Best set-up for a long-term save

Hi

In anticipation for FM 11, I'm seeking advice on the best configuration for a career game spanning 20 to 30++ seasons. I pretty much stick with higher reputation clubs (LLM is too challenging for me), building up my manager rep until I land my dream job with Inter. After which, I'm pretty much a one man club (as long as the board permits).

Because I only move around early in my career, in the past, I only selected England, Spain, and Italy as "playable", loading their top 2 divisions; loading all other european leagues as "view-only" (mostly just the top division); and several leagues from other continents as "view-only". However, I have noticed that this really impacts the quality of the long-term game, with Englang, Spain, and Italy (especially) dominating both at club and international level. I recently read somewhere in the forum that this is due to the lack of AI control in non-playable leagues, and I also suspect that player regeneration is better for playable leagues?

Anyways, for FM 11, my proposed strategy is to load as many playable leagues as possible even though I don't intend to manage in many of them, just to ensure realism in the long-term, with maybe a small or medium database. But I'm wondering if anyone has had success with using DDTs to aid player regeneration in the long-run and maintaining some balance. If DDTs offer an alternative, then i would not need to load so many playable leagues.

Also, I am wondering if selecting a league as playable but setting the detail level to none is as good as not selecting the league as playable. i.e. how much impact does detail level have on a long-term save? What's most important? AI control, player regeneration, or match detail?

I am open to any suggestions on how best to ensure a balanced game in the long-run. I am willing to sacrifice game speed to achieve realism as long as its 1) not dead slow and 2) I do not want to be in a situation whereby the save becomes too large to run after several seasons.

I'm not that tech-savy but I think I have pretty decent specs:

Win XP

Intel 2 Quadcore CPU @ 2.83 GHz

1.98GHz, 2.35 GB RAM

NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX

Cheers,

forzamr_b

I had a fantastic 20+ season save with England (down to BSN/BSS), Italy (down to C2), France (down to C2), Spain (down to Segunda B), Holland (down to Jupiler) and Germany (down to Third Division)

id start off by reading through this forum. It has alot of good challenges on there for people wanting to load up alot of countries. This is one is one of the most popular.

I am advising of challenges as, the main reason why these threads are very hard to answer, is that different people play in different ways. I start as low as i can and build a team over many seasons (48 seasons in my current save) but as you said you like to start at a decently high club.

Why no just load up the top leagues of all european, asian and south american countries? Should give you a wealth of choice there?

You should checkout Amaroq's replies in the threads i have linked to below here. It's quality stuff, just what you need to know about setting up your save.

How do view only leagues work?

Match detail/ Playable leagues question

How to get the best possible regens in FM10?

Make sure you load a variation of different leagues from different countries. Load up all the top 2 leagues from all the big European countries (England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain) and load the top division of all, what I like to call, the European secondary countries (Portugal, Holland, Belgium, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey). Then, to get some variation, load the top leagues from both Argentina and Brazil. This will ensure that there will be a decent amount of South American regens in your game, which will help in the long run.

I load this:

Denmark (All) - My home country + The all divisions from the country I start in

England (League 2)

Spain (Segunda)

Germany (2. division)

Italy (Serie B)

France (Ligue 2)

And top divisions from Holland, Greece, USA, Portugal and Russia

Plus top divisions from neighbour countries (Scotland if I play in England and so on)

And a file that secures regens from most countries

Usually about 27 leagues, and 105000 players

For my long term saves I play LLM style, and tbh that's all I've been playing the last few months. It's so rewarding taking a BSN/BSS club up the divisions.

Make sure you load a variation of different leagues from different countries. Load up all the top 2 leagues from all the big European countries (England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain) and load the top division of all, what I like to call, the European secondary countries (Portugal, Holland, Belgium, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey). Then, to get some variation, load the top leagues from both Argentina and Brazil. This will ensure that there will be a decent amount of South American regens in your game, which will help in the long run.

This .

Make sure you load a variation of different leagues from different countries. Load up all the top 2 leagues from all the big European countries (England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain) and load the top division of all, what I like to call, the European secondary countries (Portugal, Holland, Belgium, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey). Then, to get some variation, load the top leagues from both Argentina and Brazil. This will ensure that there will be a decent amount of South American regens in your game, which will help in the long run.

thats a lot of leagues

That's only 17 leagues. It's not that much.

I would go for this:

All leagues from top coutries (England, Spain, Germany, Italy, France) then all from minor but still strong (Russia, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, Greece, Turkey, Ukraine) and one poor league: (Polish ;p in that case) and both Argentina and Brazil as storngest sides from South America maybe even MLS or Mexico also.

On large database you have approximately 100k players

You should checkout Amaroq's replies in the threads i have linked to below here. It's quality stuff, just what you need to know about setting up your save.

How do view only leagues work?

Match detail/ Playable leagues question

How to get the best possible regens in FM10?

I just abandoned my career game to start again with this advice! Cheers

I load at least one league from every continent.

You should checkout Amaroq's replies in the threads i have linked to below here. It's quality stuff, just what you need to know about setting up your save.

How do view only leagues work?

Match detail/ Playable leagues question

How to get the best possible regens in FM10?

Thanks Shakeable. These have been really useful.

Select all the leagues. Simples.

But if you have the specs you have to start a large save (say 100 leagues), you should keep the following in mind..

1. load leagues with close proximity with each other (ie. if you load Germany, also load at least Turkey and Austria, and maybe Albania and Bosnia if you can find the xml files. If you load MLS, have Mexico too. China, Hong Kong & S. Korea, etc.)
   
2. balanced setup (select some big football nations, some upcoming nations, and some lower-tier ones)
   
3. go global (load at least 2 countries from each continent around the world)
   
4. have playable nations, not view-only - will help balance out the newgens spawn
   
5. load potential feeder club nations (which means if you play in England, load Poland and Belgium as well for work permits)
   
6. don't load only the premier division of a country of a big nation like England or Spain, your game world loses a lot of potential in the future. I would say loading only the premier division of a country like Denmark or Sweden is ok if you just want some newgens from those areas (I still load every division in those leagues in my games)
   

And I have 90, 100 league career games (and my 130 league holiday test save is in 2015 as well). I'm in 2022 with my 90 league save. My specs? A 2.1 Ghz Dual Core Dell Studio 1555 on Windows 7 with 4GB Ram. It's 0.5 performance stars but it's running fine.

agree with all the points

1) Load leagues related to your league. Eg Brazil will load Arg, Colombia, Portugal etc.

4) This can be solved by loading players from countries or leagues.

4) This can be solved by loading players from countries or leagues.

True, but having them selected as playable is more beneficial than loading all players from a particular country. Loading players in a good compromise if you don't exactly have the performance from your pc to load the entire league. I did that more in FM09 because there was no editor, but with the FM10 editor and in FM11 as well, I probably won't use that feature too much because I can basically load whatever league I want.

True, but having them selected as playable is more beneficial than loading all players from a particular country. Loading players in a good compromise if you don't exactly have the performance from your pc to load the entire league. I did that more in FM09 because there was no editor, but with the FM10 editor and in FM11 as well, I probably won't use that feature too much because I can basically load whatever league I want.

Yeah thats what I'm talking about.

@ the OP

You mentioned DDTs - remember you don't need to import DDTs to your files, just select the ones you want as part of the database options when you're at the new game menu in FM11.

I suppose, if like some people, you don't like starting your 'main' save until after the last patch (start of February) you could set-up a large game on November 5th and play that for a few months and see how it goes. Then make your final judgement based on that?

[*]have playable nations, not view-only - will help balance out the newgens spawn

I agree there Rancer.

If you're just concerned with the FREDS (don't ask me what it means, I just know it's how we're supposed to refer to the blighters now) you could get the same result by retaining the players though, I think - which would speed things up. Or is there an advantage to loading a league over retaining players, regarding FREDS?

I suppose, if like some people, you don't like starting your 'main' save until after the last patch (start of February) you could set-up a large game on November 5th and play that for a few months and see how it goes. Then make your final judgement based on that?

Or you could holiday your current savegame for 1 year and see how long it takes and then compare it to your new set-up game.

I agree there Rancer.

If you're just concerned with the FREDS (don't ask me what it means, I just know it's how we're supposed to refer to the blighters now) you could get the same result by retaining the players though, I think - which would speed things up. Or is there an advantage to loading a league over retaining players, regarding FREDS?

You still get newgens from retaining players. I loaded the African megadatabase in my career game and have seen some very good African newgens. I think it's down to the fact newgens in loaded leagues actually play 'real' games while those players who play in leagues that are not loaded in the game only play 'simulated' games. I don't see a big effect on African newgens since the very good ones usually move to Europe in the 1st or 2nd year of their careers. I think it's down to player development.

Or you could holiday your current savegame for 1 year and see how long it takes and then compare it to your new set-up game.

That's a good way to compare.

But you're not really getting a feel for how those set-ups are going to 'feel' as you actually play the save, if you know what I mean. Save A might holiday 20 minutes quicker than save B, but you're not experiencing the wait between match days as you play the game - and you might find that'll be enough to put you off playing.

Another thing is - I think the file size 'snowballs' as you go through the years. So the waits might be acceptable for a few years, but after a number of years it'll be longer.

As you say though, it's an indicator.

You still get newgens from retaining players. I loaded the African megadatabase in my career game and have seen some very good African newgens. I think it's down to the fact newgens in loaded leagues actually play 'real' games while those players who play in leagues that are not loaded in the game only play 'simulated' games. I don't see a big effect on African newgens since the very good ones usually move to Europe in the 1st or 2nd year of their careers. I think it's down to player development.

Yeah, so with player creation there's negligible difference. And regarding club football too, because as you say - they'll gravitate to 'better' leagues quite early.

Thanks mate.

I like to retain them, as I prefer the trade-off to keep processing down. I was just wondering if I should re-think my approach.

I like to retain them, as I prefer the trade-off to keep processing down. I was just wondering if I should re-think my approach.

Depends on your specs and patience and preference really. View-only leagues process faster as the results are largely based on reputation. Playable leagues take a lot of time as the game processes every fixture.

Good thread guys, I'm not long after getting a good laptop so i wasn't sure what to load when i get the FM11... this will help a lot.

aannnd bookmarked!