thanks, I was able to clear my first battle a bit after reading this. I had around 30 or 40 soldiers. I find that having everyone geared (weapon %) and experience helps a lot, but when you're starting, the experience part is a bit difficult. What I did the first time was to use heavy fire until there was a huge group, and then I used grenade. Fortunately, I was able to get over 60 nearby before first grenade. Since you get 3 grenades and 2 covers, you have to use grenade twice in one of the fights, and then cover. So, I grenade and cover, and then use heavy fire to get as many nearby as I can again, and then grenade and get to final cover, and then it's just a shootout. If you managed to retain enough soldiers, you'll win. When your soldier count is so low, even if they grenade, it won't do much to you.
It's not fixed. So best thing I found was to test one, see how many soldiers you lose/how many you kill, then roll back & try the others.
Pick whichever loses you the least soldiers, in relation to how many of theirs you've killed.
e.g. Heavy Attack: Lost 2 soldiers, killed 22 enemies.
Skirmish: Lost 1 soldier, killed 13 enemies.
Defend: Lost 1 soldiers, killed 10 enemies.
Obviously "Skirmish" is the best choice, there.
If you lose 0 soldiers, go with the Heavy Attack to wipe out more of their forces.
The next round will be different, so repeat the process again & make sure you pick the one with the best win/loss ratio.
I have 300+ soldiers, so don't suffer defeats, but the process still works if you have less.
In fact, having less makes managing your losses carefully even more important!
With grenades, optimal way is to kill a few while waiting for good number to build up, throw & move. Kill a few while waiting for good number to build up, throw & move. Take note of how many your grenade kills. Keep the third one as the final attack & this way you don't get any (maybe one) thrown at you.
