Self imposed rules to make FM harder?

Just wondering if anyone here has any self imposed rules to make FM harder? Maybe like only signing and using 3-4 foreign players in your whole squad or something. Like to hear your ideas.

only use players from the youth academy. never buy anyone. Same for staff members, they can only be players in your team becoming staff

Using youth academy players only is a good one.

A personal favourite of mine however is what I like to think of as the University challenge. Either take over one of the University sides that are around in level 10/11 on one of the lower league databases for this, or use any regular club but impose the rules anyway.

The University challenge is as follows:

You are the manager of a University Football Club, as such all of your players are students. This gives you the following rules:

1) Players may only be signed at age 18/19 when they start their Undergraduate degree.

2) Players must be sold or released after either 3 or 4 seasons when they graduate.

3) You may sign one post-graduate student each year, a player aged 25 or over, who must be sold or released after 4 or 5 years when they finish their PHD.

4) No player may be sold or released before the end of their studies, so any 18/19 year old signing cannot leave before the end of their 3rd year, and no 25+ year old signing can leave before the end of their 4th year.

It's a bit of a convoluted set of rules but I've always really enjoyed it because it forces you to always be rotating your squad as players are forced to leave, you have to work to find signings because of the age restriction, and it makes risky signings much more of a gamble because if the player doesn't perform you're stuck with them for a few years.

only use players from the youth academy. never buy anyone. Same for staff members, they can only be players in your team becoming staff

I do this and take it a step further. Using the db that starts at level 23, I use the editor to create a squad and staff that are all CA 1, PA 200, with the players being 14 y.o. Obviously with the quality of training facilities at our disposal no one's going to get anywhere near CA200! I 'rig' the contract situation to make the whole squad stay and not demand to get transferred, so that squad of 22 will remain together until they retire.

I won't go into further details since many people would consider it cheating, even though it makes success much harder.

3) You may sign one post-graduate student each year, a player aged 25 or over, who must be sold or released after 4 or 5 years when they finish their PHD..

I bloody wish we got 4 or 5 years as a PhD student! Realism should demand that you have 3.5 years, the last 9 months of which you are a hermit who spends his entire time writing his thesis or crying about writing his thesis! Nice idea though.

I did the whole buying only players who are under 23 for the first team and developing them. It was actually quite fulfilling as I quickly learnt that I had to carefully plan years ahead of time what use I would have for player X when he was good enough to play. The challenge of playing only youth players is clearly much more difficult that this, since you are stuck with what you get.

Something I have always wanted to do is to build a team where I only sign players of my clubs nationality, and try to have success with them by bringing them up through the leagues. I have never gotten around to doing this though.

Something I have always wanted to do is to build a team where I only sign players of my clubs nationality, and try to have success with them by bringing them up through the leagues. I have never gotten around to doing this though.

I like to do this, particularly when I'm playing a "One Club" type save. On FM14, i tried it with Porstmouth and I took them from League 2 back to the Premier League and won a couple of Cups; 2 JPTs, 2 Capitol One Cups and 1 FA Cup. It made it a bit more trickier alright and fairly annoying when you come across some really good players but couldn't sign them because of their nationality. I really enjoyed the save though so I'd reccomend giving it a try.

I like to do this, particularly when I'm playing a "One Club" type save. On FM14, i tried it with Porstmouth and I took them from League 2 back to the Premier League and won a couple of Cups; 2 JPTs, 2 Capitol One Cups and 1 FA Cup. It made it a bit more trickier alright and fairly annoying when you come across some really good players but couldn't sign them because of their nationality. I really enjoyed the save though so I'd reccomend giving it a try.

So do you sell off players of other nationalities at the start of the game? Or till you receive an acceptable offer?

Every version I do my typical "youth academy challenge" with Crewe Alexandra. You can only sign ex-players that came through your academy and only use youth players that come through the intake (and your current team ofc) this is probably one of the hardest challenges but gives you a real long save where you have to simply develop your players even if there not the greatest of regen. These are the saves that give me the most joy

My big save is always with Ajax and I have also "youth only" rule, with exception of feeder team players (Ajax CT for example).

Another rule is that I won't hold any player back when big club comes to knock. If I get a great fee for them (difficult to name a number, but usually 2-3 times his value) I sell and take another youngster from U-19 to fill his place. It can backfire, of course, and my transfer policy is often being criticized by fans, but that's the challenge.

I only save/reload if I lose. All draws have to count, regardless of opposition.

I only use the in-game editor to look at players' PA after my scouts have identified them.

I only add other managers to teams if I really​ can't sell or buy who I want.

I only save/reload if I lose. All draws have to count, regardless of opposition.

I only use the in-game editor to look at players' PA after my scouts have identified them.

I only add other managers to teams if I really​ can't sell or buy who I want.

He said to make it harder, they will all make it easier

harder this is the hardest fm ever why would i make it harder... actually cant stand this incarnation

I only save/reload if I lose. All draws have to count, regardless of opposition.

I only use the in-game editor to look at players' PA after my scouts have identified them.

I only add other managers to teams if I really​ can't sell or buy who I want.

Do I sense sarcasm..!?

Something I've done since I began to play CM/FM is not a rule, more type of an ocd thing.

Every player I sign must in the history tab where you can see his statistics, have played a two digit amount of games once they've done it one season.. (If people understand what I mean..)

Makes the statistics screen look much more even! (Don't know why this started..)

Makes the game harder in a way..

I use custom databases and manage at very low non-league. To keep this realistic I only sign players who were born within a very small local radius, or have been released by other clubs who play within this radius. At the start of the game I filter in the player search by 'place of birth' and add these to a new shortlist which essentially becomes my pool of possible signings, and subscribe to the transfers of the other clubs close to me who are slightly higher up the pyramid. As I rise up the league, this pool gets slightly wider geographically, but I don't 'go national' until I'm in the Conference. Whenever I move clubs in the non-league I stick to these geography rules, so if my staff recommend any signings that don't fit this criteria I have to give them a swerve.

Similarly, when hiring staff, they also have to fit the local area, regardless of how poor they are.

I only save/reload if I lose. All draws have to count, regardless of opposition.

I only use the in-game editor to look at players' PA after my scouts have identified them.

I only add other managers to teams if I really​ can't sell or buy who I want.

lol

Bang on.

I'm just about to start an FMC save which will be more about taking the club forward than being the manager. Am going to start at Whitehawk in Vanarama South and am going to restrict my signings to a maximum age of 22. The challenge for me is firstly completely overhauling the team to bring in young players who can progress and then i'll be looking to progress these players as i go up the leagues. I imagine this is going to be very difficult, especially in the early stages so if/when i'm sacked (as i don't fancy paying to unlock 'unsackable' i'll just create a new manager and pick up where i left off. Not played much of FMC at all since it was part of the game so i'm looking forward to this until the new patch is out

Win the league while only using contain and playing without strikers

I can only sign one player per year, other than that, I have to rely on youth products.

I do like to go youth only as well, I cannot sign anyone, every player must come through the youth products.

I am surprised by how common the local youth only approach is used. To me, that would virtually remove the most fun part of the game (scouting/transfers).

I am surprised by how common the local youth only approach is used. To me, that would virtually remove the most fun part of the game (scouting/transfers).

It's almost like fun is completely subjective

I edited the skin I'm using so that player attributes are invisible - all I have to go on are scout/coach reports and actual performances.

Ian MacIntosh did a pretty good Moneyball/FM series, very good read and worth trying out. Here's the first post/rules: http://thesetpieces.com/features/football-manager-meets-moneyball-pt-1/

Also playing as Bilbao and only being allowed to sign Basque players would be a good challenge.

I used to have a bit of a convoluted system that "forced" me to sell a player whenever I got a bid for twice of his value. In some saves this forced me to completely rebuild squad after squad, others made no difference at all. I also experimented with restrictions to have at least a few homegrown players on the match squad.

Example of my rules at its wackiest version

Eventually I abandoned this because it was a bit of a hassle having to remember all the rules when doing transfers, and FM got harder for me in recent versions anyway, I didn't need any more constraints, it's difficult enough as it is. Made more sense in FM12 when it was ludicrously easy to build a successful team, and players had very little power, you could keep good players forever even with small clubs.

Hire a director of football and put him in charge of all signings and contracts. In a flash, you are now subject to the same squadbuilding AI as all the other teams.

I really like the ideas of using a skin to make all of the attributes invisible and having your director of football handle all of your signings and contracts.

Would it help to use the in-game editor to change your CA and/or PA to lower numbers?

If a team make a realistically high offer for a player, generally I'll let him go. I know there's mechanisms for the player to get unhappy etc and the risk they'll leave for a free, but if a team offers me 30-40 million for my star player I quite like the opportunity to rebuild, especially if I'm not a huge globally recognised (ie Madrid, Man Utd etc) club.

Sadly also means with my Karlsruhe team this version I've only been in the CL once

I do that with my Ajax youth only save. It's tricky to say what offer is good enough to enforce this rule, but usually when big club comes and offers 2-3 times of players value I accept. At times it leaves big holes in my squad, but on the other hand, it demands continuous flow of talented youth coming from U-19 team to fill those gaps.

For me it adds realism, because Ajax (and the likes of Karlsruhe, I suppose) are selling clubs in real life, who make more money in transfer market than they spend, and for talented players these clubs are stepping board for bigger leagues/reputation/money etc. So, when recieving suitable offer, there's no point in standing on your youngster's career.

Due to the same reason I'm hanging onto my first team / rotation players and always try to tie them down with long term contracts.

Ian MacIntosh did a pretty good Moneyball/FM series, very good read and worth trying out. Here's the first post/rules: http://thesetpieces.com/features/football-manager-meets-moneyball-pt-1/

Also playing as Bilbao and only being allowed to sign Basque players would be a good challenge.

I'm starting a new save, using his rules too.. although it was Alex Stewart and not Ian Macintosh.

I edited the skin I'm using so that player attributes are invisible - all I have to go on are scout/coach reports and actual performances.

I have done that before, and hope to try it again when starting a new game after the final patch is released. You should be able to view the hexagonal attribute graph though, which groups the attributes into sections, and makes it quite realistic.

When I start my A-League save (waiting on a database) I am going to try and build a team of all Adelaide players within five years.

I'm starting a new save, using his rules too.. although it was Alex Stewart and not Ian Macintosh.

Yeah so it was, the guy from TIG Podcast. It's Ian MacIntosh's site though, right?

So do you sell off players of other nationalities at the start of the game? Or till you receive an acceptable offer?

I try and sell them off as quickly as possible but I'll try and get the best deal for them. I put any foreigners into the reserves or whatever straight away.

I employ a director of football and let him sign my players and I only pick players based on their form from their last 5 games regardless of who they are.

I employ a director of football and let him sign my players and I only pick players based on their form from their last 5 games regardless of who they are.

That's interesting. Takes me back to FM07 (was it?) when club expected you to sign some new players and if you refused to make transfers, then board intercepted and brought in a couple of new signings in the last week of transfer window.

The edit skin to make the attributed disappear seems an amazing idea....wish I had thought of it.