Still work to do with the AI

I don't think the AI cheats, like many other suggests, but I think the calculation of the game is much too hard in the usercontrolled clubs disadvantage. It seems like AI always give the computercontrolled clubs the optimal/best outcome in most situations. For instance I guess the AI doesn't do mistakes regarding Teamtalks. So, if you, choose the wrong Teamtalk to your guys, this could turn the game in second half...because the AI's Teamtalk is always to the best for the computercontrolled players. That's why it sometimes can overrun you in the second half, just because of this Teamtalk, in addition to the famous 4-2-4 computercontrolled change of tactic, even though you had full controll in the first half, is big favourite, have the best players etc.

I think that FM could be better if SIGAMES let the computercontrolled managers do more mistakes during the season/a single match like the usercontrolled manager obvious do and is natural IRL. I don't know if this is already done by SIGAMES, but it sure doesn't seem so.

Learn from the best chessgames nowadays. They let the computercontrolled opponents do mistakes depending on how skillful they're supposed to be. It can be everything from childish mistakes to obviously bad moves among adults.

I'm fairly sure AI managers do bad team talks sometimes.

It's hard to judge because the effects in the 2nd half are the combined effects of your team talk and that of the AI so if you both get it right or both get it wrong you won't see a big difference, but if the AI gets it right and you get it wrong then you have no chance and vice versa.

I have had as many times where the combination of my HT team talk and that of the AI has caused me to over-run the AI team in the second half as I've had times when I get it wrong and the AI over-runs me.

I agree that the effect pf team talks is ludicrously over the top since there are so few options to choose from that is is sometimes like a lucky dip, but I don't think it is biased towards the AI.

I agree with glamdring, you can see in your media that the computer has given a poor team talk, as the opposition players come out and slate the manager. The lower down a respective managers 'man management' ability, the more likely he is to make a mistake, like your quoted computer controlled chess games.

I dont know what other situations you are implying that the computer gets it 100% right, is it only the interaction options? Commenting on a players form, will it always have the desired affect? Interaction with regards to you, they always come out on top in any mind-games? Your players, or his will let you know who won, with their personal thoughts.

As you said you only guess, I dont want to sound like I am having a go.

Originally posted by glamdring:

I agree that the effect pf team talks is ludicrously over the top since there are so few options to choose from that is is sometimes like a lucky dip, but I don't think it is biased towards the AI.

At least twice a season I make a miraculous second half turn around and I don't think that has anything to do with my inspirational team talks, it could be, it could be down the AI messing up, it could be down to the fans we just don't know.

I haven't any facts, of course, that concludes my opinion. It's a feeling that comes around when something unatural, through my eyes, happens far too often, and not occasionally.

I guess neither of you have any facts that can verify that the AI is optimal in it's current shape and form, and it all comes down to our subjective feelings.

I feel it's wrong when you're beeing outplayed by a much weaker opponent, and they score easy goals against you. The problem is that it happens in to many games through the season and NOT occasionally. This even happens when in front of the season is expected to be a title challenge/-winner.

I know that the AI change tactics many times through a match and I catch a very close eye to the Action Zone screens. When I see that I lose grip in an area I try to counter that tactically. When I lose grip in the midfield I often increase the 'closing down" on all the opponents midfield-players. I addtion I combine it with hard tackles. If I'm desperate I also start to 'man-mark' them. And still...they dominate the area. I lower the defence-line. Still no effect. Since I'm often a big favourite I can only see two options...1) The opponent players are despite all, much better than mine. 2) The AI runs the show and help them to find the great tactics that overrun me.

In the latter it's not likely that a weak opponent can outplay and dominate over ManUtd, Chelsea or Arsenal just through pure change of tactics and teamtalks on a regular basis. In rare occasions it might happen. that's the real world.

Well the fact is that I never get outplayed by lesser opposition, I might lose by the odd freak goal to them twice a season, but 8 league titles says that winning is possible. It's because of that, that I assume problems against lesser teams is down to tactics and problems with management rather than the AI finding great tactics.

You're right it happens now and again, but if it's happening all the time then somethings wrong with your tactics because it doesn't happen to me.

The AI isn't perfect in its team talks. If I ever let my ass man take control of a friendly he seems to upset the players with his team talk. I also often disagree with what he has to say when I click on the assistant manager team talk option, and I don't have any problems with my team talks.

I stick to "For the fans", at the beginning of every match, "encourage" if i'm winning 1-0, "pleased" if i'm winning 2-0 or above and "angry" when losing. Seems to work ok, despite being quite limited.

Originally posted by Ernst:

I haven't any facts, of course, that concludes my opinion. It's a feeling that comes around when something unatural, through my eyes, happens far too often, and not occasionally.

I guess neither of you have any facts that can verify that the AI is optimal in it's current shape and form, and it all comes down to our subjective feelings.

I feel it's wrong when you're beeing outplayed by a much weaker opponent, and they score easy goals against you. The problem is that it happens in to many games through the season and NOT occasionally. This even happens when in front of the season is expected to be a title challenge/-winner.

I know that the AI change tactics many times through a match and I catch a very close eye to the Action Zone screens. When I see that I lose grip in an area I try to counter that tactically. When I lose grip in the midfield I often increase the 'closing down" on all the opponents midfield-players. I addtion I combine it with hard tackles. If I'm desperate I also start to 'man-mark' them. And still...they dominate the area. I lower the defence-line. Still no effect. Since I'm often a big favourite I can only see two options...1) The opponent players are despite all, much better than mine. 2) The AI runs the show and help them to find the great tactics that overrun me.

In the latter it's not likely that a weak opponent can outplay and dominate over ManUtd, Chelsea or Arsenal just through pure change of tactics and teamtalks on a regular basis. In rare occasions it might happen. that's the real world.

It's a bit of a jump from what I actually said to interpreting it as me thinking the AI is optimal! There are plenty of issues with the AI, I just think that it always getting team talks correct is not one of them.

If you keep losing to lesser opponents you either don't have as good players as you thinkk you do or you are making tactical errors. I find defensive-based tactics impossible to fathom so I often concede goals to inferior opponents, but that is due to my failings and (in my opinion) slightly dodgy programming of the defensive instructions in the game - same for me and the AI though - it's just that I have my own limited human understanding of what is happening.

I rarely get "outplayed" by inferior opponents. I sometimes lose to them because we create lots and score nowt and they create 1 shot and score it. I have also come up against teams who just dominate possession by triangulating passes between their defence and midfield meaning my team just can't get hold of the ball - that I consider unrealistic and a bug (despite watching Greece play Sweden recently).

Apart from that though I find all my failings come down to either me not being good enough tactically or my team having an off day or me getting a team talk wrong (but I have equally many times when I roar back to win when probably the AI has got its team talk wrong and I get mine spot on)

What kind of clubs are you all managing? I guess it's easier to get grips of things if you are a manager of one of the top 20 clubs in Europe, i.e. Liverpool, ManUtd. Real Madrid, Roma etc.

Does anyone of you have coaching experience IRL ?

I guess there is three main areas that influeces the outcome of any change in the tactics. These are: 1) Team instructions. 2) Player instructions. 3) Opponent instructions.

So..when the AI changes it's tactics, I guess you have to do something with one of these areas or a combination of them. Does anyone of you know if one of these areas is more important to change over the two others ? For instance is it more important to do some changing in each of the defenders 'closing down' slider in 'Player instructions' instead of changing the 'closing down' to "ALWAYS" under the Opponent instructions' for each of the opponent's strikers when you want to stress them alot, and be sure that your own defenders are close to the opponent's strikers when they receive the ball.

My main game is with Werder Bremen and Fiorentina so whilst they are big clubs they are certainly not amongst the top echelon who should expect to be winning constantly in Europe. Fiorentina only finished 6th in Serie A last season whilst Werder Bremen flirted with 7th place before I dragged them back up to 2nd, some 20 points behind champions Bayern Munich.

At that level not being able to get to grips with defending properly is quite noticeable

As for what to change when, I have to admit I have no idea what happens with opposition instructions if you create some mess of conflicting instructions in your own player's instructions and the opposition player instructions - probably your players just get confused and make mistakes. Personally I very rarely set opposition player instructions unless there is a player I consider especially weak or inexperienced who I want to make sure we close down or generally force into making mistakes.

Generally I will change team instructions beased on what I want to see change in the flow of the game whereas I often change individual player instructions if I want to respond to something the AI is doing. I watch most of Bremen's games in full match mode so I can get quite a good view of what is happening, although I still fail to fix what is wrong quite often!

Originally posted by Ernst:

I guess it's easier to get grips of things if you are a manager of one of the top 20 clubs in Europe, i.e. Liverpool, ManUtd. Real Madrid, Roma etc.

Yes and it's a learning curve i.e. I started FM08 using Man Utd and that's how I learnt what worked etc. No I manage a variety of teams from VFB Stuttgart to East Fife and Glentoran to Spurs. I have no coaching experience at all.

So..when the AI changes it's tactics, I guess you have to do something with one of these areas or a combination of them. Does anyone of you know if one of these areas is more important to change over the two others ? For instance is it more important to do some changing in each of the defenders 'closing down' slider in 'Player instructions' instead of changing the 'closing down' to "ALWAYS" under the Opponent instructions' for each of the opponent's strikers when you want to stress them alot, and be sure that your own defenders are close to the opponent's strikers when they receive the ball.

I never ever ever set opposition instructions and I never change my tactics mid match. I have a home tactic and an away tactic, no matter who i'm playing I use one of these tactics. Changing your tactics, IMO, harms your teams tactical abilities. FM recognises how used to a tactic a player/team is so changing it can have adverse effects, because the players don't have enough time to get used to it.

The example is when I take over a new club I use my trusted tactics, but the team doesn't necesarily play very well using them for the first 5/6 games. They gradually get used to them and by mid season your team will be playing exactly the way you want them to play and now that they are used to that tactic they will play like that forever. Constantly chopping and changing, or tweaking as it seems to be called, means the players never have a set tactic.

I'm not totally convinced by that...I make plenty of tweaks to tactics mid-game and it doesn't seem to have a big adverse effect. I start with the same tactic every game (well, slightly different slider settings + counter-attacking for away games), but will often pile on more forward arrows or crank up mentality or tempo or take tempo down or whatever during the match to unsettle my opponents or to try to exploit different things.

Plus if you keep a rigid tactic opponents learn it as well as your own players!

I take your point re: opposition learning it, but I vary my starting line up so it might act as a tactical change. I play a narrow 4-2-3-1, sometimes I have two of the 3 AMC's as skillfull players with pace and sometimes I play strikers breaking into the box, sometimes I play an MR who is more solid. I think the consistency of tactic is aided by the variation in starting 11 style. Either that or sometime soon i'm about to be found out

The AI isn't perfect and does not always do everything right. Different managers have different success and the quality of a manger can have a big impact on an AI teams performance.

This works both ways, a new manager can improve a team or completely destroy them. This is very well demonstarted in Kipfizh's excellent AI experiment. In there you get a real feel for what attrbutes affect a managers performances and how a good manger can make all the difference, as can a poor one.

And like others have said, I rarely get beaten by poor opposition so this is entirely down to how you play the game. I also rarely see a team make a miraculous recovery against me after half time. It does happen on some occasions but rarely enough for it to be realistic.

I'd like to see managers having more personality, and more individuality, but there's not a problem that I can see with AI managers being too good.

The FM manual states that you shouldn't change your tactics alot. It confuses the players when you use several tactics during a match, i.e. from 4-4-2 to 4-5-1 to 3-5-2 to 3-4-3 and maybe back to 4-4-2.

This is quite obvious a paradox to what 'glamdring' experiences. Maybe it depends on the quality of the teams and that the player of top European clubs can manage these changes in formations and tactics better that ordinary player. I guess it speaks for itself. Have you 'glamdring' noticed that this ability to absorb these changes is different among the players of Werder Bremen and East Fife ?

I don't think Glamdring changes his tactics quite so drastically so it maybe doesn't affect his game so much. Other users on these forums say about making changes every couple of minutes during the game to counteract certain things, that would be a drastic change and so affect the players.