I've been enjoying the game since I replaced my graphics card, but I'd like to know if anyone has tips to survive the Long War option without losing any countries. I've gotten good enough to beat Classic Ironman, but the inflated costs and buildtimes in Long War means I can't build enough satellites fast enough to stop every country from panicking and bailing out; I'm stuck relying on lucking into abduction missions and terror attacks panning out in such a way that I can juggle continental panic levels, which I doubt is the way I'm supposed to go about it.

So, any tips for me? I know I could get through the game easily enough with only 12 or so countries, but me ego demands that I keep everyone on the same boat!

try to plan your research bases so you can your get bonuses. Invest in snipers, get the powers that lets them shoot from anywhere. build uplinks.

if you are playing with the long war mod apparently you can take back countries from the cold dead hands of the aliens

It's the uplinks I'm having trouble with. Their cost (and those of satellites) jump too high for me to keep up, especially since I need to ramp up my engineer count and power levels too: even when I link the uplinks together, and ignore Nexuses in the early game, I can only pop out about six satellites by the end of month three, by which time I have at least three panicking members and only enough satellites to calm one or two of them.

Which base are you starting with? Africa and to a lesser degree Europe are your best options to raise funds quickly early on. Also sell almost 99% of everything in the first 2 months. You should have laser weapons for everyone and at least 7 satallites up before may rolls around.

I'm using Europe this go around, as I've already done all the other continents save Asia. I've also largely stayed away from upgrading to lasers, and instead relied more on explosives to buy time until researching plasma. I actually find the battles pretty easy now, thanks to a "take it slow" approach, but the damned abduction missions happen at least twice a month, and once the battleship/supply ship UFOs start appearing my crappy interceptors can't shoot it down in one go, so the UFO often gets away before the second interceptor can reach it.

this was free on ps plus right? still have to play it!

That's just it. You can skip lasers in a normal game and go straight to plasma, but in classic ironman that's just no an option. I have laser weapons and cannons as soon as possible because of this problem. Chryssalids and ufos will overwhelm you otherwise.

One strategy you could use it to not use your satellites and then let an area that's one away go max. You don't lose a country until the end of the month, so just launch the satellite before the council meeting at the end of the month to get that country back on your side. If the country already has a satellite though, you don't want it to go all the way red because there's no way to recover it.

I've been getting away with that in Classic Ironman, though. Grenades, alien grenades, and especially rockets soften up Chryssalids and Mutons, and then gunpowder weapons finish the job. It helps that lasers and plasma upgrades are only a few weeks apart, if you prioritize getting plasma (I do). But you may have a point about interceptor's weapons, although I'm worried that the two second lag time in using the Phoenix cannon will doom my interceptors. Should I start buying and using the item that guarantees your ship dodges two attacks? I'm not sure how much more punch the Phoenix cannon has over the Avalanche missles.

Good point. Do you think I should hold off on using my spare satellite at the end of the first month? It'd get me a bit more fudge room, albeit at the considerable expense of early game funding.