Cthulhu Dreams

Oh wow those are some. Interesting changes!

And this is a worked example of why you need to bring forward the Leinster championship matches to stop them running into the European knockouts. In this case its getting bumped because *Meath* not me is in Europe

More loan bug - he is under contract until 2038. I cannot work out precisely what causes the issue.

Further testing of the loans issue reveals it has only happened with other Irish teams - loans to European countries never have the issue. You will always be able to propose an extension unless the other side is not interested.

More on the loan.. thing. Previous in game day, I couldn't offer loan extensions to most of the players with loans exnding 1/7/2033. Today.. I can offer it to some of them?

Fixed itself shortly afterwards?

Another loan bug:

Okay I've got the start of the 31/32 season and I'm thinking about packing the save in. The bug that means you cannot extend loans due to 'Their being no valid transfer window to return in' is destroying my fun as so many players come back, and it takes so long to get them back out on loan that the dressing room starts kicking off about being left out of the training camp or being left out the squad at the start of the transfer window or being left out of European competition. I've spoken to other build a nation players and this is definitely some sort of bug. I'd suggest checking the transfer window situation and walking through. This is 'must address' imho as it makes things tedious and almost unplayable. I cannot really even buy new players because it takes so long to filter everyone back out on loan. Edit: to put some numbers on this, of 46 players out on loan, 18 can be extended, 4 cannot be extended due to contracts expliring, 1cannot be extended as the club doesn't want them back and 23 cannot be extended due to the loan window bug thing. The only other serious piece of feedback is the week break between the Leinster group stage and the finals results in the schedule overlapping with the European games causing the schedule to blow out. Bringing the first two finals games forward a week and then having the last two games once a week on the weekend would stop this interaction.

New bizarre issue. I've won the league, and that has guarteed UEFA champions league group stage. Player wants to leave to play in the champions league in the midseason window. I cannot say 'WE'RE QUALIFIED FOR NEXT YEAR YOU DOOFUS' which seems weird, but I'm guessing is probably not you.

The extremely annoying loans not being able to renewed due to no valid transfer window stuff persists: I thought it was something to do with this, but this guy: and this guy Cannot have their loans extended due to 'no valid window to return in before their contract expires' despite that obviously not being the case. Might be a bug, might be something to do with the database.

I actually lost the league! We massively bottled it. On the upside the league is strengthing, but by far the funniest thing to happen is: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is somehow in the league. He got Middlesbrough up the Premier league via the playoffs, got relegated and then sacked, and is now managing Galway. One piece of feedback. After the midseason transfer window, there is another squad registration window for the Allianz league... but obviously no more league games. People still get mad at you for not registering them however. I'm not sure if you can take it out, but changing the registration process or window here to eliminate the registration process if possible would remove a minor source of annoyance.

Another example of the weird bug: and Kitching's contract

I'm not sure if this is a bug, a thing, or what, but I accidentally loaned out some players at the start of the season on 5 month loans. Now their loans are expiring at ~14th Jan 2028 and I cannot extend their loans as there is not a valid transfer window for them to return before their contract expires - but they are under contract until 2031 and 2032. My only hypothesis is that's happening because of the restricted transfer window at the end of the season? Your guess is as good as mine. The premier league is now absolutely gutting my squad though.

The rep issue has mostly fixed itself by the 27-28 season. Current rep rankings: Allianz Div 1: 35th (still silly, we are behind the Cypiot first league, but what can you do) Div 2: 69th (nice) Div 3: 107th Div 4: 151th (one step ahead of Norway's 4th division). The fourth division still has an inexplicably poor reputation, as the clubs are pretty solid, but the wage issue is rife at this level. Carlow is spending 14k of a 129k a week budget, and they have 20 million pounds in the bank. Limerick is even worse:

One really minor thing - I made the knockout rounds of the champions league, which, as I have preferences set to 'force wednesday/saturday' due to playing a network game this has the odd result of heavily sliding back the finals of the lenister senior football championship. Munster has had its finals and won and we are still to do our Semi finals. I'll keep you updated, but this might cause the finals to bleed over into the all ireland. Does not cause any problems, though it might if I stayed alive in the CL. I'm not totally sure how to fix it or if it needs fixing given the highly specific combination of events and settings here. One option might be as per my diagram, but I'm not really sure: Having it played over 4 weeks on saturdays only might work, but obviously this only matters if you have the Wednesday/Saturday forcing thing set, so you could probably consign it to the 'not really a problem' basket. (The Semi Final is being held on the 24th now that I've been knocked out). Another scheduling issue that cropped up: Not sure it's a big deal.

Some further observations from deeper in the save: I was wondering why the AI was going in hard on players I had recruited and constantly spamming me with offers, and it's because they are really struggling to recruit. Looking at Allianz Division 2 we have: Tipperary: budget of 200k, spending 60k, 140k unspent Mayo: Budget 151k, spending 76k, difference 75k Tyrone: Budget 120k, spending 55k, difference 65k Derry: Budget 78k, spending 35k, difference 43k ARmagh: Budget 171k, spending 70k difference 100k Kildare: Budget 110k, spending 60k, difference 50k Offlay: Budget 157k, spending 53k, difference 104k Cork: 156k, spending 51k, different 105k All figures in pounds per week. My budget is 129k a week! You can see the average team could afford to double their wage spending. The situation is actually worse in Division 1, where Dublin, Kerry and Galway have 150k to spare each, with Kerry having an incredible 233k a week unspent. This would make sense if they were dominating, but Kerry is rusted to the bottom of the table having 2 points with 6 games to go. My league dominance is explained by the one weird of trick of 'spending money on players' I'm not totally sure how to fix it, but it's kind of a pervasive problem. I obviously need to get better at flogging my players to these guys on loan deals. Something you could do is add new board promises to buy new players, or have the club objectives to be sign high profile players, or sign high profile players from other countries? Anything to get them active in the transfer market outisde of Ireland would make a difference. Relatedly, changing this: Would help A LOT. Similarly, the contient preferences were changed maybe they would go after players without me having to run very silly 'trial farms' where I trial tons of players to try and get other clubs to go after them when I release them.

1-1 draw during the league stage, then they lost in the finals to Milan on penalties immediately after Milan trashed me 5-1 on aggregate in the quarter final. Still, the financial and rep boost from going that deep in the Europa league has helped the club. Went from 463rd ranked club to 110th, Ireland up to 17th in the Coefficient table, and Closed the book on a 13 million + 50% of next sale for my LB to Fulham. Only bummer is that we didn't get to 15th for the extra Europe spot. Only problem is due to extremely poor planning / I forgot that the league rules are not the same as the Europa league rules I am going to be limited to essentially a 17 man squad next season as I've liquidated all the HGN and HGC players to replace them with 18 year olds (whoops)

Got a deep European run together and I did note one thing. I understand you want the league squad registration rules to be like Europe - which I like - but Europe has an exemption that u21 players who have been with the squad two years don't need to be registered. The league doesn't have that which may or may not be intention just thought I'd mention it. Otherwise going really strong.

Finished my first pre-season in European competition off the back of winning the All Ireland. Squeaked into the Europa League group stage due to some lucky draws. The only week where fixtures piled up where the first two weeks off the Allianz Division 1 where I had both legs of the playoffs and two league games in two weeks. Looks like across the season I have 8 weeks with 2 games which isn't terrible. Amazingly, drew Man U in the league stage, which is going to be unpleasant. Edit: Update, after loaning out a bunch of players, I tackled the season with a 19 man first team squad, which was probably a bit tight. Everyone is shattered, but a 21 man squad probably would have done fine. I did my season in the 2nd division with a ~16 person squad but the demands of Europe probably required a bit more expansion.

In good database news, we finished on top of the Leinster championship league stage again for that sweet, sweet, 3.6 million pounds which I really need to help address the finances. The only thing I really would like is some sort of rotating playing between the regional champions ideally for a European spot. Maybe this could be like Year 1: Leinster plays Connacht, Munster Plays Ulster Year 2: Leinster Plays Munster, Connacht Plays Ulster Year 3: Leinster Plays Ulster, Connacht plays Munster I think that covers off all user cases, and having it as two separate cups minimizes the extra amount of football that gets played AND lets you dump off extra Europe spots from the league without taking away from the All Ireland. Would make these competitions a lot more important too if you could get european qualification from them which I think would be fun. Welllllllllll, they show that 45 minute half time appearances help development, but 70 minute substitutions hurt it. Past that age 21 inflection point, 70 minute subs don't help development at all but don't hurt it either. But this may be a different approach to match strategy between you, me and the AI. If you are actually consistently subbing on 3 young players at half time, more power to you, but that's not really how I use substitutes (I save them for low performing, injured or tired players to try and change a match to win it). If I have the sort of control on a match that lets me sub in a bunch of youth players at half time, I'd just start those players, then if I need it I have the flexibility to make strategic changes. But regardless, the AI sure isn't doing that. Obviously this is a 5 sub league and not a three sub league, but this older premier league data suggests: Most 'realistic' substitute appearances (which I have ever reason to believe is how the AI behaves) are of the 'actively hinder' development variety and not the 'modest improvement over not starting' variety. If you want to develop your players by subbing them on a half time, I guess you can, but you've really got to force it. As a human maybe I can do that... but the AI sure as heck isn't doing that. That said it doesn't really matter to me as I'm just forcing youth players currently: I see where you are coming from, but I kind of disagree. As full match appearances are a lot more beneficial, I want to get that guy 20-30 appearances focusing on full starts, but I guess if to use subs 50 half time sub appearances. There is absolutely no way in this DB as its currently set up I can get 50 half time sub appearances, so I'm looking for 25 starts. But I think we need to wait and see for the 'is it actual playing time' before we can meaningfully progress this discussion because it might be totally pointless!

I just won the Div 2 league huzzah with a game in hand. Onwards to div 1 next season and hopefully europe. No problems on the info, key findings here: You can see the magic 20-30 appearances number driving my thinking here - appearances beyond that are dead weight. Please note the GIANT CAVEAT that it might be in the in game actual playing time that matters. And here is the relationship between substitute appearances and growth. To do that he effectively created save where the AI would replace the outfield players at different points in the match. Full details here:

Yeah it turns out that I cannot count, last season we played 34 competitive fixtures. For some reason I had the number of fixtures in the Leinster senior championship wrong in my head. Teach me to post without the game infront of me. But yeah, I kind feel my point still stands. If I'm playing, say, a 4-3-3 and I want to develop a CM or a ST. If it's the CM, we've got 68 starts available (the Evidence based football manager guy has shown substitute appearances don't help development). If I've got 4 CMs, two can make 25 starts and will develop, 1 can make 18 starts and has stunted development, and the 4th CM has no starts and has terrible development. A B team league here would help a lot, as I can sign a veteran 4th I don't care about to be the backup and stash him in the B team, and I can give the 3rd CM the requisite 7 additional starts in the intermediate league. But also something like the McKenna cup or the FDB insurance league would let me just get a few extra starts in and get the developing CM up the 25 threshold. The situation is much worse with the striker: If I have two strikers, with 34 starts, one guy gets 25 starts and that leaves 9 starts for the other guy. To develop he has to find another ~16 competitive matches somewhere, or I sign an old emergency backup and just play the youth starter all the time. Now, this might not matter as much as I think it does now, because it might be the only thing that matters is the 'actual playing time' not the number of starts, so let's put a pin in this for a bit and I can come back to it depending on whether it's absolute number of starts or playing time that matters. If it's just the 'actual playing time' number, I'm totally fine with the number of matches. I prefer the smaller schedule as it means I can churn through seasons faster. With the league rep, Wow, this clued me in. I thought we just had completely different perspectives, as in my save I first thought to check the rep at the end of season 1 - where for some reason the Allianz Division 4 rep was down in the 170th(!) position hence my remarks earlier about the reputation being ridiculous. But I fired up a new save, and noticed you have division 4 alongside Serie C in the 85th position, and the rep had just mysteriously cratered for some reason in my save. Absolutely baffling rep mechanics from FM23 here! I'm still mad about the reputation, but nothing you could do about that. In season 3 it hasn't recovered: So this explains why I hate the league rep - it's because the league rep as it stands has absolutely no relationship to league rep you set at the start of the game LOL. There is something seriously weird going on here with league reputation, and it's a bummer, just not sure what you can do about it. Btw: I think the attendances are great and wouldn't change that at all.

Everything else makes sense - and is just my opinion I'm vibing on the DB. I really like the rules on players (e.g. 4 by club, 8 by nation etc), and the loans are reasonable. With the transfers piece: you can assign preferences in the editor where clubs and leagues try and source players from X locations. I'm noticing there is a lot of circular type transfers where players are moving within the league system, but the biggest force introducing new players into the league is me, but see below for my issue here. If clubs were encouraged to go outside the league a bit more for transfers would open this up, particularly as in season three there is quite a lot of money left begging as AI clubs don't seem to be able to find players (and I have 105k players loaded) With the comment about player development. The Evidence based football manager guy says you need 20-30 competitive fixtures (not friendlies) to get good development for a youth player. We've got something like 14+5+7 for league, plus regional comp, plus all Ireland, so we only hit 26. I've been picking up a few more games by making it out of the group stages in the cup, but player development wise I'm locked into getting a young starter and just forcing him to start every game. If there were a few more competitive fixtures I'd have a bit more flexibility, hence hoping for some more competitive fixtures. Anywy I will keep going and report back.

Trucking into season 3 now. I think my only comment that have changed is A) I've realised some of the breaks are international breaks (my bad) but there is still slack in the schedule that could be compressed B) It would really help the development of the save if there was a preference for signing outside of Ireland, but I understand that this might not be the most realistic. C) it's really hard to get enough fixtures in for development. If I need people ton get 20-30 completive games in to develop, and you have 14 league fixtures, maybe 10 from your regional competition and maybe 8 or so from the all Ireland, so you cannot really afford to rotate the squad much. Will be easier once I get to Europe, but some more competitive matches (maybe a pre season cup or the like) would help things a bit. D) The league reps definitely need to be lifted to enhance player values. I wish I had the editor turned on so I could tweak this myself.

Weird bug that may not be you, but we won the Leinster Senior Football Championship, and the board is understanding of my failure to progress past the champions playoff.