XCOM: Enemy Unknown
- The most important upgrades from the Officer Training School are the ones that increase party size. Get them ASAP.
- No one is invincible, but Rookies are cheap.
- Tanks (SHIVs) are not, and can't be trained. You can't really research them casually, because by the time you've gotten them formidable, they're probably outclassed by just about everything, so either be ready to throw yourself into SHIV research, or don't feel bad about passing them up.
- It's all but impossible to research everything in a normal game, so don't stress out about it, just research what you think you'll need.
- On that note, autopsies (and, later on, interrogations) usually make research in some other area go quicker, so do those first when you can.
- A shotgun Assault plays completely differently from a Rifle one, and using one like the other will quickly get them killed.
- When choosing skills for your soldiers, you'll usually know which one you want by your play style, but don't be afraid to mess around with it, you'll always have more dudes.
- However, there's an Assault skill that makes the first Reaction Shot against that character each round miss. Get it, it increases their survivability by leaps and bounds, and the other skill is only good with a very specific, specialized build.
- A powerful psychic is just as amazing in this game as it was in the first one.
- If you want to break the game in half:
- Always, always be ready to fire 2-3 satellites into orbit at the drop of a hat. Get your engineers going early (and make sure you have a lot of them!) and make uplink construction a priority.
- Floaters are no longer pussies, watch out for them.
- If you haven't spotted aliens yet, best thing to do is take your move action and Overwatch with everyone. Don't dash into unknown territory.
- Flank, flank, flank. If you sit around taking potshots from cover for ages you'll get nowhere.
- Beelining for lasers is as good an idea now as it was in 1994.
- Countries with 5 panic dots will leave XCOM at the end of the month. Satellites placed in a country reduce panic a little immediately. You don't get any income from them until the monthly report. Therefore, a good idea is to hold onto your satellites until the day before the report, and launch them into any countries with full panic.