Making game harder at levels 6-10...

[Mikeonhisboat]

So, I'm starting a new save somewhere between level 8-10 I'm wanting to make the game as tricky as possible, without doing something that makes it feel super-unrealistic, - really fighting against relegation from say level 9 whilst living in fear of the might of the footballing giants of my world - Lancaster City, Bishop Auckland, and the rest.

The way the sub-level 6 databases work means they populate clubs with regens which are all abysmal due to those leagues' low reputations. This can have the effect of making the game easier - as once you sign a few folk it's easy to sail up the leagues (New star striker with pace of 7 is going to leave those defenders with pace/acceleration of 3-4 for dead...) So it's only a challenge the first half season or so until you have your new team in place. I could change the reputation level of the league/the clubs in it to push the game to generate higher quality newgens. As well as manually editting plenty of players in to my rivals whilst decreasing my own. Worried if i increase the rep of the league (and necessarily those above it) too much though it might have unforseen consequences which make things too easy for me in other ways?

I love signing players, so don't want to do a youth intake only type save. But could join my club once the league starts, having created an unemployed alt first for pre-season to allow my rivals to snap up all the good free transfers and loans. And start with a low wage budget which is currently tied up with utter deadwood with 1 for pace and longterm injuries. Low morale too. And obviously Sunday League with no badges for myself. And likely using Majestic's improved Manager (but not coaches etc) AI file.

Ultimately I want a situation that, over a few hard seasons starts to be recoverable from and with the potential to then slowly grow in the usual way. But with each league to feel like a separate new challenge on the way up which requires multiple seasons of squad building to move from newly promoted and fighting against relegation the first year or two post-promotion,to eventually moving forwards. Any thoughts from anyone on how to shape/edit things to make it a challenge in similar way to above? I'm imagining a mix of db edits and setting/play choices.

Also let me know if this should be in the main forum rather than editor's hideaway.

[BMNJohn]

Your post is pretty similar to the topics from people who are disappointed with the lack of competition on the transfer market, and overall difficulty of FM in general, not just at the lower level. You can indeed find such threads in the General section.

Besides self-imposed challenges, I don't think there's much of a way sine it's a part of how FM fundamentally works. For example, the AI doesn't adapt to your tactics, it adapts to your reputation. Therefore and regardless of the level (even in the Champions' League), sound tactics are generally good enough for you to beat other clubs assuming there isn't a wide gap in player ability. Also, I mentioned Reputation, and Reputation scales poorly when you go down the levels. If you go low enough, like level 10 in England, you could have teams one or two leagues apart that have very similar Reputation... and therefore use a similar type of tactical mindset against your club even though they're one or two leagues above.

This also applies to the CA/PA system: the system has a tough time modelling significant differences between players at a very low level. You can have players that have a difference of 5 or 10 CA points from each other that are not significantly different in actual ability; especially since Physical attributes are generally more expensive than Mental or Technical ones. What is the difference between a player who's 1 or 2 points faster than another if they have none of the attributes that would make that superior speed useful? Pace and Acceleration are pretty important, but without Positioning/Off The Ball or a lick of Anticipation... well that's higher CA but not necessarily a better player. And even at high levels you still see players with really average Mental attributes, nevermind hidden attributes. Also, what is an Attribute point anyway? How much faster a player really is when you go from 5 to 6 Pace? And from 10 to 11 Pace? Or 18 to 19 Pace?

On top of that, Reputation also has an equal if not bigger hand than Ability when it comes to hiring personnel, especially managers. For instance, you can very well have a manager with good attributes at a lower club, but because his tactics don't work too well and he's not smart enough (unlike you human) to diagnose why their tactics suck, they got sacked, their Reputation took a hit and they're not going anywhere. You have many people who noticed how in older versions Guardiola was getting sacked left and right and yet still landed pretty good jobs. Why? Because if you checked his attributes in the db, you'd see that FM's Guardiola uses a parody of tiki-taka with no penetration and no pace at all. Meanwhile, Mourinho was doing infamously well at Man Utd in FM17, while his real-life counterpart wasn't so lucky. IRL, you would bet your ass that 1) Guardiola would fix his tactics or player choice or 2) if he was too stubborn, less and less prestigious clubs would hire him despite his work ethic, and he'd have a Bielsa-like career trajectory.

So yeah, FM simply isn't really designed to be a footballing simulation. It's a pretty good management game, but it's not a simulation where there's fluidity to the world as well as huge amounts of granularity. A lot of things in FM are based on certain factors and hard-coded values in the database It's not sim-racing after all, can't fix an human AI like a car!

[WIGutie]

Nerfing the reputation of lower competitions, and the clubs located there thus making winning a lower league competition far less prestigious and therefore that much harder to grab players that otherwise would be with a Tier 5-7 side is one way imo.

tl;dr: Nerfing/boosting reputations of competions that actually have real world meaning to give a real disparity between the top competions/nations in the world and others is a really good way to simulate the difficulty, as well as nerfing the reputations of lower ranking clubs.

Long. boring version

One thing I have done to make the game much harder when making a custom club is to make my club rating so abysmally low that I have to claw and fight with basically regens in Vanram N/S and try and snag somebody to flesh out the team, relying on depth and struggling to get a couple coaches to train well with. Reputation 500 in VanRam N/S is hell difficulty especially if you have it set to being stuck with the club (no firing, but you don't leave). You have to constantly shoot for getting FA Cup/Trophy wins to farm Reputation to where anyone that is worth anything will sign either as a player or staff.

Eventually if you keep clawing mid table or better in tier 6, a few FA cup qual round wins, maybe even round 1,, some wins in FA Trophy (also a comp whose rep I nerf to make it even harder.... nobody pays any attention to who played at that match at wembley a week later other than the minnows that were there, the losers trying to forget it even happened that they made it to wembley that time and lost). I can see a similar thing if you nerf the reps of lower league comps to almost nothing and FA Vase/Trophy as well.

Slightly bumping up the reputation of competitions for the football league is also a big deal imo. Not many competitions should be weighted as high as they are anyhow, especially outside of EUFA/CONMEBOL, in a previous year's game I spent hours nerfing a lot of competitions and giving slight bumps up to top flight EUFA competions and lessening their Second/third flight ones (or in the case of some, all of them). 

No club in below tier 7 should have a rep of 1000+ or anywhere close to it for that matter that didn't in the past exist in the football league I can't see why any of them below tier 6 even do.

Edited April 21, 2020 by WIGutie

[Wolf_pd]

Is the lack of variation in reputation also part of the issue?

[BMNJohn]

44 minutes ago, Wolf_pd said:

Is the lack of variation in reputation also part of the issue?

I'm going to say yes based on experience, but I'm open to be proven wrong. It affects the tactical approach the AI takes when facing you. That's why your hear often about "mid-season slump". Basically, the AI recognizes your club is a bit more reputable, and they use different tactics. That's also why when you play an empty database where every team has about the same quality of players, the current top clubs stay on top during the first season: their Reputation dictates that they'll have to try to win, while the clubs they're facing play more conservatively due to the gap in Reputation. That never works. How would two teams that are a division apart with 100 or 200 difference in Reputation approach their matches against your club? Most likely not too differently.

Also, Home bias absolutely is a thing in FM, in a pretty nasty way. Teams play more conservatively away and fairly confidently at home. Which means that you could be beating teams you have no business beating just because you're playing at home and they came in with a conservative tactical setup. Then you play them away and they batter you black and blue since they play at their real level. Coupled with complacency and squad rotation, I've had more than a few good runs in the Europa/Champions' League just thanks to that: you play the first leg away and expect them to be complacent and/or rotate and try to grab a narrow win or a draw with goals. Then when you play at home the second leg, you benefit from the Home bias.

It's kind of a mess to organize those ideas, so sorry if I'm not too clear..

[Mikeonhisboat]

So in reality, with some editting, starting at say level 8 or higher could be much harder than at level 9/10 or lower?

Seems to me that there are a few assumptions:

-computer match AI is largely rubish. Some tweaks eg the manager file and to reputation will impact it, but not in a way that will make things radically different. Therefore best way to make matches harder is for majority of teams you face to have much better players than you. So the mechanics of the game outside of matches is best way to increase difficulty of matches.

-It's easy to make your first season or so hard - nerf the team, boost the other teams. But after a year or two things become easier as you pick up signings and as the coputer AI desn't maximise their potential. After a few years of struggleyou build a great team and shoot up the leagues. (Look at those doing Dafuge's challenge - the odd relegation prem to championship and championship to L1, but very rare to see anyone getting relegated before  that. Why? Your team eventually good enough to win VanNorth is good enough by default to fight at bottom at bottom of League 2. And by time you get there is by default good enough for top half. A season of cosolidation followed by promotion becomes the norm. 

-So why? Well it must be because of bigger jumps in player quality between leagues. The base game has following league reps: Prem 174 (team reps 9000-6250); Champ 128 (6100-5300); L1 102 (5500-4200); L2 82 4600-3500); VanNat 69 (4150-2600); VanN/S 45 (3000-2300) So a fair amount of overlap. As you go lower, leagues and teams bunch up more both in terms of league and team rep. So once you're good enough to win one league, you're de facto good enough to get promotion from next few above it. 

(Just typed all that and realised I'm effectively just repeating @WIGutie  ) So what's needed is spread. And as there's not much room to make the Premier League that much more reputable, and as we want to presumably keep the bigger jumps from L1 to Champ and Champ to Prem that Dafuge's saves show irl. So we have a straight choice of either spreading out the lower leagues as far as possible, or possibly better (?) pairing them? So you have not much difference Northern Premier Div1 to Northern Prem, but then a big old jump to Van North/South. Not much diff to Van Nat. Then another big jump to League 2? With a few teams (6-7) at top of each league with reps in middle of league above, to create the yo'yo type clubs, and mean hopefully they'll dominate those divisions. There's obviously a limit to how low you can go with this.

Does anyone know which effects Newgen quality more - league rep or club rep? Same question for signings from other leagues?

[BMNJohn]

8 hours ago, Mikeonhisboat said:

Does anyone know which effects Newgen quality more - league rep or club rep? Same question for signings from other leagues?

Youth Coaching affects PA the most out of all parameters for clubs. Youth Recruitment affects CA IIRC: after all and even with the most Professional player ever, a PA of 170 is near useless if your starting CA is 40; especially for AI managed clubs. But then the youth gets poached by upper division clubs quickly and small clubs remain small, just like they do IRL.

As for signings... Let's be real, who are clubs going to sign players from? Your board most likely wouldn't let you scout outside of the scope of your league, and you probably cannot buy the scouting packages to have knowledge of players in neighbouring countries (if you were to load them anyway). Clubs are going to sign players from other clubs in the league and maybe the echelons above or below. Increasing the Reputation of a club is pretty much akin to give them an easier path to the higher levels. As I've written earlier, Reputation affects both signings and how teams line-up and approach matches tactically speaking.

Edited April 22, 2020 by BMNJohn

[WIGutie]

I have in prior years (2016 in particular) done via editor and nerfed (but also in some cases given a slight bump upwards) every single competition that didn't seem to "add up" in terms of their reputation in relation to UEFA. For example Is winning Russia's Premier league REALLY that close to as prestigious as winning Ligue 1 in France? Doubtful. 160 vs 154 when the Eredivisie is only 139?

Imo there should be a far more expansive gap between the big five and the rest, and that Championship should fall somewhere in the top 20-25 of all European leagues in reputation aside MAYBE Serie B and Ligue 2, what compeitions ANYWHERE get any attention paid attention to generally speaking outside of Europe, let alone their own countries? I routinely discuss teams in tier 3/4 (League One and League Two) with others in the US on a fairly frequent basis, especially when the FA Cup is ongoing.
 

Random going on about my own thoughts about reputations and the like in the spoiler. Sorry, it's 1AM here and I'm starved of football talk with the boys at the local EFL pubs in my metro area....

Basically English domestic leagues should be bumped up in reputation seemingly across the board at least amongst the EFL ones, maybe even a couple points to VanRam National (which is what I do personally, given there are third tier comps in random countries with higher...)

There really aren't many leagues that arent the Top Domestic ones anywhere in the world that get chatter like EFL leagues, nor domestic cup competitions like FA Cup. I've never met a fan of any European club that isn't Top flight outside England aside Serie B and a Ligue 2 club. Some might cheer for a local club (rarely) below top flight, but they all have their home kits for the big clubs they actually pay attention to. I try to base things realistically. I don't think winning domestic leagues in a pacific island nation/territory should be on par with tier 5 in england or remotely near a EFL compeition. Vanuatan top domestic comp is 55, while ones that grant bids into UEFA aren't even at 80, just no.

Spoiler

 

Speaking of domestic cup comps, which ones other than FA Cup even get noticed internationally? Top Domestic Cups are a bid to EURO, (which again globally doesn't get much attention, or is almost seen as a thing to mock the 5th place EPL team to go to instead of EUFA) and usually the winners are at best the second flight division which when that ever happens (a few times a decade amongst the top 5 nations at most, and usually of a team that has a track record with the top domestic league anyhow). 

Again, I think it's entirely reasonable to make a bigger gap between the competions especially at the top. I would argue personally that placing EPL above La Liga is entirely reasonable. Outside the 2 (sometimes three when At. Madrid jumps in) team dogfight for La Liga, who really pays the league much mind outside fans of Spanish clubs? We all know that the odds of either Barcelona/RM will be the winner most years, even RM and Barcelona fans I know only focus on those two clubs and shrug otherwise, since they know they're going to EUFA again next year regardless of 1/2 (which they still care about, but the matches themselves... don't mean all that much aside jockeying for position between each other for a title). EPL/Bundesliga are more competiive and more heavily discussed. Even Serie A gets discussed more often amongst football fans I know IRL (though again, most are EPL peeps, which might factor in this).

What pro league has the global appeal with a wide array of clubs rooting for them? Not La Liga for sure, nor Ligue 1. What SECOND flight compeition has a wide array of fans openly rooting for their teams...anywhere? Championship sure does. I even knew several fans of League One and Two clubs here in the US.... (I'M even one of them, not even being from the UK.... thanks SI and FM 2010 for that though, lol)

 

 

Edited April 23, 2020 by WIGutie

[BMNJohn]

4 hours ago, WIGutie said:

I have in prior years (2016 in particular) done via editor and nerfed (but also in some cases given a slight bump upwards) every single competition that didn't seem to "add up" in terms of their reputation in relation to UEFA. For example Is winning Russia's Premier league REALLY that close to as prestigious as winning Ligue 1 in France? Doubtful. 160 vs 154 when the Eredivisie is only 139?

Maybe the Russian Championship isn't as big as the French Ligue 1, but the reality is that in the UEFA club competition rankings France is barely doing any better than both Portugal and Russia; and if it weren't for PSG consistently reaching March (and usually losing), France would most likely rank worse. Except for the last couple of seasons where England finally saw a winner for about, Spanish clubs brought way more density to the Champions League and especially the Europa League. Since 2010, there have been as many Spanish Europa league winners as there have been English Europa league finalists: six wins in total plus one additional final, where Bilbao lost to Atletico Madrid. English clubs have three wins for three finals. No need to remind you of what the Champions' League has been looking like for the last 10 years for Spanish and English clubs respectively.

While Ajax has been somewhat resurgent, long gone are the years where I wouldn't have wanted to draw PSV or Twente in the Champions League. I would forgive people ten years younger than me if they couldn't locate either club on an European map. To put some perspective: if it weren't for Ajax in 2017, the last European final reached by a Dutch club was in 2002 where Feyenoord beat Borussia Dortmund in the Europa league. That's worse than not only Portugal (even when accounting for Benfica's legendary curse), but also Russia (2005, 2008), France (2004 in both CL and EL, 2018), Ukraine (2009, 2015) or even Scotland (2003, 2008)!

That being said, those Reputation rankings are dynamic and separate from club coefficient rankings in FM. But in light of actual footballing results on the big stages, it's not that unrealistic. Would a player in his prime playing at Zenit, CSKA Moscow, Porto, Sporting CP leave their countries for Olympique de Marseille or Olympique Lyonnais? I would have said yes twenty years ago, but probably not now. The leagues may be weaker, but those Portuguese or Russian clubs had no less success on their own in the last handful of years. I know about the Aleksandr Golovin transfer to Monaco, a Russian-owned club that specializes in trading players, but that's mostly it.

Edited April 23, 2020 by BMNJohn

[WIGutie]

On 23/04/2020 at 04:44, BMNJohn said:

Maybe the Russian Championship isn't as big as the French Ligue 1, but the reality is that in the UEFA club competition rankings France is barely doing any better than both Portugal and Russia; and if it weren't for PSG consistently reaching March (and usually losing), France would most likely rank worse. Except for the last couple of seasons where England finally saw a winner for about, Spanish clubs brought way more density to the Champions League and especially the Europa League. Since 2010, there have been as many Spanish Europa league winners as there have been English Europa league finalists: six wins in total plus one additional final, where Bilbao lost to Atletico Madrid. English clubs have three wins for three finals. No need to remind you of what the Champions' League has been looking like for the last 10 years for Spanish and English clubs respectively.

While Ajax has been somewhat resurgent, long gone are the years where I wouldn't have wanted to draw PSV or Twente in the Champions League. I would forgive people ten years younger than me if they couldn't locate either club on an European map. To put some perspective: if it weren't for Ajax in 2017, the last European final reached by a Dutch club was in 2002 where Feyenoord beat Borussia Dortmund in the Europa league. That's worse than not only Portugal (even when accounting for Benfica's legendary curse), but also Russia (2005, 2008), France (2004 in both CL and EL, 2018), Ukraine (2009, 2015) or even Scotland (2003, 2008)!

That being said, those Reputation rankings are dynamic and separate from club coefficient rankings in FM. But in light of actual footballing results on the big stages, it's not that unrealistic. Would a player in his prime playing at Zenit, CSKA Moscow, Porto, Sporting CP leave their countries for Olympique de Marseille or Olympique Lyonnais? I would have said yes twenty years ago, but probably not now. The leagues may be weaker, but those Portuguese or Russian clubs had no less success on their own in the last handful of years. I know about the Aleksandr Golovin transfer to Monaco, a Russian-owned club that specializes in trading players, but that's mostly it.

What is the reputation of winning a (domestic) competition? Again, these other ones you are so vehemently asserting.... globally and even around the continent, very few pay any mind to when UEFA isn't ongoing. If I rack up wins in Russia, is that comparative to Italy? I personally think that's a bit marginal to assert at best that Zenit beating a team at the bottom of Russian Top flight is equivalent to beating a team in Serie A/Ligue 1. I don't mean to come across as rude, but the discussion is about disparity/competitions, not individual clubs. I've never touched the reputations of individual clubs. I think you're trying to peg the reputation of an entire league to that of a few clubs within it which isn't even close to anything I spoke of. 

Teams gain reputation (as they should) through success in continental completions, which you emphatically keep going back to (and which by the way I reflect by lowering most league competitions a bit). Reputations of individual clubs exist for a reason. IMO Domestic league's reputations should be looked at based on the reputation of the clubs within along with a real perception of how prestigious winning/succeeding in that competition is. 

This is to your point about players going to play in Russia and in general.

Spoiler

You argue about where players go citing Russian oligarchs blowing money and went on about Portugal (who I never even discussed). Where did Christiano Ronaldo go? Did he go to Russia? Did he go back to home in Portugal? No. The assertion that because people go to Russia means that it's somehow directly related to how the reputation should be slated for them makes zero sense.

Do hockey players leave the NHL to go play in the KHL (Russian pro league) because it's prestigious? Of course not. Nobody even knows the name of the trophy for the KHL (but many hockey fans even know the minor league AHL trophy the Calder Cup and of course the Stanley Cup in the NHL) they go for the money.

Some COULD reasonably and seriously argue this about the EPL. But if pay were the same, do you really think people would play for Zenit over a top Ligue 1/Serie A side, let alone winning the Russian domestic trophy should be remotely on par with winning in England? You even cite the case of Golovin. Money roughly equivalent, he went to Serie A. Hence the disparity. Hence why I cited why should there be the rating of 154 for Russia is excessive. 

I have Russia's at 144, Portugal's at 138? Dutch at 136 or 134, I forget which, and Turkey somewhere in the low 130s, maybe 129? No idea.To assert however that treating winning those domestic leagues at a lesser level, based on real world perception of them is wrong because of how a couple clubs did a thing a time or two, while the rest of a competition is.... mediocre even in a good year, makes little sense.

Citing an example of Russia having an edge of over 5% of all rating points possible over the Dutch pro league but being essentially buttressed up right behind France comparatively does not need an analysis of why I'm wrong for finding that a bit strange. Russia having the oligarchs who blow money built into the game via the sugar daddy system gives them enough of a leverage as is, since the game does not seem to have players/agents factor in geopolitical/social/quality of life considerations (despite the very functionality under the hood of a nation's economic factor/development status being in there) that precludes and has precluded much of player's decisions to play there versus another country (not to mention they ensure to pay pro athletes in Euros in Russia versus their own currency anyhow), otherwise you might see the Japanese/Korean leagues take off a bit more. 

This isn't just about top flight, this is also about downward adjusting the rest of the competitions out there, second, third and fourth tier. We can argue endlessly about how one club does at UEFA for a couple years. That was never what I was talking about. I used examples as a reference, which you're taking issue and emphatically engaging over. I don't think you would argue second flight in Russia is reasonably on par with Ligue 2, Serie B are you? This is not what I was posting about. If anything based on your reasoning I should consider furthering the gaps between 3/4 top leagues and everyone else

Edited April 26, 2020 by WIGutie

[BMNJohn]

9 hours ago, WIGutie said:

I think you're trying to peg the reputation of an entire league to that of a few clubs within it which isn't even close to anything I spoke of.

Pretty much, yeah. I don't find it unreasonable that the global perception of a league is essentially based on the level of its best clubs and their performance.  That's how it would work in FM to my knowledge: the better the clubs perform globally, the higher the reputation of the league; even if there are some clubs "perceived" as really weak in it, or that the average level is not great.

Perhaps I misunderstand your point then (English isn't my first language after all), but I don't really see how strange it is.

Edited April 26, 2020 by BMNJohn
Although according to FM, the bottom two Russian Premier clubs (not three because I exclude Kazan) aren't miles behind the bottom two French Ligue 1 clubs in terms of average player CA, but people have taken issues with FM's Russian scouting in the past.