Why do AI teams manage to sign players for lower contracts?

[Sassafras]

I was battling to sign a free agent as Leicester.

Offered the player 60k a week, 2.5mil signing on fee, 500k agent fee, first team football, all of my bonuses were higher.

Stoke offered 31.5k, rotation squad status. They also have lower reputation than my team (checked in editor).

As we all know, footballers all want to play for half the money while being promised less football. 

Why does this happen?

[Prokopije]

It does sometimes. I recently had case with Juan Mata, as free agent. I was at Zvezda (Serbia, continental club reputation, group stage of Champions league). I offered star player status, 2,1 millions of salary, 800K fee on signing + bonuses. He signed for some club from Qatar (both, club and league have lower reputation than Serbia/Zvezda and I wont even compare Asian CL to European) for 1,3 millions of salary, 350K signing fee and half of bonuses I offered. 

[Sassafras]

7 hours ago, Prokopije said:

It does sometimes. I recently had case with Juan Mata, as free agent. I was at Zvezda (Serbia, continental club reputation, group stage of Champions league). I offered star player status, 2,1 millions of salary, 800K fee on signing + bonuses. He signed for some club from Qatar (both, club and league have lower reputation than Serbia/Zvezda and I wont even compare Asian CL to European) for 1,3 millions of salary, 350K signing fee and half of bonuses I offered. 

It's just makes no sense though. Really frustrating and you wonder what the point of all the variables are if the AI just does what it likes anyway.

[_mxrky]

Because the game is broken 

[HUNT3R]

On 13/02/2022 at 00:39, Sassafras said:

I was battling to sign a free agent as Leicester.

Offered the player 60k a week, 2.5mil signing on fee, 500k agent fee, first team football, all of my bonuses were higher.

Stoke offered 31.5k, rotation squad status. They also have lower reputation than my team (checked in editor).

As we all know, footballers all want to play for half the money while being promised less football. 

Why does this happen?

The offers seem logical, but based on the information you've given, the player should have accepted the offer that promises more playing time (for more money) at the higher rep club. It would be great if you can report it in the bugs forum. If you have a save from just before these offers are made, that'll be fantastic and it can give the testers the chance to look under the hood and see what's going on. They can then either log it as a bug or explain why it isn't, though this sounds like a bug.

[managerialmuggle]

On 12/02/2022 at 22:39, Sassafras said:

I was battling to sign a free agent as Leicester.

Offered the player 60k a week, 2.5mil signing on fee, 500k agent fee, first team football, all of my bonuses were higher.

Stoke offered 31.5k, rotation squad status. They also have lower reputation than my team (checked in editor).

As we all know, footballers all want to play for half the money while being promised less football. 

Why does this happen?

Are you seeing if there are any pre existing relationships with any players in your squad compared to the others? Maybe he wanted to play with mates are has a very good relationship with the manager compared to you. There are more important things than game time and money to some players

[Spurs08]

20 hours ago, Prokopije said:

It does sometimes. I recently had case with Juan Mata, as free agent. I was at Zvezda (Serbia, continental club reputation, group stage of Champions league). I offered star player status, 2,1 millions of salary, 800K fee on signing + bonuses. He signed for some club from Qatar (both, club and league have lower reputation than Serbia/Zvezda and I wont even compare Asian CL to European) for 1,3 millions of salary, 350K signing fee and half of bonuses I offered. 

That one might actually make sense. Qatar will have a near-zero tax rate so the wages won't be so different, and is also seen as a more attractive place to live - both of these are taken into account in FM. He's taking slightly less money to go and play somewhere where he can hang out with the rest of the rich, famous and wealthy in perfect luxuary rather than somewhere which was a literal warzone when he was growing up and, rightly or wrongly, still isn't seen as a particularly attractive place to live.

[Prokopije]

1 hour ago, Spurs08 said:

That one might actually make sense. Qatar will have a near-zero tax rate so the wages won't be so different, and is also seen as a more attractive place to live - both of these are taken into account in FM. He's taking slightly less money to go and play somewhere where he can hang out with the rest of the rich, famous and wealthy in perfect luxuary rather than somewhere which was a literal warzone when he was growing up and, rightly or wrongly, still isn't seen as a particularly attractive place to live.

Belgrade is attractive place to live, certainly more attractive than Manchester where he spent last few years of his life. Speaking of Manchester, maybe he was so sick of rain that he decided to dig himself into desert. About tax rate, it's 10%. About warzone, it was in BiH and Croatia. It's safer place to live than middle east these days.

That "image" is more thing of prejudices in certain parts of the world than actual reality.

Edited February 14, 2022 by Prokopije

[luka_zg]

Well, for a person living in Europe to still think Croatia,Serbia,Bosnia etc as a warzone 27 years after the war is quite...ignorant?

[Spurs08]

3 hours ago, Prokopije said:

Belgrade is attractive place to live, certainly more attractive than Manchester where he spent last few years of his life. Speaking of Manchester, maybe he was so sick of rain that he decided to dig himself into desert. About tax rate, it's 10%. About warzone, it was in BiH and Croatia. It's safer place to live than middle east these days.

That "image" is more thing of prejudices in certain parts of the world than actual reality.

It's doesn't matter if it's a matter of prejudice or not. In FM terms: Serbia is a "Developing State" with an Economic Factor of 13, Qatar is a Developed State with an Economic Factor of 16. Serbia also has a 20% income tax set for high-earners. So he's choosing 1.3m with them instead of 1.68 with you to live in a much nicer place. Half a million euros or so, to someone who has earnt many tens of millions through his career already, isn't necessarily enough to justify moving to Serbia. Maybe the reality is different; I haven't been to either place. But image is important, and Qatar is certainly extremely attractive to the rich.

[Prokopije]

3 hours ago, Spurs08 said:

It's doesn't matter if it's a matter of prejudice or not. In FM terms: Serbia is a "Developing State" with an Economic Factor of 13, Qatar is a Developed State with an Economic Factor of 16. Serbia also has a 20% income tax set for high-earners. So he's choosing 1.3m with them instead of 1.68 with you to live in a much nicer place. Half a million euros or so, to someone who has earnt many tens of millions through his career already, isn't necessarily enough to justify moving to Serbia. Maybe the reality is different; I haven't been to either place. But image is important, and Qatar is certainly extremely attractive to the rich.

Oh, well, we'll have to agree to disagree. I guess it's matter of personal view. To you it seems realistic, to me not. I don't think economic difference of value 3 have so much weight, especially with sport part of equation. How game is "set", do players (and which) chase "luxury" or whatever and if they're "aware" of how many millions they earned during their careers, we can only speculate.

I also signed, during years, Olivier Giroud, Dries Mertens and Douglass Costa, also to Zvezda, despite them having offers, in those cases, from more "appealing" divisions (France, Italy, Belgium, Holland), but "smaller" clubs. Might be different players having different patterns of behaviour indeed.

[potbellypigs]

11 hours ago, managerialmuggle said:

Are you seeing if there are any pre existing relationships with any players in your squad compared to the others? Maybe he wanted to play with mates are has a very good relationship with the manager compared to you. There are more important things than game time and money to some players

Is that coded into the game? Because I've seen this kind of answer to this question many times and always thought it was a load of rubbish.

[Gongom]

I've had players sign for amateur clubs on 0 wages over my offer of a professional contract in LLM for some reason. I think there's just a natural handicap to the player manager as artificial difficulty so the AI has a chance.

[Freakiie]

18 minutes ago, Gongom said:

I've had players sign for amateur clubs on 0 wages over my offer of a professional contract in LLM for some reason. I think there's just a natural handicap to the player manager as artificial difficulty so the AI has a chance.

LLM is a whole different story though, at that stage distance is one of the most important factors. So if the options are play with the local amateurs or move to the other side of the country for a crappy professional contract the choice will often be the local one.

[Mars_Blackmon]

I would assume that there are many factors but one I haven’t seen posted yet Is negotiation attributes 

[Mst82]

Some of the responses to this man 😂😂. Lower tax, more attractive places to live, hanging around with the rich and famous……

Its a game man! I’m managing in Greece and the weather was 12° in the middle of July! If those factors above do make a difference then it’s not very joined up, i.e. a player moves to hotter country for the game itself to say its 12° in mid July in mainland Greece. 

The answer to the OP is that this is an issue, not a bug as such, just another AI weighted factor that you see time and time again. Pleased Hunter has sort of acknowledged it though 👍🏼

[Mars_Blackmon]

2 minutes ago, Mst82 said:

Some of the responses to this man 😂😂. Lower tax, more attractive places to live, hanging around with the rich and famous……

Its a game man! I’m managing in Greece and the weather was 12° in the middle of July! If those factors above do make a difference then it’s not very joined up, i.e. a player moves to hotter country for the game itself to say its 12° in mid July in mainland Greece. 

The answer to the OP is that this is an issue, not a bug as such, just another AI weighted factor that you see time and time again. Pleased Hunter has sort of acknowledged it though 👍🏼

All of those things are valid though.

[Mst82]

I went after Nigel De Jong on a free with Panathanaikos, offered him the star player role and more than he demanded - however, he went to wolves on less money as a back up option to Neves and Moutinho. He chose the tropical Wolverhampton over the Parthenons of Athens. 

[Mst82]

2 minutes ago, Mars_Blackmon said:

All of those things are valid though.

I’m not having that, sorry 😂

[Mike J]

1 hour ago, Mst82 said:

I went after Nigel De Jong on a free with Panathanaikos, offered him the star player role and more than he demanded - however, he went to wolves on less money as a back up option to Neves and Moutinho. He chose the tropical Wolverhampton over the Parthenons of Athens. 

That could be explained by the league reputation. Playing in the Premier League is a big draw for a lot of players, especially since De Jong already speaks English so wouldn't have as hard a time settling. It's a little bit weird, but not out of the ordinary. 

1 hour ago, Mst82 said:

I’m not having that, sorry 😂

We know the game models things like tax rates and quality of life/standard or living. Why do you think those things are even included in the game if they aren't used to make decisions like this?

To the OP, your situation does seem pretty weird. I would have expected the player to sign for the higher rep team in the same country. When the player signed for Stoke did the game give you a reason why? Most of the time you are told why a player chooses another club over your own.

[managerialmuggle]

12 hours ago, potbellypigs said:

Is that coded into the game? Because I've seen this kind of answer to this question many times and always thought it was a load of rubbish.

Relationships are definitely in the game so utilizing it in making a players decision would seem logical. I've had a few players join me saying "I wanted to work with this manager" or along those kinda lines so I would imagine the same would happen for AI managers 

[HUNT3R]

2 hours ago, Mst82 said:

Some of the responses to this man 😂😂. Lower tax, more attractive places to live, hanging around with the rich and famous……

Its a game man! I’m managing in Greece and the weather was 12° in the middle of July! If those factors above do make a difference then it’s not very joined up, i.e. a player moves to hotter country for the game itself to say its 12° in mid July in mainland Greece. 
 

 

 As mentioned, these are factors in the game that players take into account. It's been in for a while too. I remember managing Schalke on an early FM (something like FM09 or FM10) and a player chose Hertha Berlin (It may have been another team in a big city) over my team because it's in a big city and we're in Gelsenkirchen. Even then, we're talking about similar contract offers, so that was the deciding factor. 

In the OP's case, the contracts aren't similar at all and to me, there's a clear choice to be made.
 

Quote

The answer to the OP is that this is an issue, not a bug as such, just another AI weighted factor that you see time and time again. Pleased Hunter has sort of acknowledged it though 👍🏼

 

It's not a weighted factor. These things aren't in FM. This, to me, looks like a clear bug.

It means little that I think it's a bug though. The best is to submit a report in the bug tracker so that SI can review it and 100% confirm whether it's a bug or not. If it is a bug, they have an immediate example to log along with the bug itself. It helps the devs in that it saves time trying to get enough examples and then we could see a fix for it sooner.

[Mars_Blackmon]

3 hours ago, Mst82 said:

I’m not having that, sorry 😂

Then you must not pay attention to the game nor opened the pre game editor.

[Mst82]

54 minutes ago, Mars_Blackmon said:

Then you must not pay attention to the game nor opened the pre game editor.

calm down pal, just having a ROFL