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Points totals for title races - is it coincidence?


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In my 9 season career journeyman save at the end of season 8 I was made Roma manager. Expectations were to challenge for the title and at Christmas I had a 6 point lead. Due to a hideous away record in the second half of the season this was reduced to 1 point with 5 games left and ultimately I fell short by 2 points after losing at relegation-threatened Siena (something that happens to me constantly in FM10, but that's a whole different rant). Needless to say my opponents (Juventus, the defending champions) went undefeated. I finished second, but only did so because 4th placed Udinese managed a late winner at 2nd placed Genoa on the final day. All this is to set the scene a bit for my main point. In the 8 previous seasons Serie A has finished as follows:

09/10 - 1st: 83, 2nd: 80, 3rd: 72, 4th: 66

10/11 - 1st: 83, 2nd: 73, 3rd: 67, 4th: 66

11/12 - 1st: 78, 2nd: 73, 3rd: 70, 4th: 69

12/13 - 1st: 79, 2nd: 75, 3rd: 75, 4th: 74

13/14 - 1st: 80, 2nd: 76, 3rd: 75, 4th: 73

14/15 - 1st: 74, 2nd: 73, 3rd: 66, 4th: 64

15/16 - 1st: 76, 2nd: 73, 3rd: 70, 4th: 69

16/17 - 1st: 76, 2nd: 74, 3rd: 71, 4th: 69

Except for the first season no champion has required more than 77 points to win the title and no one has scored more than 81 points in 6 seasons. I take over Roma and this happens:

17/18 - 1st: 84, 2nd: 83, 3rd: 82, 4th: 82

Yes, every team in the top 4 (none of whom are the traditional Italian mega-clubs from Milan) has managed to score more points than has been necessary to win the title in any previous season. I managed to score 10 more points than my predecessor and amass an 18-1-0 home record (winning 18 in a row after a draw with Juve on opening day) and very nearly wound up one place worse off). I would put this down to bad luck, but it seems to happen to me constantly in every FM for the last 3 or 4 years. I can point at plenty of reasons why I didn't win the title in this instance (having to pick from which of my 4 mediocre DC's was in the least bad run of form being a big one), but I can't explain how the AI seems to raise it's game whenever I'm in a title race in a top league (it seems less prone in lower leagues, possibly because of differing standards of relegated sides). I have to admit I don't have much evidence to work on besides anecdotal evidence from previous games since my FM10 experience has mostly been LLM so far, but a friend who I mentioned this to earlier told me that his Arsenal side that took 5 years to finally win a title retained the title with a reduced points total after he left. This sort of thing in FM has become something of a running joke, but I was wondering if a) other people have noticed a similar effect and b) if there might be a genuine reason for it in the way the game is programmed?

*As a final note, I came to Roma from one season at Cagliari (also Serie A) after a career in England so for a large part the game has been generating results on reduced detail, but the 2016/17 season of my stats cannot be explained this way since I was managing in the same league, just in the bottom half.

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what you need to do now is play 5 + seasons and get the points.

At this point you can't call it more than a one off year.

I play win Spain and Barca / Real are always miles ahead of everybody in the 80point range, so I know I will have to get into 80's to win. To get into the 80's I have to reduce the amount of points Real and Barca get (ie. by beating them once or twice each). So all of a sudden there will be 3 teams high 70 or low 80's instead of 2 teams high 80's.

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when you are playing as a human user the other teams chasing the title too usually seem to follow your results pretty closely regardless of their quality. its the same in a relegation battle really. except only you as the user have a possibility of slipping up.

I have also noticed this through many FM's and like you possibly not while in the lower leagues as much as in the highest tier, except its probably worse in the lower leagues regarding relegation battle.

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Yeah I've noticed this as well, the leagues are always much closer when you don't have them active, that is you're not playing in them or the detail level isn't set to high. It's particularly annoying as the OP points out when it costs you the title. I play in the SPL a lot and on FM08 I could never win the league because despite consistently getting 80 - 90 points Celtic would always have an amazing season, only lose 1 game, and get 95+ points. When I left to manage in the EPL, all of a sudden they were winning the league with less than 80 points.

Perhaps it's when the league becomes active it becomes more 'realistic'? And by that I mean the match engine properly processes the matches so the big clubs naturally get more points against the weaker teams, thus more points in general, and more realistic points totals? (Inter finished with 82 points, and Roma 80 this season just finished for example)

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The major problem in FM from what I have seen is this...

1. You need to play every big league on full detail to get the best out of it, realism wise.

2. Weak teams are way too good, especially against the human manager. You never see a big 5-0 to 8-0 win every 2-3 weeks in the EPL like in real life. In the EPL its almost a given that a big side will trounce a smaller side and by quite a few goals. (especially compared to Serie A etc). There is just too much balance between big and small clubs in the EPL compared to real life.

3. Human managers are A LOT more likely to make tactical errors that will be exploited even by the most mundane of sides. Its quite easy to be a side like Man United or Chelsea and lose to a Wigan or Wolves at home. Mainly due to random in game events and erratic behaviour by the AI.

4. Top sides managed by the AI very rarely lose any games, and by this I mean sides that win the title can go 38 games undefeated and it happens quite often. Most of the time the winning side gets an outrageous amount of points compared to the human manager who in real life would have won the title with the amount of points gained through-out the campaign.

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The major problem in FM from what I have seen is this...

1. You need to play every big league on full detail to get the best out of it, realism wise.

2. Weak teams are way too good, especially against the human manager. You never see a big 5-0 to 8-0 win every 2-3 weeks in the EPL like in real life. In the EPL its almost a given that a big side will trounce a smaller side and by quite a few goals. (especially compared to Serie A etc). There is just too much balance between big and small clubs in the EPL compared to real life.

3. Human managers are A LOT more likely to make tactical errors that will be exploited even by the most mundane of sides. Its quite easy to be a side like Man United or Chelsea and lose to a Wigan or Wolves at home. Mainly due to random in game events and erratic behaviour by the AI.

4. Top sides managed by the AI very rarely lose any games, and by this I mean sides that win the title can go 38 games undefeated and it happens quite often. Most of the time the winning side gets an outrageous amount of points compared to the human manager who in real life would have won the title with the amount of points gained through-out the campaign.

Hang on, i thought people were complaining its too easy a few days ago. :D

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Ok, it seems like a lot of people have experienced something similar to me. I'll just add a couple of points:

the leagues are always much closer when you don't have them active, that is you're not playing in them or the detail level isn't set to high.

After posting this thread I went and found a thread I started back in the FM08 days where I'd been running a career save and every time I went to a new league the totals needed to win the title jumped by about 20 points. That thread was the first time I'd ever heard about the detail settings available for background leagues and clearly this issue has been much improved since FM08 since points changes like that don't happen anymore. This was why I mentioned that I'd spent the previous season managing a different club in Serie A so the 'background league detail' shouldn't be an issue. This situation seems to be much more head-to-head with your immediate rivals.

Hang on, i thought people were complaining its too easy a few days ago. :D

Not me! :)

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My experience in Serie A is similar. This past season, after both myself (cagliari) and Juve had a mediocre first half of the campaign, only 1 point between us by winter break. I went on a 15 match winning streak.. sadly, juve didn't lose a match from January 'til the end of the season, so, even if I won every single game, and drew with juve, I still wouldn't have won the league. Now, the only balance in that argument, is that my form was only very slightly less than Juve's, but it is mighty frustrating that no matter how well you play, and how many points racked up, I just couldn't catch them! Not saying it's 'broken', or 'programmed' just mighty frustrating.

Still though, won the CL and been given a nice big transfer kitty for the new season.. Juve are NOT going to win it this year! :D

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I once won the league on 08 with Man U with 99 points. Arsenal tailed me the whole season and finished on 98. This happened the next 2 seasons as well. Despite constantly winning I was always under pressure. It did feel suspicious but I didn't mind, I liked the pressure and I'd have been bored without it.

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i was chelsea on fm08 and won the title on 98 points and arsenal were 2nd on 96.

i do notice early on in seasons the game wont let me get a good lead. if im say 2 points clear with a game in hand then i know i will probably lose that game whatever i decide to do. i also notice that AI teams will also slip up if they get a bit ahead.

i also think with great reason that the game likes to keep it close. if im winning the majority of my games then there will be another side on my tail nearly all season. if iam not winning so many then the other teams challenging slip up more as well.

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This can happen in real life for example: Real Madrid and Barcelona this season, but if a team at the top has no real competition then they are more likely to rest players ahead of big games etc and lose points that way, or just be complacent, but if your team if chasing them all the way or they are chasing you they are less likely to take their foot off the gas

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This can happen in real life for example: Real Madrid and Barcelona this season, but if a team at the top has no real competition then they are more likely to rest players ahead of big games etc and lose points that way, or just be complacent, but if your team if chasing them all the way or they are chasing you they are less likely to take their foot off the gas

I agree with this to some extent, but it doesn't really explain how 4 teams simultaneously improved their points tallies to a level beyond anything seen in that league for the better part of a decade. In my case I spent heavily and Juve added to a title-winning squad, but the other two came from nowhere relatively speaking.

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