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And there is also a series of "Civilization" games, where the number of units in need of player control can reach several hundred. And that's not to mention dozens of cities.

Evidently, you're not a fan of turn-based wargames then. As an example take the old Steel Panthers series, first from SSI and then later Steel Panthers: World at War from Matrix Games and now Slitherine. That game premiered in the early 90s (I was one of the first reviewers) and still has a huge following today. Some turns don't take minutes or even hours, they take days and can involve a hundred units or more. That game was very much a commercial success and there are dozens more that I can think of like it.

I'd also like to add that just because there's room for X, number of soldiers in a transport does not require you to fill every vacancy. If you'd like to play with fewer soldiers then have at it, enjoy yourself and play the way that best pleases you. There's no one here who will tell you that you can't and you're free to ignore any troll that does.

Why are we talking about limitless possibilities like that is inherently a good thing? All games have rules and the fun/challenge comes from working within that space to find solutions to the problem at hand. I would much rather make a few meaningful choices than a large amount of relatively simple or meaningless ones. I do agree with you that the combat missions themselves can quickly get tedious, though I believe that is down to how simple they are. "Kill all the dudes before they kill you" doesn't lend itself to particularly interesting tactical gameplay and it forces the terrain, map layout, enemy type, etc etc to do the heavy lifting. That said lots of people hated the timed mission (and the versions of it the second firaxis game) so maybe we are the outliers and most people find the very basic mission structure compelling enough.

I ran the Steel Panthers support site for Matrix Games for 12 years. During those 12 years, Matrix Games produced 3 add-on campaigns for the game that each sold over 200,000 copies, and the SPWaW community itself added a community-created campaign that won several awards. The community, when I retired and handed it over to someone else to manage in 2013, had more than 55,000 active participants and players worldwide and was even arranging group tours of WWII battle sites. The point I'm making here is that your particular viewpoint of what makes for a good game is not the be-all/end-all of successful game development. It's not an invalid viewpoint but neither is it the sole viewpoint. Other players can and do have different criteria on what makes a game good.

Limitations cannot open up limitless possibilities. Unlimited possibilities arise only in the absence of restrictions.

The game is made tedious by a huge number of monotonous combat missions. The combat missions themselves are also tedious due to the small viewing radius, as a result of which the player has to spend a lot of time just examining the map. All combat missions are very similar: 8-12 of your soldiers must destroy a certain number of aliens. The final battle is essentially no different from any other battle. In classic X-COM:1-2, the final battle was a large-scale battle requiring the participation of 26 soldiers, while a regular UFO assault required no more than 12 soldiers (from the middle of the game). And with some UFOs, 4-6 soldiers could easily cope. Also in X-COM:1-2 there were several combat missions that also required the maximum number of soldiers (26). There weren't many of these large-scale battles, but these battles gave the player the most intense emotions from the game. The problem with this game is also that, according to legend, aliens are more technologically advanced, and humanity can resist them in battle only in quantity, not quality. In fact: the player's soldiers are more powerful than the alien soldiers, and the aliens can defeat the player in battle - only by quantity. The Xenonauts game does not have the emotions that were in X-COM:1-2. When in the first battles (especially at night), the player lost more of his own soldiers than he destroyed the alien soldiers.

Cleaner selections

Considering the absolute lack of financial support from earth governments, and the loss condition "two continents lost" makes the game impossible. The bottleneck in the game should naturally be the scientific examinations of new races and technologies, which cannot be put on a timetable accesible for the players. You cannot wage war on six continents without basefacilities there. Worse: The bases are so expensive and too small for a serious warfare. The answer to this situation is an old japanese one; seppoku!!! Giving free tech breakthroughs are not worth shit, when any produktion is so expensive... and you can't sell it with a profit. Do you actually know what money are???

oriiginal UFO used 8 soldiers as initial size of squad, but a tank cost is 4 soldiers. Also first mission used just 6 soldiers as you see, below becouse of sluggish gameplay also people back then were far more patient, myself included. Less soldiers >>> more chance to get commercial success.