Daniel Evensen

The tactics should work. You're looking at editor data files here. They need to be rechecked against the new database before they can work.

Undeserved Victory Man, we played poorly. This was the worst match I’ve seen yet. Everybody played badly. We went down 1-0 in the 33rd minute after giving up a penalty on a ridiculous defensive play. I don’t even want to think about it. Everybody was playing poorly, and our defense looked ridiculously bad. The offense was doing okay, but we couldn’t find the goal. I think we had 5 shots hit the woodwork. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I mean, the goal isn’t that small. A miracle happened in the 2nd half. I put Rovaglia on after Luciano Parra had the worst game of his career in the 1st half. Rovaglia tumbled over in the penalty area in the 81st minute, after I had given up completely, and the referee mysteriously awarded a penalty to us. I’ve been back to watch the clip, and I simply don’t see it. Pietro fooled him. That’s all there is to it. Anyway, Mueanta tied it up, and we held on through an uneventful extra time period. We then won the shootout, 4-3. Yan Kun, of all people, scored the final goal. This is the same Yan Kun that we bought from Jiangsu FC at the beginning of the season and stuck in the under-21s. This is the Yan Kun who I took no notice of until our coaches started pointing him out in training. This is the same Yan Kun whose debut was delayed because of an injury that took him out for over 2 months. He’s only 20 years old, and he’s on top of the world. We have a final match to look forward to. We’ll play against Shenzhen FC, who are 4th in the Chinese Super League. That game will take place right after the end of the regular season. Qingdao Red Lions We do have a regular season to finish up here. I’ll keep going through it game by game. We should win this next one easily, even if we don’t play any of our regular starters. The Qingdao Red Lions are bad, and we look like sure favorites. The next big question is whether we will hit 200 goals for the season. We’ve scored 199 so far. After that, we’ll see if we can get our goal differential in the league up to 200. I’ll have to think of some other goals once we hit that one.

I suppose this means we won't see a Red Bull franchise in East Germany in the Iron Curtain project, then?

Lol, you can't do it this quickly, I'm not even halfway done with my current project! Thank you for all of your hard work, man! I'm looking forward to managing in Kiribati again, which is where I belong.

This is great stuff! I'll put a save with Red Bull Tokyo on my list of future projects.

Lol, what a nightmare this would be in real life. But very well done! Do the teams have sugar daddy owners or access to tons of money?

A professionalism rating of 2 for me would be far too realistic for comfort...

I tend to go for personality only and not worry too much about the attributes. Regardless of who you go with, take another look in the next transfer window to see if you can't find a model citizen. Chances are one will pop up.

The Title I was nervous for this one. We didn’t do anything in the first half to put me at ease, either. Pietro Rovaglia won a penalty in the 25th minute, but his shot was saved by the keeper. I should have insisted on Younes Delfi taking the penalty, but Rovaglia hopped in there before I could say anything. We went into halftime drawing 0-0. A draw would have secured us the title. But you know how things are around here. We want to win every match. Drawing just doesn’t do it. I took Rovaglia off after his awful first half performance. And that’s when Delfi started working his magic. Delfi’s first goal came from a corner in the 46th minute, a close range shot that probably was offside. His second, third, and fourth came within 5 minutes of each other, near the 60 minute mark. And we won, 4-0. The Chinese National Second Division Northern Group title is now ours. We knew coming into this that we were going to be promoted. I never thought that we would wind up going undefeated, however. This wasn’t exactly a surprise. The pundits had us picked to win before the season started, and that was before I started making big splashes in the transfer market. Still, a win is a win. The board is happy, our fans are happy, and I’m happy. We’ve now won 39 league matches in a row. We’ll see if we can keep our Chinese FA Cup dreams alive in the next match. It’s going to be close. Honestly, I’m still not convinced that this team is good enough to compete at the Chinese Super League level, let alone in the European Champions League. We’ll see when we get there, I suppose. Even the likes of Delfi have had off games here and there. I worry that some of our younger players have developed a strong dislike for big matches. And, of course, I want to do everything in my power to ensure that we’re developing good Chinese players. Speaking of which, we finally managed to get recognition in the Team of the Month. Liu Shaoziyang and Yan Kun, two of our young Chinese stars, were recognized as the best at their positions for the month of August. I’m hoping that is a sign of things to come. Month In Review It’s April, which means it’s time to look back at what happened in March. We’re still rich, of course. We haven’t been turning much of a profit, but there’s still more than enough money to keep us going for quite some time. The board is pleased with everything except for my transfers. Actually, Chairman Guo still doesn’t seem all that thrilled with our results, despite the fact that we’ve won the league title without losing a single game. I’m not sure what more he wants from us. The supporters are even more upset about my transfer policy. I guess my policy of signing every halfway decent under-18 player we can find regardless of future potential isn’t winning over a lot of converts. Sadly, there’s no way for me to tell everybody that they’ll thank me in 5 years for what I’m doing here. Our squad dynamics are good, especially now that Ye Jie is happy again. He’s happy just in time for me to sell him this summer. The one piece of sad news is that Zhang Jianyi, our left back, is out with damaged cruciate ligaments. That’s going to keep him out for 9 months, and likely will mean the end of his career. I was never really convinced by his abilities to begin with, and I just don’t see him getting past this injury — certainly not if we keep improving our personnel. We’ve had a number of injuries lately. Hopefully we can stop that problem from spreading. Guangzhou City We’ve got another huge one coming up. We’re going down to Guangzhou to face Guangzhou City in the Chinese FA Cup semi final. The press think that we’re going to win. I actually think we have a better chance this time than we did against Zhejiang FC. Guangzhou are in 11th place in the Chinese Super League and haven’t played well lately. We’re not only undefeated, but we’re also going to start Luciano Parra and Suphanat Mueanta, our two big star strikers. We’ll have Lee Jin-Yong out there too, for the ladies. Chairman Guo expects us to win, of course. He always expects us to win. Let’s hope that we don’t disappoint him.

I mean, I don't completely disagree with some of the things he does. I pay a lot of attention to player personalities, and brought in a few older players just because they had Perfectionist and Professional personalities for the sole purpose of helping the squad's overall personality out. I don't disagree with the transfer tricks either; heck, I'm currently in the process of poaching the youth intake of every other team in the country to make up for my batch of inconsistent and unambitious newgens. But, yeah, you can't complain that the game is too easy if you make sure to use every exploit under the sun every single time you play. If you really want a challenge, start from the very bottom in a country in the middle of nowhere, force yourself to come up with your own tactic, set things up so that you can't see player personalities, ignore the coach reports, turn off star ratings and attributes (what I call hardcore mode), and go from there. The game will be a lot harder — and you don't even need extra editor data files to do so. It's not polite to come onto the official forums and complain that the game is too easy when you use exploits to win everything, though. The problem's not the game.

I mean, it is an off-topic comparison that isn't really valid. There's nothing holding you back from challenging yourself in this game. I'm puzzled by your intransigence. Seriously, if you have a history of starting threads on this very topic, and people keep giving you ideas that you could pursue to make the game more interesting and challenging, why do you persist in throwing them back in our faces? People are legitimately trying to help you, but you are insisting that something that the rest of us don't even consider a problem be solved. It feels a lot like trolling.

Have you tried using Daveincid's Increase Realism Megapack? It's not perfect, but it will correct some egregious AI behavior, such as its inability to give young players proper game time. There are other editor data files out there that improve AI managerial behavior. My favorite is the one that DarthFurion comes out with as part of his World Super League each year, though we're still waiting on the FM23 version. Seriously, if you're getting bored with the game, give that World Super League a try. It'll take you a long time to try to win that crazy worldwide Premier League. But, yeah, if you keep doing the same challenge with the same team or league every year, FM is going to start feeling boring.

Like @Brother Ben said, we're telling you how to make the game harder. And, yes, the Youth Academy Challenge looks incredibly difficult. There's a reason why those who attempt it wind up having to "reroll" so many times.

Promoted! Well, we did it. We managed to secure promotion to the Chinese First Division. We didn’t look particularly good, though. Beijing Baxy, who are in 22nd place and are a simply awful team, managed to hold our strikers at bay. We won this one by 2-0, one of the slimmest margins we’ve had all season. Pietro Rovaglia became the hero, scoring two quick goals in the first half that proved to be the final margin of victory. Our other strikers were eerily quiet. Mueanta had the worst game that he’s had for us yet, and has me worried about how he’ll do next season. There was a crowd of 1,000 there to watch us, probably the biggest crowd that Beijing Baxy has had all season long. I’m just happy that we were able to put it away. The Spoils of Victory Everybody is happy following our triumph. Chairman Guo was thrilled, though he did remind me that he knew we would wind up on top all along. We’ll see if he is willing to open up his pocket book a bit more for us in the coming transfer window. It wasn’t exactly a shock result for the board, of course. The board thought all along that we should gain automatic promotion to the First Division this season. If we really want to impress them, we’d better duplicate the feat next season. The fans are also delighted, though they had the same expectation right from the start. They don’t give you a lot of room to budge around these parts. Anyway, we’ve got two big pieces of news after this victory. The first is that our Under 21 team has officially won its group, after an emphatic 10-0 win. The Under 21 team has gone undefeated in its season to date, and looks absolutely stellar. Young striker Max McMillan scored 36 goals in his youth season for us, making me wonder whether he’ll start trying to elbow his way into the first team squad next season. The second big piece of news is that Ye Jie has finally gotten over the sale of Fan Xiang. Being able to start for the Chinese national team during the most recent international break might have helped calm him down a bit. However, I’m afraid to say that it’s probably too little too late for the 28 year old centerback. With youngsters like Yan Kun and Paulsen hanging around the first team, Ye Jie is starting to look expendable. Winning The League? The next task facing us is to defeat Ningxia Renhaixi once again. If we win this one we win the league. It’s as simple as that. View draft history

Yep! I downloaded an extended fantasy Chinese league database from the Steam Workshop. The rules are different: you can have up to 20 foreigners registered, and as many as 8 on the pitch at any time. The database also resurrected a number of Chinese teams that have gone bankrupt over the years, including our rivals Jiangsu FC, who went under a year or so ago, and Yanbian FC, who went under back in 2018. It also includes a path to the European Champions League if we manage to finish in first place in the Chinese Super League. If I remember right, the database is called something like "入歐" (enter into Europe) as part of its name. I made a few slight modifications to get our club out of debt... and to add on a sugar daddy... Anyway, the entire thing is 100% fantasy, from the more friendly foreigner rules to the fact that these otherwise bankrupt and dead teams are able to play again. I'm not certain that there are enough professional teams surviving in China right now to warrant a third division...

Caoshangfei This match wasn’t any contest. We only won by a 3-0 margin. However, we didn’t give Neimenggu Caoshangfei any chance at competing. Mueanta scored an easy goal in the 17th minute, followed by a free kick strike from Paul Wade. Kristoffer Paulsen sealed the deal with a header from a free kick in the 56th minute, and that was all she wrote. Paulsen got the Player of the Match award, though it wasn’t quite as impressive as his prior performances have been. I think that award came to him mostly due to his goal. That makes it 37 wins out of 37 matches for us in the league. We’ve scored 193 goals in the process. We’re likely to beat the 200 goal mark before the season is over. It’s hard to believe, but we still have 9 matches left. Title Push Apologies for being a bit abrupt, but we’ve got a title to push for. We are playing on the road against Beijing Baxy again. We’re sure to win. The question is whether Jiangsu and Beijing University lose. A win here means that we’re promoted, since Beijing University will be at least 27 points behind us with 8 games remaining. Meanwhile, a loss by Jiangsu would put them 26 points behind us with 8 games remaining, clinching the league for us. If Jiangsu draws, they would be 25 points behind us, also clinching the league for us. Once this is done, the only remaining question will be whether we can hit 200 goals or not.

Taiyuan University of Technology Apparently the students in Taiyuan don’t exactly play fair. Our match against the Taiyuan University of Technology was simply ugly. There were 9 yellow cards in all, 6 of which were called against them. We won, 4-0. It wasn’t pretty, though. And, worst of all, Luciano Parra was injured by a pretty deliberate challenge. There were bright spots. Both Yan Kun and Shi Jiayang scored. Yan Kun’s goal was a sight to behold, too. He scored from a few yards outside the penalty area, giving us a glimpse of what an amazing player he truly is. In the end, however, it was the 16-year-old wonder Zhu Bin who came away as the man of the match. His passing was simply amazing, and I’ve got a feeling that he’s going to wind up being our first choice left winger in the near future. Parra’s Injury Luciano will be out for about a month. The press is worried that this will damage our chances. I think we’ll be fine. It means that Rovaglia will have more chances up front. My plan is to start him together with Mueanta up top, and to stick Delfi on the right wing. We’ll probably stick with Zhu Bin on the left wing, and will let the rest of the team come together naturally. Speaking of Yousuf Delfi, there are already calls for him to be called up to the Iranian international squad. He deserves it. Lee Jin-Yong On Loan? “You said no, right?” Charlotte asked me at breakfast the other morning. I gave her a blank look. “You said no?” she repeated, eying me carefully. “No… to what?” I asked, puzzled. “To the loan request, silly,” she replied. “You know you need to keep my 오빠 here, right?” It took me a while to figure out what she was talking about. We received two different offers from 2nd tier South Korean clubs to take Lee Jin-Yong in on loan. Neither club wanted to pay any of his wages, which are hilariously high at 465,000 RMB per month (highest on our squad). He’s been starting a lot recently, too. There’s no reason to loan him out, and so I refused both offers. Still, I’ve got to wonder how in the world the Lee Jin-Yong Fan Club knows this stuff before I do. Inner Mongolia We’re playing against the Caoshangfei squad from Inner Mongolia at home this time around. We’re almost certain to win. We’ll clinch promotion with a win here, and I think we’ll probably clinch the league as well. No pressure.

Go start a new save with FC Ingolstadt 04. Make your coach have no badges and no experience. See how you do with a mostly injured squad, no transfer budget, an injured (and injury-prone) centerback who takes up something like 1/5 of your wage bill and who just signed a contract 4 months ago, and expectations to win now. I lasted about 2 1/2 months, lol.

Paging @Daveincid... Dave has a list on his Patreon of recommended setups for different purposes. Personally, I always play with all players activated and all leagues on. If I ever have the money, I'm going to make my own computer with one of those really nice Ryzen 9 chips and will try to play with the entire world loaded. The last time I tried that it took something like 30 minutes to advance past the first turn in the game, lol.

Just wanted to add on that there are editor files that mess around with these newgen templates. I think there's one that floats around every year that makes the playing field completely even for every country, in case that floats your boat. Honestly, I've found odd success with players from random countries that my coaches claim are not good enough to play on my squad at all. There's enough randomization in this game to make it interesting despite the fact that Brazil always produces better newgens than Costa Rica.

Interesting issue, and one that I never faced with Monterey. I did have a problem with my Intel iMac when I upgraded to Ventura, however, that rendered the graphics card useless for some random reason. You probably don't want to hear this, but I got so frustrated that I switched straight over to Linux. I'm on Pop!_OS now, and all of those issues are gone. FM actually runs more smoothly, too. Do you know what specific folder the data is (or was) stored in? I've never trusted that general OSX breakdown of data by category. Again, I'm biased by my negative experience, but I've got a feeling that OSX is creating this monster-sized data, and not FM.

Just be careful with whatever you do. It can be fun to throw a bottle now and then, but if you hurt your morale too much you'll find it almost impossible to recover. This is how I lost my virtual job with Ingolstadt 04...

Quoting this for truth. The game really is a lot more fun when you stay away from the wonderkid lists and all that jazz. This is one reason why people find it more enjoyable when the newgens start coming around.

Yeah, I think this is actually right. One of your attributes will change if you curse in press conference comments that you type up yourself.

Lol - and here I am trying to figure out how to justify buying an AMD Ryzen 9 just to play this game.