Make your own Tactics?

[Preveza]

If this is in the wrong area, please move

I love making my own tactic, and obviously gain much more satisfaction from it as well.

I do download successful tactics on the occasion, but winning does not feel organic so I end up starting from scratch again.

 

Im not asking about tactical help. Just whether or not others use their own, and the reasoning behind it. Want to gauge the opinions of others.

 

I try to refrain from using others tactics, even if I am struggling. 

[Black and Yellow]

Always use my own tactics. It's one of the more satisfying aspects of the game when a tactic you create starts dominating. 

[Swillo]

I like to use my own for a few reasons. Firstly I want to develop my own knowledge about the game and implemennt exactly what I want from my team. And I know it's my fault when it goes bad and my fault when it goes right.

[Keyzer Soze]

26 minutes ago, Black and Yellow said:

Always use my own tactics. It's one of the more satisfying aspects of the game when a tactic you create starts dominating. 

Agree 100% with this.

And also, if you don't create your own tactic you'll end up winning or loosing and don't know why.

Removing the creation tactic part from the game, for me it's like removing 50% of the fun when i play FM. The others 45% is for the transfer market, and the rest 5% is for anything else in the game.

[isignedupfornorealreason]

I make my own, because I want to try and understand how things work and how it all fits together. I'm not always spot on with it, and it can be very frustrating, but it's a bit addictive trying out new ideas. Lots of head banging vs the wall but when it works, it's wonderful.

 

I do take inspiration from stuff posted on here though. Sometimes I copy things outright, and then deconstruct it in my own way to get my own style of play within that framework - something I did with Jambo's 4-5-1 concept last season.  But most of the time I prefer to read and take an idea from someone and see if perhaps, I can do it in my own way, maybe in a similar or different formation y'know?

[Karnack]

I'm much like you OP. I've downloaded a tactic now and then but never end up playing that save for long.

My own tactic is the best, even if it's rubbish!

[russ the womble]

I always create my own. It's more satisfying, plus I watch how we have played in real life and like to try and recreate elements with the same players. I watch some youtube channels to try and build an understanding of where I may go wrong, otherwise its pretty much trial and error.

[Preveza]

Awesome responses. Just picked up my copy of FM16 today lol. Delayed I know.

 

Cant wait to get a save going with my own tactic. Here we goooooooo. 

[dSquib]

Always do and the popular successful tactics that are always around I suspect merely succeed through exploiting some game oddity. I only take satisfaction in using a tactic that is both my own and one I think could conceivably work in real life, or close enough, as it does in the game.

[GazTheDoood]

Pretty much the same as everyone on here so far, I make my own. However, with the slight caveat that I tend to pick my manager's preferred system in head before I start the save, then spend the save developing this system - even if this system is not strictly how I would like to see a team play in real life. For example, last year, I developed a defensive 5-3-2 focused on hardly any possession and quick counters, whereas IRL I enjoy to watch a possession-oriented tactic and the football that creates. 

As others have said, developing tactics is one the most enjoyable parts of the game for me too, especially when something in a created tactic seems to 'click'.

[shirajzl]

Do you really expect people who only use downloaded tactics to post here given the general frown upon such practice?

[knap]

I make and use my own.

[noikeee]

I always try to create my tactics however if it's been quite a few seasons and I still haven't figured things out on my own, I'll go out and download some... but can never resist adapting it to my liking.

In my current career I started with FM15 again as I can't stand a few things with FM16. My previous FM15 tactics were already a 4-4-2 diamond adapted from someone else in the forum (Dafuge's), they were nearly identical to his, and I'd had huge success in my previous career with it. However, this time I struggled with it for about 3 seasons. Then I decided I had a player that worked better as IF rather than winger and decided to try to include that. It was a disaster and I was sacked.

Frustrated, I went off to search for one of those "miraculous" downloaded tactics. I added a new manager to the same team and started the new season with the new downloaded tactic.. and hated it. It seemed incredibly wasteful as it told every player to shoot from long, and it had about a billion different, contradictory instructions. Which not only made it hard to understand what was it trying to do, also made it impossible to adapt on the fly to particular match situations. By the 2nd friendly I was already messing with it, and spent the entire season tweaking it, with unconvincing results. Was nearly sacked again.

By next season I finally had it working, it now had very little resemblance to the tactic I downloaded and it was very much its own thing. The result? Won the league by 24 points, and now I've got the most satisfying team to watch I've had in all recent FMs. I might've originally started from someone else's base, but I'm bloody well proud of it now.

Full story in the FMCU forum.

[EuskalHerria]

I usually scour the forums for an effective tactic that was made by another user that fits what I am looking for. I don't have the knowledge yet to create my own. Someday. Maybe this year. Who knows. But, I can definitely see the gratification of making your own tactic. But, I still enjoy finding a tactic that I enjoy and building a club around that.

[shirajzl]

7 hours ago, noikeee said:

also made it impossible to adapt on the fly to particular match situations. 

The whole point of those tactics is not to adapt or touch the tactic ever, i.e. play the game the old way, if you will. They rely on overloading the AI with bodies thrown forward and constant shots, hoping for the best.

[withnail316]

Always my own, although I've used the same one from old saves, so I'm not necessarily starting from scratch each time I start a new career.

[Svenc]

15 hours ago, noikeee said:

 

In my current career I started with FM15 again as I can't stand a few things with FM16. My previous FM15 tactics were already a 4-4-2 diamond adapted from someone else in the forum (Dafuge's), they were nearly identical to his, and I'd had huge success in my previous career with it. However, this time I struggled with it for about 3 seasons. Then I decided I had a player that worked better as IF rather than winger and decided to try to include that. It was a disaster and I was sacked.

 

Out of interest, did that by the end of it still involve that wide midfield diamond? This is something I've never picked personally as opposed to the narrow diamond, as this is really a simple thing, what you line up is your defensive shape and you can see the holes it has there right on the screen already, namely that there's two central guys sitting atop each other plus two wide guys opening channels rather than having the entire width of the pitch covered. Not at all arguing this can't work, but I've always wondered. You houve the AMC plus DMC just as on the formation screen literally sitting atop each other (rather than the central guys next to one another as in a flat 4-4-2) and the wide midfielders sitting wide rather than positioning narrow as in the narrow diamond. Op midfielders advance into there on every attack.

It's one I personally probably would consider a quite special formation that needs a lot of monitoring as opposed to the more regular ones. Not sure if the AI uses it anymore (it seems very rare if at all). Depending on the op formation alone, could face quite some trouble, probably. Those opposing formations could hugely vary depending on in which country and league you manage alone. If Dafuge uses it though, it must be very much practical and not at all as much of a specialty formation as it always appears to me in action. I think he flies through matches commentary mode. Still take a look at that, that's just insane. :-)

As for the OP, "own" which includes some simple in-match decision making. Fm ain't a purely hardcore tactics sim and you can delegate it all to assistants entirelly too if you want, but to me it's a tad extra fun if you get the hang of it and proactively get into the position where you can visibly alter the dynamics of play rather than praying for the best on every weekend, like scoring the late equalizer as your desperation ploys have at long last paid off some. Or completely killing and stopping a game for good. Or conversely employing simple means to kill a game off and hold onto the ball in front of booing crowds to hold onto leads. That action and reaction thing that turns games into games and part of what makes FM differ from Fifa Man and countless others failed attempts, where lots of buttons pretended you could change dynamics of play, when actually you blatantly couldn't. Unlike old iterations (or real life management, for that matter), all it takes is like a click of the mouse.

[noikeee]

15 hours ago, shirajzl said:

The whole point of those tactics is not to adapt or touch the tactic ever, i.e. play the game the old way, if you will. They rely on overloading the AI with bodies thrown forward and constant shots, hoping for the best.

Well yeah, and tbh as currently I'm in a long-term project career, I don't really want to go all micro-management and would rather just have a system that works and doesn't need to be touched much. So I can understand that.

Still, why would you have 17 TIs and then contradict them with all your players. The tactic had "run at defence" and then every player had a PI of "dribble less".  Just senseless overcomplicated stuff. The first thing I did (after turning off the long shots) was to try to simplify everything just to make sense of wtf was it trying to do.

My current tactic is better () and I can just switch a role or change strategies or something, if I want to do something specific in specific circumstances. That's impossible when you have a zillion instructions.

8 hours ago, Svenc said:

 

Out of interest, did that by the end of it still involve that wide midfield diamond? This is something I've never picked personally as opposed to the narrow diamond, as this is really a simple thing, what you line up is your defensive shape and you can see the holes it has there right on the screen already, namely that there's two central guys sitting atop each other plus two wide guys opening channels rather than having the entire width of the pitch covered. Not at all arguing this can't work, but I've always wondered. You houve the AMC plus DMC just as on the formation screen literally sitting atop each other (rather than the central guys next to one another as in a flat 4-4-2) and the wide midfielders sitting wide rather than positioning narrow as in the narrow diamond. Op midfielders advance into there on every attack.

It's one I personally probably would consider a quite special formation that needs a lot of monitoring as opposed to the more regular ones. Not sure if the AI uses it anymore (it seems very rare if at all). Depending on the op formation alone, could face quite some trouble, probably. Those opposing formations could hugely vary depending on in which country and league you manage alone. If Dafuge uses it though, it must be very much practical and not at all as much of a specialty formation as it always appears to me in action. I think he flies through matches commentary mode. Still take a look at that, that's just insane. :-)

Yes I'm well aware the 4-4-2 wide diamond is a bonkers defensive structure. I'm not too sure why it didn't work for me in Bulgaria with CSKA Sofia, but I had ridiculous success with it before, with several different teams in different leagues. Despite the fact the DM has an enormous space in the pitch to cover, in FM15 that's not a huge drawback. You'd expect teams to be able to pass around the DM at ease and pull the defence all over the place, yet, that doesn't really happen. With the right DM, it was hilarious to watch at times how he'd just go after the opposition midfielders and directly barge the ball out of them, marshalling an enormous area with success. Just keep an eye for all the yellow cards he picks up...

In fact this is why I'm happier with the 4-2-3-1 I have now, it looks more realistic. Don't get me wrong, I really had loads of fun with the 4-4-2 wide diamond, it was great that Dafuge shared it at the time, because I was struggling before it. But I always knew it was kind of game-breaking and unrealistic. Specially since I made it a point of making it even more bonkers by upping the mentality from Control to Attacking...

This is one of the things FM16 did improve on FM15. I really dislike the FM16 ME for other reasons (hence why I went back to FM15), but I remember a few other users struggling with the wide diamond at first, because now the AI was finally wise to it and exploiting all that space it leaves open. That being said, I think Dafuge made it work again in '16 by making the AM track back a little more.

Might as well just call him up to confirm, hey @dafuge we're talking about you. 

By the way, I have seen a wide diamond in real life, and it was just that crazy. 2009, first season of Jorge Jesus in charge of Benfica. Javi Garcia as DM, Angel di Maria and Ramires as ML/MR, Pablo Aimar as AMC, and Javier Saviola and Oscar Cardozo as STs. It heavily relied on the neverending running back-and-forth of di Maria and Ramires, specially the later, who also helped out on central areas when needed. So maybe that's a little different from FM there already, but it was inherently an unstable structure; and although it was brilliant to watch and worked domestically as it won the title, it proved unsustainable specially in Europe, and as the years went by the AM became more and more a MC, and it morphed into something more similar to a classic 4-4-2. Which is the system Jorge Jesus still plays these days, now in charge of Sporting.

[dafuge]

I love my 4-4-2 wide diamond, I think I have been using it since FM05

I tried something else one year to try and move with the times but I struggled with it, possibly because it changed the type of players I needed to sign.

[Milleg9]

Previously always downloaded but I have now found it much more exciting trying to be successful by designing something that is successful because of me 

[Feddo]

In fm08 I only downloaded tactics as I couldn't create one working myself. After a long pause I came back with fm13 and after reading shrewnaldo's blog and all the push them wide articles I tried making my own. Wich by now is working pretty well.

What I've done a lot the last years is using created roles (central winger, midraum) or using big parts of tactics from bloggers I read. They don't provide downloads so you have to recreate it yourself.

 

[Feddo]

Oh I forgot, I have downloaded a strikerless tactic from Strikerless.com because I just couldn't get it to work. But in my last save I finally figured it out, so wont be using that file again

[Cougar2010]

12 hours ago, dafuge said:

I love my 4-4-2 wide diamond, I think I have been using it since FM05

I tried something else one year to try and move with the times but I struggled with it, possibly because it changed the type of players I needed to sign.

Interesting, I've never been a fan of the wide diamond as you seem to be giving up control of the middle of the pitch.

A few versions ago I was managing in Italy where more or less every club was playing a narrow tactic (4132, 4321, 4312 etc) except for Juventus who had a decent amount of success with a wide diamond.  Eventually Inter took over the league playing a 442 with two DMs (Mainly due to two outstanding strikers, one bought & one through youth) and Juventus got a change of manager which led to them switching to a typical Italian narrow formation.

[WarroOxford]

I'll take inspiration from tactics from the forum and adapt them to my team the best way I can. I have a philosophy and an idea of how I want my team to play. I'm not an expert at implementing it in the actual game yet but advice and inspiration from tactic creators helps me big time. Undoubtedly real-life managers will take inspiration from other clubs/managers or downright copy them.

For me, as long as I truly understand what I'm implementing, the types of players I need to succeed and understanding when and when not to make changes to the tactic before/during/after a game I don't have a problem with using a tactic someone else has created. I was very much in the boat of only using my own tactics until a few months ago.