My worst map: small village (called "england" in skirmish)

[Seerorin]

You simply need enough firepower to decimate any alien in one turn if you see it. Yeah it's pretty damn hard. But that's the only way it will ever work. See them kill them back. You can use tactics sometimes after u secured the civilians, but before that you can't really do anything. I don't even know why nation happiness decreasing when there wasn't even a single UFO in their nation...

[anonymissimus]

You simply need enough firepower to decimate any alien in one turn if you see it. Yeah it's pretty damn hard. But that's the only way it will ever work. See them kill them back.

Well precisely that doesn't work on this map. Or the others I mentioned.
If it's the case, the map becomes indeed easy. A visible alien is a dead alien, most of the time. An example is forest, where often all aliens on the map are visible right from the start. I almost always kill most aliens right away on my first turn, the remaining ones bleed, panic or go mad rage, no matter how heavily they are armored. It's no problem to safe all civilians on that map.

[Telok]

You want ugly? I've had aliens pop up on top of the playground wall and lob a grenade down on my troops during the first alien turn. Nothing quite like starting your second turn with five dead soldiers and two aliens covering you with close range plasma rifle RF.

Perhaps if the map were a bit larger with a little more room down below and a building basement that opened onto the lower area.

[MonkeyHead]

Worst map for my playstyle? Luxury resort is the winner here. One alien often spawns on the roof overlooking the dropship, ready to rain fire or grenades down, doubly worse if armed with a plasma blaster. You have 3 lines you can assault over; one leading up a doubling back stairway to an exposed semi blind alley often with aliens just around the corner overlooked by 2nd floor windows, one leading to the centre of a map through a basement which you exit towards the already mentioned blind alley or to the third line of assault, which is a small stairway leading to a wide open area overlooked by alien firing points in ground and second floor windows. Other aliens spawn in good cover behind buildings far from you, and will pop out of cover as soon as you leave troops exposed. My only successes on this map have involved lots of reaction fire luck with shotguns and my own plasma blasters, liberal use of fire and smoke, and more than one melee kill when things get desperate.

Honourable mention has to go to the secret depot, which often has a number of aliens in firing positions overlooking the automatic door triggered by putting a soldier there as a reaction fire magnet. Smoke can make their survival more probable, until they rush the door, or an alien appears on the roof above the door and wipes your squad with a grenade, plasma blaster fire or some fully auto rounds of some sort.

I have also recently begun to hate the archaeological dig. There are so many points a single alien could entrench themselves and be a right pain in the ass.

[anonymissimus]

Luxury resort can be won with little losses and all civilians surviving. Seems you are entering the building ? Hide valuable soldiers and civilians in lots of smoke, leave a few expendable soldiers crouched in the open to lure aliens out of cover. Snipers are useful to hit through walls, grenade launcher to shoot over obstacles such as the edge of the rooftop. Then you can still kill a few aliens on your first turn, though they are often only 1 or 2 on this map. I go into the building only once there are at maximum 1-2 aliens left.

Archaeological dig belongs to the easiest maps at all, the reason being that most aliens spawn down in the tunnel, while most civilians spawn in a way you can be between them and aliens. Set up too defensive points, one near the small pathway southwest, the other near the giant stone structure in the middle in the north. As always, stay smoke covered, scout out of the smoke each turn and kill anything visible. That's safe, since there's enough area around your smoke which you can keep free from aliens each turn while civilians hide in smoke too, behind or near to you. Snipers can shoot through the walls of the ruins and through the ceiling of the tunnel for the last few aliens which have been wandering around there since the mission start.

[ShipIt]

I put some time into this one. Still far from perfekt, as there is too much open space around. That´s what it looks for now:

[Noordung]

looks very nice.
does anybody knows if editor works in windows? becouse i cant get it work.

[anonymissimus]

Since the time of my complaints, I've managed to save all civilians on this map too. Depending on starting positions and especially number of aliens...if there are only 6 it can work. Thanks to looking up alien spawn points with radiant, hehe, shooting blindly with grenade launcher, and placing cannon fodder attracting the shots. (This cannot be cheating as I could be the one who created the map so I would know spawn points anyway.)

@ShipIt
The most important factor why I call this a "bad" map are the relations of spawn points of aliens, civilians and soldiers. They should be in a way that the player can draw the alien's attacks away from the civilians onto himself. That's problematic in the current 2.5 version as aliens can shoot at civilians much more easily.