AI Experiment - what would happen if?

[foxmad]

I have a little theory of my own...

All the bandits that didn't go on to become Coach's took different routes:

Left Back 2 - BBC Commentator

Right Back 1 - Regular on Question of Sport

Right Back 2 - Owns an Estate for family

Centre Back 1 - Taken up working with Children

Centre Back 2 - Occasionaly opens supermarkets

Centre Back 3 - Once starred in a Steven Spielberg Thriller

Centre Back 4 - Owns a bunch of Islands near America

Left Mid 1 - Cocky TV Host of really bad gameshow

Left Mid 2 - In Africa helping with AIDS research and support

Right Mid 2 - Season Ticket holder at the Bandits

Centre Mid 2 - Working On Sky Sports News

Centre Mid 3 - Does a monthly column in FourFourTwo

Centre Mid 4 - Has been seen in Celebrity Big Brother and I'm a Celebrity...

Striker 1 - Football Pundit

Striker 2 - Football Pundit

Striker 3 - Set Up an Academy for youngsters in Asia

Striker 4 - Lives at home with Mum counting his money.

Idiots - Both have played parts as descendents of the Mitchell Brothers in Eastenders, roles in The Bill as bad brothers and now spend their time acting on crimewatch and surfing cheap porno sites on internet.

[kipfizh]

Ones to watch

Your annual guide to the stars of tomorrow:

Hugues Guichard (17, 94/195), is a French striker playing his trade in the youth system of Marseille. A real prospect, he is already playing for the French Under 21 team.

Bjorn Strand (16, 85/193) is even younger – the Norwegian striker is waiting for his chance to make his debut for his Tromso.

Ante Bacic (17, 112/189) is a Croatian central defender, and already a regular for Varteks, who he played 24 times for last season. He will surely be noticed by a bigger club soon.

Previous tips

Carlo Lupo (23, 191/198) raced up another six points of CA as he storms towards his potential. Now a world star, he had a 7.73 average for Milan this season.

Toni Halonen (23, 180/187), the Finnish centre back, has finally broken into the Chelsea team, but is playing poorly.

Patrick Schmidt (21, 178/184) added another seven points to his CA this season and is thriving at Valencia, and at international level for Germany.

Marian Badea (22, 146/189), the Romanian left sided player, moved from Zenith Peterburg to Reading, where he is struggling.

Slim Sellami (18, 122/188), was an awesome prospect, but after spending a year without a club, has been removed from the game. Why on earth did no-one want him? He was a fantastic prospect!

Pereira (22, 175/187), the defensive midfielder, rose a huge 13 CA points to close in on his potential, moved from Inter to Bayern Munich, where he is starring.

Aleksandras Stazys (21, 170/186), Lithuania’s left back, moved from Man City to Arsenal for 15.75m, and is settling in.

Tony Allison (19, 139/192), moved from Birmingham to West Ham, and the forward is already playing first team football.

Barry Low (20, 134/195) joined West Ham last summer and has spent this season on loan at Wealdstone to give him exposure.

Ronnie Blundell (18, 131/195), the central midfielder, remains at Derby and is yet to make his debut.

Seydou Kamara (20, 132/194), the Ivory Coast central midfielder, is the latest talent to be released by a club in his home country. Will he follow Sellami into retirement? He shouldn’t, having already played six times for his country.

[kipfizh]

World beaters

Gerardo Robles (28, 197/197) spends his third season at the top of the pile, scoring 33 goals for Inter and winning countless awards.

Robles has a lead of six CA points, but his reign at the top may be ended soon though, by newcomer Carlo Lupo (23, 191/198), the original tip for the future, who is rapidly improving at Milan. The centre back is a force to be reckoned with at the back.

Ruben Camara (27, 191/191), the Spanish goalkeeper remains in the top five, but has now moved to Arsenal, after they paid Mallorca a massive 29m for his services. But the Gunners aren’t done there – they also retain Meng Tao (27, 191/191), the Chinese striker. The final member of the top five is Barcelona’s German keeper, Max Trehkopf (29, 191/191).

The final member of the 190 CA group is another Arsenal player, and the best English player in the world, midfielder Richard Taylor (25, 190/192).

Incidentally, Arsenal actually have four of the best seven players in the world, as the seventh place goes to Tao’s striker partner, Thomas Pichot (26, 189/189). It is a wonder that they are not more successful, coming only fifth in the Premiership.

[kipfizh]

Distribution of 180+ CA players

The clubs

Arsenal – 7 (+3) (191, 191, 190, 189, 184, 181, 180)

Chelsea – 6 (+4) (183, 182, 182, 180, 180, 180)

Milan – 4 (-1) (191, 188, 184, 180)

Real Madrid – 4 (+3) (188, 185, 183, 180)

Inter – 3 (-) (197, 187, 181)

Valencia – 3 (+2) (185, 184, 183)

Barcelona – 2 (-1) (191, 184)

Juventus – 1 (-) (182)

Benfica – 1 (-) (182)

Man City – 1 (-) (182)

Lyon – 1 (+1) (180)

Roma – 1 (+1) (180)

Bordeaux lose both their players, Paris, Mallorca and West Ham one each. Arsenal and Chelsea and swamped with talent but neither team will even be in the Champions League next season.

The leagues

England – 14 (+6)

Italy – 9 (-)

Spain – 9 (+3)

Portugal – 1 (-)

France – 1 (-2)

Total – 34 (+7)

There are more stars around this season than last, all but two of them play in the big three leagues and they are all in Europe.

The nationalities

France – 6

Spain – 4

England – 4

Italy – 3

Mexico – 2

Germany – 2

Argentina – 2

Portugal – 2

Brazil – 2

China – 1

Serbia – 1

Turkey – 1

Holland – 1

Croatia – 1

Finland – 1

Belgium – 1

The vast majority, 27/34, are European, so you can expect the World Cup to stay in Europe for the time being.

[CanaryLawn]

Always pleasing to see ipswich lose 5-1!

[rtik-1-one]

Kipfizh this is absolute brilliance and very well laid out and structered.

KUTGW

[rtik-1-one]

Oh Kipfizh is it possible to do a premiership winners page to see the dominant teams of each decade in your game??

Would be very interesting.

[waz_nufc_awk]

Excellent update as always Kip.

[kipfizh]

The good news?

Phil Edwards has retired!!

The bad news?

Ben Clayton has been hired, with CA 93 and PA 93. Oh dear. And he's only 45, so not retiring anytime soon.

[5ergio]

Bah. What a bunch of loosers sitting at Bandits Board Room. How can't you find a more talented, I don't mean a super one, just a little bit more talented manager to up the team? All I'm hoping is that they see they need a better manager before they got relegated from EPL.

*crosses fingers & hopes for a talented manager to be hired in near future*

[Meitheisman]

OMG this is ridiculous, I can't believe the chairman managed to find yet a worst manager for his team... grrr

Great update though, I'm amazed at how fast you did it too, great job Kipfizh!

[jackyb1989]

This is great stuff Kipfizh, keep up the good work!

Just wondering if you could tell me which save game editor you are using in this game?

[AB-forever]

Great with an update

KUTGW

*hating the Bandits board*

[roversawh7]

Kipfizh,

Do the ex-Bandits that are still in the game still have the Bandits as a favored club? I was hoping that one of the current assistants would come back to take the vacant post, but I guess not.

[ajani]

Great read once again!

KUTGW

[Bluebeard]

What has happened to all the talented Brazilians? Strange!

Thanks for the updates Kip, this continues to get better and better... long may in continue!

[kipfizh]

Originally posted by rtik-1-one:

Oh Kipfizh is it possible to do a premiership winners page to see the dominant teams of each decade in your game??

Will do!

Originally posted by jackyb1989:

Just wondering if you could tell me which save game editor you are using in this game?

I use FM Genie Scout to examine all the hidden attributes of players and clubs, but that's it - the rest of the data comes from in-game.

Originally posted by roversawh7:

Do the ex-Bandits that are still in the game still have the Bandits as a favored club? I was hoping that one of the current assistants would come back to take the vacant post, but I guess not.

They all do, yes, so in theory, they have every chance of making that jump, but not so far.

How great would it be if one of the talented keepers became manager someday?

Originally posted by Bluebeard:

What has happened to all the talented Brazilians? Strange!

Yeah, there is a dearth of them. But if you look at the young prospects you'll notice that a young African disappeared from the game after no interest from clubs, even though he was a potential world beater. I wonder if this is happening to a lot of non-Europeans.

I'll analyse the spread of PA as well in my next report.

[Knight274]

Anyone want to second my nomination of Kip for Forum Contributor of the Year? ;-)

[VonBlade]

Originally posted by Knight274:

Anyone want to second my nomination of Kip for Forum Contributor of the Year? ;-)

Nope. This is the best thread to ever exist on this forum, surpassing even Dafuges gutting sacking following a takeover.

In fact, I'm struggling to think of a more enthralling thread on any of the numerous forums I visit.

VB

[kipfizh]

The thing that strikes me is this:

I asked myself the question while writing that last report - how can the Bandits improve? The obvious answer is to buy more players.

The trouble is, it appears from the purchases made that the limit of players wanting to join the club is around th 158-159 CA and PA mark. Phil Edwards, for all his failings, did at least show admirable squad sense - if he needed a right back, he'd buy two, and while writing the last team analysis, it struck me that the Bandits now have a couple of players for every position, and what's more - none of them are old and fading.

With the number of players between 140 and 160 CA, no-one below that range should have to play.

So the question is - if you have a squad filled with players around the level that is the best you can buy (due to reputation), you have two such players for every position, and none of them are old, how are you supposed to improve?

Most clubs improve by outperforming their abilities, thus raising their reputation and allowing them to maintain that step up by buying better players. That, to me, is down to two factors.

1) The ability of the manager.

2) Luck (sometimes things just go well in a season).

I suspect that if I took the average CA of the best 22 players at every Premiership club, the Bandits would come higher than 15th. Their squad is decent, in fact it is as good as their reputation allows, so the only thing that can be holding them back is their manager.

So what should we hope for?

Simple - there were two ways the Bandits could move forward. One was a talented manager, which they do not have, the other was luck.

Let's hope that everything goes their way this season, and they hit the top ten. The media will expect around 12th next season, and then they can sit 16th-17th, get their manager sacked, and get a new man in.

The only other option is a poor season now, but with expectation so low, by the time the new man is sacked they'll be practically relegated.

Did that make any sense?

[waz_nufc_awk]

Perfect sense.

[ajani]

I think the bandits are not getting any good managers is because the chairman has a low ambition and dosen't care enough to pay a top class manager to take the team forward.

This is also a major reason why I don't think any of the very ambitious ex-bandits would manage at their old team.

[bnurpo]

Hoping for an early retirement Any chance of seeing the Bandit's favourite staff btw?

[Funkin\' Hussler]

Where did Garba (ex-Newcastle manager) go?

[magicmastermind124]

kipfizh, firstly I have to congratulate you on the job you're doing here. I've been keeping up with the story for a month now, and what i'm really looking forward to seeing is the day where the Bandits get a 180+ CA player and when they get into Europe, and the Champions League.

I am worried now that without a good manager that this is going to take longer rather than sooner, however we waited to long for them to get to the Premiership, and now we're all too impatient to wait any longer! KUTGW

[TB36]

What happened to John Terry as Chelsea manager?

[monkeyinapinata]

kip, on the subject of comparing attributes of the bandits with the rest of the Premiership, FM genie has a cool option where it rates the player/team for ther effectiveness in a given position (like say you have two players, one has a higher CA than the other, but the other has all his points where it matters but the first has his scattered around, FM genie will say the second is better). So you go to the team search menu then in the competition field enter the premier league then search. It should tell you each team's current ability and potential ability which I think takes all the players that the program considers the best starting 11 then averages their current and potential abilities. It would be interesting to see where the Bandits fall in this ranking and how true it is to real life.

[monkeyinapinata]

Originally posted by ajani:

I think the bandits are not getting any good managers is because the chairman has a low ambition and dosen't care enough to pay a top class manager to take the team forward.

This is also a major reason why I don't think any of the very ambitious ex-bandits would manage at their old team.

none of the ex-bandits are ambitious. In fact, I'm vaguely surprised that none have come back to the bandits now that they're more or less cemented in the Premier league.

[crafty bison]

Kip - do you think you could provide a summary list each season of all the Bandits' transfer dealings? (Transfer fee and date of transfer, i.e. summer or January, are most important if you don't want to bother with listing which clubs they dealt with.))

[Bluebeard]

Having often been in the position that the bandits find themselves in, the obvious way to improve is to spot decent young players and buy them before their reputations rise/ they get snapped up by big clubs. The AI usually seem pretty good at spotting future star players in my games, so let's hope the bandits get that way too!

[chopper99]

I now worry about the bandits improving any further any time soon.

With the current manager at the helm they're either going to stay still or slide backwards. Only a lucky season (and perhaps a lucky cup win) can raise expectations enough to get the manager sacked. And if that does somehow happen we can only pray that the board appoints someone decent.

One of the ex-keepers coming back to take the reigns would be amazing, and would be a fitting twist to this excellent story.

[Meitheisman]

Well, the one hope that I still have is that if the Bandits have great scouts (can we get screenies of the backroom staff ability please Kipfizh?) maybe they can find players with relatively low CA (hence interested in the Bandits) but aq very high PA and the manager could sign them since he's been on a spending spree for quite some time now.

[5ergio]

Originally posted by Meitheisman:

(can we get screenies of the backroom staff ability please Kipfizh?)

Also a CA/PA report of the backroom staff can show us the (in)ability of the board and the manager in hiring the staff imo. As Meitheisman stated a great scout could be the key for improvement. Or we have to wait for a talented manager to take the job at Bandits.

[Phil1987]

is there anywhere i can download the original saved game of this from?

[Scotty Walds]

Not yet

[kipfizh]

Originally posted by Funkin' Hussler:

Where did Garba (ex-Newcastle manager) go?

He left Newcastle to become Deportivo manager.

Originally posted by TB36:

What happened to John Terry as Chelsea manager?

He left Chelsea to become Milan manager. Yes, really.

Originally posted by monkeyinapinata:

kip, on the subject of comparing attributes of the bandits with the rest of the Premiership, FM genie has a cool option where it rates the player/team for ther effectiveness in a given position (like say you have two players, one has a higher CA than the other, but the other has all his points where it matters but the first has his scattered around, FM genie will say the second is better). So you go to the team search menu then in the competition field enter the premier league then search. It should tell you each team's current ability and potential ability which I think takes all the players that the program considers the best starting 11 then averages their current and potential abilities. It would be interesting to see where the Bandits fall in this ranking and how true it is to real life.

Cool, thanks for this, I'll try to include some league comparison in the next update. Now that they (hopefully) won't change division again, this should be a neat feature.

Originally posted by crafty bison:

Kip - do you think you could provide a summary list each season of all the Bandits' transfer dealings? (Transfer fee and date of transfer, i.e. summer or January, are most important if you don't want to bother with listing which clubs they dealt with.))

Yeah, sure, easiest way is probably for me to just grab a screenshot of the 'transfers in' and 'transfers out' pages.

Originally posted by Meitheisman:

Well, the one hope that I still have is that if the Bandits have great scouts (can we get screenies of the backroom staff ability please Kipfizh?) maybe they can find players with relatively low CA (hence interested in the Bandits) but aq very high PA and the manager could sign them since he's been on a spending spree for quite some time now.

Sure, I'll do a staff update in the next one.

Originally posted by Phil1987:

is there anywhere i can download the original saved game of this from?

Not as yet, but there will be once this experiment comes to an end.

[monkeyinapinata]

Here lemme do a step by step walkthrough for how to get the ratings.

1. Open FM Scout and load your save game

2. Click on the Club Search button.

3. In the Division field, enter in "English Premier Division"

4. Press Ok

5. The two columns on the far right are what you are interested in: "Rating" and "Pot Rating" those are kinda self explanatory.

6. Optional: Double click on where the Bandits are listed.

7. Click on the Tactics tab to the right.

8. At the bottom of this screen there is a button that says "Top 5 Formations"

9. You will see how the program rates the team for various formations based upon how good it thinks the player is in his position (top left Table). On the Positions tab, there is a drop down menu to change the displayed formation.

Just throwing this out here in case you run into difficulties finding this information.

[monkeyinapinata]

I think it would be interesting to see how the current manager sets up his team and selects his players, and compare that to what FM Scout believes are the strongest formations for the current players, as well as who FM Scout thinks the strongest player for that spot is.

[Sazchu]

Loving it loving it loving it, and i'm especially happy to see man utd crashing and burning ^^ can't wait for them to go bye bye and be relegated from the conference divisions.

A+ kip

[Dreaded Walrus]

If this thread was an item I had bought on eBay, this is the "feedback" I would "give":

A++++++++ TOP EBAYER WOULD BUY AGAIN AAAAA++++++++

[01everton]

when is the next update gonna be i need another fix of the bandits. Great thread though Kipfizh keep up the good work.

Also i have another question Kipfizh are there any teams in the main 4 divisions that haven't been close to promotion and haven't been relegated but have just finished mid table every season. As this would be very interesting to see whether every club progresses or doesn't and if a team has finished mid table ish most seasons then it would be very unrealistic I believe. This may be very difficult to find out but I would be very grateful if you could find out please.

[williamshankley]

The wait has been agonizing

[01everton]

i wonder if kipfizh has given up with this experiment and has left us all to imagine what will happen to the Bandits. I would think a update will arrive within the next 36 hours.

[shane_man]

Im actually looking forward to the release of the DB... I would love to conduct the same experiment just to see the small differences.

[crafty bison]

Aw, I was hoping for a weekend update

[kipfizh]

Sorry folks, the weekend was a complete writeoff - when I'm not going to a wedding I'm off on a stag weekend, so everything is utterly manic at the moment.

Early week I am recovering, end of week I am off again!

The next seasonal report is coming along, it's a little longer than normal because it includes a new feature or two

Thanks for your patience!

[RavenVW]

Originally posted by kipfizh:

Sorry folks, the weekend was a complete writeoff - when I'm not going to a wedding I'm off on a stag weekend, so everything is utterly manic at the moment.

Early week I am recovering, end of week I am off again!

The next seasonal report is coming along, it's a little longer than normal because it includes a new feature or two

Thanks for your patience!

Yes... patience...

*puts away 'kill kip!' signs

[Wegason]

It's funny, I have been doing a similar thing with my Football Manager games for quite sometime now. Creating a team, usually in a city without a league club like Chelmsford or Canterbury (where I work and where I went to Uni) and put them in the bottom league in England that is playable and try to take them up from there to the Premiership.

I differ slightly in that I start with a 6,000 seater stadium and £5 million in the bank and a reputation equivalent to a top conference side but similarly, a Chairman with medium ambition. I'm currently sitting in a playoff spot in League One at the beginning of October having been promoted the previous year. I'll often be taking bright youngsters my scouts have found in Scandinavia and other places and moulding them into good and great players, and then selling them on to keep my club financially secure and to enable me to improve my squad.

The best example of this was a young Swedish striker I got called Johan Teymur who scored 74 times in three seasons for me and attracted the attention of the cash-rich Portsmouth who, after I kept refusing them, gave me £5 million for him.

Anyway, just like to say that this is one of the best threads I have read in a long time, your reporting and detail is incredible considering how long it must take to get it. This is a great experiment and I shall follow its progress intently.

[Meitheisman]

To me your experience is as far away from Kipfizh's as is a McDonald's to a French high class restaurant... they're both food but what else is comparable?

[foxmad]

Utter Class...KUTGW Kip