AI Experiment: The Impact of League Reputation on Club Reputation

My latest long-term game (2015) has been with Ajax in the Dutch Premier Division. Having been quite successful over the last few seasons, I started to notice something a bit strange with my club reputation. Around early May at the end of last season, our club reputation was ‘Continental’ and this then increased to ‘World Class’ after winning the Champions League. However, a couple of weeks later it had been reduced back down to ‘Continental’.

Understandably I was a little annoyed by this but remembering information I had read on these forums in the past I knew this wasn’t due to a bug but was down to the workings of League Reputation.

For those of you who are unfamiliar of the role of club and league reputation I have given a brief explanation below:

Club Reputation (CR)

Every club in Football Manager is assigned a hidden figure between 1 – 10,000. The higher this figure, the higher the reputation e.g. Manchester United = 9250, Accrington Stanley = 2500.

CR is the most important figure to any club as it determines areas such as attendances, quality of player you can sign, transfer budgets etc. This figure can increase or decrease based on the success of the club.

League Reputation (LR)

Every league is assigned a hidden figure between 1 - 20 based on the relative size and importance of the league. The higher the figure, the ‘bigger’ the league e.g. English Premier League = 18, Belarusian High League = 9.

The purpose of this is to maintain the balance of league strength throughout the gaming world. This is done in the game by some sort of capping on the CR of teams in that league at the end of each season. The degree to which these teams have their CR capped is determined by the LR of the league they compete in. LR is a fixed figure that can not change once a new game has been started.

With this knowledge a couple of questions occurred to me which I wanted to explore:

• Just how is this LR capping affecting my club’s reputation?
  
• If I am always successful (i.e. winning European Cup every season) will my club reputation continue to rise to the maximum (10,000) or will it reach a point before that where it can not be improved upon?
  

I have decided to investigate these questions and the relationship between CR and LR for my Ajax team in the Dutch Premier League. I have done this through use of FMM 2.25 in order to check the exact figures of CR. I should also say now that I have performed this experiment using FM08 but I think it is fair to presume the same capping system is employed for FM09. Results to follow shortly….

The CR of my Ajax team is 8891 and the LR of the Dutch Premier League is 14.

I have identified 3 key periods in terms of CR in the Dutch Premier League for the 2014/15 season:

• Starting CR (19th May)
  
• CR increase after European Cup win (20th May)
  
• CR decrease after league season finish (28th May)
  

I continued through the game, noting the CR change at each of these dates. This let me calculate the increase in CR due to winning the European Cup, the decrease in CR due to LR and the overall increase/decrease come the end of the season.

I then loaded the game back to 19th May, changed the starting CR to match that of the finishing CR from the calculations performed previously, and did the process again. Below are the results:

CR = Initial Club Reputation

CR EC = Club Reputation after winning European Cup

CR LR = Club Reputation after league finish (final CR)

Increase = Change in Club Reputation from winning European Cup

Decrease = Change in Club Reputation at league finish

Overall = Final increase/decrease in Club Reputation

[b]CR          CR EC       CR LR       Increase   Decrease   Overall[/b]
8891        9172        8954        281        218        + 63
8954        9219        8997        265        222        + 43
8997        9250        9025        253        225        + 28
9025        9274        9046        249        228        + 21
9046        9289        9060        243        229        + 14

Etc.

Looking at these figures it can be seen that CR is still increasing. However, it seems the overall increase in CR declines as initial CR increases. So I kept doing these calculations until I reached this set of figures:

[b]CR          CR EC       CR LR       Increase   Decrease   Overall[/b]
9086        9318        9086        232        232        0

So I have finally found a level of CR that can not be improved upon no matter how successful the club is. This Potential Current Reputation (PCR) is 9086. Out of curiosity I tested some CR values higher than this figure:

[b]CR          CR EC       CR LR       Increase   Decrease   Overall[/b]
9100        9326        9093        226        233        - 7
9500        9627        9364        127        263        - 136
10000       10000       9700        0          300        - 300

So it seems that even if the CR is artificially raised above the PCR value, the game will naturally bring it back down to the PCR no matter how successful you are.

It can therefore be concluded that playing as a Dutch team, the maximum CR that can ever be achieved is 9086. I’m a bit disappointed about this because even though my CR for Ajax would be ‘World Class’ it means I will never be able to attract the very top level of players. Add that onto the fact it’s unlikely I would win the European Cup every season, it probably means I’ll be stuck on Continental reputation for the majority of the time.

I now plan to test this with other European leagues, firstly the Greek and Turkish leagues as they also have a LR of 14 in order to see if the same results occur. It would be interesting to see what the maximum CRs are for different countries around Europe. From these results and further tests I may try to calculate the formula used and see what the exact link is between LR and the capping of CR.

I find this very interesting as i always wondered how the reputation works

thanks for the experiment and waiting for the other leagues

that was a great read, and a very well thought out experiment small mac. ive always wondered about reputation and how it works, so looking forward to the next leagues!