How to Build Your Base Efficiently in X-Com: Enemy Unknown

X-Com: Enemy Unknown is a game that requires both tactical and strategic skill. No matter how efficient you are at the tactical squad based combat aspects of the game, if you do not understand how to strategically build your base, you will lose every time. Due to the significant restrictions on resources you will experience while playing the game, you will need to be efficient in order to succeed. The following advice will help you build your base as efficiently as possible.

Building Placement – There are two kinds of buildings in X-Com: Enemy Unknown: buildings that you build only once and buildings that can be built multiple times. Buildings that can be built only once can be placed anywhere legal to be effective. Buildings that can be built multiple times gain benefits from being built adjacent to each other. The best way to maximize those benefits is to build those types of buildings in a 2×2 block. This maximizes building efficiency, but is more expensive because excavating lower levels costs more money and you need to build an Access Lift on a level before you can excavate or build there.

Income Building – Your first priority in this game should be income building. There are two good ways to build income: increased satellite coverage and more engineers. Increased satellite coverage causes countries to provide you a monthly stipend and has the added bonus of helping to lower panic in the world. The maximum number of satellites you can build in the game is based on the number of Satellite Uplink and Satellite Nexus facilities you have built. You should build Satellite Uplink facilities as soon as possible (as well as satellites to launch from them). A good trick with these types of buildings is to build three Satellite Uplink facilities and then build a Satellite Nexus. Demolish one of the Satellite Uplink facilities and build one more Satellite Nexus. That will allow you to maximize satellite coverage throughout the game.

The other way to build income is to gain more engineers. You may get a monthly stipend of engineers based on satellite coverage and can earn engineers from missions, but another way to get engineers is by building a Workshop. Each Workshop built gives you five engineers. Additionally, Workshop adjacency gives you a discount on items built in your Workshop. Income production from this source isn’t direct. Instead, you get increasingly high discounts from both adjacency and from having more engineers than projects require. These discounts equate to higher income because you are spending less to build and money goes further.

Power – While your income infrastructure is important, all of these buildings require power to operate. There are three buildings in the game that produce power: Power Generator, Thermo Generator, and Elerium Generator. The Thermo Generator is special because it can only be built on a square that has steam vent. When planning your base, you should note where these steam vents are and plan to build a Thermo Generator on most or all of them. It is a very efficient method of power production. The Power Generator is incredibly inefficient and should only be built as needed in the short term, with the intention of destroying it later. All of these buildings provide additional energy when adjacent to each other, but building in a 2×2 block is not recommended for them. Instead, build as the steam vents dictate and place Elerium Generators with as many adjacencies as possible.

Unique Buildings – As mentioned previously, some buildings can only be built once. These unique buildings have two major functions: to provide a new base option and to further the game. In general, you want to avoid making the buildings that further the progress of the game until you are fully prepared to take the next step and you will want to build the buildings that provide new options as soon as you can afford to support their costs. Alien Containment and the Foundry should always be your first two priorities. Technically the first forwards the progress of the game, but the ability to interrogate aliens is so beneficial that doesn’t really matter. The Foundry allows you to upgrade weapons and equipment in new ways that can be critical to the survival of your soldiers. The Officer Training School is also very important, but the abilities it allows you to buy are very expensive. You need to avoid the temptation to spend too much money in it before you have firmed up your infrastructure. Finally, when your infrastructure is completely secure, build the Psionic Labs.

Other Buildings – There are only a few other buildings in the game and two of them exist primarily to further the progress of the game: Hyperwave Relay and Gollop Chamber. These buildings should be built only when you are fully prepared for the difficulty to ramp up. Building them early will lose you the game quickly. The Laboratory is the final building and it has mixed benefits. It will decrease research time, but research time is rarely a bottleneck in this game. If your resource production is solid and you have money to burn, feel free to spend it building Laboratories, but until then, this should always be low on your priority list.