Kichijoji

Thank you, I've lurked for quite awhile and appreciate all the good info on here.
 
That mission was one of the more memorable ones for me. I was so flustered during it I was having guys throwing grenades that I forgot to prime haha. Damn Sectopods were brutal.
Towards the end it was just her(Colonel with really good stats) and a unarmed rookie that was either mc'd or panicking non stop. She had just blaster bombed her way onto the south top floor taking out 3 or so in the process. I had her hide out in the nav room hoping to pick off an Ethereal that might come around since her reactions were really high.
The mc'd rook spotted an Ethereal near the grav lift but was shot soon after. I also knew there was another one in the opposite top floor room(command room?) because he had killed my former commander when he entered. By counting the psi attacks, I figured it was the last 2. Didn't have any BB's so picked up a heavy plasma.
I waited until turn 40 something and nothing, no door sounds either. Deciding to go for it, she came around the corner and bam, she got blasted head on. Lost half her health and 1 fatal wound but still got a kill on auto. Picked up a blaster from a corpse on the lift and blew up the opposite room, was so relieved to hear a death scream and score screen music^^ Lost a lot of good men and a hover tank but it's games like this that keeps me coming back.
 
 
 
Thank you for your feedback and good information. I didn't know that about the Infiltration missions. But it makes sense now that I think about it.The alien base spam seemed to coincide when I started building more bases, but just coincidence I think. Asia, Australia and Brazil have all pulled out, and Europe is falling fast. Antarctica and the Pacific had bases as well.
 
The only differences I can really notice between vet and genius difficulties is there seems to be retaliations very quickly and troopers that usually don't get mc'd (70ish psi strength) can get mc'd on one try. I'm curious if there a safe zone for psi strength on superhuman?

Well, here's what I understand of it.
 
- Every month, the aliens start one Alien Terror mission and one "non-Terror" mission from the set {Alien Research, Alien Abduction, Alien Harvest, Alien Base, Alien Infiltration} (chosen at random, with weights depending on what zone it's being attempted in). Alien Retaliation missions are spawned by X-Com shooting down UFOs, and Alien Supply missions are randomly spawned by existing bases.
- Alien Base missions, unsurprisingly, build an alien base. Then they terminate. Alien Infiltration missions also build an alien base when a country is infiltrated, and they do not then terminate; they start over, and repeat until every country in that region has been infiltrated (spawning a base for each one).
 
I'm guessing that what happened was some combination of the following:
- a couple of alien bases that had already been built, but which you hadn't found
- the alien-mission die rolling Infiltration several times in a row, with the earlier Infiltrations continuing and spawning more bases even while the later ones were going on

Damn, reads like a great story to tell! Battles like that really feel like an accomplishment.
 
Welcome to StrategyCore.

Hi all~
My recent game has been kinda odd. I'm playing genius with no mods other than the xcomutil difficulty fix.
Well, I went until mid-October before the aliens built their first base. Mostly just terror sites and a few research and harvest missions and then constant retaliations.
Then, between the end of October until the end of December they built 11 more bases, about 5 Ethereal and the rest Muton and Snakemen. I think there is about three more infiltration missions going on as well. Haven't seen any Sectoids since May.
I was so starved for elerium and cash I was letting their fleets land and taking them out intact, Snakemen were no problem but the Ethereal battleships can get pretty messy, I barely took one with one surviving trooper that was fatally wounded.She ended up with 9 kills on that one and made commander
 
I've played X-Com since the psx days on and off, maybe 50 or so playthroughs and I've never seen alien base missions starting so late and building so many in a short time.