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My general strategy is not to expand into additional regions at the start, beyond making contact with the zone containing the ADVENT blacksite. The game logic tends to put facilities 2 regions away from your controlled zones, so expanding further, faster, nets you no easier time getting to them. Making use of the construction boost at the base tends (for much of Apr-May) to net much faster campaign progression than additional regions contacted does.
When the Doom meter hits 11 or 12 (depending what's going on) I hit up the blacksite, and I've built the PG second (GTS-PG-Power-AWC-Psi Lab (coil)-Power-Res comms-Shadow chamber (coil) being the general build order), so I usually have a skulljack (and bluescreen rounds) around that time too, which offers the next avatar reduction on demand.
Once I no longer control a zone that gives controlled access to avatar project reduction my top priority is always heading for the nearest alien facility (or follow up blacksites). Getting the shadow projects for the vial and codex brain done to get those on the map early also helps, since again the more zones you control by the time the projects are done, the further you end up travelling in total. If you're lucky, by leaving them on the map long enough you'll get a region with both a facility and blacksite, that's not really required though.
You need to be fairly disciplined about what resistance rumour scans you do, and which you leave. Generally intel, supplies, alloys, rookies (after March), assorted loot, increased region income and one or two others are a total waste of resources, they offer little reward for the time invested. Unless you already have a region with a facility/blacksite contacted you're better off spending the time on the contact/build tower/contact/build tower cycle.
Getting hold of a facility lead as a backup is nice too, but generally not necessary.
To do this, always build contacts towards an existing facility as your first priority. If there are no facilities, you may even want to hold off on expanding until one appears and then start moving towards it. Make sure you are, at max, one territory contact away from being able to assault a facility, since you can normally make contact in 7 days or less if you immediately shift to that when the last pip fills. This requires careful management of Intel and contacts, you may have to pass up some tasty black market items or continent bonuses to make sure you are always ready.
Maximize the effectiveness of your story-line missions, as well. Each mission story objective (Jacking a captain, Black site, Foundry, Psi-Gate) knocks the main Avatar statue pips down, so make sure that the statue has pips before doing one of these objectives (and I would wait until you are in a doom countdown as well for maximum effect). I believe in Legendary the only one that doesn't reverse the progress is killing an avatar. Don't squander these story objectives if you have a facility you can knock over instead, in the early-mid game you can use the black site and the captain jack as an emergency get-out-of-jail-free card if you were unable to contact a facility in time. Speaking of which, I notice a distinct lack of proving ground in your early build order, which is required for the skulljack!
It has been a few months since I played vanilla legendary but I think my build order is usually GTS, AWC, Power, Comms, Proving Ground. From there, if I have not gotten very many engineers as rewards I will build a workshop, then probably another comms/power (or expansions) to keep making contacts. Shadow chamber unfortunately is a luxury that you have to live without for awhile, it is very nice to know what enemies to expect but is not a necessity. I will usually even build a psi lab before the shadow chamber, but that is just my preference since I like to get psi involved as quickly as possible.
The nerf of the Timer Cheese definitely hurts most in the early game, but you should eventually reach a point where you have several facilities within range, a couple story-line objectives in your pocket, and thus some breathing room to accomplish whatever you need in the mid to late game.
ETA: Oh yeah, and as Fringehunter7719 put together a very good reply while I was typing up my dissertation, he pointed out the other great get-out-of-jail-free card, Facility Leads! Those have saved my ass on a number of occasions, you can basically breathe easy and stop expanding for a little while to work on other things if you have one of them in your back pocket!
Never tried GTS-PG before, sounds ballsy running without the AWC until May but I think I'm at a level where I could manage the roster ok.
Restrictive Contacting is an interesting idea as well. I'm normally so focussed on expanding perhaps I'm creating a horrible loop - I do Blacksite immediately, then head towards 1st Facility. By the time I get there this spawns the other Facilities very far away...
Skulljacking your first Captain & Codex actually reduces Avatar Pips?! Somehow that's completely passed me by - I thought they just unlocked the Story Missions and gave Intel.
There are essentially two types of pips: Statue pips that show up under the statue in the middle of the ocean, and Facility pips. Knocking over a Facility always removes the exact number of pips that the Facility has contributed, so the only way to get rid of Statue pips is to accomplish story objectives. Skulljacking the captain (to release the first Codex) counts as one of these. In Legend, though, I do not believe skulljacking the Codex (and killing the first Avatar) does. On lower difficulties it will, but as far as I can remember it did not on Legendary.
I do it for the synergy with going for armor before weapons. Since you get the access to heavy armor for explosives and extra inventory spots for ammo I find the damage upgrades about as fast as going for weapons. With the PG that early you can get a leg up on skulljacking/skullmining and grenades too.
The thing about getting the armor is that it also decreases your wound times since the same number of points of damage puts you in a lower category of wound.
Making use of engineers efficiently (i.e. buying them from base every time they are available, never assigning them to building, never assigning them to power before the end game, generally avoiding staffing the AWC unless multiple soldiers have long wounds) and the base construction boost in Apr-May you won't wait that long for the AWC anyway.
I'm struggling on vanilla legend ironman, although the difficulty before it is easy for me. I can do the first month or so without problems, but I struggle when the some of the first new units (stun lancers, vipers, advanced troopers) are introduced. I feel like my problem is that I can't dish out enough damage to kill them fast enough. I recently tried rushing mag weapons (like rushing rushing - Modular weapons right into mag weapons right off the bat), but the avatar timer ran out since I didn't have any contacts. What's your typical research order? Do you prioritize engineers or scientists? Do you buy them from the monthly supply drops?
you can check or change the values in the ini. One of the easier things to significantly turn off or nerf without feeling bad about it.
One thing I did notice on classic Advent datapads and alien datapads give massive amounts of intel compared to other difficulties.
Research order. Bio > Res Com > Res Radio > Mag.
The priority here is getting into position to contact other regions. The only time i drop this tech order is for Modular weapons, but ONLY if i find a stock of any quality.
Build order, GTS > AWC > Power Relay > Res Com > Proving Grounds
Grenadiers are worth their weight in gold, train a couple more, you're going to need them. then get the AWC because people will be out injured for 30+ days otherwise. Once you got those the pressing issue is getting access to blacksites and story missions or it's game over, hence res comms.
This is the order I start out with everytime. It's a solid foundation to build upon. Generally speaking if i'm buying from home base it's engineers, but only if I don't need the supplies for something else.
As for stunlancers and vipers, it's hard to tell you how to deal with them, it kinda depends on the situation in which you encounter them, but i will say t hat both are worthy candidates to be grenaded to hell and back ( stacking 3 grenades if absolute needs be) or flashbanged.
There are different ways to get the damage you need, one is to do as you say, just go straight for mag weapons. Make sure to upgrade squad size as soon as possible - an extra soldier is a 25% upgrade in damage potential each turn after all. Presumably your soldiers are ranking up and you're taking appropriate skills that increase their number of attacks and/or damage which is the second.
The third method is through the proving ground, it's easily neglected, but it provides very large potential firepower gains. Poison or dragon rounds each add 1 point of damage on hit and a minimum of 1 point at the start of the enemy's turn against organic targets (barring poison immune units such as vipers), which is actually equivalent to a whole tech level. Bluescreen rounds (a bit later admittedly - you must defeat and autopsy a mec to get them) add 5 points of damage against mechanized units (plus codex/andro second form/gatekeeper) which is more than both tiers of weapon upgrades combined, a godsend against codexes in particular and very handy with gunslinger or hybrid sharpshooters who can fire a lot in a turn (or AWC blessed individuals with serial or death from above). Heavy armor gives you rockets for free, which do damage, shredding and cover destruction at the level of a plasma grenade and acid/gas/incendiary grenades all do substantially more damage than frag grenades do.
If squad size 1 and mag weapons leaves you feeling short of damage, then you should check that you have enough explosives per mission (I'd recommend minimum of 1 per pod + 1 spare, that's 4 for easy/moderate missions, 5 for difficult and 6 for very difficult as a good guideline) till you feel more confident or have other late campaign options. Make sure you're destroying cover and shredding armor, use what damage you have on high percentage shots, and remember that if an alien is burning and only has 1 hp left it's already dead before its action comes up.
I don't prioritise engineers over scientists - rather I prioritse both! I will recruit any and all that come up from scan events, I will recruit any and all that come up to purchase at HQ (till I have ~6 engineers at which point I basically ignore getting more). Don't waste money on workshop or lab (it's the $75 a month and power requirements that get you, although they aren't immediately conspicuous). Engineers and scientists make good rewards from guerilla ops, but generally there are too many other considerations on those to advocate just choosing one (which mission is difficult? Which dark events do you need to block? From mid game onwards it's best to not take "defend the relay" missions, when they die fast, and any mission with a hack objective can offer very powerful rewards like +20 permanent hack skill that means I usually take those missions regardless).
I find minimising wasted engineers is actually more important than recruiting tonnes of them. I never assign one to power facilities before end game, I barely ever assign any to construction. Keep them digging or working in the PG/Psi Lab only, pretty much throughout. Only assign to the AWC if you have multiple soldiers out for moderate or lengthy periods, if you have a near full strength squad it's not needed. The HQ construction boost during Apr-May gives a much bigger boost to base development than anything else, even if you only have 2-3 engineers, since it will double up unstaffed building projects as well as doubling digging speed, effectively granting more engineers than you even have a lot of the time. I also usually end up buying at least 1 engineer or scientist for intel from the black market in the first few months.
Research for me is usually:-
Alien Bio-ADV officer-ADV trooper-Mod wpns-Res comms-Hybrid Mats-Plated armor
First three are to open up PG and (importantly) battle scanners before the first retaliation, allowing me to never get ambushed by a faceless.
Building is:-
GTS-Proving Ground-Power-AWC-Psi lab (core)-Power-Res comms-Shadow Cham (core)
The only building I'll assign an engineer to boost is the psi lab (and depending on circumstance the shadow chamber so I can get on with the two key research projects there - blacksite vial and codex brain), getting ahead of the curve is accomplished with the HQ construction boost for most of Apr and half to most of May (depending on if any goodies that I really want to scan come up - e.g. grenade/ammo, resistance contact, scientist or engineer). Most rumour scans just get ignored (intel, supplies, assorted items, power, lower contact cost, alloys, rookies after March etc.)
Avatar project reduction is provided by having access to the story missions - contact the blacksite region after it pops (around 1 apr ish, depending on what's going on), so I've got 2 points of reduction on demand once the timer is at 11-12 pips, the codex skulljack should be ready by a similar point. After that it's a question of always prioritising contacting a region with a facility in it, but getting to the shadow chamber projects to get those on the map to act as extra reductions helps a fair bit too.
Incidentally, don't forget that if you're struggling with damage against aliens with significant dodge (like vipers, codexes and various later edition advent soldiers) then 100% hit chances or explosives will help a lot as they won't graze.
I uploaded this screenie the other day that shows a fairly typical progression by early June, if it's of any interest:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=820119135
ETA: Oh yeah, I meant to say that since facilities tick up and provide more doom reduction if they are left on the map longer it's generally more efficient to use the blacksite and officer skulljack before starting out on the long mid game facilities slog, so that the first facilities are more likely to be worth more reduction by the time you do them and the later facilities require traversing less regions in total. Also - just because you have access to one source of reduction doesn't mean you can't be working your way towards the next via contacting/building towers.
Not that it's a big deal at all, but just FYI, without mods you can't research mag weapons until you research modular weapons.
Also, don't waste unnecessary intel.
Whilst I agree that the Proving ground is not strictly necessary before July, it's certainly making things easier. Skulljacking provides those two points of reduction, allowing you to save facilities for longer (and hence be more likely to have ticked up more), which alleviates pressure from the avatar meter. Doing that sooner, rather than later, and getting as much ahead of the construction curve as possible then allows you to get the follow up mission of the psi gate in play much sooner, that mission offers very large doom reduction.
This is aside from the intel generation (and even clutch attempts at facility leads) that skullmining allows, the heavy weapons that EXO suits provide and the damage bonuses (worth at least a whole tech tier) from upgraded ammo and grenades, all of which take a lot of time to complete, meaning that if you delay by 2-3 months you'll be 2-3 months behind that damage and utility for the rest of the campaign.
It is quite possible to have every building of use (GTS, PG, AWC, Psi lab, res comms, shadow chamber and even def matrix which isn't of use) by July if you put your mind to it. Pinning all your hopes on facilities for a long time tends to make things harder rather than easier, and the alternative means getting on with the PG and Shadow Chamber.