Anyone got any good tactics for taking on aliens when they attack a city. I always seem to have difficulty in these situations.

Lots of explosives, prox mines in alleyways, spotters ducking behind cover. Don't stand in front of windows.

Deployment's the trickiest for me, so I follow NKF's suggestion now and throw a smoke grenade out first (aim at the bottom of the ramp to lob it over the tanks) and wait for the cloud before deploying. Then you can have one scout spotting and everyone else firing blind from the relative safety of the cloud.

You lose a few civilians, but save more soldiers. After I saw a blaster bomb whizzing by on the first turn, I reckoned the tactic had some merit.

Check out the topic called "how do you make it early in the game". It has some recent discussion on just what you're asking for.

Cazbol

You can only do your best... You want to try and spread out as quickly as possible and take many med-kits.
It's best if you're guys get injured non-critically than you let civilians die...

Early on, keep your soldiers together. Not side by side, but don't ever run off alone. I never move a soldier without at least one more beside him.

If you work in pairs, you stand a much better chance of survival.

Also, move slowly. Civilians are going to die. There's nothing you can do about that.

Keep explosives use to a minimum. You can't afford to kill civilians. One X-Com killed civilian is almost as bad as two killed by the aliens. Later in the game, I won't even take explosives on a terror site.

Cheers guys, I'll see if I can implement a few of your ideas in my battles!

I don't know Warlord. You go in slowly? I always try to get my boundaries set early on in the mission. The misssion edges that is.
As long as you stick to the edges of the map and building walls then you're fine...

i'm used to using just 2 people at the start with maybe a tank as well. it was bad.(that was tftd and start of UFO). now i use maybe 8 or so people.