When hiring soldiers I'm looking for high TU's and Acc. Also Strength when Wolf armor becomes available. These things gives them surviving chance more than bravery and reflexes. It is not expected that these soldiers will survive enough to get good in every stat, and it doesn't really matter since by the end of the game I don't think I have any soldier that was present at the start of the game, but I'm still winning easily most of the battles (playing on veteran / ironman).
Also the game is decided on geoscape, not on tactical level. You can win every tactical battle with zero casualties, but if you lose the air war you will lose the game. However, if you control the air war and shoot down every UFO, it's impossible to lose the game even if you take full casualties from time to time, because you have basically unlimited resources to replace the losses.
At the beginning - first and probably second month - you will be struggling with the money, but from then on the funds will be raising. Have two bases in the first month and the third by the 2nd or 3rd month to cover most of the land. Radars are very expensive and it doesn't worth to build three on them on each base from the beginning, it's better to have three bases with one radar each than one or two bases with three radars. It's not necessary to build living quarters in your second and third base right from the start, keep them as pure air bases until you will have enough money to expand.
Prioritize researching new aircraft and aircraft weapon to keep the pace with the bigger and more numerous UFO's that will appear. Learn to fight manually all air battles to see what you can shoot down with what aircraft, so when multiple UFOs appears in the same time to know how to handle as many of them in the same time, with minimum aircraft sent (for example for a landing ship UFO, a single marauder with plasma guns is enough, sending more is a waste of resources that could be needed elsewhere). Do not send multiple aircraft at once grouped in squadrons, but send them separately in the same time. This way you can issue orders to them independently once in the air, which could be needed if unexpected situations arise. For tougher UFOs, once your aircraft intercepts them, order them to tail and examine on the zoomed map if your aircraft is actually positioned behind the UFO, then engage, to start the battle directly on its rear.
If an alien base pops up, don't hurry to attack if you are not ready (meaning at least wolf armor and laser weapons), otherwise you will be in trouble. I have left a base untouched for over a month (you will be losing money from that continent steadily, but not severely), and went in with wolf and predator armors. By that time the base became a fortress, but it was easy nevertheless. However, terror missions are mandatory, if you fail them you will take catastrophic losses to funds and possibly lose the continent, so be prepared for the worst. Having air superiority and shooting down every big UFO as fast as possible reduces the chance of a terror site to appear (I had only one terror mission from september to may).
In tactical combat you can scout with a soldier, and when he spots an alien, check if you have direct line of fire with your soldiers behind. They can shoot and kill it even of they don't see it directly! (kind of gamey) Because of this I only build sniper (laser/plasma/mag) and shotguns (and machine guns for predator of course). The guys with sniper guns are shooting from far behind across the map, while the shotguns are good at close range. Even if you lose an alien completely from sight, if you memorized on which tile it was standing, you can force attack that tile by holding CTRL and shoot that tile. I had killed one that way. With machine guns, if you can move so that you have two aliens in line in front of you, always fire at the alien in the back. This way you can kill both of them. The most funny moment was three aliens killed from a single burst :) They were bunched at an UFO entry.
I only use smoke grenades (when one of my soldiers remains out of TUs in full view, to cover aliens' line of sight) and stun grenades when I need to capture a live alien. Explosives can destroy the loot, so it's better to kill the aliens with the guns than with grenades and rockets.
Bottom line, priorities from most to least important:
1) air coverage - have three bases ASAP covering all the continents (more are nice but not really necessary)
2) air superiority - have 3-4 aircraft ready at each base - keep research focused on new aircraft and guns
3) least important - tactical combat - research armor to give your soldiers a surviving chance but don't despair if you lose soldiers as long as you have money to hire others.
Post edited July 12, 2015 by gunman_