heart your mod should be quais-mandatory without individual config settings, so it is balanced considering the overarching possibilities of your hardcore audience (who will play Legend heavily modded). Because the idea of raising the stakes in the Chosen Chamber is special.

Thanks, I hope I could convince you.

*Raise the Sarcophagus health pool from 80 to 100. This will make it impossible for a 2-turn destruction of the device, allowing the Chosen to ressurect at the very least 3 times and benefiting from the drawn-out battle with more reinforcements incoming, offsetting the reduction to 6.

*Estabilish a last reinforcement call when the Sarcophagus is destroyed. Obviously I couldn't test this but I think 4 units is fine, so that if any stragglers were left you don't get cruelly overwhelmed and punished for wanting to kill the sarcophagus soon. The number 4 is good because the Chosen will summon reinforcements by itself, which will be at least 2 more units in the field at its first action.

*Reduce the Reinforcements numbers to 3 units per pod, 2 pods at a time (6 per reinforcement total). Keep the composition parameters as is, othermods add the intended difficulty for old wolves players who crave Legend level challenge.

*Raise the maximum reinforcements to 18, making it 3 full reinforcements rounds if the player can't destroy the Sarcophagus in time.

These RNG layers can't be truly dealt with before full Plasma/Powered teching and Ranger/Grenadier/Reaper Majors. And in my opinion the "That's XCOm baby"factor never excludes the possibility of you actively preparing for the odds making a turn.

The main point I think needs to be adressed is to make it viable for a fun experience in a first Stronghold raid with Magnetic/Plated teching, while at the same time making even very late game compositions be funneled (not forced) to fight the Chosen at least 3 times (top tier compositions usually have insane Alpha Striking capabilities and thus defeat the purpose of having it be a drawn out battle, because no one wants to risk soldiers in meaningless firefights).

To that effect, I PROPOSE to you:

Also, the pod compositions can have Primes, Bios/Armored, or worse, a full Wraith Commandos summon (which take an immediate action upon reveal). The possibility of such reinforcements alone isn't the issue, though, but the fact you can either luck out on having a Chrissalid-only pod to have a Bladestorm fest or get your ass handled by Commandos, or even a particularly nasty critter pod, which is a quite absurd situation with the healing rate and sarcophagus health pool in Legend.

So if you can't Alpha Strike or safely reduce the reinforcements numbers, you will get overwhelmed by the Chosen first return (such mods make the Chosen mroe agressive, with better weaponry and some new traits like Poison/Acid/Fire/Daze rounds for example) and the subsequent reinforcements that will follow.

This above is the chokepoint for sub-Plasma tech, which makes the first Stronghold raid an unpleasant experience.

With full Plasma/Powered teching you can force your way through and with clever play not suffer casualties, but with Magnetic/Plated teching and a single Major that's a whole different story: you either get lucky or get trampled.

You see, there are 4 pod summon location possibilities which will trigger immediately after killing the Chosen (especially if you Alpha Strike it, with the Chosen coming back to the fray in a 1 turn interval (takes action in second turn though, but WILL reveal concealed units as soon as it appears if it has All-seeing). The Chosen also summons more reinforcements naturally if not immeadiately Alpha Striked.

Hello again, I made some extensive testing with the most popular difficulty mods out there and would like to give you a more thorough feedback and, in the end, suggest an update.

Difficulty: Legend

Important Mods: A Better Advent (+ A Stronger Advent), Bio Division 2.0, Advent PsiOps (Wraith Commandos), Armored Berserker, Omega Berserker, All Enemies Plus (lifts all critter restrictions on reinforcements and mission parameters outside of Golden Path), Chosen Weapons Fix, More Chosen Traits, Hero Classes Rebalanced (no Templar Bladestorm).

Testings show that unless you deploy a team of Majors+ to cheese Grenadier Salvo and Ranger Reaper Bladestorm Implacable, the mod interacts badly with compounding difficulty/new creatures mods. Badly not because it is super hard, but because it is super RNG dependant, with odds you can't honestly prepare for outside of the very late game.

Thank you for you feedback. I did play test with 6 spaws of 3 and 2 spawns of 3 also.
9 new enemies was super hard too handle but not impossible and 6 was not a threat. I decided to go for 8.
Those values are still easily configurable to your liking as it is said in the Configuration section.

The mod is great but honestly 8 new enemies in a single turn is a bit too much, on top of the other (good) hardening changes to the Chosen healing

I managed to pull it off (without a Sniper) only because I came heavily loaded with explosives because of the Chosen weakness, so I saved everything and just used them on the reinforcements (late game advanced explosives). But if I wasn't packing such load or was in mid-game I would have been slaughtered

Jesus Christ this mod is totally ruthless with A Better Advent.

Playing on Legend and 4 Archons spawned in one side and 1 Viper Prime and 3 Sectoids in the other.

Totally unbalanced :(

Thanks.

My bad. I always imagine people going through ini files. But they can't if they don't get the mod
Changes:
Legend
- Down Chosen will recover 49% of his health instead of 34 before.
- Once a Chosen is down it will spawn 2 pods of four enemies instead of 2 pods of one
- The max reinforcement units present on the map have been raised from 8 to 16 (good luck haha)
Commander
- Down Chosen will recover 33% of his health instead of 25 before.
- Once a Chosen is down it will spawn 2 pods of three enemies instead of 2 pods of one
- The max reinforcement units present on the map have been raised from 6 to 10

Please can you us exactly what changes you have made?

More people will try out your mod if you give us a better description.

or maybe we fight all chosen at the same time. that will be an xcom bloodbath

Felt odd they didnt have dedicated body guards for their key to victory.