Long term help.

I've never really played this game for more than four seasons before quitting and starting up a new game (bar a few attempts with FM09, and I wasn't enjoying them), so I don't have an opinion on this matter for a long term based game.

I am just wondering how many players/leagues/nations I need to have in my database to have a sustainable long term save. I've seen people saying they have 230,000 players in their game, but my computer simply can't cope with that. The max I can seem to have, without the game suffering considerably is 40,000.

Is this okay to play with, or should I just stick with short term games?

For a long-term game, I would suggest at least the top league for the following countries:

Argentina

Brazil

England

France

Italy

Germany

Spain

The European countries for balance in Champions League, and the South American countries for newgens.

I don't know how many players that is, but it should give you a nice starting point--and if it's a lot over 40K that doesn't mean you can't at least try it with a smaller database. If you've only done long-term with '09 and it was slow, then the speed boost from '10 might help.

Try a joruneyman, start off in a lower league and work your way up.