I feel like maybe they overtuned the early game difficulty with EW, there seems to be more missions per month so even when you don't wipe more soldiers end up in hospital (especially with seekers getting 2 almost completely unavoidable damage each), which spreads exp out more (which is not bad, per se, but makes early/mid game harder without high rank soldiers), it's even more painful because you need more exp to level now.
The Seekers thing is why you always need to take battlescanners. I've lost more rookies in early months to Seeker-induced panic spirals than anything else. Also note that, early on, you want to face the nastier missions with basically nothing except Infantry, Assaults, and a Gunner + Scout pair, maybe a Sniper if you have a good one. Low-ranked other classes just don't have enough damage to handle a lot of stuff.
But. Uh. The way panic works is very different. The fact that Abduction missions are single-target instead of pick-one from three options ensures that you can minimize the spread of panic everywhere except the continent that the aliens built their base in. What I'd recommend is to accept that you've lost the continent that they started in and focus on forting up in two other continents until you're stable with a dozen interceptors and full coverage, then start expanding. In my current campaign I haven't built a satellite in close to three months (and have only 6 up total), I'm in mid-September, and I've only lost three countries (including the one with their base); one is orange, one is yellow, and the rest have less than half of one chunk of panic.
He noted that he isn't playing Long War, he is having those probs in a vanilla game, so while your suggestions ARE helpful, they aren't helpful to HIM
As for Long War, that is pretty much the strategy I have been taking, got lucky with the alien base being in Africa and just let the terror missions take that over, just recently managed to satellite all of Asia at the same time my foundry finally went up, but then Australia proced a terror mission, so I sold off a shitton of stuff to afford all the interceptor upgrades other then the wingtip missiles. Note that I ALSO got all of North America at this time, so my interceptor coverage is basically going to go from "can barely take down a scout with several casualties" to "I murdered half your goddamn fleet, come at me bro" in the next week or so
I also can't figure out any good strategy for the strategic level. 40% longer research means you *need* some labs/scientists (unless you want to spend 2+ months researching lasers), but the panic mechanics haven't changed at all so you still need to engineer/satellite rush too. It just seems like there's never a good time to buy it, especially if you want any OTC/foundry stuff.
Well if you want to research rush you could try sat rushing and using all those sats in Europe, though in vanilla this would depend heavily on who the RNG decides to screw with abductions. Could also save countries that offer scientists instead of engineers, though this would hurt your sat rushing a bit.
Starting in South America might help too, instant autopsies/interrogations will go a LONG way to helping that research, especially if you really make a point of capturing.
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Topic: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis) (Read 970139 times)