[My own "house" rules . . .]

Prepare to go through the same hell that real life managers go through every match. There are so many emotions and ups and downs when you follow the whole match and not just watching highlights.  I normally watch the match with the speed a couple of notches above the midpoint.

 

[My own "house" rules . . .]

One house rule I use during matches (I watch them in full) is that I am not allowed to change tactics unless there is a natural  stop in the game... goal, player substitution ( for any team), injury (with physio entering the pitch) or a red card. That can be a bit painful when you start a match and immediately see something you would like to change but have to wait for one of those natural stops.

[Ideas regarding save restrictions? Which restrictions do you use?]

A few years ago I managed a club in the second division in Chile. The team was predicted to finish last in the league but half way through the season I was in first place and dominating. Of course it is fun to win but it felt a bit too easy. So I started to think what the reason of my success was and it was easy to find... I had signed 11 new players during offseason and when checking the other teams the average was about 2-3. I think squad building is what gives us the biggest edge versus the AI managers.  So how to make the game harder?

I started to use Action Points. When I am signed to a contract I receive 1 point for each day of the contract. If i sign a contract starting 1 July and it ends 30 June next year I will receive 365 points. In the case I would be fired I have to pay back points, if I am fired 100 days before my contract ends my AP-saldo is reduced with 100 points. If my AP-saldo should then go below zero it is game over, I would have to end the save.

I have a list of actions that cost points... signing a player, either as a free agent or through a transfer from another club, will cost me 150 points, loaning a player for the full season cost 60 points, signing staff 10 points and so on.

Resigning players and staff under contract cost no points. Neither do signing players from the youth intake.

I may also earn points... selling a player will increase my saldo by 60 points, gaining promotion 100 points and so on.

The beuaty of the system is that you could tailor it to what you believes gives you an edge over the AI and so making the game a real challenge. Maybe taking control of certain staff responsibilities should cost points, forcing you to delegate more. Maybe introducing a new tactic during the season will cost some points. 

Of course you have to do some bookkeeping, but it is not too demanding. 
 

[Suggestion: Export data to csv]

Make it possible to export data to csv-files. Many (most?) other sport management games have this feature. We are now forced to create custom views and then via ctrl+p save them to files and import them to excel etc. But the whole presentation of stats is poorly implemented in the game, some stats are available to print, some are not. 

And when you are creating your custom view there are no consistency... example: you may get the total number of Dribbles but not the total number of Sprints, that stat is only in the /90-format. OK, it is simple to multiply with Minutes to get the total number but it an odd design choice. Other stats is not available at all to download this way.

Make this available and I am sure the community will use the data to create some very cool tools.

[The Realism Thread]

13 minutes ago, francis#17 said:

Great post, thank you.

 

Just realised this is to completely hide attrovites, do you know anyway to make the number disappear but have the colour

I assume you need a special skin for that. I am just happy to hide the numbers...   I have created a custom view with the attributes I think a manager should know when it comes to his own players. I then print that view to a file, import the file to Excel. do some calculations (with a random element) and get a result back in a form that is logical for that specific attribute,  VO2 max for Stamina and so on. Just for the immersion. I am crazy, I know..

[The Realism Thread]

There has been some questions in this thread about hiding attributes , maybe someone already answered how to do it, but if not... It's easy to do by changing four values in Preferences: in the advanced settings for Skin colours just change to 1 (one) in the A-column for all four levels of Attributes. Then you will not se any attributes in the game... almost. The only exception (as far as I found) is when selecting a scout for an assignment, you will see his attributes for judging current and potential. 

 

 

 

[Is it only my impression that FM2019 is too easy?]

47 minutes ago, Federico said:

I must say this, that sometimes (the most of times actually) after reading one of your posts I'm more confused than clarified.

But it must be to my poor knowledge of the english language, for sure.

Thanks! I was afraid I was alone but then we are at least two who are confused. But, as you said, maybe it is because english is not our first language. It could very well be crystal clear for the natives.

[Is it only my impression that FM2019 is too easy?]

6 hours ago, nico_france said:

The main concern for me is most of all AI which is completely failing at teambuulding, and i guess it's the trickiest part to code for SI

I can't count saves where a particular team is stockpiling players at a specific position, spending silly money and did not give them a single start

Same goes for teams buying players to the human manager

We (human managers) will always have a large advantage regarding team building, that's one of the reason why most of us are over achieving as well

 

I agree, team building is the key.

But should team building really be that tricky to code when compared to the match engine? Every manager in the game have a preferred tactic style and to make a template what positions are needed and what positions that are important for that particular style should not be that complicated to create. And they have been working on this for a quarter of a century or more and those working with it is very talented and smart people. And still you may move to a new club and have not one player able to play left fullback but there are seven strikers. No wonder the previous guy got sacked!

And then there is the match engine that, according to me at least, gets better and better with each release. And the ME should be really tricky to get right but somehow SI make steady improvements. 

I may be stupid but I can't understand why SI don't make a real effort to get the team building right. There are only two alternatives but I can't make up my mind which is the correct one:

1) It's a conscious decision where SI wants the game to be easy, they know their customers and the majority is very happy indeed winning Champions League with Halifax. To make the AI teams unable to build teams based on common sense is a way to make sure the customers will return and buy the next version. 

2) They are unable to code the team building part of the game. They are really trying each and every year but fail all the time. 

 

[Is it only my impression that FM2019 is too easy?]

Sadly I must say that this will probably be my last version of FM, and I played it since the 1990's (CM in those days). And the reason is that it is not an interesting challenge anymore. I don't know the reason, if it is a decision by SI to make the game easy to increase sales or if it is because all these micromanaging we are able to do now make it even harder for the AI to compete. 

I thinks it is sad that people are forced to make up artificial challenges , using only youth players or whatever, to get the game more enjoyable. It's quite odd actually, we are reading daily that AI will take over the world, and in this game the AI seems to be more stupid each year.

[Team talks]

I would like to see a change in the team talks. Instead of addressing Defenders, Midfielders and Attackers as groups I suggest we should be able to address the teams play in the different phases of the game, In possession etc. If I, as the manager, would like to criticize the team when we are out of possession, then I want the entire team to be listening to my wisdom, not just the Centre Backs and Full Backs. We defend as a team and we attack as a team, right?

As it is now I may be very happy how we play in one phase and very unhappy with another phase. But it is very frustrating because FM don't allow me to express this to the team.

 

[[FM19] South, Central America and Caribbean Leagues megapack by Tonao and sporadicsmiles]

Fantastic work Tonao!

Especially South America is a so vital part of the football world, but not well represented in vanilla FM. Your work increases the value of FM by 100% for me. 

 

[[FM19] South, Central America and Caribbean Leagues megapack by Tonao and sporadicsmiles]

12 hours ago, zanchin said:

I can't believe people stressing editors to do gargantuan work like this as if it's some child's game.. Only looking at what other people did in the editor to replicate real life systems made my head spin🥴

I could not agree more. Tonao is doing an amazing job, doing it on his spare time and then sharing it with us for free. And then we get people asking for a faster tempo of his releases?!?!?  Sometimes one loses faith in the humanity.

If you read this Tonao... thanks for your fantastic work!