Part 3: Junior at Tactics University - How to watch/ analyze games (or effect of small tweaks)

[prince0102]

This third part will bring the series up to the current day and time. I reached here after finally figuring out how to watch and analyze my games.

The 3 parts together chronicle my journey from extremely frustrating start as here

Part 1: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/356573-Freshman-at-Tactics-University-Learning-Thread-for-Underdogs

Part 2: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/367560-Part-2-Sophomore-at-Tactics-University-Morale-management-and-financial-management

to here

[prince0102]

So in part 2, I ended up with these 3 questions

"why doesn't the assistant provide better feedback" - I wanted him to tell me why I won/ lost a game.

"why is reloading giving different results everytime" - it makes it impossible to analyze games

"how to watch games" - I wanted to tweak my tactic.

I'll admit, the randomness of results drove me off the game for a long time. I didn't touch fm13 for more than a month but every week I would watch the premier league games and think about these questions.

I could never reconcile two observations. 1) This game is a probability function or a game of margins just like in real life football 2) But good players can consistently get excellent results.

So somehow, we need to figure out how to increase the margins in our favour enough so that we have a higher chance to win in majority of the games. But how to do that ? Now, veterans of these games have watched these games and know the match engine in and out to know what tactical changes to make. But for novice players, this is not obvious.

Let me explain.

When you want to win possession, Cleon suggests using 3 shouts - a) hassle opponents b) get stuck in c) push higher up. Now this is great if you know this but if you don't, you will be clueless. Maybe IRL a manager knows this but for a fan the simple thing he knows is - I want to Win back possession. But how to make the game do it ? This was a simple example but for every small tweak, this is not obvious.

The only way to do this is to watch and analyze games. And I started analyzing matches with tackles, interceptions, heat maps and the usual things but also another trick. In the comprehensive highlights, I would jot down, a) how my team/ opposition was creating the chance b) how did it fall apart b) who lost possession.

Example

As you can see, some things kept repeating itself. It was obvious my tactic was weak in the wings and the opposition was attacking through wing-play. My main attack was through the supporting strikers. Now I wanted this so it was ok. But the STC and DM kept losing possession and few misses were through long shots. This was not what I wanted. So I needed to change it - either through role/ duty or shout or substitution.

I started jotting down things that worked for me e.g.

In fact, a website has already done a lot of hard work for you which I really liked. You will still have to figure which one of those work for your particular tactic.

http://www.guidetofootballmanager.com/match-day/adapting-tactics/match-stats

[prince0102]

Interestingly, the answer to another of my frustration (the first two questions above) why I won or lost was already in my question.

The answer was Reloading. I know it sounds like a cheat but the base rule I used is that only the first result counts. If the result was not what I expected then I would treat it as a failed experiment, I would save game as a temp file and start replaying (experimenting) the game until I figured out the answer.

Its true that for some losses, I played the game at least 50+ times (like wwfan did for FM05 or Cleon mentions in his blog he did initially) and Voila !. For every game, I could figure out a combination of tactical/ team talk/ selection of right players that would work at least 3 times.

Its a game of margins but if you tweak the margins in your favour enough, you will win the same game again and again and again.

It also answered another question, if I won just because I got lucky, the next 3 times I played I lost with the same settings. Hmm.. so that win was a fluke.

[prince0102]

So that's how I ended up tweaking my tactic 4123 tactic to this

That is it. Just 3 simple tweaks from last season's tactic

1. didn't try to fix weakness on wings - strength through middle > wing play

2. DLF (s) changed to Treq. (so they can float freely to link up play better)

3. DM(D) --> DLP (D) (it allowed back passes to DLP and pull opposition out of their half or defensive shape. Also, my DM is like Bastian Sch. and aerially weak)

And now I am comfortably cruising through the matches with the exact same mid-table expected team.

Here's a typical heat map

There's probably more things to try like

a) can I move the WB in the WB position to push them up

b) what if I make it asymmetric like AF + DLF + T roles

The bottom line is small tweaks can change how your tactic behaves quite dramatically

[prince0102]

Shouts that work great with this tactic

If opposition is playing high pressing game

a) Hassle opponents b) push higher up c) get stuck in

If opposition goes more offensive

a) Control strategy

If opposition sits back

(a) Control strategy (b) pass in space

In general

(a) exploit middle (b) play wider

That's it. Hopefully, I will gain fresher insights as I go keep playing.

[Cleon]

I'm liking all these parts but imo I feel it would have all been better as 1 single thread because it all crosses over and isn't like the ones Llama did what are more generalised. All your parts link together and is part of a bigger picture so would be better seeing it all in one place.

[prince0102]

I'm liking all these parts but imo I feel it would have all been better as 1 single thread because it all crosses over and isn't like the ones Llama did what are more generalised. All your parts link together and is part of a bigger picture so would be better seeing it all in one place.

I agree. I was worried it would become unwieldy and impossible to digest.

But in hindsight probably better yes, so if there is a way to combine them, sure.