New to FM, not sure what game settings to use

[MattyR]

Hello

I'm new to Football Manager, having just got FM11. I've spent the past few days collecting up the faces megapack and logos and kits etc, and I've been reading through the FM11 online manual. I've also been looking through the various screens of a test career I made.

The thing is, despite all my reading and searching, I'm still not sure about a few things. One of those is the number of leagues to include when starting a game. What I want to do is start as Bolton Wanderers and never move to another club. The game will end if/when I'm sacked or I get bored. I'd still like access to players from the top clubs in Europe, the Americas and a few eastern nations.

So, if I made only the English Premier League playable, and the top leagues of 40 or so other nations view-only, will I still get access to the players and regens of the English lower leagues and the teams in those top leagues? I read somewhere that in an older version of the game (I think it was FM09), regens from view-only nations were really bad. Has this been fixed?

Something else I don't understand is the level of detail in matches. I'd like as much information as possible from some of the domestic cup competitions in Europe and things like the Champion's/Europa League, but I'm not too bothered about anything else. What would be the best settings to use in terms of match detail? From what I've read, there are two engines used to simulate matches; one quick and one full. What exactly would I see differently if I looked at one match that was set to "All" match detail then looked at another set to "None"?

I was hoping someone could help me understand these parts. I've seen posts from loads of different message boards with people asking the same questions, but I can't find a definitive answer.

I'll post my PC specs aswell, incase they're needed.

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 555 @ ~3.2GHz

RAM: (2x) 2GB Hynix Single-Channel DDR3 @ 535MHz

GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD5670 512MB DDR5

Thanks.

[kingjericho]

View-only league are something you don't need, imo. You either have them as playable leagues so you can manage or scout them, or you don't load them at all. You can instead load extra players.

I think your specs are more than enough to have a decent save with a handful of leagues.

[Neil Brock]

Honestly for a first game I'd suggest running only a few leagues, you don't want it struggling to get through the days. Personally I'd only run a handful of full leagues (say the top nations) and no view-only leagues. By all means have a medium or large db but don't go too excessive. It's much more fun to have not enough leagues running than far too many that means your poor old PC keels over and dies!

As for 'Match Detail', Full/All means the game even though is played in the background, afterwards you can view the highlights and match report, however the more matches you have 'Full' the longer processing will take.

Quick Match aka 'None' means there are no highlights available and you cannot view the match report, however it is, like the name would suggest, quicker. Both types of matches generate average ratings/stats etc.

[MattyR]

Thanks for the replies.

I understand the match detail now, but I'm still unsure of the playable nations bit. If I made the top four English leagues and the top leagues of Italy and Spain playable, and selected no other leagues, would I still be able to scout teams/players in Germany for example, and would I be able to sign players from leagues that I didn't make playable? This is probably the main bit of confusion I have.

What does increasing the database size do to the teams? Does it add more youth players or something like that?

[z3n]

If you do not select other leagues you will still be able to buy and scout teams/players from other leagues. But you will not see their league standings. And overall there will be less players from that nation (most of lower league's clubs will have just a few players instead of a full squad).

The bigger the database, more overall players will be in the game.

For your game I would recommend choosing this leagues:

England(Im not from england so I do not pay attention to lower leagues rather then premier league so it is your decision how low will you go)

Italy(serie A)

Spain(La liga)

Germany(Bundesliga)

...and a large database.

Have fun playing and welcome to FM

[MattyR]

Thank you very much.

I'll start my first (probably short) career as the Super Whites later. I know what settings to use now.

EDIT

Just thought I'd post the settings I went with, in case anyone is interested.

Playable Leagues

Dutch Eredivisie

English Premier League

English Championship

English League 1

English League 2

German Bundesliga

Italian Serie A

Portuguese Liga ZON Sagres

Spanish La Liga

Players from top-division clubs

Argentina

Belgium

Brazil

France

Japan

Scotland

South Korea

Approximate Player Count

40,000

Computer Performance

5 Stars

Estimated Game Speed

2.5 Stars

[z3n]

My computer would die with those settings

[Ricey]

My computer would die with those settings

My scouts would die with those settings =)

[chob]

If I don't intend to leave the club I start with I either just load that nations leagues or I'll also include top leauges in the big countries like England, Spain, Italy & Germany. You don't need a huge database to have a good long term game either. I usually run either a small or medium database and I don't even bother loading players from certain nations either.