Svenc

More importantly, the model is based on the assumption that human managers as well as AI managers were seeing "eye to eye". Kind of a bit in like football management. That's blatantly not the case. For a start, unless SI were able to code AI able to read (and influence) the second by second match play the way a better human player can, there's always gonna be a gap. Generally, AI management is the main factor in why most experienced players are eventually experiencing what they experience. There's two possible solutions to make that gap smaller: - Improve AI management. - Limit input. Every option a player has is one where he can gain an edge over AI, eventually. This goes in particular for options influencing the second by second match play, e.g. individual player positioning with possession / without, general decision making with the ball, etc. The more micro control or rather influence you have, the wider the possible gap in between AI and player. AI is never gonna be as creative as a human player too. Limiting input naturally makes it harder for players who really struggle to do anything genuinelly "bad" too as a side-effect. The performance gap between AI and players becomes smaller across the board. Not arguing this to be the best route, mind. Long-term squad management naturally plays a big role as well, but that can be filed under point 1: improve AI management.

Well, they certainly took the opposite approach to Owlcat with their Pathfinder games. Enemies are too easy to hit? Just inflate their stats to kingdom come. Mind you, some of that is actually necessary (optionally either way), as Pathfinder is a rather unbalanced system. Allowing completely OP character builds even if playing by the official rules 1:1. Speaking of which, the mere notion that you would even NEED to rig the dice here is silly. All any developer of RPGs needs to do is simply giving enemies better stats. They'll be harder to hit. They'll hit you more. THey'll do you more damage, they'll be harder to kill, etc. And this can be made transparent, which is important. It's the difference between perceived "unfairness" (secretly fiddling with hit dice) or "fairness" (optionally giving enemies better stats to make the game harder). Any dev who'd still opt for going with "unfairness" is either (pardon me) an ass, an idiot or both. Naturally, FM is a bit more opaque. To put it that'aways.

It's more like the opposite, as certainly was the main motivation of it being in: making hits more likely with every streak of miss. It's an option mainly to avoid player frustration. To more or less quote Larian's CEO from an old interview when BG3 was announced in 2019 (can't find it atm): "Missing isn't fun. If you miss tons of times, you're going to give the game a bad review." D&D tabletop players are used to streaks. A Dice 20 system is rather prone to them. However, the game was meant to appeal to more than just D&D players. By the way: Despite the "That's XCOM" meme, XCOM acutally increases the chances to hit with a miss too (at least on lower difficulties). If there's ever any deliberately FIDDLING going on, it's always done to avoid player frustration. There's no point in deliberately frustrating your player base. What's more, once their trust in the fairness of your game is destroyed, it's hard to impossible to win it back. It's the most stupid thing you can ever do. I'm also still having a good laugh at that people overperforming across the shop is never reported as a possible issue -- but an AI managed team scoring from frew shots is always crossing the line immediately. PS (off-topic): I totally agree that some of Larian's "tweaks" have messed some things majorly up. Even D&D's inherent action economy... which is a part of the reason why combat is so easy and/or spells such as "haste" this overpowered.

Just logged in for the first time in eternity to comment that I genuinelly love the irony here. (And I'd be very concerned if the AI still wasn't able to "exploit" stuff like this -- at least once in every purple colored moon. Looks like there's still a lot to do for FM2025 though in that regard.) Btw, another newcomer on the management games block now gets the "cheating AI" treatment by players as well. It's the equivalent of the XCom meme, or more recent Baldur's Gate 3, which RNG apparently was totally rigged against the player. Actually, according to the internet the RNG is rigged against the player in just about any RPG. The more popular the RPG, the more rigged it is (as the number of bad game theory grows accordingly to a game's player base, naturally). PS: Any developer actually deliberately messing with its player base by implementing "cheat AI" is the dumbest kid on the block. Nobody is going to stick with a game long-term that they perceive as inherently unfair. That's not only a player lost. That's actually a paying customer lost. A CLEVER developer would do EVERYTHING to not even make that suspicious of his game cheating a player appear. BG3 even implemented optional "karmic dice" so that streaks were less likely to happen. The D&D faithful were furious. How could they? That's how. And did it do anything? Hell it did...

Yes, they did. Real Madrid 2 - 2 Valencia (August 27 2017) | La liga | 2017/2018 | xG | Understat.com Real Madrid 1 - 1 Levante (September 09 2017) | La liga | 2017/2018 | xG | Understat.com Real Madrid 0 - 1 Real Betis (September 20 2017) | La liga | 2017/2018 | xG | Understat.com Which would continue until well into January, with CR7 alone not hitting a cow's arse with a banjo, scoring but 4 goals from over 100 shots (two of which penalties). At which point Barcelona were already pretty much confirmed champs. Despite managed by someone doing a bit more than looking at final match stats to gauge how well his team played... Which the AI on this game luckily hasn't ever done either. Speaking of AI managers: If the AI were more capable at match tactics, it would pull of these kind of matches even more. General rule of the thumb: If the AI can do something you cannot, the AI has an edge over you, end of story. Imagine it was able to read the ME play the way the actually superior players of this game can (flaws included)... dynamically adjusting match tactics to space available during matches. SI aren't going to do that, naturally, as that would lead to enraged players.

Historically it's also been the human manager being super successful (as usual...), thus his team rising in reputation to the point that every AI manager choses defensive tactics. As would happen to any manager, AI included, from the start were they managing Man City, Bayern, et all. Thus not only the AI always having fewer shots -- but also the AI teams exclusively ever scoring from few/er shots. That's bound to happen even if the human manager weren't attacking 24/7. Toss a coin for long enough, you may even get a couple streaks... simple laws of probability. It seems some of the same familiar faces still popping in too. SPOILER: If you can't do that to the AI in particular in matches where the AI is considered massive match favourite, chances are YOU SUCK AT THIS GAME. SPOILER ENDING. What I said about if the AI were one day actually to become "decent": RAGE QUIT CENTRAL. I don't mind anymore, mind. I actually compare "quitting" football to when I quit smoking. At first, it was pretty hard. Nowadays I'm wondering what the fuss is all about and I'm often actually pretty alienated not merely by players and federations/officials, but fans alike, acting as if a simple (and occasionally fun) game of kicking a ball around indeed WAS a matter of life and death.

I see these kind of topics have never "evolved". Despite many human managers evidently still outperforming the AI left, right front and center on all accounts on FM20, 22, 23 and 33. Except for one crucial one. Which is winning a few matches despite having fewer/ lesser chances -- which is not gonna happen to that super successful human manager, as it will be exclusively AI that will shut up shop / play on the counter, seeing the human manager team as the big dog to frustrate. You can only ever win with fewer shots if you aim to have fewer shots, Sherlock Obvious. If the human managers would do the same from kick-off in that scenario however, matches would play out like a Western movie shootout, except for nobody ever drawing the gun... This is one of the reasons why I've stopped playing (the other is that I'm alienated by football these days). Because if the AI were to massively ever improve, the challenge would increase, and "it" would happen MORE oftently. Imagine an AI manager that could "read", as a good human manager can, where that space left to exploit would actually be... and dynamically in-match adjusting its formations/roles/duties and instructions accordingly. Rage-quit central.

That said, no FM playing experience currently whatsoever (or football interest, for that matter). But the first post sounds like there MAY be something iffy about Conte's actual match management (which is non-existent on leagues not fully simulated, as matches aren't actually fuly simulated). Wouldn't be a first for AI managers on the series. In particular given the frequency of how often he's being sacked. Still have vivid memories of AI Guardiola on about FM16ish, back when he was managing one of the most domestically dominating squads in the game at that time. Namely: Bayern. Which he semi-regularly got to scoring less than 60 goals per season, plus sometimes have them losing as many as 7/8 matches throughout. This was in parts connected to him frequently completely isolating Lewandwoski from all the rest, making him easy to mark to boot, as his "lone forward flat midfield" 4-1-4-1 primary "prefered formation" had that lone forward pretty much always on an attack duty regardless of the roles around that forward (and a couple other stuff). If you're unsure what to look out for, you could "test" this by replacing Conte in the db with somebody else (e.g. another AI manager) doing better in this edition. And of course, running a suitable amount of season simulations to rule out randomness (see sample size song). edit: Some of the more recent experiments seem to go in that direction already, albeit just by altering some of Conte's traits.

Jap-jap-japa-joe-jap. (First thing was talking him out of retirement two years earlier -- the wurst was yet to come. Butterfly effect doesn't even to begin to describe.)