Increased board interaction about economics

I just saw this thread http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/220571-Giving-some-of-the-transfer-budget-back-to-board-to-have-them-grant-your-request

and it made me think of a lot more shortcomings in the interaction between the board and us when it comes down to the economics of the club.

Thus I thought to make my more general point I should not derail the thread above and start a new one about that instead. This is partly about interaction features and partly about the AI behind the board's decision making.

So far the economic interaction is really little:

- start of season expectation vs. budgets choice

- board requests about budgets and expansion/improvements

That should be it, if I'm not mistaken.

Also there was one incident recently which made me fume and in the end led to me leaving the club. I had taken WestBrom back to the EPL in the first season and finished 8th in EPL in the second. In my 26,200 stadium I had an average attendance of 26,100. I had signed lots of youngs talents who were developing and demanding more money now to renew their contracts. Even by concentrating on youth I had hit a ceiling quickly. As it was obvious that the potantial for a stadium expansion was there I requested it with around 10m in the bank. The board rejected, due to a lack of funds. However, three weeks later I got the EPL TV bonus money and the board immediately announced plans to install an under-soil heating for a whooping € 11m. A stupid under-soil heating opposed to the much needed stadium expansion... I think you can understand that I was less than pleased...

I like and support the general idea contained in the other thread. We should be able to make quite a few trade-offs with the board in the manner suggested in there and maybe move away from a mere board request/answer scheme to something closer to an actual discussion. For example:

- Sacrifice transfer and wage budgets for infrastructure projects

- Vice versa sacrifce infrastructure projects for higher budgets to achieve sporting success first (which should result in a promotion and higher revenues which could then be used for the infrastructure project) which at the same time would have to put immense pressure for instant success on us

- Prioritize infrastructure projects (see above)

I do NOT intend to suggest any decision making on our side here. Obviously the board should still be in charge. But looking at what's happening and more importantly what's not, I feel that there should be more interaction which would allow us to give more strategical input to the board which would then make a more informed decision based on our opinion or against our opinion. That would of course probably also need a better AI behind the decison making module.

I hope you can see where I'm heading.

Please feel free to discuss if you like this approach and how far we can reasonably try to take it and by which other sensible request or discussion options.

I think a more sophisticated board AI would really move the game on well. I like the idea of sacrificing infrastructure projects for short-term sporting success putting extra pressure on short-term success on the field. Would also be good to sacrifice a few years of transfer kitty to expand a new stadium or invest in youth facilities which I think is the main gripe at the moment. Let's hope SI are one step ahead on this and it's going to be part of FM11.