Playing Normal. It may be "early on" but it's still weeks of game time to get enough engineers, cash, and have the power stuff built and base excavated and satellite uplink starting being built. By which point enough of the "pick one of three" missions have come up that 1/3 of the globe is in high level panic.
The issue isn't the combat, is the base. I'm doing alright at the combat side of things at the moment; on current playthrough I'd only lost two guys by the time terror mission rolled around. Just I'm clearly messing something up on the base side of things if I've not got the research/engineering in place to have any extra satellites up and the improved gear in place.