Is this game too easy??

I managed Aston Villa for 15 years winning the title 9 years in a row, the champions league, F.A cups and so on numerous times as well in that period. I went a season only losing one game, the F.A cup final on penalties. Im not bragging but it is so easy, wheres the challenge gone like in previous games.

Man City have bags of money and yet still buy poor players and win nothing. Barca and Real Madrid the 2 richest teams in the world are also the same.Its so unrealistic. There is no team big enough that offers you a challenge.

This game is good at the start but after a while it just gets so boring and easy when you get your players and staff in. There is no way anybody could do an Alex Ferguson on this game without being bored of it.

To make it worse I moved to an under achieving Arsenal side and after 3 seasons I looked at my World beating Villa squad who are now playing Europa League,the A.I is terrible.

In a word, yes.

Somehow, I think the excitement needs to be more spread out (if possible) in future versions, I too have become bored after domination games.

Lately, I only buy players that are nationals of the nation I'm playing in. A lot more difficult.

Once you reach the top level the game does become easier. In most peoples game the AI does not seem to have decent long term planning to maintain a challenge. In my opinion even if you start a game as a big side there needs to be more challenge from the other big sides.

Once you reach the top level the game does become easier. In most peoples game the AI does not seem to have decent long term planning to maintain a challenge. In my opinion even if you start a game as a big side there needs to be more challenge from the other big sides.

exactly, I find myself building an empire and then just quitting to make another one and doing it over and over again.

The only way to ensure a long term challenge is to move clubs.

Ive got a game thats in 2047 at the moment, ive been everywhere from switzerland and austria to germany and argentina, its just a pity i need to move clubs regularly just to keep a challenge going.

I do a save of trying to win every continental competition so a long term save with a long term aim that keeps my games challenging and pretty long.

Its extremely difficult for SI to get the balance right however, after all, who would play the game if you were the manager and you finished 6,7,8,9,10th every season like the do in real life? There would be no long term players... it would be boring. So with this same mentality, you also look at how the AI adapts to tactics... how annoying would it be if the AI worked out your tactic once every few games?

For me taking Villa to Europe and winning everything is not really a massive challenge anyway. Getting the likes of conference teams to do the same is way more difficult, as it takes ages to battle with the big boys in terms of wage structures, transfer fees etc, and even when you do win one or two things, you are not guaranteed to win year in, year out.

Anyway, I quite enjoy taking teams into the prem and then just quitting and going to some rubbish team the bottom of the football league. I find that more fun and more challenging... hence why I enjoy long-term games more than perhaps you do.

But its each to his own in FM. Most like it at the top, and not so many like it at the bottom (which is the same reason why FML failed)

Thats why i would be in favour of a single, harder difficulty setting. Would make it so much more enjoyable for a lot of people.

I realise theres a lot of opposition to this, though im not sure why.

Thats why i would be in favour of a single, harder difficulty setting. Would make it so much more enjoyable for a lot of people.

I realise theres a lot of opposition to this, though im not sure why.

Probably because there's no realistic way to implement it. Improved AI would be put in as default for the better statted managers, so wouldnt be seperated into different difficulty settings. So the only way to really implement a "hard mode" is to just give the human team a flat penalty in terms of chance to win games. Or some other kind of bias that'd lead to the same. Which in my eyes would be pretty pointless.

I would say you have to implement your own difficulty levels, I have a tactic I developed with my Norwich side which is winning me everything, this season I am close to winning it all (Champs League, Prem, FA and League cups), so I will either do away with this tactic at the end of the season and try something new (I always liked 3-5-2 in the old CM days, may try and work on a tactic similar), or resign from Norwich and take over a League 2 side with my all winning tactic.

I'll probably do the former, as I will find it hard to leave Norwich, plus am in the process of getting a new ground and don't won't to leave before it's built.

I think poor planning from the AI in the transfer market is the single biggest reason for this. The game seems to start off at a relatively decent difficulty level, then just gets easier and easier as time goes on. It has got a little better in recent years with regards to this,but still needs a lot of work imo.

Does the AI even take into account a player's average rating yet, for example? On FM10, I took the same player with me to club after club and he scored bucketloads, because the new manager coming in never rated him highly and nobody else at other clubs ever went in for him. I checked with FMRTE and his PA was capped at 148, but because his high attributes were in exactly the right place, he still scored 25+ goals per season in every top division in Europe.

^^^

+1 to That. The AI is still taking the short cuts that were necessary in CM1. Looking at reputation and CA\PA but blind to attribute values. My single biggest hope for FM12 is that AI squad building is overhauled.

I think poor planning from the AI in the transfer market is the single biggest reason for this. The game seems to start off at a relatively decent difficulty level, then just gets easier and easier as time goes on. It has got a little better in recent years with regards to this,but still needs a lot of work imo.

Does the AI even take into account a player's average rating yet, for example? On FM10, I took the same player with me to club after club and he scored bucketloads, because the new manager coming in never rated him highly and nobody else at other clubs ever went in for him. I checked with FMRTE and his PA was capped at 148, but because his high attributes were in exactly the right place, he still scored 25+ goals per season in every top division in Europe.

Yes thats it. If you look at a team like Man City in this game they have all the money in the world and still buy poorly. They bought a regen off me for 50 million, one of my best players I ever had and they hardly ever played him.If the A.I improves in the transfer market and actually plays the players they payed a fortune for then we might start getting a bit of a challenge.

I agree that the problem lies in the awful transfers the A.I. occasionally does. And I don't think it would be that hard to implement a better transfer A.I. . They also have scouting reports, obviously, but they shouldn't rely on scouting reports alone. Usually, attribute distribution is more important than CA, yet the AI doesn't seem to recognize that fact.

In my opinion, the AI manager already has every tool to his disposal. Managers have a preffered formation and playing style. There are several roles for every position that highlight all the required attributes. All the A.I. has to do is decide on a balanced role system for his formation and sign players accordingly. As mentioned above, average rating also plays a huge role, yet in real life, I have seen the same happening. 20 goal per season players were put in the reserves or on the bench because 'they didn't fit in the system'. (I live in Belgium, but for who know them, Wesley Sonck or Kevin Vandenbergh are great examples)

This also gives me the idea to make scouts look for roles instead of positions, saying Johnny McJohn is a great box to box player instead of a great midfield player. This would also make it easier for the AI managers, since they would have to do less of the scouting themselves.

Strangely enough, I have occasionally encountered managers who kept on making great signings and made life hard for me. And when they resigned the club took a dive in the rankings. So maybe it is possible already, but the attributes required of the managers are just too high.

edit: what may also play a part is the fact that in real life, managers are seldom the only one making the decision who to buy and who not to buy. There are many clubs where the manager just says 'I need a strong forward' and then the chairman splashes some cash and buys a woeful player because the chairman doesn't know the least about football and the player has a good agent. We don't have that problem in Football Manager however, and although it would be realistic to emulate that problem by making other managers sign poor players, it unbalances the game

I didn't think that it was AS easy as when I got the "lower divisions" download and started at the bottom - at the lowest level you don't pay anything for players or pay anything to players as they're all amateurs, so i basicly just signed all the best players in the league, got promoted then did the same, getting rid of the dead wood for free as they weren't paid anything.... along the way I managed to pick up some decent football league material and managed to get into league 1 after about 12/13 seasons with 9 back-to-back promotions in the lower leagues.

In all fairness, it actually was really fun - but ofcourse winning is haha!