Your new game setup?

One of the things that bugs me is when I forget to load a league or country and it has inspired me to make this thread.

What setup do you use for FM? What leagues do you load, and what additional countries? In my current game I forgot to load up Germany and I'm apparently missing out on a lot of regens.

I plan to try get FC United to the Premier League.

At the moment, I'm loading up the top leagues from England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Scotland and Spain. I'm also loading all players from Argentina, Brazil and Japan.

I heard Reunion was worth loading whilst playing in the lowest league?

EDIT: Scrap my challenge idea.

I play with a small database and the English leagues as far as league two (for shame on my laptop)

I sometimes gamble on a few country loads, either brazil or Ireland gets the nod from me, you can never have enough Brazilians, And if i have amazing training facilities, i buy loads of irish youngsters with potential and turn them into awesome players and watch the national team reap the benefits.

At the moment i thinking im running 30 nations, large database and all Swiss players loaded

I got a new laptop just for FM09!

But before that i was running i think 18 or 19 nations on a medium database

If your doing dafuges challenge you will have to start again

Call me crazy if you wish, but I have exactly everything loaded... All leagues, all players from all nations and large database.

At the moment i thinking im running 30 nations, large database and all Swiss players loaded

I got a new laptop just for FM09!

But before that i was running i think 18 or 19 nations on a medium database

Wow, my PC is pretty good and it takes a while to begin a game with 5 nations and 2 extra countries.

If your doing dafuges challenge you will have to start again

Haha, yeah, I re-read the challenge and noticed I wasn't allowed to do it the way I had planned, so now I just want to take FC United to the top.

I usually load:

England - up to league 2

Italy - serie B

Spain - 2nd league

Germany - 2. Bundesliga

France - Ligue 2

Portugal - Bwin liga (correct?)

Brazil - top league

Argentina - top league

Belgium - top league

Holland - top league

And then additional nations with all players: Ghana. As i want to manage the national team

Wow, my PC is pretty good and it takes a while to begin a game with 5 nations and 2 extra countries.

But to be fair, mine is new. I think the game recomended spec is 3.0 and my laptop is 4.6 so its got alot of performance :]

But in a couple of years it will probably be old, so i have to enjoy being pretty cutting edge while i can =p

Why did you load all players from Japan??? Only Japanese players who play outside Japan are in the game, so you only get some Japanese players in Singapore besides those playing in Europe.

They are the leagues I load up too!

I usually load all the leagues in england to the BSN/BSS and the top 2 spanish leagues with a large database. Thats quite enougb for my very average laptop and enables me to have a good selection of players and teams.

For regens:

- Brazil (top league)

- Argentina (top league)

For competitive balance in Europe:

- England (top league)

- France (top league)

- Germany (top league)

- Italy (top league)

- Spain (top league)

Because I like to have the opportunity to manage in them:

- Croatia

- Holland

For work permits:

- Belgium

- Poland

Because I might want to manage the national team:

- Ireland

- Mexico

- Portugal

- Scotland

- South Korea

- U.S.A.

My laptop would give up after a season at the very most, with your set-up Amaroq.

Mine handles it .. but I'm used to some decent wait time when I hit "Continue", and I absolutely hate getting ten or fifteen seasons in and having a team which is unquestionably better than any AI squad in my game-world. I need that many active leagues to ensure that that doesn't happen; even if I dominate my domestic league, there are still the Barcelonas of the world to keep me honest in Europe .. and there are enough quality regens that, once the initial wave of high-reputation real players retires, the AI have quality regens at their disposal.

What kind of laptop do you have Amaroq and what kind of loading times do you normally put up with?

Do you ever find problems with slowdown in the future due to the save game file getting big etc.?

I've always been afraid of loading too many leagues & nations in case I end up having to abandon a save after, say, 10 or 20 years due to slowdown.

C.

Dell Inspiron 1525, dual 2.4GHz cores, 3GB RAM. I'm pretty happy with it.

Loading and saving a setup with, say, 25 leagues from 17 countries ( top leagues only, all English leagues) doesn't take more than about ten seconds; "Continue" can take five to sixty seconds, and doesn't Continue quite as far as I'd like . I haven't had to abandon a long-running save due to load-times even after 15 seasons or so ..

.. but I have had to abandon a save where I only had one nation and a Small DB running because my club had just gotten outsized compared to my game world. The only challenge I'd have had left was to leave my club, take over a Man U or the like, and try to beat my former club.

Oh! One thing I think helps (times) is that I am very careful with the "Detail Level" settings. For example, when I start out at the BSN level, I set the "Matches In Full Detail" preference for all other competitions to "None". That lets me turn them on (and correspondingly, slow my game down) when they are relevant to my squad(s).

So, I'd only turn any Detail on for the South Korea league if I've been accepted as South Korean national manager. I only turn on Full Detail for international matches when I start to feel like I have a fair number of international players on my squad. (Usually, Championship or equivalent level.) I'm only going to turn Full Detail on for Belgium if I have a work permit feeder club. I only turn on Full Detail for Spain when I've reached some form of European competitions.

I'm also careful to turn OFF Full Detail when it ceases to matter to me .. e.g., I want all of the UEFA Cup in Full Detail while I'm in it, but if I start qualifying for the ECL regularly, I can turn it back off (and turn it on again I get one of the parachute-exits).

Interesting post Amaroq. Something that a lot of people probably take for granted when setting up a game.

C.

Dell Inspiron 1525, dual 2.4GHz cores, 3GB RAM. I'm pretty happy with it.

Just bought the same laptop, 18 leagues in 10 countries running quite smoothly so far.

Thanks, crouchaldinho, Detail Level is one of the features I think of as "big" but probably qualifies as "hidden" to most users.

Runstop - the only problem I have with it is I got the lowest-end video card (I kid you not, about three weeks before SI announced 3-D for FM'09), which means most of the video processing is done in-processor rather than on my piddling graphics card. Consequently, the machine can overheat (and crash) if I'm watching a match in 3-D whilst holding the laptop on heat-retaining fabric such as a blanket or a mattress. You've been warned!

Amaroq, you're input is top quality as usual. But out of interest, how many seasons per save do you play on average? I mean, i would love to have many leagues on the go but i also like to play long-term which obviously means i have to think about long term processing.

I have used this setup (since FM05) for my career game :

England, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Scotland -> Top Leagues + Medium Database.

I have also played different custom setup games like various challenge settings found in different FM sites.

i load absolutely everything with a huge database because if i dont it will bother me

I usually load:

England - up to league 2

Italy - serie B

Spain - 2nd league

Germany - 2. Bundesliga

France - Ligue 2

Portugal - Bwin liga (correct?)

Brazil - top league

Argentina - top league

Belgium - top league

Holland - top league

That's my set-up too except I add all English leagues and all Scottish too.

I include Belgium because I get a feeder club for work permit purposes and the players need to play games! I include the Belgian second division because I try to choose a lowly club where my kids will get games, and it's important that relegation doesn't mess up their development.

I usually load about a dozen leagues and maybe 20-25 nations worth of players. The exact ones depend on where I feel like managing,

When I am playing my career/story games I usually find myself competing in a European league and thus once I reach Europe, I want European competitions to be competitive and tough.

I load the following (top divisions only unless stated):

Austria

Belgium

Bulgaria

Croatia

Czech Republic

Denmark

England (League Two and above)

France (Ligue 2 Orange and above)

Germany (Second Division and above)

Greece

Holland

Italy (Serie B and above)

Norway

Poland

Portugal

Romania

Russia

Scotland

Spain (Second division and above)

Sweden

Switzerland

Turkey

Ukraine

24 countries, 32 leagues, all in Europe.

If I am starting in England, I'll generally load all leagues, if i'm in Germany, i'll load down to 3. Liga (or Regionalliga on FM08). Occasionally I'll also add in USA, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and South Korea if I want a more world based game.

As detail level has been discussed, I generally run the league, or perhaps the country on full detail but I always run all European competition fixtures and all international qualifying and tournaments on full detail.

I must confess that I haven't tried running all the leagues I run on full detail, not sure how long it would take but I don't notice slowdown with my current setup with my new-ish PC so I'm fairly happy with it.

The main reason I run all the leagues above is

a) it makes Europe more interesting if your in a smaller country

b) I like watching season by season how the different leagues move up and down in the co-efficients and how this affects how many places they get in the UCL and UEFA Cup.

c) It means I know how teams I like are doing in many different countries and leagues.

Now if SI were to make FM capable of utilising CUDA, then I could run everything in full detail.

I include Belgium because I get a feeder club for work permit purposes and the players need to play games! I include the Belgian second division because I try to choose a lowly club where my kids will get games, and it's important that relegation doesn't mess up their development.

I'm not quite sure what you're saying here. Players still get games and develop in non-active leagues....

I mean if the Belgian club's players have CAs higher than my new signings (typically youngsters with low CA but high PA), they won't be in the first team squad and will just rot in amongst the non-playing squad members. I've had players spend 3 years at work-permit feeders before and play 2 games in that time. I can monitor this in an active league, but not an inactive one.

I plan to try get FC United to the Premier League.

That's exactly what I'm doing in Dafuges challenge. After 4 years im in League 2, and am facing a massive scrap to stay in the league.