Things to look out for, be wary of, change.

[neonshaker]

Hi guys,

I exclusively play FM Touch these days and I also only watch my games on key highlights (even that is an upgrade because in years past I would just use commentary - a hangover from champ manager I think). However do you think it's possible to continue like this and have relative success. What things should I be looking out for in match stats or player morale etc that can allow me to make changes and stay successful without having to have a PhD in football manager match engine studies and can keep the game fairly breezy. I've struggled this year quite a bit and I'm getting a little worried FM might be beyond me in the future as I just don't have time to sit and read a thesis on match tactics and then engine.

[Svenc]

Imo if you apply common sense football logics, you would do reasonably well in all versions. It is important to note that any supposedly run in FM can be down to random chance in FM as well as in football, so not panic attack just because you haven't won in five matches. In particular if your opponents still have competitive squads, matches tend to be tight affairs. It's logically that the influence of random chance is so big, as matches in FM go 90 minutes too despite there being miserably few goals for that. In other words, matches in FM tend to be settled in very few key moments too. It's a crazy sports, and often times managers are given far too much credit for short term success or indeed failure. Despite FM engaging into that kult of the manager, I think it overall has that quite well. If you don't watch and purely look at stats, you will never get a feel of what was lucky or wasn't, but that doesn't mean you'd need to watch 90 minutes either. It's a player fallacy to think that two or three losses in a row or something would be an arbitrary way of the match engine supposedly telling you that there was something wrong. There might be something, mind. But an end result in FM is no different to an end result in football. Goals are hard to come by and can come off individual error purely, or even genuinely (marking) bugs, without watching you'll never tell.

There's a plethora of downloads going round this year that have not a single player holding position, all running up. In FM 2015 this wasn't viable as you'd concede like hell. It appears to have become viable as of FM 2016 again suddenly, though individually, that leads to frustration. Like the random huge losses whenever an AI manager sets up multiple forwards who are immediately available for a counter attack, or those dropping deep and packing the middle, if virtually no one is staying deep in position, there is no back pass and therefore you're encouraging matches of like 30+ (often hurried shots) and no goal. Totally football basics, if everybody visibly just runs forward, vulnerable to the counter, no team in football does that and certainly not as a baseline default. Therefore I'd always advice to try the assistant managers rather than download. If you'd watch matches, they visibly work off the same core logics as any AI manager. They'd rank as schooled football personell in the world of FM. They can fail, but so can you. On Touch you can even give them match plans i.e. playing for a draw or going for broke. I tried outright holidaying from day one, not doing ANYTHING personally. Watford: on course to safe midtable. Milan: CL qualifiers spot. Arsenal: title challenge. Etc. That's something I test with every version. They can fail, but so can you. That's first season, after that you can improve the squad and so will the results. As Touch doesn't have much of man management to speak of, "Classic" FM.

I hope that SI don't stop the improvements for AI manager decision making or let such illogical tactics flourish (also for the sake of versus multiplayer, which is neat for online tournaments and more, but immediately suffers if you can just exploit). For anybody who doesn't want to engage as deeply their assistants would benefit of it too, plus the tactical basics as of FM are more basic than many think it to be. That's the reason why some players who pro-actively engage some (without spending hours on each match at all, just making smallish logically tweaks here and there) can go onto endless runs, even beating random chance which is always there, as any poorly shot in FM too has a however small chance of going in. They basically run circles around the thing.

[shirajzl]

Hi guys,

I exclusively play FM Touch these days and I also only watch my games on key highlights (even that is an upgrade because in years past I would just use commentary - a hangover from champ manager I think). However do you think it's possible to continue like this and have relative success. What things should I be looking out for in match stats or player morale etc that can allow me to make changes and stay successful without having to have a PhD in football manager match engine studies and can keep the game fairly breezy. I've struggled this year quite a bit and I'm getting a little worried FM might be beyond me in the future as I just don't have time to sit and read a thesis on match tactics and then engine.

Your worries are shared by many and I know a lot of people (both personally and online) who have given up on FM since tactical knowledge has become far too important. It's only realistic, true, but with each iteration everything goes further and further away from the old standard of "set up a basic tactic and never look at it again, just focus on squad building."

There are two solutions. Either you download other people's tactic and plug it in or just set up something basic and lower your expectations significantly since you won't win as much as we got used to in FM over the years.

[neonshaker]

Your worries are shared by many and I know a lot of people (both personally and online) who have given up on FM since tactical knowledge has become far too important. It's only realistic, true, but with each iteration everything goes further and further away from the old standard of "set up a basic tactic and never look at it again, just focus on squad building."

I don´t necessarily want to just set it up and go but I resent having to read a 4000 word tactical bible just so I don´t get spanked 4 - 0 by Aston Villa. I remember in tactical theorems there used to be tactical templates to show you how to set up a marginally functional tactic in different styles and also in the current pairs and combinations there are suggestions at the back but in the last week I´ve been told twice that setting up my tactic based on those ideas won´t work. I just want an idiots guide to having a fun experience on this game. I bet 90% of the hours I log on the game I´m actually reading these forums instead of actually playing and it´s just running in the background.

Rant over! :-)

[shirajzl]

The problem is that ME and tactics are so complex that any kind of "idiot guide" just doesn't work, especially in the long run.

The comically poor in-game documentation is a big part of the problem, but that issue has been acknowledged and slightly being worked on (for example, better visual representation of team and player instructions in FM16).

[Svenc]

Disagree completely except for the official documentation. As to why, see above. I run this test ever year, simply holidaying and doig nothing by myself. I've never used any downloads though for my saves, therefore I'm not used to winning the Champions League with MK Dons first season. You could write a step by step guide same as wwfan did, and though it will be no gospel, simply sticking to it step by step I don't see anybody this massively struggling. All the fuss made about shape, there's this theory that the AI would always apply inch perfect counters or anything which simply ain't true in the slightest. It's lovingly dynamic, which means in theory no team exactly plays the same as the other. To my knowledge, and I've seen a research guide published somewhere on a fansite, the shape which is overcomplicating very simple things for instance, every AI manager simply picks that based on attributes given to him, such as his flamboyancy. The micro-analysis of tiny positioning details from the tactics subforum, that doesn't apply in the slightest. Additionally it's not only a game of tactics. It only would be if you would totally stretch players. Evidently superbly dribblers for instance they run the show on their own simply by completing tons of dribbles, and so on. Therefore better squads = better results all by themselves. With Barcelona you'd need to do a lot of blatantly bad things to underperform outside of individual matches in any kind of way.

All that's changed tactically is some refinements as to AI managers (which naturally means the same for your assistants). In particular on FM Touch, where man management is basically non-existent. And that you aren't guaranteed default wins if previously you exploited marking or corner routines. Those would grant you goals even if your team was totally outplayed, naturally. It's of note that this doesn't only granted you additionally goals. Every goal typically springs a change as for the AI manager plays. Unlike human players who have everybody on supp/att duties by default (generalization), the AI visibly opens up in an attempt to get back into things and gifts you space your team now breaks into totally visibly not only due to the virtue of higher lines, this is very basic football stuff. I.e. defend duty players being typically encouraged to "hold position" which is exactly what they do, always do until a change is applied. Basic of all basics, if you run forward you leave your position which somebody else has to cover for now or you don't. So an exploit goal makes another become more likely on an easy counter. In the long-run the fixing of exploits means less gifted points, but in the short-run also additionally more tightly matches where the final result can go either way, in particular against teams that aren't that far apart in terms of quality. Kind of like in football a bit.

Try. At best by creating multiple managers taking over multiple teams, as individual failure is always a possibility, and some boards are more patient whilst others absolutely not. You'll see. You'd also think SI had introduced those match plans for AI managers taking over for actually use rather than them getting ignored.

[neonshaker]

Disagree completely except for the official documentation. As to why, see above. I run this test ever year, simply holidaying and doig nothing by myself. I've never used any downloads though for my saves, therefore I'm not used to winning the Champions League with MK Dons first season. You could write a step by step guide same as wwfan did, and though it will be no gospel, simply sticking to it step by step I don't see anybody this massively struggling. All the fuss made about shape, there's this theory that the AI would always apply inch perfect counters or anything which simply ain't true in the slightest. It's lovingly dynamic, which means in theory no team exactly plays the same as the other. To my knowledge, and I've seen a research guide published somewhere on a fansite, the shape which is overcomplicating very simple things for instance, every AI manager simply picks that based on attributes given to him, such as his flamboyancy. The micro-analysis of tiny positioning details from the tactics subforum, that doesn't apply in the slightest. Additionally it's not only a game of tactics. It only would be if you would totally stretch players. Evidently superbly dribblers for instance they run the show on their own simply by completing tons of dribbles, and so on. Therefore better squads = better results all by themselves. With Barcelona you'd need to do a lot of blatantly bad things to underperform outside of individual matches in any kind of way.

All that's changed tactically is some refinements as to AI managers (which naturally means the same for your assistants). In particular on FM Touch, where man management is basically non-existent. And that you aren't guaranteed default wins if previously you exploited marking or corner routines. Those would grant you goals even if your team was totally outplayed, naturally. It's of note that this doesn't only granted you additionally goals. Every goal typically springs a change as for the AI manager plays. Unlike human players who have everybody on supp/att duties by default (generalization), the AI visibly opens up in an attempt to get back into things and gifts you space your team now breaks into totally visibly not only due to the virtue of higher lines, this is very basic football stuff. I.e. defend duty players being typically encouraged to "hold position" which is exactly what they do, always do until a change is applied. Basic of all basics, if you run forward you leave your position which somebody else has to cover for now or you don't. So an exploit goal makes another become more likely on an easy counter. In the long-run the fixing of exploits means less gifted points, but in the short-run also additionally more tightly matches where the final result can go either way, in particular against teams that aren't that far apart in terms of quality. Kind of like in football a bit.

Try. At best by creating multiple managers taking over multiple teams, as individual failure is always a possibility, and some boards are more patient whilst others absolutely not. You'll see. You'd also think SI had introduced those match plans for AI managers taking over for actually use rather than them getting ignored.

Thanks for the reply Svenc. So are you saying you think it's very possible to stick to basics and do reasonably well.