Running the wrong version. You need to have the patched one (Which is supplied here as well as HOTU) instead to run it on XP. I have a widescreen too, but running the patched .bat makes it run just fine.

Mouse

This game is surely the best Microprose ever made.
The new version of this great game called UFO:Aftermath
cant be compared with this one.....too bad

X-com STILL sits near the top of my list. Microprose was the best, man.

UFO-junkie, I just don't get why you build your second base in South America. There is only Brasil there to protect and it's a fairly minor contributor to your budget. Meanwhile, you're leaving North America and the Far East open for the taking by aliens.

My first base goes to southern Germany; my second goes either in the North American praries in the middle of the US-Canada border or in China, depending on where there is more alien activity at the moment. I usually lose Australia, Brasil or South Africa to alien infiltration, but at least the core of my sponsors in Europe, America and Asia stay with me.

Money is not really the reason for building my base there hence NA has signed a contract with the aliens in the first month... Its `cause many Ufos are flying via South America and can be interceptet on their route now quite well.

My current money after one Year (in the game of course!) is about 50.000.000 $, so I could build bases all over the world.
Its just the ting that South America is nearly the exact counterpart for my first base on the worlds` other side.

I always try to expand quite quickly, as soon as I've got enough engineers to make me a nice profit each month.
I remember on regular difficulty (I played the old bugged version back then, no idea to which difficulty level it corresponds) that I've managed to finish the game without losing a single country to the aliens. A few sometimes stopped funding me for a month, but they didn't sign a pact with the aliens. The next month their funding was back on track.
Of course it increases the chances of losing a base, if you haven't had time to build proper defenses yet.

I find that if your base is well planned you should be able to defend the base as easily as a normal mission. i find terror missions harder than base defence. Even with my bad bases.

I meant especially when they're attacking my new base before I've got a decent amount of soldiers and equipment in place :)
But I remember I usually wasn't that good at defending my bases, usually lost a couple of soldiers...

Hey'all, I,ve got a toubleshooting problem, I haven't got any problem running the game until I start the first mission, the game crash as soon as the battlefield load, if anyone would help me make the game run, I expect it's a video configuration problem so if anyone would tell me the refresh rate and resolution supported, it would be great. If you find any solution, please wrtie me an e-mail at Life_rider99@hotmail.com.
Thx

From what I remember, this was answered in this very thread ten thousand times already.