Too few men makes it hard for me to keep my immersion in the game world.
This. One of my favorite things about X-com is that, with that many bodies on the ground, it made me feel like I was sending in a task force to accomplish a mission - not just the one little squad.
I posted about a "scaled up" X-com game in that one dream games thread we have here somewhere - lots of Skyrangers dropping off battalions and artillery VS armies of xenos with giant mechs and whatnot. Scaling down to four guys is the opposite direction I want to move in. :(
I also liked having large squads because it helped make my soldiers expendable. With just 4-6 guys now, they can't afford to allow stuff like aliens getting reactionfire or nades on us while we try to exit the Skyranger - that'll mean "lol everyone dies before you can even get into the mission, terrible game, will not sell" stuff. It makes it feel... fair. It shouldn't feel fair, it should feel unfair, so when we kill them xenos and win the mission, we feel badass.
I never really played long enough to get to power armor, so all my guys died in one hit UNLESS they were really lucky (which made them my beloved badass soldiers). That was good. It made me fear their shots.
One of the biggest things I
didn't like practically every remake I've seen and Apocalypse was how sturdy my soldiers were. While I love seeing my buff soldiers in -shock soak up bullets while returning fire, it made it a reliable, viable tactic to let my guys get shot. That's not cool - I don't want my X-com-grunts soaking a couple lasers to the chest every mission, spending a couple hours in medbay back in the base, and then walking it off like nothing happened! I don't want them to walk away from grenades.
But with just 4-6 guys, I can't see how they'll NOT be doing all that. There's no buffer zone of rookies taking their trial by fire - if they're in close, one grenade from off screen that you didn't see kills the squad, or they'll be able to shrug it off and take cover to continue fighting - hurting, but not dead from a super-advanced bomb.
The rookies dying left and right made it feel like what it should feel like - humanity going their hardest against a threat it isn't ready for.
I really hope there'll be a mod that lets me up the unit totals. ...But, since I probably won't be able to run it on PC, I'll probably be outta luck.
...I didn't like Civ 4 either, so kinda worried. :V