Difficulty (Long War)

From the Long War FAQ:

I'm fairly new to XCOM. What difficulty should I start with?
Normal.

I'm an XCOM veteran. What difficulty should I start with?
Normal.

But I'm really awesome at --
Sorry to interrupt, but just start with Normal. We don't have easy difficulties in this mod that hold your hand while you learn the ropes and we've removed every bit of code we can find that cheats for the player on the lower difficulties. It's going to be hard. The other difficulties are just harder versions of Normal; feel free to move up when you get a handle on all the new mechanics.