Why Fm is Easy/Difficult

[Sloak]

Football manager does an excellent job, IMO, of simulating how world football works. If you load all the leagues and nations fully and go unemployed for the next 50 years you’ll have a realistic outcome. I love that FM does this, it has this feeling like you don’t matter, you could be there or not be there, it will go on anyways.

But the Human player isn’t an AI, you have advantages in a few specific areas that determine wether you will find the game easy or hard. Given that your only competition is the AI, they’re the benchmark for your performance, and if you perform better than them in an area the game will feel easy and when you’re worse than them it’ll feel hard.

The primary area you have an advantage over the AI, at least I feel, is team selection. This isn’t just your starting 11, but how you scout and aquire players. The AI is going to peimarily scout players playing internationally, and players from their home countries. This is due to them hiring primarily domestic staff, and this is demonstrated by the fact that if you take over Barcelona after 5 years you’ll realize you likely only have Spain and a few other nations with any knowledge. This means that as the human player, you can nab high quality young players before a lot of big teams if you scout them before the AI even has a look. This also applies to scouting and acquiring players with good attribute fits and personalities. The AI doesn’t grade personality as well as you can, and if you know what attributes fit your tactic better than the AI, you’ll have an advantage in this area, and vice versa. However, you could find the best prospect in the save and mess up his development if you don’t use him well tactically.

I feel tactics are secondary to squad selection because with poor players but excellent tactics you can have consistent strong performances, but with excellent players and poor tactics you can still have moments of brilliance that carry the performance. The difference between the Human and AI can be massive here, both positively and negatively. The AI’s weakness can be seen in the common meme that the assman gives terrible advice. If you select a good assistant stat and preferences wise, wouldn’t he outperform the average AI manager? This doesn’t necessarily always disregard his advice, but it goes to show how big your advantage can be. Your ability to make a functional tactic, wether it’s a premade or a homebrew will determine wether you perform well or poorly versus the AI.

The third area is pretty broad, but as I feel they all have a similar level of impact I’m lumping them together. I refer to this area as meta knowledge, things you know because you’re a human that the AI can’t know. Because you’re a human you know you need to rotate your squad to varying degrees for the sake of injury and development, you probably know Brazil and Argentina have high youth ratings, you know how to set up a training schedule, you know how to keep your players motivated, you know how to manage finances, you know that gegenpress is considered overtuned, and many other things you learn about the game the AI simply can’t be aware of. The more of these things you know and apply, the better you’ll perform.

What this all means is that players who feel the game is easy feel this way because they can consistently create functional tactics and fill them with players who fit them, while also building up their knowledge of the game and applying it to further the gap between their only competition, the AI. Players who feel the game is hard may struggle with one of the first two areas or may not have/use the things they’ve picked up playing it. 

I think this is why more experienced players begin to find the game easy due to applying things they’ve learned and having developed a good understanding of tactics and team selection and players who find the game hard probably do so due to delegating tasks (reducing their ability to deviate from the AI competition) or haven’t built up the base of understanding other players have.

My advice if you feel the game is easy would be delegate some tasks, allow the game to scout for you, allow the game to hire your staff, allow the game to set up your training, or any combination of these. This will stop you from being use your whole advantage over the AI. And for players who feel the game is hard, just remember your competing against realistic competition and there’s a lot of things going on you can’t really control or haven’t learned how to control. Be confident in what you think is right, even if the AI says different, and focus on solid team selection and tactics and let the knowledge build up over time.

[Mars_Blackmon]

Non of this stops the AI from sitting back and not trying to attack.