Need help improving my rivals

My goal for this save: improve the Belgian competition.

So far I'm doing great, won the league 10th time in a row and doing quite well in Europe too.

My biggest problem now is: while I'm getting better and better, my Belgian opposition is getting worse and worse.

This year no other team has even managed to qualify for the Europa League group stages.

Now I've managed to make the Belgian league a 3,5 star league (from 3 stars), but if I want it to improve further I really gonna need some help.

Any tips?

keep a very close eye on the scheduled European matches of other teams in Belguim, then save before each one and replay until you get them into the group stages. Its a chore but it really does help push the co-eff up. Personally i have Scotland up to 4th in Europe through doing that.

keep a very close eye on the scheduled European matches of other teams in Belguim, then save before each one and replay until you get them into the group stages. Its a chore but it really does help push the co-eff up. Personally i have Scotland up to 4th in Europe through doing that.

you are kidding right? you find cheating a good and decent solution?

you are kidding right? you find cheating a good and decent solution?

How is it cheating to improve my rivals? I dont change my own results in Europe, i just ensure the AI controlled Scottish teams make the group stages of either European comp. I have been quite succesful in Europe with my team without cheating, and it does me no real good as the players i sign are always very young and get sold around 23-24 when they would ask to leave anyway if i hadnt got the rep of the league up. It doesnt give me more money really as the prize money in scotland even now is less than £2.5m for winning the league and less than £2m for TV rights.

Anyway, its my game, my FM world, i enjoy the game more now as most of the teams in Scotland are targeting good players and managers, for me its fun, its really not for anyone else to judge.

The guy asked for a suggestion, i gave him one.

How is it cheating to improve my rivals? I dont change my own results in Europe, i just ensure the AI controlled Scottish teams make the group stages of either European comp. I have been quite succesful in Europe with my team without cheating, and it does me no real good as the players i sign are always very young and get sold around 23-24 when they would ask to leave anyway if i hadnt got the rep of the league up. It doesnt give me more money really as the prize money in scotland even now is less than £2.5m for winning the league and less than £2m for TV rights.

Anyway, its my game, my FM world, i enjoy the game more now as most of the teams in Scotland are targeting good players and managers, for me its fun, its really not for anyone else to judge.

The guy asked for a suggestion, i gave him one.

of course it is cheating. you get benefited by that so yes you are cheating. if you want to argue that it is your save, your rules then, we all agree as long as you don't try to make others do it.

people, don't cheat, come on, play the game properly

you could start managing a second team in belgium, manage two teams at once, i do this in serie a.

im currently managing fiorentina and ac milan

or maybe you could inject a load of cash into the clubs....

of course it is cheating. you get benefited by that so yes you are cheating. if you want to argue that it is your save, your rules then, we all agree as long as you don't try to make others do it.

people, don't cheat, come on, play the game properly

In what way does it benefit me? The other teams are better than they would be which in turn makes the game harder, they rival me for signings instead of me having the first option on every good player i come across, the AI managers are better as a result. I dont sign ANY big name players because i cannot afford them or their wages, so the rep going up does very little in terms of helping me.

Again i dont see the issue, the guy asked, "how can i make my rivals better" what i have done is an option, the only other one would be pumping them full of money and editing their managers, which is worse?

I just sell them my best youngsters for cut down prices... It seems to have worked. I've created a massive divide in the league though. There's a top 7 now including me, then the rest...

In what way does it benefit me? The other teams are better than they would be which in turn makes the game harder, they rival me for signings instead of me having the first option on every good player i come across, the AI managers are better as a result. I dont sign ANY big name players because i cannot afford them or their wages, so the rep going up does very little in terms of helping me.

Again i dont see the issue, the guy asked, "how can i make my rivals better" what i have done is an option, the only other one would be pumping them full of money and editing their managers, which is worse?

1) your league gains rep = benefits you

2) I never implied you cheating, I said that suggesting cheating is not good. Actually I would have no problem if you cheated but tried to convince others to play better.

3) I agree, other suggestions in here are worse.

4) let's not argue, better friends than rivals. don't forget if i become your rival you will have to save and load to improve me

1) your league gains rep = benefits you

2) I never implied you cheating, I said that suggesting cheating is not good. Actually I would have no problem if you cheated but tried to convince others to play better.

3) I agree, other suggestions in here are worse.

4) let's not argue, better friends than rivals. don't forget if i become your rival you will have to save and load to improve me

It honestly doesn't affect me, the young players i sign would come anyway, some of my top players, who in turn are some of Europe's top players signed for me long before the co-eff was this high and like i say i cant afford to sign any players who may now come because of the co-eff, i barely break even selling twice as much as i buy each year.

It was really a test of the DLR i started that i have just carried on, and im glad to say the test proved the DLR works quite well, if only the prize money wasnt so limited by licenses then it would be a perfect addition to the game, as it stands you will always be limited by things set in the database from the start which means getting the rep of Scotland up, is good in terms of seeing us there, but in reality you cant afford to compete with the big leagues no matter what, even if i got Scotland up to number 1 i would still miss out on tons of players purely because of money.

Dont worry im dedicated in my task, i think i re-loaded 1 AI game about 40 times before getting a good result, so i can get anyone through to the champs league

I'd guess the best idea would be to develop good players and sell to them somewhat cheap..

you are kidding right? you find cheating a good and decent solution?

To an unrealistic question? Sure. (That isn't a slight on the OP by the way; I try to do the exact same with my Hungarian league saves.) No manager in the world right now is seriously thinking "how can I help my main rivals get better?" If you want people to "play the game properly", this is absolutely not the thread for you.

To the OP, here's what I do:

- Bring in youth players and develop them specifically to sell to other clubs in my division. Refuse all bids for them from other nations' clubs; only accept bids from within my own nation.

- Overpay for any player I buy from another club in my country. Conversely, don't snap up my rivals' best players.

- Loan out my best youth players to other clubs in my nation. Again, reject all offers from foreign clubs. This is more difficult, as my reputation's usually so high that they don't want to move on loan - even to Ferencváros or Debrecen.

The more hacked solutions include:

- Any team which is taken over by a Fans' Trust is edited via FMRTE to have a Foreground Sugar Daddy.

- Facilities upgrades via FMRTE for clubs who make cup finals/European competitions.

So Andy, have you see the Hungarian league split down the middle into basically a good and bad half. It seems that the teams in Europe now are amazing and the ones who aren't are frankly terrible. As demonstrated by me drawing at home with 7th place Debrecen one week and then thrashing 8th place Kaposvar 8-0 away...

There's no short-term solution, and I think rightfully so...

In the long run, the more you win, the better your league rep will become, thus helping all the major clubs in your nation.

I thought Dynamic Reputation was introduced for this very reason, but of course you can't expect this to change overnight... There have been "One Club Nations" in Europe for ages, and the success of one club has rarely caused a general improvement of the whole domestic scene...

Before Dynamic Reputation was introduced I just altered the League reputation/standard every year based on performances and Coefficients.

It worked quite well, but still the AI squad building skills are too low to actually keep the game challenging after just a few seasons

So Andy, have you see the Hungarian league split down the middle into basically a good and bad half. It seems that the teams in Europe now are amazing and the ones who aren't are frankly terrible. As demonstrated by me drawing at home with 7th place Debrecen one week and then thrashing 8th place Kaposvar 8-0 away...

To be honest the way i have done it has also created a split, you get the same 6 teams in Europe each season and the rest are cannon fodder for the best part. The team that gets promoted each season usually wins maybe 1 or 2 games if they are lucky, and the team in 6th is usually about 20 points ahead of the next team come the end of the season.

So Andy, have you see the Hungarian league split down the middle into basically a good and bad half. It seems that the teams in Europe now are amazing and the ones who aren't are frankly terrible. As demonstrated by me drawing at home with 7th place Debrecen one week and then thrashing 8th place Kaposvar 8-0 away...

In my save, there are three distinct sections in the league. There's me, Ferencváros, and Zalaegerszeg (tycoon-owned ZTE), then a huge gap (ZTE have 1.5x the points of fourth, after 20 games) down to REAC, Kecskémét, Gyirmót, Debrecen, Honvéd, Szolnoki MÁV FC, Videoton, Győr, and Dunakanyar-Vác, then another huge gap (12th-place Vác have 1.5x the points of 13th) down to Felsőtárkány, Kaposvár, BFC-Siófok, and rock bottom Újpest. The gaps are so stark that teams in the top section regularly beat the middle section by 4+ goals, then teams in the middle section regularly beat the yo-yo clubs in the bottom section by 4+ goals. Ferencváros have played Újpest twice this season - in real life the most intense rivalry in Hungarian football - and the games have finished 8-0 and 7-0. My under 19s regularly crush teams in the bottom four by four clear goals in the cups.

The league basically breaks down this way:

Section 1: Me, and teams who regularly buy players from me.

Section 2: Teams who occasionally buy players from me, and teams who consistently loan players from me.

Section 3: Teams who neither buy nor loan players from me.

That accounts for pretty much the entire split between those sections of the league.

Seems to me that the best way for me is just doing what I'm doing. While I'm financially healthy, I can't really afford to practically "give" money away. I'm also not really into cheating.

So, the thing I can do so far is loan out my best youth players to teams in the league (which I'm already doing).

We'll just see what the future brings to the other teams.

It's still cheating to save and reload.

Although the point is to cover for the lack of AI....

I wish i could loan players to my rival clubs, but unfortunately there is a bug in the Scottish league that prevents SPL teams loaning players off each other which scuppers that

In what way does it benefit me? The other teams are better than they would be which in turn makes the game harder, they rival me for signings instead of me having the first option on every good player i come across, the AI managers are better as a result. I dont sign ANY big name players because i cannot afford them or their wages, so the rep going up does very little in terms of helping me.

Again i dont see the issue, the guy asked, "how can i make my rivals better" what i have done is an option, the only other one would be pumping them full of money and editing their managers, which is worse?

Having the other teams in the league doing better in Europe drives the reputation of the league up and therefore allows you to attract better players. That is how it benefits you.

Now I'm not going to get on my high horse and say that you shouldn't cheat, if you want to cheat then go ahead, just don't come on here and tell other people to.

In my save, there are three distinct sections in the league. There's me, Ferencváros, and Zalaegerszeg (tycoon-owned ZTE), then a huge gap (ZTE have 1.5x the points of fourth, after 20 games) down to REAC, Kecskémét, Gyirmót, Debrecen, Honvéd, Szolnoki MÁV FC, Videoton, Győr, and Dunakanyar-Vác, then another huge gap (12th-place Vác have 1.5x the points of 13th) down to Felsőtárkány, Kaposvár, BFC-Siófok, and rock bottom Újpest. The gaps are so stark that teams in the top section regularly beat the middle section by 4+ goals, then teams in the middle section regularly beat the yo-yo clubs in the bottom section by 4+ goals. Ferencváros have played Újpest twice this season - in real life the most intense rivalry in Hungarian football - and the games have finished 8-0 and 7-0. My under 19s regularly crush teams in the bottom four by four clear goals in the cups.

The league basically breaks down this way:

Section 1: Me, and teams who regularly buy players from me.

Section 2: Teams who occasionally buy players from me, and teams who consistently loan players from me.

Section 3: Teams who neither buy nor loan players from me.

That accounts for pretty much the entire split between those sections of the league.

Hmmm... Interesting. You said that Hungary's League was 3 or 3.5 stars on your's or is it higher now?

The teams in my "Big 7" are quite different from you. There's me, miles above followed by:

Debrecen - They float about from 2nd to 7th on a yearly basis. Odd to watch because when they hit form they are unstoppable. They just reached the round of 16 of the Champions League for the second season in a row. I've sold them tons of players.

Ujpest - They are much like Debrecen, just more free spending. They go through players like they're going out of fashion, and they find some real gems too. I've had to hold myself back.

Videoton - They were second last season and are a good but inconsistent.

Ferencvaros - They are on and off but have sealed themselves in this group

Gyor - Currently second by some distance. I sold them on of my former top prospects and he's beasting for them.

Diosgyor - It was a top 6 before they came asking for some of my players. I just let them have them and now they're battling it out with the rest of them.

The order is how I'd rate them but they move about a lot and are generally quite close. The other "big club" in Hungary at the moment is my reserve team which I renamed Kispest Honvéd FC as I got sick of seeing the name Honvéd II. They dominate the cup to hell and make the second tier look like a joke. They're a result of my lack of control in the transfer market. I just sign far too many players, so they end up there for a few years before I either sell them on to other Hungarian Clubs or overseas.

Having the other teams in the league doing better in Europe drives the reputation of the league up and therefore allows you to attract better players. That is how it benefits you.

Now I'm not going to get on my high horse and say that you shouldn't cheat, if you want to cheat then go ahead, just don't come on here and tell other people to.

if you actually read what i say then you will have seen the point that i cannot afford any big players, wages alone rule them all out. But thats neither here nor there, the question was "how can i improve my rivals" my suggestion will do that, there is NO quick way to improve your rivals unless you exploit something, because in reality there is nothing you can do to improve your rivals.

The Hungarian league is the second-highest 3 star competition in my save. The biggest problem is nobody else had even finished third in their CL group until ZTE this season (beat Rangers home and away, which I loved ), never mind made the last 16.

Seems the way to go really is to loan players out if they're not starting regularly for you and try to keep good players in your own league when you're selling them.

I just noticed that we have a chance of going upto 6th in the UEFA coefficients this season! Debrecen is in the round of 16 of the Champions League whilst Videoton, Ujpest, Diosgyor and Gyor are in the round of 32 of the Europa league! Not likely that we will, but if say 1 or 2 of them perform well who knows! We're ~4.5 points off Russia, but they only have one team still in European competition!

if you actually read what i say then you will have seen the point that i cannot afford any big players, wages alone rule them all out. But thats neither here nor there, the question was "how can i improve my rivals" my suggestion will do that, there is NO quick way to improve your rivals unless you exploit something, because in reality there is nothing you can do to improve your rivals.

But the OP didn't ask for a quick way to improve his rivals, he asked for a way to do so, and the only way to do so without cheating is to continue winning things and eventually the league will improve and so will your rivals.

But the OP didn't ask for a quick way to improve his rivals, he asked for a way to do so, and the only way to do so without cheating is to continue winning things and eventually the league will improve and so will your rivals.

It will only get better if the AI teams do well in Europe even if your team wins the champs league every single season, but your right this can be done over the course of 20-30 seasons.

The easy (and quite fun) solution is to go to the bottom league of your nation, pick the smallest and most helpless team in there, then give that club a sugar daddy (foreground), tweak their director/chairman so that he is more ambitious (and resourceful) and set their max attendance to a number that is bigger than yours. Using FMRTE.

The fun bit is watching how long it takes an AI club with a sugar daddy to take their club from the bottom to the top.

The benefit for you and the league is that over time the club of course will improve. They will spend money, and that money is good for those who sell their players. If you are lucky, sooner or later you will get a rival up there. You can of course try out a couple of other FMRTE tweaks while you are at it: giving top training and youth facilities plus top coaches (but let their reputation remain low so they don't get snatched up by bigger clubs) to a club of your choice, to see if they improve over time. Just give a club lots of money and see how they spend them. Give a club a humungous sponsorship deal that lets them have profit over time. Give a tiny club a new stadium and (comparatively) great attendances and see them rise up the ranks.

If you do all this at once, you have many interesting things going on that could give you an incentive to keep playing that savegame. Just going into FMRTE and giving a couple of clubs a sugar daddy will take you two minutes, but could possibly give you hundreds of hours of renewed interest.

My goal for this save: improve the Belgian competition.

So far I'm doing great, won the league 10th time in a row and doing quite well in Europe too.

My biggest problem now is: while I'm getting better and better, my Belgian opposition is getting worse and worse.

This year no other team has even managed to qualify for the Europa League group stages.

Now I've managed to make the Belgian league a 3,5 star league (from 3 stars), but if I want it to improve further I really gonna need some help.

Any tips?

Use FMRTE to improve the best Belgian clubs. Improve their players, balance their attributes, give them a few wonderkids, improve their staff. This is something the AI is completely useless at. FMRTE is an ideal tool to do the AI team building for it since the AI doesn't have a clue what players it needs or what areas need improving. Ok so its not an ideal fix, but its probably quicker than having to reload your game constantly until your rivals win in europe. Spending an hour or so during every pre-season making AI squads in your league better (or at least keeping them up to a certain standard) using FMRTE works in my experience. You'll get a challenge every season, and those clubs should do well in europe on their own without reloading.

I'm also not really into cheating.

..........

What I find interesting about this thread is not that people are suggesting cheating--very likely cheating is the only way to solve the problem posed by the OP other than going through many seasons and hoping things work out. What I find interesting is that anyone could deny that the various suggestions about editing the save or reloading after every unfavorable result are, in fact, cheating.

Of course, the entire premise of the question is dubious in a simulation sense because no one wants to improve his primary rivals. On the other hand, a true fan of english football might not be too happy with Birmingham being in Europa this year.

That being said, if you are concerned about this issue and ready to start a new save, there is a non cheating answer. Do not load the major European Leagues. Create a save with Belgium being the best league at the start. Very likely Belgium will improve while Spain, Germany, Italy, England, etc. will not. As the years go by your leagues rep should rise. Of course, this will also take many seasons.

I recall someone doing a long term vacation save with Iceland loaded but not most of the major leagues and Iceland became a world powerhouse after a few hundred years.

Of course, the entire premise of the question is dubious in a simulation sense because no one wants to improve his primary rivals.

As a fan of Club Brugge I'm certainly cheering for any Belgian club in Europe. I want even the biggest rivals Anderlecht to do as good as possible in Europe.

Also the whole reason they implemented the playoff system in the league is to improve the quality of the clubs, the idea coming from the clubs itself.

So, the whole idea of wanting to improve the competition isn't as unrealistic as it seems.

of course it is cheating. you get benefited by that so yes you are cheating. if you want to argue that it is your save, your rules then, we all agree as long as you don't try to make others do it.

people, don't cheat, come on, play the game properly

I want to play the game the way I want, not the way YOU want!

What I find interesting about this thread is not that people are suggesting cheating--very likely cheating is the only way to solve the problem posed by the OP other than going through many seasons and hoping things work out. What I find interesting is that anyone could deny that the various suggestions about editing the save or reloading after every unfavorable result are, in fact, cheating.

Of course, the entire premise of the question is dubious in a simulation sense because no one wants to improve his primary rivals. On the other hand, a true fan of english football might not be too happy with Birmingham being in Europa this year.

That being said, if you are concerned about this issue and ready to start a new save, there is a non cheating answer. Do not load the major European Leagues. Create a save with Belgium being the best league at the start. Very likely Belgium will improve while Spain, Germany, Italy, England, etc. will not. As the years go by your leagues rep should rise. Of course, this will also take many seasons.

I recall someone doing a long term vacation save with Iceland loaded but not most of the major leagues and Iceland became a world powerhouse after a few hundred years.

Well, when you cheat, you do it for your own benefit. I would say that improving your rivals cannot be cheating - it is in fact the opposite of doing things for your own benefit. The game fails to give you a challenge after a few seasons, but with the help of FMRTE you could give that save a new life. I think this is better than to impose restrictions on yourself or to take over the teams yourself. Tycoon takeovers happen in RL too, and there are rich guys funding their local team also.

Heressomething....usingtheFMRTE,if I give a sugar daddy to all the lousier teams will it help any slightest way ? For example more incoming bids , building development........more competiveness in the future?

Speaking of needing to improve my rivals I'm set to face Debrecen in the Champions League semi-final!

Honvéd 11 - 1 Debrecen (agg.)

And with that we are guaranteed 6th place in the UEFA coefficients. We've completely destroyed Debrecen's confidence and they in truth didn't deserve that result in a Champions League semi-final.

They made their success out of being a team that you just couldn't score against and nicked goals. It looked to be going the same way in the first leg at home. It was 0-0 at half time. Then... 15 minutes into the second half Maxi, my young striker who'd been having a terrible game just put in the pass of the season to set up the first. Then the second went in straight away. They clawed one back to which my team went ballistic and scored 6 in 15 minutes to end the contest 8-1 at home. The second leg followed a similar story until the second half when we yet again belted 3 in a few minutes to finish it in style. What changed, I knew that Debrecen you handle long shots, crossing and long ball until the cows came home. A few good through balls though and they lose it.

Ujpest are set to play in the Europa League Semi-Final too though. They won at home 2-1 against Liverpool. Should be interesting, but that's got to left to another time. Certainly Hungary's breakthrough season though.