Guide how to set up an optimal database for a balanced savegame and ways to increase realism (updated 03. May 21) *links updated*

[karanhsingh]

I loaded all players from Senegal but after season one my game stopped producing new gens at all in that country. Does anyone know why that is? 

Are people seeing consistent new gens from Africa and if so what are the database settings being used for it? Thanks. 

[Daveincid]

vor 3 Minuten schrieb karanhsingh:

I loaded all players from Senegal but after season one my game stopped producing new gens at all in that country. Does anyone know why that is? 

Are people seeing consistent new gens from Africa and if so what are the database settings being used for it? Thanks. 

I have seen newgens in my save for Senegal in the second year.

 

It's my current test-save with all leagues + custom leagues playable. DO you have set Senegal as playable?

Cheers

Daveincid

[karanhsingh]

Just now, Daveincid said:

I have seen newgens in my save for Senegal in the second year.

 

It's my current test-save with all leagues + custom leagues playable. DO you have set Senegal as playable?

Cheers

Daveincid

No I don't have it as playable as I haven't added any leagues. 

I can't really do more than 10 leagues playable but in my past experience loading players from top clubs or continental competitions in a particular continent ensures some new gens coming through. 

This time I did it for specific countries only and am facing this issue. 

Without loading leagues as playable from say a continent like Africa, how do you ensure newgens continue to come in? Is there any way? 

[Daveincid]

vor 2 Minuten schrieb karanhsingh:

No I don't have it as playable as I haven't added any leagues. 

I can't really do more than 10 leagues playable but in my past experience loading players from top clubs or continental competitions in a particular continent ensures some new gens coming through. 

This time I did it for specific countries only and am facing this issue. 

Without loading leagues as playable from say a continent like Africa, how do you ensure newgens continue to come in? Is there any way? 

This is still a known issue which Si is still working on, which you can see here:

I don't agree with Neil 100% that the issue affecting only very low standard-players on Non-playable leagues. 

So there isn't really another way down to my experience than loading the league as playable.

Cheers

Daveincid

[karanhsingh]

29 minutes ago, Daveincid said:

This is still a known issue which Si is still working on, which you can see here:

I don't agree with Neil 100% that the issue affecting only very low standard-players on Non-playable leagues. 

So there isn't really another way down to my experience than loading the league as playable.

Cheers

Daveincid

Crazy. The irony is that it was better before the patch, on my beta save. 

[PatrickReynolds]

Thought I'd give an update on my setup and experience with the speed. For context, I am playing on an i5-8400 desktop and an i7-1065G7 laptop interchangeably.

I have all leagues playable, and started with the detail level as follows

I'm in early 2022 and after 1.5 seasons, I think the processing has slowed down a bit. Either that, or I'm getting more impatient, but it's not uncommon to wait 1-2 minutes or more every time i hit spacebar. So, I'm deciding to dial back the detail and focus more on where I'm currently managing. As I move to different parts of the world, I'll change the detail level to make more sense for where I'm managing. Here's what I've changed:

Will let you know if speed increases noticeably!

[Gee_Simpson]

I swear I read before somewhere that ticking 'current international players' in the advanced db only loads the current players from nations as of now and that it doesn't produce any newgens, is this correct? @Daveincid

Edited January 13, 2021 by Gee_Simpson

[Daveincid]

vor 4 Stunden schrieb Gee_Simpson:

I swear I read before somewhere that ticking 'current international players' in the advanced db only loads the current players from nations as of now and that it doesn't produce any newgens, is this correct? @Daveincid

This is not correct. The current newgen-bug might look a bit like it's the case but in general FM rebalances the database according to the loaded players of the start. So it doesn't matter which option you tick, there should be (some Nations are struggling, but SI is working on it) the same amount of players 15 years in the future.

Cheers

Daveincid

[IgnorantLobster]

Just popping in to say that this is excellent work - thanks

[Daveincid]

vor 6 Minuten schrieb IgnorantLobster:

Just popping in to say that this is excellent work - thanks

thank you! I do my best

[Gee_Simpson]

13 hours ago, Daveincid said:

This is not correct. The current newgen-bug might look a bit like it's the case but in general FM rebalances the database according to the loaded players of the start. So it doesn't matter which option you tick, there should be (some Nations are struggling, but SI is working on it) the same amount of players 15 years in the future.

Cheers

Daveincid

So ticking that ensures the specific nation will produce international newgens in the future?

[Daveincid]

Gerade eben schrieb Gee_Simpson:

So ticking that ensures the specific nation will produce international newgens in the future?

It's not related to international-players, It's just the amount of players ingame which will be regenerated in the future. But as I also mentioned, there is still the newgen bug which is massively for non-existing leagues especially in Africa. If you want a lot of newgens for Egypt, you need to have Egyptian-Leagues set to playable at this state of the game. But generally this is how the game works 

[Gee_Simpson]

3 hours ago, Daveincid said:

It's not related to international-players, It's just the amount of players ingame which will be regenerated in the future. But as I also mentioned, there is still the newgen bug which is massively for non-existing leagues especially in Africa. If you want a lot of newgens for Egypt, you need to have Egyptian-Leagues set to playable at this state of the game. But generally this is how the game works 

Yeah I understand, but I remember reading somewhere that ticking 'current international players' only loaded the national teams with players for the current day squads but not in the future which I'm not sure is correct.

Edited January 13, 2021 by Gee_Simpson

[Daveincid]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb Gee_Simpson:

Yeah I understand, but I remember reading somewhere that ticking 'current international players' only loaded the national teams with players for the current day squads but not in the future which I'm not sure is correct.

It's correct that it loads theese players, but this doesn't mean that the newgens will be all international players in the future. FM is much more dynamic. Again, if you load a db with 60k players, you should still have 60k players in year 2040. (Once the newgen-bug is fixed)

Cheers

[Gee_Simpson]

11 hours ago, Daveincid said:

It's correct that it loads theese players, but this doesn't mean that the newgens will be all international players in the future. FM is much more dynamic. Again, if you load a db with 60k players, you should still have 60k players in year 2040. (Once the newgen-bug is fixed)

Cheers

What does ticking 'current international players' actually do then?

Edited January 14, 2021 by Gee_Simpson

[Daveincid]

vor 43 Minuten schrieb Gee_Simpson:

What does ticking 'current international players' actually do then?

As I just said in the post before? It's loading all players from National-Teams. But this doesn't mean that the newgens in the future will have the same quality as the real players once they get replaced. FM also tries to hold the balance there to ensure there won't be just rubbish players. But players which are created later ingame are NEWGENS and not REGENS, so their quality varies.

Cheers

[Gee_Simpson]

45 minutes ago, Daveincid said:

As I just said in the post before? It's loading all players from National-Teams. But this doesn't mean that the newgens in the future will have the same quality as the real players once they get replaced. FM also tries to hold the balance there to ensure there won't be just rubbish players. But players which are created later ingame are NEWGENS and not REGENS, so their quality varies.

Cheers

Ah okay, I thought you meant they won't be national team players, but you just meant they may not be international level, I misunderstood 

Edited January 14, 2021 by Gee_Simpson

[Daveincid]

vor 1 Minute schrieb Gee_Simpson:

Ah okay, I thought you meant they won't be national team players, but you just meant they may not be international level, I misunderstood 

No problem, I am not that clear sometimes

[Gee_Simpson]

1 hour ago, Daveincid said:

No problem, I am not that clear sometimes

Lol no worries 

[Daveincid]

Update 18.01.2021

 

I finally found my way on social media, feel free to take a look in here to get more informations about my projects for Football Manager 2021

https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/546553-daveincids-info-channels-for-the-increase-realism-megapack-and-more/

Cheers

Daveincid

[asteris_]

First of all thanks again Dave for your guide, up until now I thought that loading just a few leagues doesn't have any particular impact on game immersion. Realizing that in order for clubs to be competitive on continental competitions their leagues have to be loaded really helped me improve the game.

As I realistically cannot load all leagues playable, do you think that at least national teams are able to produce a good amount of newgens regardless if their respective leagues are loaded? Playing the World Cup with only European teams dominating doesn't seem as immersive. I'll likely test it out soon, and see if I'll wait for the next patch or not. Cheers

[Daveincid]

Gerade eben schrieb asteris_:

First of all thanks again Dave for your guide, up until now I thought that loading just a few leagues doesn't have any particular impact on game immersion. Realizing that in order for clubs to be competitive on continental competitions their leagues have to be loaded really helped me improve the game.

As I realistically cannot load all leagues playable, do you think that at least national teams are able to produce a good amount of newgens regardless if their respective leagues are loaded? Playing the World Cup with only European teams dominating doesn't seem as immersive. I'll likely test it out soon, and see if I'll wait for the next patch or not. Cheers

You are welcome  It depends on which players you load via the advanced db. If you only select small/medium/big db you won't have enough players arround the world to represent their Nation at the world cup. You don't need to load all Nations as playable, you can add them as view-only and load the players from the view-only-leagues via the advanced db. This will save you some processing speed, and you have enough players in national-teams , now and in the future.  It's important to add the detail level for National-Team-games to full detail, this will give you more varies of results which will have surprizes from underdogs from time to time.

Cheers

[Daveincid]

Update 30.01.21

I created a short video version. It's not as detailed as the thread but it gives you a short overview, feel free to take a look :

 

Cheers

Daveincid

[Daveincid]

Another video to help you to increase realism in FM21

 

[DavyDepuydt1]

I started with the top 7 european leagues loaded, with each of them having the top two leagues set as playable and a medium db. (obviously before I read this thread)
Every year the total player count in the db goes down, it's down from about 60.000 to 32.000 after 5 seasons... is this because I have an inbalanced setup, and can this be resolved by adding more leagues? (or will this just give a one time boost to the nr of players, and will it go down again year by year after that)

Edited February 14, 2021 by DavyDepuydt1

[Daveincid]

vor 2 Minuten schrieb DavyDepuydt1:

I started with the top 7 european leagues loaded, with each of them having the top two leagues set as playable and a medium db.
Every year the total player count in the db goes down, it's down from about 60.000 to 32.000 after 5 seasons... is this because I have an inbalanced setup, and can this be resolved by adding more leagues? (or will this just give a one time boost to the nr of players, and will it go down again year by year after that)

this is down to a bug from SI, it's a really game-breaking bug for longterm-saves. The only way to avoid this as good as possible is to set all leagues playable. SI is still working on a fix and it's likely that it will be save-game-compatible. So adding more leagues playable helps a little, but with only 7 european leagues playable you won't get a balanced savegame at this state of the game, I'm afraid!

Cheers

Daveincid

[DavyDepuydt1]

2 minutes ago, Daveincid said:

this is down to a bug from SI, it's a really game-breaking bug for longterm-saves. The only way to avoid this as good as possible is to set all leagues playable. SI is still working on a fix and it's likely that it will be save-game-compatible. So adding more leagues playable helps a little, but with only 7 european leagues playable you won't get a balanced savegame at this state of the game, I'm afraid!

Cheers

Daveincid

Thanks for the feedback @Daveincid, really bummer this... indeed in a long term simulation file I have seen the bad consequences of this.... small rosters for many teams, U21 & U18 teams that have few players.... pffff... hope they come with a fix in the feb/mar patch...

[Daveincid]

vor 2 Minuten schrieb DavyDepuydt1:

Thanks for the feedback @Daveincid, really bummer this... indeed in a long term simulation file I have seen the bad consequences of this.... small rosters for many teams, U21 & U18 teams that have few players.... pffff... hope they come with a fix in the feb/mar patch...

You are welcome!  I am optimistic that they will, they are as frustrated as we are, so I am sure they are trying everything to fix it

[Daveincid]

New video added to explain you why I use this skin and what benefit you will get in terms of realism:

Cheers

Daveincid

[Daveincid]

There is a great megapack in progress from @davie77 which currently covers Asia and South America. don't miss it! 

Asia:

https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/549339-fm21-asian-football-confederation-megapack-by-dave/

South America:

https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/549340-fm21-confederación-sudamericana-de-fútbol-megapack-by-dave/

 

[Safe Hands]

Hey mate.

My save will be long term as attempting the ultimate challenge starting unemployed as a 19 year old Sunday league player no badges. Have to win 32 trophies including 5 champions leagues and all international tournaments.

I got 6 seasons in and other than big nations lots of teams on the international scene had squads of grey guys meanings challenge would be impossible. 

Can you please give idea of setup I should be aiming for. I not downloading any thing to the game just the official patch.

My laptop is brand new gaming laptop but I'm not tech savvy,  spec below, there nothing on it other than fm21, 

 

• Dedicated GeForce® GTX 1650 4GB graphics
• AMD Ryzen 5 4600H hexa core processor
• 8GB of DDR4 RAM delivers seamless multitasking
• 256GB SSD offers plenty of storage & super-fast loading

[Daveincid]

Hey mate

vor 3 Minuten schrieb Safe Hands:

My save will be long term as attempting the ultimate challenge starting unemployed as a 19 year old Sunday league player no badges. Have to win 32 trophies including 5 champions leagues and all international tournaments.

32 trophies? No pressure mate

vor 4 Minuten schrieb Safe Hands:

Can you please give idea of setup I should be aiming for

You could go by the setup I shared on the first post. This is made for a well balanced save-game arround the world and your laptop can handle it by ease.

vor 5 Minuten schrieb Safe Hands:

I not downloading any thing to the game just the official patch.

So you don't want to download custom leagues or you just haven't done it yet and need advice which I would use?

Cheers

Daveincid

[Safe Hands]

1 minute ago, Daveincid said:

Hey mate

32 trophies? No pressure mate

You could go by the setup I shared on the first post. This is made for a well balanced save-game arround the world and your laptop can handle it by ease.

So you don't want to download custom leagues or you just haven't done it yet and need advice which I would use?

Cheers

Daveincid

Wow mate what a speedy reply ,thank you. I'm not going to download them, just play the game as, started the challenge got 6 season in, got the japan job and literally had 40 players to choose from. Got to the asia cup and apart from 2 nations every other team had 5 players, this was 6 season in so can only imagine how bad it would have been another 10 or so.

[macca7292]

Have been meaning to post in this thread for a while. I've become a bit obsessed with testing various database setups to find a balance between game speed and realism.

After some extensive testing (this is version 9) I've come up with this list as my playable leagues and I'm having every other league as view only.

I'm about to start my (hopefully) long term save unemployed and see where that takes me. I had a great save on fm18 starting unemployed. 

I've also downloaded your realism megapack so I think I'm ready to go!

Anything else I'm missing?

Thanks @Daveincidfor this excellent thread!

[Daveincid]

vor 1 Minute schrieb macca7292:

I've become a bit obsessed with testing various database setups to find a balance between game speed and realism.

Obsessed? I feel you mate

vor 2 Minuten schrieb macca7292:

I've also downloaded your realism megapack so I think I'm ready to go!

Great! I hope you will enjoy it:)

vor 2 Minuten schrieb macca7292:

Anything else I'm missing?

I highly recommend some using at least some big custom Nations which aren't in the default game. 

There are 2 megapacks which I trust completely made by @davie77 Just pick the bigger Nations (You can refer to my list of importance of Nations for a balanced save-game

https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/549340-fm21-confederación-sudamericana-de-fútbol-megapack-by-dave/

https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/549339-fm21-asian-football-confederation-megapack-by-dave/

Cheers

Daveincid

[macca7292]

11 minutes ago, Daveincid said:

Obsessed? I feel you mate

Great! I hope you will enjoy it:)

I highly recommend some using at least some big custom Nations which aren't in the default game. 

There are 2 megapacks which I trust completely made by @davie77 Just pick the bigger Nations (You can refer to my list of importance of Nations for a balanced save-game

https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/549340-fm21-confederación-sudamericana-de-fútbol-megapack-by-dave/

https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/549339-fm21-asian-football-confederation-megapack-by-dave/

Cheers

Daveincid

Thanks a lot (or should that be danke)!

I'll have a look - I think I'm at the limit of playable leagues but I presume you mean for me to just load the nations?

Edited March 9, 2021 by macca7292

[Daveincid]

Gerade eben schrieb macca7292:

Thanks a lot (or should that be danke)!

I'll have a look - I think at the limit of playable leagues but I presume you mean for me to just load the nations?

Bitte

I would load Nations like Qatar, Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia as playable too. You already loaded a lot so you wouldn't notice a couple more  Theese Nations have a big influence for a balanced savegame due their financial power and/or their good youth-recruitment  

[macca7292]

1 minute ago, Daveincid said:

Bitte

I would load Nations like Qatar, Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia as playable too. You already loaded a lot so you wouldn't notice a couple more  Theese Nations have a big influence for a balanced savegame due their financial power and/or their good youth-recruitment  

Ok, thanks!

[Daveincid]

Update:

@davie77 has just released his megapack which covers whole Asia, South-America, North-America and Oceania! His level of detail is unique and there are a lot of features included which increases the realism for your save too Check it out:

 

[gooders11]

Hi, really interesting thread but I'm afraid a lot of it goes over my head. My laptop is a few years old and my saves usually last four seasons before i get bored. What kind of set up suits this laptop......thanks in advance.

[Daveincid]

vor 1 Minute schrieb gooders11:

Hi, really interesting thread but I'm afraid a lot of it goes over my head. My laptop is a few years old and my saves usually last four seasons before i get bored. What kind of set up suits this laptop......thanks in advance.

Might worth trying this one: 

- Loading top 5 nations and top 2 in South America playable and top 20 as view only with players loaded from the top 20 nations with the advanced-db option: 

You will have a higher player count, and these players from the top 20 will be newly generated in the future. This leads to a more balanced gameworld. It will give you a decent db for low to mid-range systems.

 

Cheers

Daveincid

[gooders11]

Many thanks for the quick reply. Detail level just on European club competitions? I have been playing fm touch with a 90,000 custom database loaded but fancy a different save on the full version. Thanks for your help.

[Daveincid]

vor 5 Minuten schrieb gooders11:

Many thanks for the quick reply. Detail level just on European club competitions? I have been playing fm touch with a 90,000 custom database loaded but fancy a different save on the full version. Thanks for your help.

you are welcome! You can try! In the end it's still a question of how important speed is for you

[gooders11]

Sorry to bother you.....but! When you say load players from the top 20 nations would i go to Europe load players from top division clubs?

[Daveincid]

vor 9 Minuten schrieb gooders11:

Sorry to bother you.....but! When you say load players from the top 20 nations would i go to Europe load players from top division clubs?

Yes, and use the "large" option too^^ It's just one option I sent you. In general I woul load as many nations as "view"-only with the players in it's division as possible 

[Safe Hands]

Has anybody experimented with adding leagues on long term save to balance the game. What I mean is let say you start with 20 playable league spread across the globe, top 5 europe top 2 division, top 2 in brazil ,Argentina,  south Africa, usa, china,south Korea and mexico. Then add maybe for 1 season Chile, Columbia Uruguay,  next season remove them and add russia,Croatia,  serbia , then season after remove them and add a different 3 leagues. Would this keep things balanced and potential for teams outside of the loaded leagues to win international cups?

 

I've starting a new journeyman save tonight this will be my only save now hopefully. Last time I had about 34 playable leagues loaded and only full detail for international matches and whatever league I was in. 3rd season I added an extra 5 or 6 leagues and noticed a slow down (i blamed adding seria C and) but not sure if this was the extra leagues or just the game progressing, player count at start was around 180k.

 

Wondered if anybody tried my idea as at start will want leagues like Hungary, Israel etc basically anywhere I can get a job so could potential scarfice other leagues to start with. However my aim is the ultimate challenge. Wouldnt want to load up mexico for example and find the teams with no players as would make it really easy then. 

[Safe Hands]

Also in terms of processing speed is it actually league that slows speed down or amount of games. For example let's say I loaded top 2 leagues in england, that 23 games to process per match day but if I did Switzerland top 2 leagues it would only be 10 games per match day. Top leagues but one has twice as many games

[Conardo]

Am 9.3.2021 um 21:30 schrieb macca7292:

Have been meaning to post in this thread for a while. I've become a bit obsessed with testing various database setups to find a balance between game speed and realism.

After some extensive testing (this is version 9) I've come up with this list as my playable leagues and I'm having every other league as view only.

I'm about to start my (hopefully) long term save unemployed and see where that takes me. I had a great save on fm18 starting unemployed. 

I've also downloaded your realism megapack so I think I'm ready to go!

Anything else I'm missing?

Thanks @Daveincidfor this excellent thread!

I use almost the same setup ... but i load all leagues from a country. And for Europe i tick top 20 (kicker 5 yrs ranking). 177k players - can you show your extented db setup?

[macca7292]

58 minutes ago, Conardo said:

I use almost the same setup ... but i load all leagues from a country. And for Europe i tick top 20 (kicker 5 yrs ranking). 177k players - can you show your extented db setup?

I just used the db setup that @Daveincid recommended earlier in the thread.

[Conardo]

vor 1 Stunde schrieb macca7292:

I just used the db setup that @Daveincid recommended earlier in the thread.

Which one? Oh wait, the one he postet first in the thread? But 177k players? Thought there are approx 150k?