I'm playing on the second hardest difficulty. I'm doing okay in actual missions, but I'm severely struggling with the Avatar project, which is really close to finishing.
The reason for this is that I started in west asia, but after the tutorial blacklist site, both other sites spawned all the way over in America, where I can't reach them until I first make contact.
However, to make contact with those, I first have to fill an entire chain of contacts over there, struggling with the contact limit and the amount of intel it costs to spread out over such a large area.
Did I just get extremely unlucky that both of the facilities spawned as far away as possible? Or is this difficulty based, meaning that on higher difficulties, your facilities spawn as far away as possible?