Meanwhile, the aliens are sending various UFOs to earth on specific missions. If they were displeased (or infiltrated by the aliens) they would cut off their funding. If a country was happy with your performance, you'd receive more money from them the next month. The money for all of this (including paying everybody's salary) could come from selling your supplies or manufactured goods, but mainly from the funding council of countries. You had to manage your resources, which included buying or manufacturing weapons, ammo, armor, outfitting your air force and troops, and directing research and manufacturing focuses.
You started with one base (with the ability to build more) somewhere on the planet. The RTS part, called the Geoscape, took place on a global scale. This game mixed real-time strategy with turn-based strategy. In 1994, Microprose released the original XCOM: UFO Defense. What was XCOM, and why is this a big deal? Because of I'm not familiar with 20 year old strategy games.
