Survival Guide (EU2012)

Promoting Soldiers

Rotate lower ranked soldiers to use as "cannon fodder" while leveling up your higher ranks. Once your higher rank has reached the highest, leave him in base and continue to level up more promising ones. Don't bother hiring new soldiers unless they're needed.

This all changes after you research Iron Will and New Guy in Foundry research. At this point, you should have enough credits to hire soldiers by the bundle, and throw out the low Will ones. Your core team of high ranking officers are now your "cannon fodder" while you level up the new squaddies. You may also consider Psi screening them before choosing which new recruits to keep and promote.

Ignore Grenades

Most aspects of the "battlescape" has been reduced compared to previous XCom titles, including the size of battlefield (especially the width), the number of soldiers, number of items you can carry etc. This in turn has led to a drastic decrease in firing ranges, and at such short range skirmishes, grenades become too powerful. To compensate, grenades deal very little damage. They're ineffective in the beginning game and become utterly useless in the mid&end game. Not only can you bring only one grenade per mission (a few perks gives you two grenades), they also take up a slot in your inventory that is needed for far more important equipment. The only useful purpose seems to be blowing up the cover of aliens behind cover.

Simplified and Granulized Encounter System

Aliens now come in groups of around 2-4. Although they wander around, these groups tend to remain dormant until you "wake them up". Similar to massive-multiplayer online game instances, "waking-up" multiple groups of enemies is just plain stupid. The best strategy is to wake-up and deal with one group at a time.

To be (an Angel) or not to be

That is the question. And the answer really depends on your playing style. Ghost Armour is the obvious way to go, but should you equip your snipers with Angel Armor? The answer is arguably less, mostly because of a bug in the game - it grants you Height bonus and Damn Good Ground bonus even though the Angel Armor strictly says it shouldn't.

Satellite is Key

Plan ahead and cover the entire world with satellites ASAP. This is the only undisputed rule in playing this game. Some players prefer to launch satellites at the end of the month to lower panic levels when they're highest.

Missions Choices

You will be considering several things when deciding on which mission to choose. However your considerations should come in these orders: 1. Panic level Your choice vastly differs on difficulty level. For example, on easier difficulty settings, ignoring some missions can lead to increased panic for one country - but for higher difficulty settings, this could lead to increased panic in the whole continent. Thus, consider panic level on the whole rather than individual countries. In some cases continents with more countries should be taken care of first. 2. Rewards Before you have full satellite coverage, credits and engineers should be your preference. After full coverage, you probably would prefer more engineers until you no longer need more. Scientists and soldiers aren't that important comparatively speaking.

Scientists and Laboratories and Research

Consider not building any laboratories, mostly because they aren't needed even on higher difficulty settings. You should be finishing research very fast, if you first research arc throwers, and then research all autopsies and live aliens ASAP.

Africa

As strange as this sounds, because of game mechanics and because you need full satellite coverage as fast as possible, the African bonus in credits is probably your most important reward. Consider this as your first base location.

Don't sell like 1994 X-Com

For veteran players, take heed that all those corpses and miscellaneous junk are no longer junk. Most have a use, whether to fulfil council requests or to manufacture things (yes even corpses can be manufacturing components). So after full satellite coverage, consider keeping them instead of selling them.

Optimal strategic development

This is my strategy for developing the base and satellite coverage on Classic. Tips and comments appreciated. The goal is to have as much money as possible, since money is a huge factor in the game.

Starting in NA, we get 180 extra funding from the beginning, and a bonus that is most beneficial at the beginning. Restart game until you get steam on 3rd level and not in columns 2, 3 or 6 (2 and 3 is where statellite facilities are going to be located, 6 makes it impossible to place workshops in a square). Optimal location for steam is adjacent to the access lift, to the right (5 column). I dont like steam at higher levels because its a very big investment of money to build a thermo gen right away.

Start by getting extra engineers ASAP and excavating left and right on 1st level. You need 10 engineers to build Satellite Uplink, so you must get 4 engineers and build a workshop. On first level, in first month, you are going to build a Power gen, Workshop and OTS, leaving space for the Satellite Uplink. Your power gen goes over the tile with the steam on the third level. Reserve space for Satellite Uplink next to the existing one. Workshop goes in 5 or 6 column (to the right of the access lift), space must be left to build 4 of them in a square. OTS goes either to column 1, 5 or 7, whichever is free and doenst disrupt workshop's square formation.

At first month, you need to build 1 satellite. Always build satellite uplinks (14 days) and satellites (20 days) so that they are completed before council report (so you get extra money immediately). You can build more than one satellite at once.

On later aductions, first chose the minimum panic hit, then try to get 4 extra scientists, but that's not as important. After you have >5 scientists, go for money rewards if it wouldnt be a huge panic hit.

Send your first satellite preferably to a country that gives big income (Russia or some $ 100 country), but you may want to prioritise a country that has maximum panic to prevent it from leaving the project. As soon as you send your first statellite, order at least 2 interceptors to that country.

Second month, you will be building a second Power Gen, Satellite Uplink and 3 satellites. By the end of the month, try to get a full country covered, preferably Europe (purely for money) or South Africa (again, for money). Also, by the end of the month, try to have access lift built to lvl 3, and room for thermo gen excavated.

Third month, you will be building a thermo gen, third Satellite Uplink and another 3 satellites. You may want to go for Nexus here, but it will require you to build extra workshop, and probably even more power, which you may not have money for. Make sure to upgrade to 4 interceptors right at the beginning of month 3, as big UFO's are going to show up. You may also want to have some phoenix canons built (2 interceptors with phoenix will usually take down a big UFO, in case of unluck 3rd one will finish it off with avalanchem but it takes all 4 of them to take down a big UFO with avalanches, and i believe if you get unlucky you're screwed).

If at any point you have no money, you should sell stuff on the grey market. You can afford selling items even if you didnt research them yet, since you will get them again. I had to sell every ufo component and lots of alien bodies to get me through the second month, but it was worth it - jumped from 250 to 550 income! Also, I am building alien containtment on the end of second month to save money, and i am not researching beam weapons until month 3, and foregoing manufacturing carpace armor (manufacturing only skeleton suit), also to save money. I have not built foundry yet (maybe i'm wrong on this) but i havent had any spare money or base space for it. I only got squad size upgrades at OTS.

By the end of third month, you have 2 countries fully covered, one of which should be Africa, and you should have a very nice paycheck. This will allow you to start getting all the nice stuff :)