Classic Ironman quick tips

[NoShot]

The following are tips that i have not seen, so add them to your knowledge. For example i don't talk satellites or engineers in great detail.

• I highly suggest you do a regular impossible game first. Its like swinging a heavy bat in the batters box getting ready for the real deal.

• Pick Asia. This will allow you to have a 6 member squad for your first terror missions, which will help ALOT. Try and beef up your squad as fast as possible.

• Dont shoot for sattalite nexus, they take forever, cost major bucks/resources and do the same job as 2 regular relays. By doing this you will save money for officer training goodies.

• Sell all your corpses and ufo parts like flight computers and power sources. you only need the ufo parts for satellite nexus and the new fighter craft. your not using the overpriced nexus and the new fighter crafts are not needed till late game, so you dont need to save them till month 2

• Dont skip laser, shoot for them. Skipping lasers is a huge mistake. You can fully equip your squad with lasers before you can get 1 guy with a plasma rifle. Look at it this way; lasers cost 75% less then plasma and plasma only gives you a 35% bonus in damage over laser.

• Try to capture a sextoid as early as possible for the laser rifle research bonus. Yes that mean building the interrogation chamber right off the bat.

• Engineers are only key in the begging of the game. Do 2 engineer missions then alternate between cash and engineers and stop getting engineers around 50 altogether. The engineer bonus caps out around 50 so any more is a waste. People have been brain washed into maxing out engineers and workshops. Yes they are absolutely key in the start, but that's about it.

"Cost discount falls off quickly with number of engineers, and is capped at 50%.

The formula isProject cost = Base cost * (0.5 + 0.5 * (Minimum engineers / Available engineers))


That is, with double the required engineers you get 25% discount,with four times the required engineers you get 37.5% discount,with infinity engineers you get 50% discount." ( not my own words)

• If you make it past the first terror mission, its smooth sailing.

[uhKillswitch]

I finished Classic Ironman just fine by building two satelite uplinks and two nexuses (nexi?).
I tried to sell the least amount of alien corpses, especially sectoids, floaters and cyberdisks, so I had enough resources to build the interceptor/firestorm boni.
My starting location was Africa btw and everything went great.
Further on I never chose money as a mission reward, I always went for engineers.
I'm sorry to say that I disagree with most of your tips besides building the alien containement chamber first.

[NoShot]

there are lots of ways to win xcom on ironman, that is what makes it a great game. If you followed none of these tips you could still win. This is just what i found to be the most painless through multiple play through.

[Snowed]

I just started this and I'm actually a little worried. I did the entirety of month 2 without getting a single mission. Now I'm behind in research (no weapon fragments to research with haha). Better yet, I zoned out and didn't launch my satellite in month 1 so I lost Canada right off the bat (started North America as I've already done Asia/Africa/SA).

Hoping it goes well in the end.

Another thing that might be an issue is that half of my soldiers are heavies. I know heavies are good, but come on.

[uhKillswitch]

I always went with two snipers with double tap. Try to rank up some more rookies.
I lost Mexico on my impossible run during my first month so you still should be good.
Didn't you get missions during month one or did you just skip them?

[Pr1nzPriapismus]

In my opinion, you don't need to buy even a single Dodge/Track or Aim thingy. Rather sell the corpses for yummy cash!

Just go for the Daemon asap and equip it with EMP or Fusion weapon and the sky is yours.

Seriously, the air combat is super lame in this game and even on my Impossible walkthrough I did not buy a single one of them and did not loose a single ship. Allthough I have to admit that I had to abort a couple of fights to prevent them from being shot down. As far as i suggest, the only reason why you have to upgrade to the Daemon at all is that you will only get 5 secs to shoot down the UFO with your Interceptors towrds end of the game, which is barely possible.

BTW, I am currently playing Asia as starting location but had no Officer Training School ready from the scratch. Had to wait until end of the second month until I was offered to build it...

[trank]

i've yet to try Ironman, have only played some Classic and Impossible. some good tips here.