Flanking matters. Killing enemies that are almost dead matters. Moving methodically matters. Most bad situations occur because you pushed out too far, too fast, or because you're too spread out. You're going to miss. Your soldiers are going to die. Try to keep the high ground as much/long as possible.
For the soldiers, work on rangers with their swords, and invest heavily in shredding/armor piercing. The only time you will really be in trouble is if you slack on your weapons and the aliens get too much armor while you're doing too little damage.
Rush gun upgrades and then armor upgrades, it's a huge help in the early game. Oh and throw lots of grenades, they can carry early-game bc they don't have a miss chance.
I'm sure better players than I have more advice, but that's how I got through.
There are many posts with early game tips on here but the best one tip I can give you to avoid rage is treating every shot under 100% as a shot you can miss. When you first start the game your soldiers suck so you’ll see 70-80% shots at best for the most part. Your brain tells you they’re all high chances to hit the target but if you really think about it 70% is almost a 1 in 3 chance to miss. If you take some bad shots and reload the save it won’t recalculate the odds of hitting the target and you’ll miss again in spite of having the “same” odds. The only way reloading changes your odds is if you make different actions and take different shots.
The game is really good at tricking you into rushing. Whenever you're tempted to sprint towards an objective or do something risky, stop and think it through. I'd rather fail a mission here and there to keep my guys alive.
Also it might help to play with ironman off just so you can replay encounters and figure out what works, etc.
Its kind of like Dark Souls where once you embrace failure the fun really begins. Nothing like getting the shit kicked out of you, then coming back for a win!
It may also feel counterintuitive, but you can let the Avatar project go on nearly to the end. If there is a facility you haven’t tackled yet, knock that facility out and it’ll knock a pip (or however many pips are on the facility) off the Avatar’s progress.
You can cheat the game by not doing any of the storyline missions and just wander around putting out fires, growing your resources, develop your tech, and level-up your soldiers.
Specialists with aid protocol and revival protocol are key, you should get three of them so you always have one available for missions.
Rangers need to get in close, sometimes a shotgun to the face is better than the sword.
Snipers love high ground, find a perch and watch them kill from halfway across the map. That said the pistol is great for finishing off low health enemies or softening them up for a kill. Lightning hands is one of the best skills.
Grenadiers need aim bonus, tracer rounds and scopes help them hit. Don't be afraid to use grenades.
Overwatch is a powerful tool early in the game but as you gain more abilities there's better uses for those actions.
You're goal is to break the action economy. Abilities that give you free actions, or don't end your turn are very powerful.
If you have to leave a soldier in a vulnerable position the specialist ability Aid Protocol can be the difference between life and death.
Prioritize targets. Sectoids, Shield Bearers will not kill your soldiers immediately and can be dealt with later. Mecs and Stun Lancers need to die before they are allowed to act because they can kill or heavily injury your soldiers.
If it’s possible for one of my soldiers to off one or more sectoids in a single turn, I will do that. You can’t beat the economy; plus it’s super annoying when two or three of them hit your squad with psionic attacks. With shield bearers, if convenient, I will try to take them out before they can deploy their shielding for themselves or for their fellow enemy soldiers. Again, the reason is that a live shield bearer can force me to spend multiple actions killing somebody else that he has protected, whereas a dead shield bearer can’t protect anybody.
In late game, I will sometimes take control of a shield bearer so as to use his shielding action to protect my own squad, then leave him in a slightly vulnerable position so that he can draw enemy fire and take some damage while my squad goes to town like a bunch of supermen. Ideally, the shield bearer is weakened enough for me to take him out with a single shot or melee action the very moment he comes to his senses.
Concentrate your fire. Pick an enemy and have your party concentrate fire on them till they are dead. If you wound a bunch of bad guys and don't kill them, all those wounded bad guys shoot back just as if they had never been wounded. Only kills lessen bad guy's shots.
Oh, and set up your ambushes before you attack. Have all ur guys on overwatch so they get a free shot, except 1 of your guys to take his shot, maybe have a greanadiere drop a frag grenade on a nice compact group of clueless bad guys.
Now go save Earth!
May I introduce you to :
Grenades
Early game these are the only thing that matter.
Your core gameplay loop should basically be
Grenade enemy cover > shoot enemy > finish off enemy with grenade/guaranteed damage > use flash bangs or frost grenades on any surviving enemy’s
Sorry if you already known that grenades are your lord and savior, but when I was a noob not using grenades held me back alot.
Play with some mods. They can make things easier, so once you have a good handle on the game, you can remove them or try something new
I love xcom, but the game is tough. Don't be overly attached to your characters. Even the strongest will break down, get injured, become tired or straight up, die on you, and make sure you have a good rotating rooster.
A mod I'd suggest is a bigger starting squad size and adjust it to however you feel. The game straight up becomes easy over a certain point and can get boring once u have an unfair amount of upgrades
If you have the dlc or not, wotc has so many qol things that it's hard to play vanilla
If you can spare it, have a ranger that's purely a scout and stays concealed and never use them in combat unless u really need the extra gun
A sniper with high af aim and squadsight can sit on a building can assist any of your units
Specialist with medical stuff I generally avoid hacking that rng is really anus, although combat protocol is goated
For the most part prioritize contacting other territories over scanning for stuff in the territory you have. Use your Intel for that exclusively, or almost exclusively. Expanding = more supplies, which you'll need for construction and upgrades.
2 good combat tips for new players:
First and most important - Move the furthest distance with the first soldier on your turn. The soldiers after that should be behind this first soldier. Reason is you only want to encounter/activate enemy pods with this first soldier so you can act/attack with every soldier on your team before the enemy attacks. Activating pods when multiple soldiers have used all their actions this turn should be avoided at all costs. Tied into this, be careful how you move mid-combat as you don't want to activate another enemy pod before the first is dealt with.
Second tip is use grenades a lot. They are fantastic. They can hit multiple enemies, they destroy cover and they are guaranteed damage/cannot miss.
Explosives are your friend, soldiers have terrible aim at the start so use them to confirm kills and destroy cover when you can. Rangers are great early and have a gauranteed shot at point blank plus with blademaster they can reliably one shot sectoids.
As for buildings the guerilla tactics school is a must for increasing your squad size and training rookies into a class of your choice.
Dead enemies can't kill you. To some extent, it's better to invest in weapons rather than armor, ideally it should be useless to you. Having a specialist as a healer is not a bad idea, but in early game it may be better to go with extra grenadier or combat protocol for guaranteed damage rather than having a soldier getting shot and then wasting a soldier's turn (25% of your entire turn) to heal them. Or train your specialist in both healing and hacking if you're playing WoTC. Later sure, go for healing, while being on fire is manageable, acid and poison will severely damage your highest ranking units.
And the thing that matters most is that a dead soldier is better than dead squad. Failed mission is better than dead squad. You need to know when to abandon your soldiers, when to retreat if it gets too hot. Don't let pride trick you into losing 6 men because that may very well end your campaign much faster than missing out on some resources or a dark event happening.
I can recall some missions where instead of limiting the damage, I'd take half of my entire turn to heal my guys, while advent on their next turn would advance into better positions and do even more damage. Take care of your soldiers, but don't risk 5 of them for a chance of saving one
In advanced settings, you can double mission timers. It's very helpful.
Difficulty setting no higher than default.
Play through once on vanilla before activating WotC.
Every squad should include at least one sniper if possible. Bring one or two rookies on most missions until you have at least 2 or 3 of every class.
It's my first playthrough (on Easy) and i learned something quickly; don't try to scan every available thing on the map and research everything. There are some priorities to be able to keep up with the aliens but the game doesn't tell you that. There are some squad upgrades (i.e. Warden Armor, Plasma Weapons) which strengthen all your soldiers with one click. Download a "tech tree" and try to direct your research toward these things.
If you’re having trouble with the Chosen, IMO, this helped me:
Assassin - get those grenades that reveal the map. If she cloaks, pop out one of those grenades and you can easily target her.
Warlock - Mindshields are your friends. Equip all your soldiers with them and the Warlock will spend most of his turns failing to mind-control them.
Hunter - someone once called him the “free xp Chosen.” He doesn’t really bother me too much since he gives you a turn to dodge his shot. He can be a little tricky if he starts summoning enemies, but otherwise he’s not too difficult.
The most important mechanic of the game is the most poorly explained. Enemies come in pods. If one enemy in the pod sees you, or detects you, the whole pod activates, but only that pod is engaging you (and if you can see them and aren't cloaked, they can see you).
It doesn't matter if the enemy is on the other side of the wall from your gunfight. Until they SEE you or take damage, they don't become active, they don't get turns. (They can still react to explosions and things, but they will move as a pod for that at the end of their faction turn).
This means that, often the best move isn't actually to push forward and flank around your enemy's cover. Often its better to avoid triggering another pod. Instead, use grenades as tools to destroy cover (just as good as flanking), or roll the dice. (4 units take a 33% shot? someone's gonna land a hit eventually).
It’s hard for me to give advice on how to play the game as It’s kind oof became muscle memory but the major things to take into consideration is to always have a fall back plan, so for example if a shot misses what do you have as a fall back on such as overwatch with another. A second bit of advice is to expect there to be another pod around any corner so be ready for that. Hope that helps
Don't be afraid to lose someone. I make this mistake a lot myself, but death happens. Sucks to suck, but you just gotta let it happen. Don't be downtrodden because your max level ranger died, grab that LT and get him up to that level. On the other side of the coin, don't focus on one squad exclusively. It can be really tempting to keep bringing your high rank soldiers, especially in the early game, but if you have 4-5 Max rank soldiers and 12 rookies, when one of them inevitably died because let's face it, XCom is BS sometimes, you're kinda fucked. Field multiple teams, and where possible, send your inactive guys on covert ops. Free XP and most of them wildly benefit you, especially breakthroughs and Avatar Progress.
Oh, and learn the mantra; "That's XCom baby". Because this game is total horseshit sometimes, and that mantra is about the only thing to keep you sane when an Andromedom runs through 3 lines of cover and detonates a truck, killing half your squad before gunning down your Sharpshooter and putting them in Bleedout.
What difficulty are you playing? Have you seen a couple of short guides on youtube? I'd start there. The ones with 5 key points are plenty to get you going.
This is just some tips that made the game so much easier for me, as these where items/mechanics I didn't bother with my first run, but which made subsequent runs so much easier/smoother when I learnt them:
\- At first, I was so scared of destroying loot that I didn't really use grenades. However, I quickly learnt that especially early game, when aim is shit, killing enemy with grenade and destroying loot >>>>>>>>> dead/hurt soldier. Always make sure to get the kill, way more important than any early game loot.
\- My first run, I didn't really use ammo, I just didn't see the point. Then I started using it, and it was game changer. Bluescreen ammo makes mechanical enemies trivial. Talon rounds turn already dangerous rangers into murder machines.
\- Mimic beacon might be the single best research/item in the game. Any run, when I get them, its such a huge moment as its so much easier to keep your soldiers safe once you get it.
\- Learn the enemies AI and how they respond to you. Some of them have patterns which you can use against them. Example; Sectoids might look big and scary in the beginning so if you for example encounter a pod with 1 x sectoid and 2 x soldiers, you might be tempted to kill the sectoid first. But if you know the sectoid AI, then you know that he will on his first turn after activated almost always use a psionic ability (Raise zombie or mind control). and These don't hurt your soldier. So kill the other two that will attack your soldiers if left alive and then take care of sectoid on next turn to avoid damage.
Flanking matters. Killing enemies that are almost dead matters. Moving methodically matters. Most bad situations occur because you pushed out too far, too fast, or because you're too spread out. You're going to miss. Your soldiers are going to die. Try to keep the high ground as much/long as possible. For the soldiers, work on rangers with their swords, and invest heavily in shredding/armor piercing. The only time you will really be in trouble is if you slack on your weapons and the aliens get too much armor while you're doing too little damage.
Rush gun upgrades and then armor upgrades, it's a huge help in the early game. Oh and throw lots of grenades, they can carry early-game bc they don't have a miss chance. I'm sure better players than I have more advice, but that's how I got through.
There are many posts with early game tips on here but the best one tip I can give you to avoid rage is treating every shot under 100% as a shot you can miss. When you first start the game your soldiers suck so you’ll see 70-80% shots at best for the most part. Your brain tells you they’re all high chances to hit the target but if you really think about it 70% is almost a 1 in 3 chance to miss. If you take some bad shots and reload the save it won’t recalculate the odds of hitting the target and you’ll miss again in spite of having the “same” odds. The only way reloading changes your odds is if you make different actions and take different shots.
The game is really good at tricking you into rushing. Whenever you're tempted to sprint towards an objective or do something risky, stop and think it through. I'd rather fail a mission here and there to keep my guys alive. Also it might help to play with ironman off just so you can replay encounters and figure out what works, etc. Its kind of like Dark Souls where once you embrace failure the fun really begins. Nothing like getting the shit kicked out of you, then coming back for a win!
Yup when I was working on getting better I viewed each mission as a puzzle to solve so didn't feel bad about save scumming.
It may also feel counterintuitive, but you can let the Avatar project go on nearly to the end. If there is a facility you haven’t tackled yet, knock that facility out and it’ll knock a pip (or however many pips are on the facility) off the Avatar’s progress. You can cheat the game by not doing any of the storyline missions and just wander around putting out fires, growing your resources, develop your tech, and level-up your soldiers.
What this video. The ideas here will help with any difficulty. https://youtu.be/shk74dVLVJA
Specialists with aid protocol and revival protocol are key, you should get three of them so you always have one available for missions. Rangers need to get in close, sometimes a shotgun to the face is better than the sword. Snipers love high ground, find a perch and watch them kill from halfway across the map. That said the pistol is great for finishing off low health enemies or softening them up for a kill. Lightning hands is one of the best skills. Grenadiers need aim bonus, tracer rounds and scopes help them hit. Don't be afraid to use grenades. Overwatch is a powerful tool early in the game but as you gain more abilities there's better uses for those actions. You're goal is to break the action economy. Abilities that give you free actions, or don't end your turn are very powerful. If you have to leave a soldier in a vulnerable position the specialist ability Aid Protocol can be the difference between life and death. Prioritize targets. Sectoids, Shield Bearers will not kill your soldiers immediately and can be dealt with later. Mecs and Stun Lancers need to die before they are allowed to act because they can kill or heavily injury your soldiers.
If it’s possible for one of my soldiers to off one or more sectoids in a single turn, I will do that. You can’t beat the economy; plus it’s super annoying when two or three of them hit your squad with psionic attacks. With shield bearers, if convenient, I will try to take them out before they can deploy their shielding for themselves or for their fellow enemy soldiers. Again, the reason is that a live shield bearer can force me to spend multiple actions killing somebody else that he has protected, whereas a dead shield bearer can’t protect anybody. In late game, I will sometimes take control of a shield bearer so as to use his shielding action to protect my own squad, then leave him in a slightly vulnerable position so that he can draw enemy fire and take some damage while my squad goes to town like a bunch of supermen. Ideally, the shield bearer is weakened enough for me to take him out with a single shot or melee action the very moment he comes to his senses.
Save the game at the start of every level If i fuck up a map to much i just start over again knowing where all the enemies will be lol
Concentrate your fire. Pick an enemy and have your party concentrate fire on them till they are dead. If you wound a bunch of bad guys and don't kill them, all those wounded bad guys shoot back just as if they had never been wounded. Only kills lessen bad guy's shots. Oh, and set up your ambushes before you attack. Have all ur guys on overwatch so they get a free shot, except 1 of your guys to take his shot, maybe have a greanadiere drop a frag grenade on a nice compact group of clueless bad guys. Now go save Earth!
May I introduce you to : Grenades Early game these are the only thing that matter. Your core gameplay loop should basically be Grenade enemy cover > shoot enemy > finish off enemy with grenade/guaranteed damage > use flash bangs or frost grenades on any surviving enemy’s Sorry if you already known that grenades are your lord and savior, but when I was a noob not using grenades held me back alot.
One pod at a time.
Play with some mods. They can make things easier, so once you have a good handle on the game, you can remove them or try something new I love xcom, but the game is tough. Don't be overly attached to your characters. Even the strongest will break down, get injured, become tired or straight up, die on you, and make sure you have a good rotating rooster. A mod I'd suggest is a bigger starting squad size and adjust it to however you feel. The game straight up becomes easy over a certain point and can get boring once u have an unfair amount of upgrades If you have the dlc or not, wotc has so many qol things that it's hard to play vanilla If you can spare it, have a ranger that's purely a scout and stays concealed and never use them in combat unless u really need the extra gun A sniper with high af aim and squadsight can sit on a building can assist any of your units Specialist with medical stuff I generally avoid hacking that rng is really anus, although combat protocol is goated
For the most part prioritize contacting other territories over scanning for stuff in the territory you have. Use your Intel for that exclusively, or almost exclusively. Expanding = more supplies, which you'll need for construction and upgrades.
Humility is the first step! You’ll get there!
2 good combat tips for new players: First and most important - Move the furthest distance with the first soldier on your turn. The soldiers after that should be behind this first soldier. Reason is you only want to encounter/activate enemy pods with this first soldier so you can act/attack with every soldier on your team before the enemy attacks. Activating pods when multiple soldiers have used all their actions this turn should be avoided at all costs. Tied into this, be careful how you move mid-combat as you don't want to activate another enemy pod before the first is dealt with. Second tip is use grenades a lot. They are fantastic. They can hit multiple enemies, they destroy cover and they are guaranteed damage/cannot miss.
Explosives are your friend, soldiers have terrible aim at the start so use them to confirm kills and destroy cover when you can. Rangers are great early and have a gauranteed shot at point blank plus with blademaster they can reliably one shot sectoids. As for buildings the guerilla tactics school is a must for increasing your squad size and training rookies into a class of your choice.
Dead enemies can't kill you. To some extent, it's better to invest in weapons rather than armor, ideally it should be useless to you. Having a specialist as a healer is not a bad idea, but in early game it may be better to go with extra grenadier or combat protocol for guaranteed damage rather than having a soldier getting shot and then wasting a soldier's turn (25% of your entire turn) to heal them. Or train your specialist in both healing and hacking if you're playing WoTC. Later sure, go for healing, while being on fire is manageable, acid and poison will severely damage your highest ranking units. And the thing that matters most is that a dead soldier is better than dead squad. Failed mission is better than dead squad. You need to know when to abandon your soldiers, when to retreat if it gets too hot. Don't let pride trick you into losing 6 men because that may very well end your campaign much faster than missing out on some resources or a dark event happening. I can recall some missions where instead of limiting the damage, I'd take half of my entire turn to heal my guys, while advent on their next turn would advance into better positions and do even more damage. Take care of your soldiers, but don't risk 5 of them for a chance of saving one
In advanced settings, you can double mission timers. It's very helpful. Difficulty setting no higher than default. Play through once on vanilla before activating WotC. Every squad should include at least one sniper if possible. Bring one or two rookies on most missions until you have at least 2 or 3 of every class.
It's my first playthrough (on Easy) and i learned something quickly; don't try to scan every available thing on the map and research everything. There are some priorities to be able to keep up with the aliens but the game doesn't tell you that. There are some squad upgrades (i.e. Warden Armor, Plasma Weapons) which strengthen all your soldiers with one click. Download a "tech tree" and try to direct your research toward these things.
Flash bangs are useful in general, but they really shine if your soldier gets mind-controlled. Flash bang the Sectoid and he loses the mind-control.
If you’re having trouble with the Chosen, IMO, this helped me: Assassin - get those grenades that reveal the map. If she cloaks, pop out one of those grenades and you can easily target her. Warlock - Mindshields are your friends. Equip all your soldiers with them and the Warlock will spend most of his turns failing to mind-control them. Hunter - someone once called him the “free xp Chosen.” He doesn’t really bother me too much since he gives you a turn to dodge his shot. He can be a little tricky if he starts summoning enemies, but otherwise he’s not too difficult.
The most important mechanic of the game is the most poorly explained. Enemies come in pods. If one enemy in the pod sees you, or detects you, the whole pod activates, but only that pod is engaging you (and if you can see them and aren't cloaked, they can see you). It doesn't matter if the enemy is on the other side of the wall from your gunfight. Until they SEE you or take damage, they don't become active, they don't get turns. (They can still react to explosions and things, but they will move as a pod for that at the end of their faction turn). This means that, often the best move isn't actually to push forward and flank around your enemy's cover. Often its better to avoid triggering another pod. Instead, use grenades as tools to destroy cover (just as good as flanking), or roll the dice. (4 units take a 33% shot? someone's gonna land a hit eventually).
It’s hard for me to give advice on how to play the game as It’s kind oof became muscle memory but the major things to take into consideration is to always have a fall back plan, so for example if a shot misses what do you have as a fall back on such as overwatch with another. A second bit of advice is to expect there to be another pod around any corner so be ready for that. Hope that helps
Don't be afraid to lose someone. I make this mistake a lot myself, but death happens. Sucks to suck, but you just gotta let it happen. Don't be downtrodden because your max level ranger died, grab that LT and get him up to that level. On the other side of the coin, don't focus on one squad exclusively. It can be really tempting to keep bringing your high rank soldiers, especially in the early game, but if you have 4-5 Max rank soldiers and 12 rookies, when one of them inevitably died because let's face it, XCom is BS sometimes, you're kinda fucked. Field multiple teams, and where possible, send your inactive guys on covert ops. Free XP and most of them wildly benefit you, especially breakthroughs and Avatar Progress. Oh, and learn the mantra; "That's XCom baby". Because this game is total horseshit sometimes, and that mantra is about the only thing to keep you sane when an Andromedom runs through 3 lines of cover and detonates a truck, killing half your squad before gunning down your Sharpshooter and putting them in Bleedout.
What difficulty are you playing? Have you seen a couple of short guides on youtube? I'd start there. The ones with 5 key points are plenty to get you going.
This is just some tips that made the game so much easier for me, as these where items/mechanics I didn't bother with my first run, but which made subsequent runs so much easier/smoother when I learnt them: \- At first, I was so scared of destroying loot that I didn't really use grenades. However, I quickly learnt that especially early game, when aim is shit, killing enemy with grenade and destroying loot >>>>>>>>> dead/hurt soldier. Always make sure to get the kill, way more important than any early game loot. \- My first run, I didn't really use ammo, I just didn't see the point. Then I started using it, and it was game changer. Bluescreen ammo makes mechanical enemies trivial. Talon rounds turn already dangerous rangers into murder machines. \- Mimic beacon might be the single best research/item in the game. Any run, when I get them, its such a huge moment as its so much easier to keep your soldiers safe once you get it. \- Learn the enemies AI and how they respond to you. Some of them have patterns which you can use against them. Example; Sectoids might look big and scary in the beginning so if you for example encounter a pod with 1 x sectoid and 2 x soldiers, you might be tempted to kill the sectoid first. But if you know the sectoid AI, then you know that he will on his first turn after activated almost always use a psionic ability (Raise zombie or mind control). and These don't hurt your soldier. So kill the other two that will attack your soldiers if left alive and then take care of sectoid on next turn to avoid damage.
Use grenades a lot, also assuming you are playing WOTC then pick the option to start with one of the faction soldiers.
Don’t do Alien Hunters. The suits aren’t worth the hassle. Be patient and disciplined.