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FM13 AI Player Development Project


Erimus1876

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PATCH 13.3.2 UPDATE - This project has been postponed until FM14 as some essential issues remained unresolved even with the final SI patch.

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FM13 AI Player Development Project

*** OPEN BETA ***

We all know the AI is poor at developing its players - often allowing their talent go to waste by letting them stagnate in the reserves. Most young players coming through also fail to reach anywhere near their potential ability because they often go season after season without ever kicking a ball.

All this leads to a progressively weaker gameworld as the AI squad quality degrades over time - leaving the human manager to go on to eventually dominate.

This project is based on the theory that giving AI teams more opportunities to field their young and fringe players in competitive and meaningful matches may help their players' CA develop better, and along with it that players reputation, which in turn could stimulate more transfer activity.

What these files have is a system in place that has replaced the default reserve leagues with an extensive parallel league system built under the secondary league structure in the editor. And because secondary leagues are classed as competitive competitions any appearances made in them are recorded as 1st team games. Therefore in theory this should help develop any players playing in them just as they would if those players where playing in the 1st team in the EPL, Championship, Bundesliga, or Serie A etc.

This is the 9-level basic structure for England with the optional 3-tier School Network tagged on for an extra layer of player development:

structurel.jpg

England contains the accurate league pyramid down to level 9 (the county primary leagues). Running parallel to these main leagues is a regionalised reserve league, above which is a 3-division national reserve league, and finally above that sits a 2-tier academy league consisting of the national academy league and an elite Academy School of Excellence for the 12 best academy clubs in England.

The very top of the English Academy/Reserve League Pyramid:

acadtop.jpg

The very bottom, 9 levels lower:

acadbottom.jpg

With this system it is now possible to take your level 9 clubs' reserve team all the way up the regional and national reserve league system, to the very top School of Excellence.

The reserve & academy leagues have strict player rules which forces the AI (and you) to field a majority of younger players with only 4 over 24's allowed. This gives the younger generation of players the badly needed match-time they require at a crucial stage in their development.

Also included are files that have 2-tier academy leagues for France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

Example of the 2-tier Italian Academy League setup:

euroacad.jpg

You don't have to load all 9 levels if you don't want to. The academy/reserve system is linked to the main league structure, so for example if you only make down to the Blue Square Premier active, you still have active reserve leagues down to that level too.

But if you want an active reserve squad for your club you will need to make sure they're at least at an active level in your game, so its important to check to see what level your clubs' reserve team is at before deciding what levels to load down to!

The original thread where this idea was first discussed can be found here:

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/329719-AI-still-unable-to-develop-young-players

This should still be considered a Beta Test since there is no long term data to analyse yet. So whether this player development network is making AI teams in long term saves more of a challenge to compete against is still open to debate.

Thanks to Big Yellow, DNicholls, DJ Sir Matthew, DrizzitD, ViG1980 & Tactic Master for holiday tests. :thup::thup:

Download from here:

http://footballvideogames.weebly.com/database-downloads-for-fm13.html

Instillation instructions...

Copy the file to the following folder:

C:\Users\YourName\Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2013\editor data

Then when you start a new game:

  • click on change database
  • on your editor data files screen, tick all the files you want to load
  • then on your choose nations screen tick the nations you want to include in your game
  • also tick 'add players to playable leagues'

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Optional extra...

Grass Roots Football in Football Manager for the first ever time?

This is an added layer of player development included with the above files.

Normally newgens just pop up each season and appear in your youth team with no pre-history of where they came from (apart from their town of birth). The grass roots add-on changes this slightly. It contains a School Team network and a regional School Association network for 15 - 18 year-olds.

These networks produce very young players - "schoolboys" - that start off in their school team aged between 15 & 16. There are 128 school teams playing in regionalised mini-leagues throughout England. Above the school team leagues is a regionalised School Association, and above that are the Association's Academy teams. These young-player academy teams have direct feeder affiliate links to most professional clubs in England, Scotland, and some from Wales. Each schoolboy can play up to 15 matches a season for his team - giving him vital match time that he would be lucky to get elsewhere.

The professional clubs sometimes sign the best of these youngsters throughout the season, and because some of them have competitive grass roots matches already under their belt before joining a pro-club, they often have a head start in their development compared to a normal youth team newgen.

This does not replace the normal professional club newgen intake or the default SI youth leagues. Its just an added option that compliments the current system.

Example of a school league:

school3g.jpg

school2w.jpg

Couldn't quite get the school yard look, but this'll do:

school1x.jpg

School Association Leagues:

school0.jpg

Example of some schoolkids who were good enough to be spotted by professional clubs:

combinedapps.jpg

It may now be possible to follow a newgens career all the way from him being a 15 year-old boy playing in his school academy team, to him becoming a multi-capped world known pro playing in the world cup finals! :)

Example of a regional school football academy team:

academyteam.jpg

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I tried to continue from when you left off before, but being a total newb at the editor it was quite overwhelming, but very entertaining to instruct myself with.

I'm very looking forward to this, thanks for continuing it yourself!!!

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Are you still planning on releasing these updates for other league like the older versions had, I want to work with this but don't want England becoming overpowered and thus aiding in the killing of a long term game...Think the school system is kick ass and want to include that in my next game!!

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Are you still planning on releasing these updates for other league like the older versions had, I want to work with this but don't want England becoming overpowered and thus aiding in the killing of a long term game...Think the school system is kick ass and want to include that in my next game!!

There are top-end academy leagues from 4 other nations besides England included with this, so England shouldn't dominate the game. I'm hoping this system will make England a tougher place to manage in due to all 800ish teams in England having access to academy/reserve leagues and the school system network (should you load it). But on the European front those top-end academies in Spain, Italy, Germany, and France should help develop players from those nations just as the English academy does at the highest level.

I think England can be used as a blueprint that can be extended to other nations in future updates - provided all this works!! :D If it works, then the time it'll take to implement it on a wider scale will be worth it. So consider this first one as a test run, and lets see what happens.

The school system could have been far far better than it currently is but unfortunately I think there are some issues with affiliate teams in the FM13 editor that don't make it work as well as it should. So even though the system works, the amount of players coming through it and making it to the pro-leagues is pretty low at the moment. Having it loaded or not won't make much difference in the long run. If I could get it to produce 100 players a season that go on to become quality professional players it would be much better, unfortunately its only about 10% of that at the moment.

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Yeah, I'm delighted with it. If it does work out and you do expand it to include other countries beside the original ones included (not to sound selfish and ungrateful by wanting more) and SI continue to ignore this game killing issue in FM14, I'll probably just skip FM 14 and play this as it seems this might give me more entertainment than any token features FM14 will offer

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Can a professional club buy the "rights" to a player in these leagues, i.e. can they sign the player on a pre-contract but they won't go to said club until their time with their school has finished to continue development?

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I don't think so. The school teams are just normal teams like all the rest so there are no special rules for them. The only difference between the school teams and normal professional football league teams is they only offer their players 1 year youth contracts, and once that contract expires they can offer him a new one if he's under 17, or they have to release that player.

The best of those released players are then supposed to be picked up by regional school association & academy teams, but this is the part that doesn't work very well at the moment. Its rare for a released schoolboy to end up in an association team unfortunately.

The school association academy clubs are the next level up and luckily generate their own newgens so they at least fill up with real players after about 1 full season, and these teams also only offer youth contracts, except these clubs have direct affiliate links to several football league clubs who can take the players for free. Other football league clubs who don't have a specific affiliate link to an academy club that has a player they're interested in have to pay money for him. But I don't think there are any pre-contracts signed, although I could be wrong on that :)

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I can't wait to play with the school leagues. Be great for a player from my hometown to come through the schoolboy teams and go onto become one of the worlds top players, which will be a challenge for me to find the "next George Best" (I'm from Belfast)

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You can assign scouts to them. But those leagues should be off limits for the human manager if you're looking for a challenge. They're there to give the AI a chance ;)

Fair enough - I reckon the AI needs all the help it can get :D

Do you think the school sides will pick up any of the created players that I've done (ages range from 14-23) or do they just get a yearly intake like all the U18 teams do?

Also do any of the school kids get invited for trials at local pro clubs either while still at the school side or after they have left like a normal unattached player?

Or am I getting ahead of myself? :D

I suppose there is a lot of stuff we won't know or even think of until we play the game

Can't wait to play - almost got all created players done - up to 5500 done in the last week including two days off for the ear problem :)

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Fair enough - I reckon the AI needs all the help it can get :D

Do you think the school sides will pick up any of the created players that I've done (ages range from 14-23) or do they just get a yearly intake like all the U18 teams do?

Also do any of the school kids get invited for trials at local pro clubs either while still at the school side or after they have left like a normal unattached player?

Or am I getting ahead of myself? :D

I suppose there is a lot of stuff we won't know or even think of until we play the game

Can't wait to play - almost got all created players done - up to 5500 done in the last week including two days off for the ear problem :)

I don't know if your edited players will make it into the school academies. The academies and individual school teams get a yearly intake of newgens like every club does.

I've seen school academy players on trial at other academies, but not at pro clubs.

The amount of players moving from the school academies to the main English leagues is not as high as I would like. Only about 15 - 25 players a year seem to make the grade for a professional club to take them. So at present the school system is fun to play and watch, but it would be a whole lot better if more players stepped up and made it to the big leagues. Its something I'll have to work on in time, but for now I wouldn't expect the school system to have a big impact on the game challenge. The pro-team academy/reserve system is the one that will have by far the biggest influence on whether or not AI teams develop better squads in the long-run.

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I can't wait to play with the school leagues. Be great for a player from my hometown to come through the schoolboy teams and go onto become one of the worlds top players, which will be a challenge for me to find the "next George Best" (I'm from Belfast)

Only England has individual school teams but Northern Ireland has a 6-team regional school association league. Each team in it has a youth team and a more senior academy team :-

Belfast Schools Academy

Coleraine Schools Academy

County Antrim Schools Academy

County Down Schools Academy

Lisburn Schools Academy

Ulster Schools Academy

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I'll be keeping an eye on those one's particularly...I know it might be designed to help the AI and players shouldn't be exploiting it, but If I'm originally from Belfast and a real life Premier League manager, I'm probably going to be aware of the next generation of stars from my hometown....At least until I find the player that could reach the George Best level

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Mate this looks ace. As with others the lack of long-term development has put me off this game recently, although I eventually caved and got it as a christmas present to myself. As usual the first thing I did was go on here and have a glance through the skinning and editor forums and lo and behold, came across this.

Spent the last hour or so reading through that thread mentioned (over 400 posts!) and it was quite interesting reading. You've clearly gone to a lot of effort looking into this and trying to make somewhat of a patch. Big thanks to yourself and the others who have tested it.

Really looking forward to using this now. Do you have any idea when the latest update will be uploaded?

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I hope to have this uploaded around 9pm GMT tonight.

The School Leagues database is still an early Beta version that I'm not too happy with at the moment, but I'll continue working on it over the next week or so to see if I can make it work better than it currently does.

I'll still release this early Beta version tonight with the finished academy leagues for people to try out and give feedback/suggestions on.

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Download link is in post #2.

I've included the Liechtenstein file that contains the BETA V1.0 School Academy Leagues. This file is the one I'll continue to refine over the next couple of weeks to try and get it to run better than it currently does (i.e. feeding quality youngsters into the English, Scottish, and Welsh league system). So bare in mind its still in Beta (v1.0) if you use it as part of your career games.

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Cheers mate - will give feedback a bit later in the week

Going to do the usual and edit my club into a level 9 league - I'm assuming that I only have to swap the created club into a league I want and the reserve and U18 are automatically entered into their respective divisions or do I have to edit the reserve and U18 divisions too?

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Out of interest, is there a Cheshire team for the schools league? Suprised if there isn't considering the Manchester Met. Uni Sports campus is based in Crewe. ;P

The northwest has school leagues from Manchester, Merseyside, and Lancashire. Although I think there may be some schools from Cheshire playing in one or two of those leagues. The leagues contain teams from a wide regional area as possible as in this initial file I've only made 14 school leagues with 8 teams in each. If I can get it working much better than it currently does, I'll eventually expand it to include more leagues and teams, and even add more regional school association/academy teams into the mix too.

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Cheers mate - will give feedback a bit later in the week

Going to do the usual and edit my club into a level 9 league - I'm assuming that I only have to swap the created club into a league I want and the reserve and U18 are automatically entered into their respective divisions or do I have to edit the reserve and U18 divisions too?

If you're swapping them the reserve team should swap automatically too and go into the reserve league of the swapped team.

Edit: Actually thinking about it if you're creating a brand new club then you'll have to add a reserve team to it on the main team panel, then assign that reserve team to the league of the reserve team you're replacing.

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What I've done (to save on a lot of editing) is to change the details of Holmer Green to my club and assign a new stadium and city so no team swapping was done

pretty much done so I'll get back to you on that

EDIT

Reserves have been added to a reserve league but U18s have not - will check it out in the editor

BTW - noticed that the reserves had their attendance set at 10000 in the editor - changed to 0

Also noticed that my team are set to Semi Pro in the editor but are Amateur when game is created - didn't happen in the old DB but obviously I've changed the method of editing and Holmer Green are Amateur though don't exist anymore in theory - also my club has the same colour scheme as HG even though they were changed - may have to re edit the DB like I used to :(

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What I've done (to save on a lot of editing) is to change the details of Holmer Green to my club and assign a new stadium and city so no team swapping was done

pretty much done so I'll get back to you on that

EDIT

Reserves have been added to a reserve league but U18s have not - will check it out in the editor

BTW - noticed that the reserves had their attendance set at 10000 in the editor - changed to 0

Also noticed that my team are set to Semi Pro in the editor but are Amateur when game is created - didn't happen in the old DB but obviously I've changed the method of editing and Holmer Green are Amateur though don't exist anymore in theory

Your U18's will only be invited to play in the youth leagues once you get your team up into the Blue Square N/S. The youth leagues are the normal SI-made one so you won't have a U18 team playing in a league if your main club is playing below level 6.

What I do is make all my U18's available to play for the reserve team so they're playing in the reserve/academy league system every season (which in theory is better for them than the youth leagues anyways since they're classed as 1st team matches).

Also its worth managing your reserve team yourself if you want to get them up the reserve/academy pyramid quickly.

The attendances seem ok, even when left at 10000. I see very low attendances for low level reserve games in my save so I don't think it matters if they're set to 0 or 10000.

If your edits don't take, then try making the same edits on both the Lichtenstein file and the England file since they're identical databases. One must be overriding the other so you'll have to edit both.

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Your U18's will only be invited to play in the youth leagues once you get your team up into the Blue Square N/S

that's cool - what I did in the old DB was set up a feeder team in another level 9 league and sent the best 4 or 5 U18s there for a bit of competitive experience - but now playing for the reserves would do the same - will still set up the feeder club because I think there is a problem within the game that makes getting a parent or feeder much harder if not impossible (not using the word bug :D )

I'm setting up another edit the way I used to just to see if there is any difference - although you are probably right about a conflict between the 1.08 and the youth DBs :)

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I just noticed something in my yearly uptodate to my test game...After the first season. Michael O'Neil, N. Ireland manager is contracted to the Belfast Schools team in the academy...whilst managing the nation. Might require some rep tweaking or something to prevent that from happening. But the thing is, O'Neil probably has a low reputation and thats why he's being picked up!!

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I just noticed something in my yearly uptodate to my test game...After the first season. Michael O'Neil, N. Ireland manager is contracted to the Belfast Schools team in the academy...whilst managing the nation. Might require some rep tweaking or something to prevent that from happening. But the thing is, O'Neil probably has a low reputation and thats why he's being picked up!!

His reputation will have to be raised if that's a major issue. Although I've noticed in some of the long term tests there is often a high turnover of coaches and managers at these school teams, so he may not stay there too long before moving on.

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I've made a minor tweak and uploaded V1.1 of the school file.

Its nothing to start over about, its just a small change to the school season start date. I've brought it forward 2 weeks to cut down the chance of school academies scheduling unrealistic friendlies against high-rep cubs.

(I've added a changelist to the bottom of post #2 that I'll keep up to date).

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Set up the edit the way I used to

Reserves fixtures are there after setting up a reserve team for the created club - AND remembering to make Holmer Green extinct as they were still in the reserve league before :D

One thing I noticed is that although I have the reserves and U18s (and the training ground ) set up to play at a local school the fixture list does say that the game will be played at the main stadium - set the game off on holiday to see if they do play at the main stadium or if it's just a cosmetic thing and they actually do play at the school

Looking very good so far - now just have to sort out the club logo and add a few more staff and I'm good to go and start a proper game tomorrow \0/

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I've made a minor tweak and uploaded V1.1 of the school file.

Its nothing to start over about, its just a small change to the school season start date. I've brought it forward 2 weeks to cut down the chance of school academies scheduling unrealistic friendlies against high-rep cubs.

(I've added a changelist to the bottom of post #2 that I'll keep up to date).

cool - I haven't needed to touch the schools DB (as all my changes work) so will just replace new for old before tomorrow

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Correct stadium for the reserve fixtures now - must have started game off before saving the stadium edit :rolleyes:

How can you set the schools as playable? The schools database is ticked in the extra files screen but can't see where they can be added as playable on the next screen - only goes as low as regional level 9 - but I have all the schools ticked in the custom database bit (load all players from.. )

Great work - game is pretty much ready to rock in the morning :thup:

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Correct stadium for the reserve fixtures now - must have started game off before saving the stadium edit :rolleyes:

How can you set the schools as playable? The schools database is ticked in the extra files screen but can't see where they can be added as playable on the next screen - only goes as low as regional level 9 - but I have all the schools ticked in the custom database bit (load all players from.. )

Great work - game is pretty much ready to rock in the morning :thup:

Tick the BETA V1.0 School Academy Leagues.dbc on the extra files screen, then when the Choose Nations screen pops up you'll notice Lichtenstein is now amongst the selectable nations, so tick it on there too and it'll appear on the next screen listing all your playable nations.

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I'm somewhat through it.

Only thing to note is that there are an abnormal amount of players from Liechtenstein in my U18s team.

What team are you?

Lichtenstein is just the host file, but all the teams on it are based in the UK so player nationality should only be English, Scottish, Northern Irish, and Welsh.

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Tick the BETA V1.0 School Academy Leagues.dbc on the extra files screen, then when the Choose Nations screen pops up you'll notice Lichtenstein is now amongst the selectable nations, so tick it on there too and it'll appear on the next screen listing all your playable nations.

Read this just minutes AFTER I've started a new game :D

First impressions are very good - seems the AI teams are a bit more competitive but TBH that feels more like a tweak by SI rather than having something to do with the reserve leagues as it was right from the start

Found the finances a little bit harder but TBH I didn't do the usual sponsorship stuff I usually do (Council Grant/Stadium sponsor etc) - just changed from semi pro to amateur to make finances a bit easier/realistic - obviously with this DB you don't get the mickey mouse cups so lose out on a little bit of revenue

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Read this just minutes AFTER I've started a new game :D

First impressions are very good - seems the AI teams are a bit more competitive but TBH that feels more like a tweak by SI rather than having something to do with the reserve leagues as it was right from the start

Found the finances a little bit harder but TBH I didn't do the usual sponsorship stuff I usually do (Council Grant/Stadium sponsor etc) - just changed from semi pro to amateur to make finances a bit easier/realistic - obviously with this DB you don't get the mickey mouse cups so lose out on a little bit of revenue

Yeah it'll take a few seasons before any thing noticeable AI strength-wise becomes apparent. Players have to work through the system, come up through the youth ranks and gain plenty of match time in the reserve/academy leagues before its worth comparing them against normal game newgens.

I've added prize money to the lower level leagues. The money depends on where you finish in the table. The winners of the regional league cups get a bit more cash too. But finances are something I'd like feedback on once people get 5 or 6 seasons into a game as its a difficult thing to balance properly.

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Noticed that last night when I was checking out stuff

One thing I've noticed is that when you try and arrange a friendly you don't have anyone listed under "nearby teams" even though I've set the lat/long for my team - worked fine on 1.07 :)

Works fine for me. I've just played a friendly against my old school team. My team of beer-swilling northern league cloggers have just booted a bunch of spotty 14 & 15 year old kids all over the pitch, winning 6-0.

It was like a scene out Monty Pythons Meaning of Life the way we celebrated each goal :lol:

Different sport, but you get the picture...

[video=youtube;8w6Vy3l9Gk4]

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It was like a scene out Monty Pythons Meaning of Life the way we celebrated each goal

More like Ripping Yarns -- "Eight Bloody One!!!!" :D

My team of beer-swilling northern league cloggers have just booted a bunch of spotty 14 & 15 year old kids all over the pitch

Proper football IMO :thup:

I added Watford as a parent club just for the extra income from the friendly and got 20k - I'll have to tweak that for the next game :D

BTW - I know you go from semi pro to pro when you get promoted to League Two but is there a similar criteria for going from amateur to semi pro like promotion to level 7 or 6 or is it more complicated and depends on rep and/or income?

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BTW - I know you go from semi pro to pro when you get promoted to League Two but is there a similar criteria for going from amateur to semi pro like promotion to level 7 or 6 or is it more complicated and depends on rep and/or income?

I'm not sure what the criteria is. Probably a mixture of rep and income at a guess.

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