Please make FM 2012 harder

[Some Guy!]

Come to think of it the last truly special team I'd seen the AI put together themselves was the 2018-19 Reading side on FM08 by Nigel Gibbs (my assistant in this version). That was a truly special side!

[milnerpoint]

Biggus, you make good points mate, the AI is definitely something that needs to improve, BUT i have seen some AI managers putting together fantastic squads, in the game i am playing right now Pep has been the Man U manager since Fergie retried, he has lasted 10 seasons now and has built some of the best AI squads i have seen, his current team always puts me out of the champs league, he has a huge strong centre back along side a quick one, two amazingly good midfielders, both who can tackle and create, and two of the worlds very best strikers, i can beat any team in the world when my team plays well, but even good performances against them end up with me losing. In the league i am managing though it is a bit more obvious of the problems, unless the AI managers have a very very high squad building attribute them seem to struggle to get a good basic squad going.

[anagain]

Don't use scout programms, enable attribute masking,use your own tactics-don't use corner exploits-use your own training. Try playing Turkish league with clubs that their Media prediction is >8.

I follow all those rules...and still I feel I'm beating the game too easy.

[Coentrao]

The thing is that most people i imagine just want to pick a team and sign the neymares,pastores and lukakus of this world and just dominate everything even if it's not realistic, or just get some random conference team and have consecutive promotions all the way up.

While maybe a smaller group wants the game to be a more realistic challenge, it's nearly impossible to break the Top-4 of the PL unless you got some massive financial backing yet on FM is easy, you won't get consecutive promotions nowadays without some good financial backing as well (though i think Norwich achieved it with no sugar daddy) and yet on FM is also easy.

And that's where maybe i think difficulty levels could be implemented, maybe a mode of what the game is nowadays and then a "simulation" mode that somewhat reflects real-life, where it's a lot harder to sign players from foreign countries that somehow want to play for your conference team, where the players will only sign one or two year contracts and want to leave as soon as some higher club comes around sniffing, where the players are a lot more demanding in terms of wages (which IRL is the biggest expense of most top clubs),etc

I agree that the AI needs some development but it's probably one of the areas that is hard to get right and it takes a lot of work i would imagine, having a mode like this that would make most things more realistic would help in the difficulty of the game in the long term in my opinion.

[Brian Shanahan]

is like we are saying is easer for us to build strong team while AI manager are not as clever .. SI need to make it harder for us to build strong team, we need to buy wrong players sometimes, and sure improve AI manager and make them as good as us.

why SI don't hire many of people who do game guide of how to beat AI.. SI can use those people to make AI manager smarter, beating the system. hire them for one month and they will make AI manager better . it is like security companies hiring hackers and ex thieves to strength their system, as they are the experts who knows the system holes, and if SI implement their idea in AI structure, the game will be definitely harder

Because knowing how to exploit errors and faults in a game and knowing how to fix those errors and faults and then code the fixes into the game are two totally different things. And also SI already have all the information they need to know where the problems are just by reading the fora.

You guys really don't get the point do you?

No it's you not getting the point, you're complaining about dominating in a league with a small number of compeditive (both Turkey and England have a small number of teams with a chance of winning the league on any given season, Turkey actually being more compeditive) with a team expected to be at least near dominant, and you say the game is too easy?

Look, we've given you ways to make the game harder (pick a smaller team go with automatic rep, and come back to me), we also acknowledge the many areas where the game needs improving (sometimes quite serious improving), but it still does not negate the fact that you've no point in the first place.

My biggest dream would be SI to release the AI source, the way Firaxis did with Civ4 (not only the AI, but that was the interesting part). The Civ AI did benefit from that immensly. They later hired the hobby programmer who improved the AI the most (albeit only for a time).

I'd love to take a look at the transfer AI...

Sorry for triple posting, but Firaxis never hired any of the people that actually improved the game. They hired John Shafer, who released a mod which while interesting and nice looking didn't work (there was a zombie AI problem where they did nothing for the first c.50 turns, and that wasn't the biggest problem) and worked on the most broken feature of the final expansion BtS (he brought in the spy system, and even then he ended up having to get someone else {Alexman} to do the actual work of coding the game for him). Signs are beyond that Civ 5 was released as a total mess (unplayable, untested, buggy as hell, used as a test case for DX11, despite 3 years {!!} lead time) and even now is an unplayable game due to bad design choices (going for a tactical combat system in a strategic level game!) and nerfing the most promising strategic choices in patches (because the lead designer didn't like playing with more than three cities!). But the worst fault was that not alone did they bring back every single exploit and bad game mechanic from Civ 3 that Civ 4 fixed, they managed to invent some new ones (e.g. conquering the world with 5 Horsemen on Deity).

Seriously the Firaxis model of sacking all your good programmers and designers and turning one of the biggest franchises in PC history over to a callow youth who neither had the drive to follow his ideas through, the intelligence to admit that he was wrong (and that he needed independant views) nor the ability to code even the simplest commands (most of the code was left-over from Civ 4 and with the 1UPT combat mechanics the AI became a joke) is the worst corporate decision since Gerard Ratner started talking about how bad his diamond rings were. Signs are beyond that the next game is a Facebook Farmville clone, and Civ 6 will have the worst sales of any of the Civ games (if it even gets made).

Finally, mods could you please merge my last few posts this thread? Sorry bout the spamming.

[Brian Shanahan]

NVM, thread spam, multiple posts merged, please delete mods.

[Suge]

They need to completely overhaul the gameplay. The sole goal of the game is to become as successful as possible and that is simply too easy to achieve.

As soon as you reach a certain level with healthy finances the game becomes almost laughable. Teams around you buying absolute crap season after season, you getting stronger and stronger. It's only going to end one way isn't it? We need creative barriers to stop us from becoming too successful and we need them as soon as possible.

[Erimus1876]

They need to completely overhaul the gameplay. The sole goal of the game is to become as successful as possible and that is simply too easy to achieve.

As soon as you reach a certain level with healthy finances the game becomes almost laughable. Teams around you buying absolute crap season after season, you getting stronger and stronger. It's only going to end one way isn't it? We need creative barriers to stop us from becoming too successful and we need them as soon as possible.

This x 100

Now cue the "Want easy? Play Manchester City. Want hard? Play a relegation-threatened side, or a lower league team." posts that completely miss the point

[Bradley21]

Just started a save in the hungarian second division in the hope of not winning too easily. I dont know the league, the teams, any hungarian players or staff so i thought it might be a challenge.

I took over the team expect to finish 12th, with just one signing im top of the table by 6points after 12 games with 10 wins and 2 defeats.

Fail.

[kjb36]

I agree it should be harder, I know people say be a lower league team or various other stipulations on transfers etc. But I'm a Spurs fan, I want to manage the team I love and improve them...however after a couple of seasons I'm getting 1st or 2nd place all too regularly. It seems like the Man Utd, Chelseas etc don't improve or invest very poorly in new players.

[Redbyrd]

A good example of what is happening is the strategy game Dune2 from the early nineties. Back then it was a fantastic game, and I struggled beating the game because the AI gave me so much competition. I might be older and wiser now but already 10 years ago I loaded that game again and gave it a go and I realized that the AI was so dumb it baffled me - all I needed to do was to build my base into theirs and build guntowers in the middle of their base, taking them down. They always came through the same path so I built guntowers along that path and they never had a chance.

****

The development of a worthy AI is the single most important task for SI right now. It is also the most difficult task and the least profitable.

This exactly right. Other than the unnecessary attack on my memories of Dune 2.

[Wigmore]

It's difficult to make the game "harder" because, considering FM's massive popularity, I would say a greater proportion of players aren't people like us who post on the forum and do things like the dafuge challenge, but instead are people that want to play the game with their favourite team and lead them to glory without too much knowledge of the finer details of the game. They'll stop with FM soon enough when they find it too hard and SI will have lost a huge chunk of their audience.

Maybe some kind of "difficulty mode" setting? Although this could be hard to implement and won't be to everyone's taste.

[Redbyrd]

I just though of a way the game could be made both more realistic and harder. We could be fired at the drop of a hat like real football managers.

[iamweesel]

If I want to make something harder I usually watch porn. So maybe you could try that.

[Redbyrd]

If I want to make something harder I usually watch porn. So maybe you could try that.

I suppose that could make playing FM harder but so would pretty much any other distraction. For the record, I don't think SI should add porn to the game.

[Erimus1876]

It's difficult to make the game "harder" because, considering FM's massive popularity, I would say a greater proportion of players aren't people like us who post on the forum and do things like the dafuge challenge, but instead are people that want to play the game with their favourite team and lead them to glory without too much knowledge of the finer details of the game. They'll stop with FM soon enough when they find it too hard and SI will have lost a huge chunk of their audience.

Maybe some kind of "difficulty mode" setting? Although this could be hard to implement and won't be to everyone's taste.

You're probably right. At the end of the day SI are in this to make money and to sell as many copies as possible, and that means catering to the widest possible audience. Most people want it easy, you can see that by the amount of people who regurgitate the "don't manage Man U" line without any understanding of the real problem, oppose new ideas and features that make you think, and reject by reflex action any talk of difficulty levels or sliders being added to the game (its not just an FM issue but gaming in general). I don't think SI will ever make a 'hard' mode for that reason. However, I do believe they should improve and fix aspects of the game that give it a bit more realism without taking away the fact that its just a game (if thats even possible) - the flawed AI mentioned throughout this thread being the most important imho. If they get that right, the game will offer players a better challenge as a consequence.

[hescumeth]

My biggest dream would be SI to release the AI source, the way Firaxis did with Civ4 [..] They later hired the hobby programmer who improved the AI the most (albeit only for a time).

Sorry for triple posting, but Firaxis never hired any of the people that actually improved the game. They hired John Shafer, who released a mod which while interesting and nice looking didn't work [..] Civ 5 was released as a total mess [..]

You are just plain wrong. Firaxis hired Blake to work on Civ4 Colonization expansion AI (from New Zealand) after he improved the Civ4 AI by a lot.

I hate that when people who seem quite intelligent (I couldn't agree more with your critisism of Civ5 even though I never talked about Version 5) contradict what I am saying without checking the facts first ... . I mean what do you think? That I just make things up or what? Seems quite inpolite to assume that ....

Obviously we agree that the direction Civ took with Version 5 is horrible. I still play only Version 4. But that doesn't mean that realeasing the Civ4 source wasn't great!!

[The Wet Jigsaw!]

I wish the game was too easy. I've suddenly become very terrible at this game!

[ndebergerac]

As it stands, it's silly how players are rated like crap for playing for a team like Aston Villa but, if they get signed to Chelsea or Man Utd over the winter/summer, they suddenly get a massive boost in their ratings.

If they've earned a move to a big club then doesn't that mean they have improved as a player, thus the attribute boost?

[Brian Shanahan]

You are just plain wrong. Firaxis hired Blake to work on Civ4 Colonization expansion AI (from New Zealand) after he improved the Civ4 AI by a lot.

I hate that when people who seem quite intelligent (I couldn't agree more with your critisism of Civ5 even though I never talked about Version 5) contradict what I am saying without checking the facts first ... . I mean what do you think? That I just make things up or what? Seems quite inpolite to assume that ....

Obviously we agree that the direction Civ took with Version 5 is horrible. I still play only Version 4. But that doesn't mean that realeasing the Civ4 source wasn't great!!

Problem is you never once mentioned Blake, though in your post. And unfortunately that would lead any sensible person to believe that you were talking about Shafer, as it's a lot bigger news than talking about a game they barely marketed, and which sold badly too (mainly because it also was a broken mess, this time a mess they never tried fixing. Don't get me wrong I like what Blake did with the AI in Civ4 but all that was tweaking the already existing game engine to make sure the AI knew more of what it could do, important work sure but not creating a new AI).

[hescumeth]

Shanahan, just read again. I said "who improved the AI,,,", I never talked about creating an AI. When did Shafer improve the Civ4 AI? But not only from the wording, also from the whole context of my posting ( I was talking about releacing the AI sourcecode so that people could improve on it) it was quite clear I wasn't talking about Shafer.

In addition: Why are you asuming I talk about one person, not another, just because one is "bigger news" ????!!

Our conversation went like this I: "There is this player with shooting = 5" You: "There is no player with shooting = 5" I: "Yes there is, player Joe Smith in my game". You: "You never mentioned Joe Smith in your post. I was right to say you are wrong, because everyone would think you talked about Messi, because Messi is bigger news".

What is it with this Internet that makes people think its quite OK to tell someone they don't know, of whom they don't even know if he or she is maybe a lot more knowledgable, or maybe a very young kid or ... or ... flat out they are 'wrong' without even getting their facts right?