I always try to expand quite quickly, as soon as I've got enough engineers to make me a nice profit each month.
I remember on regular difficulty (I played the old bugged version back then, no idea to which difficulty level it corresponds) that I've managed to finish the game without losing a single country to the aliens. A few sometimes stopped funding me for a month, but they didn't sign a pact with the aliens. The next month their funding was back on track.
Of course it increases the chances of losing a base, if you haven't had time to build proper defenses yet.
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A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation (Nyarlathotep, H.P. Lovecraft)
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