My first post here, and after reading the forums and beginning the game I am curious as to how many people chose hard difficulty on first game start. I chose hard, and I'm at the point where the enemy ship is due to enter atmosphere in about 7 days.

I chose hard because I wanted to make the tactical gameplay challenging, but I'm worried that maybe the hard setting will ultimately make the global game more difficult and possibly make me lose.

Hi Canti, welcome to the boards!

I think I'm playing normal. It was hard to begin with, but from there it's been piece of cake mostly. Then again I reload when I loose a soldier, so it's possibly harder if you play "ironman".

After beating Aftermath I replayed it a few times on hard mode, So going into Aftershock I started my game on hard, I struggled really badly on just about every aspect of the geoscope, however the tactical was fun and challenging.. Ultimately I restarted in "Normal" mode because the Geoscope part of the game was giving me a beating...

It would be nice to have a mode that could make the Geoscope part easier.. I was thinking about using a combo of current Addons to make the Geo easier on "hard" mode as soon as I beat the game on normal...

Well that's not good news for me. I'm going to slug it out in hard mode and see how far I can get. As far as playing "Ironman" I don't see how anyone could play it that way without already beating the game atleast once. Far too many pitfalls and lessons to be learned, I always reload if I lose a soldier.

And thank you for the welcome Slaughter.

Off topic -- Am I the only one that thinks an option for a full speed replay of each mission completed would be a huge plus to this game? Being able to watch eachothers battles in real time would be great. A system like the fps games use where it's not an actual video file, but a recorded demo of the action that requires the game to play back. I'd love to go back and see my shotgun ambushes in the stairways in full speed.

I'd never have beaten the game the first time if I had tried it on hard or ironman. By the second time you have a better understanding of the dangers in missions and what to give priority to when it comes to scientific research at each stage of the game.

I've seen that playback feature in the Total War games, and I think it would be have been great if Altar had incorporated it in the UFO series as it would help us to discuss tactcs or just to replay our moments of glory

I played my first game on medium, and now I'm doing a hard campaign. The strange thing is that the strategic game seemed harder on medium, with the cultists expanding more and the starghosts being even more aggressive. But then, perhaps that was because I wasn't as proactive in cleaning out cultist enclaves and stomping starghosts when I got the alert.

I've started on the hardest setting first thinking I'd stand a chance after having played all the previous games. Guess I was wrong. After 5 battles and losing half my men without any chance of saving them even with constant save/reload I gave up and restarted on normal. The first difference I've noticed is that morelmans are cake on normal. They run like a madman in harder settings.

I might try going at it again once I finish my normal game.

Most effective way to save your men (especialy on iron man) is: run, regroup, ambush. or just run. sick bay time ;)

I had an interasting encounter with "reticulan worshipers" in aftershock. The whole fight revolved around me sneaking around, checking out positions and evetualy 2 people throwing grenades at once AND hiting. After that happened, one of they guys with a decent gun took out everyone with assault rifles. It was 3 vs 9 or so. (first time I tried it grenade hit a tree above my cyborg and screwed him up, I was like wtf just happened... reload).

It all works out prety well if you have a target and an ambush. I had no decent guns (except one guy with reticulan laser) so my psy girl had to make 3 non cyborgs chase her. After that my cyborg met them at point blank (just behind an old truck) with auto shotgun (one of hostiles tried to shoot him with SMG, yeah right). It was beautiful. He didn't even have to reload. Strangely enough it was the guy with reticulan laser that mowed down 5 people. Holy crap he went to hospital after that mission... for a loooooong time.

Actualy I think this game is ment to be played without saves. Then it just becomes so messy.

That is, if a damned muckstar doesn't one-shot-kill a just recruited unit. Damn thing got a critical hit of over 1200 and fried her brain before she even had a chance to take a shot at it. The missions itself went well enough considering it was the 2nd mission and a rescue operation (limited to 4 soldiers) on superhuman with only laser weapons, no armour and a deasert eagle vs 3 shotgun totting morelmen and other mutants.

Im playing hardest level and the tactical is not so hard after the first missions.
The problem with geoscope: you are always low on resources and bases. Some bases you can´t afford and have to unlink them (I´m about to cover the entire globe); so you have fewer spaces for your labs/factories.
I´m thinking what will it be when Wargots start assaulting my provinces... (The starship is about to arrive). What to say about starghosts (They invade also, right?).

Well, it is not so bad after all with resources: once you finish every research, your outcome goes down, so it is fair.

But there is still the problem with the lack of space to construct base facilities, mainly because I got so few alien resources, and now it is unbalanced (I got many of the other 2).

The tactical is still easy, and I´m just fighting my first SGs. OR may be I´m too good...