grasu Posted October 6, 2012 Share Posted October 6, 2012 Ever since I started playing FM I've always used downloaded tactics. Very rarely, usually when the game came out an no tactics were available, did I use my own self-made tactics. The truth of the matter is that after a few years of playing the game I came to the, logical, conclusion that ready-made tactics make the game boring. These plug-and-play tactics are either TOTALLY unsuited for my team or they make my team invincible, so much so at times that after 2 seasons I've basically "beaten" the game. Recently I started trying to employ my "own" tactics, by using tactic building guides, trying to make plays/tactics suited for my players, etc. but with little success. For every match I dominate with 4-0 I lose 2 or 3 with even worse scores against teams that totally outplay me. My question is basically this: Is there a guide for beginners that guides me through the intricacies of making a tactic, reading plays, adapting my play to compensate for the inherent weaknesses of my player roles, etc.? I should mention that I'm not an expert in taking apart football matches and while I do have some knowledge of how the sport works (obviously!) I can't tell from watching an FM match why my players are so out of position in a glance, or why they're poor at creating CCCs, etc. So I'm looking for a guide to take it one step at a time, not to get right down into discussions of how to make a 800+ passes a game tactic while creating CCCs, by listing a bunch of things to do without much explanation as to why. Any help would be much appreciated! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
lam Posted October 6, 2012 Share Posted October 6, 2012 Okay, to be honest, I think what you are looking for is not really a beginners guide, it's more advanced or intermediate. Assuming you have a basic understanding of football (not everyone does), most of what you want can be obtained from watching matches in full. Sadly not many people want to hear this as a decent game, watched in full, can last around 45 minutes or so. AND, if you are rewinding to watch replays then it can easily take 1hr or more. I made some recomendations in another thread, which I'll link to shortly which resulted in the OP posting back saying he had a fantastic result. In prinicapl, these tips were very very simple. Again many people don't like this because they refuse to accept that watching games with simple instructions is going to get the places. The fact is, UNLESS YOU WATCH THE GAMES YOU WILL NOT LEARN THE GAME. Cleon has made some incredible posts that talk about what to look for during a game and how he manages his team throughout a game. SFraser (RIP) made some incredible posts about how to manage a team overall; talking about long term strategies, youth players and setting a quality team up with instructions. There are many other great posters, however these two had the most impact on how I play, hence me naming them. http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/316762-Struggling Regards LAM Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
lam Posted October 6, 2012 Share Posted October 6, 2012 Here are my comments in that thread. A few tips from me:1. Initially you have two choices A) Choose a formation and tactic that suits your current team (often as suggested by your coach at the start of a season) OR B) Know how you want to play and get the players in that are capable of doing so. Trying to get players to play formations that do not suit them when you are new to this style is not going to be easy. 2. Keep it simple. Choose a formation and tactic that suits your players as above and then leave it. Don't tweak individual instructions until you know what you are doing and have watch a number of games. 3. Do NOT stick with one philosophy, you WILL need to change this depending on who you are playing. Standard/Control against similar teams, counter against strong teams etc. 4. Biggest and best thing you can do which everyone seems to hate as it really slows the game down is to watch the games in full. A few things will happen when you do this. A) you will begin to understand how your team players and how the players work B) If you have problems you will be able to describe them in the forums in more detail. Watching highlights will mean you miss out on things that could have resulted in a SHOT on goal. 5. AS mentioned above, just keep it simple No worries.....Just keep it simple. Spend some time at the beginning of a new season or if you make a number of purchases. Make sure you look at the skill requirements of each role to understand what 'ideally' it takes to play in that position with that role. Don't try and bend the rules thinking you know better, if you are new to creating your own tactic, then the chances are that you do NOT know better, at least at this stage. Watch as many games in full as you can and you will have lots of those "why the hell did my player do that?" moments, and when you do, rewind and try to work out what happened. Did he get pulled out of position by two opposition wingers swapping sides, did he try to close down to early leaving a gap behind him, did he stand off for to long and invited to much pressure, was he marking that high agility, acceleration and pacey winger to tightly, was your entire defensive line to high and allowed to many long balls over the top. NOW, an important thing to note here.......... don't go changing everything in one go. If you see a player out of position and feel confident enough to do something about it, then change one instruction at a time, unless of course it's glaringly obvious. Also..... and this is one that so many people forget, when you substitute a player, for whatever reason, DON'T expect your new player to come on and do the same as the subbed player did. You might just be lucky enough to leave the instructions, assuming both were intelligent and you were playing with mixed settings across the board, BUT in most scenarios, this simply isn't the case. If you make a substitute, then make sure you change the instructions; If you pacey winger that gets to the byline by dribbling and going around players gets injured and you have to bring on a Wingback as that is all you have available, then there is no shame in telling that wingback to hold off a little. Perhaps change his crossing to deep rather than byline, set forward runs to rare rather than often. Lower run with ball to mixed rather than often etc etc..... (I tend not to mess with mentality to much), this way you are not trying to make your players do things that they are not capable of. How I got to understand the game (apart from reading great threads on the forums) was to watch the games in full, stick with some fairly default instructions that suited my team and when I felt like I was starting to understand it did I make changes....... now those changes were to REMOVE things that players could not do, I didn't try to make them do more things, I just removed the things that were obviously were not going to work for a particular player. I had a great Winger, he had fantastic stats, apart from the fact he couldn't dribble, so I let everything the same, apart from changing run with the ball to rare from often. Before changing him he would only occasionally have a decent game where perhaps he would be against a weaker defender, however, once he had his instructions changed, it played very well. So.... remove bad instructions before trying to add things...... Regards LAM Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
furiousuk Posted October 6, 2012 Share Posted October 6, 2012 There isn't a specific Beginner's Guide (as such) although one is in the pipeline. It won't cover much other than the very basics - basically it will summarise the online manual (which many people miss) regarding tactics and instructions and summarise some basic points found in the stickies at the top of the forum - the links in the stickies are invaluable. Lam's advice is, as always, extremely good, follow that and you can't go far wrong. The TT&F, whilst old, is still an exceptionally written resource. I'd have a look at that (link can be found in the stickies). FM13 will have some ME changes but any basic principles or philosophical discussions based primarily on real-life football tactics will still be completely valid. Basically, be logical, keep it simple, and everything will be gravy. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
grasu Posted October 7, 2012 Author Share Posted October 7, 2012 Thanks for the fast responses, and sorry for the late reply. I'll look into the recommended guides. How's Aid the boss? is it good for my level? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
furiousuk Posted October 8, 2012 Share Posted October 8, 2012 I've no idea on Aid the Boss, just had a quick look at the site, some decent tips. Nothing you wouldn't get on this FM forum (or any other). If the sign-up for the 'course' is free then crack on, it can't do too much harm and might help. To be honest, there are plenty of top community chaps and chappettes around here so a quick look through the stickies and you'd be good. Plus we're a very active forum (bit slow at the moment but when FM13 ships it'll be fun chaos!!) so when you have a question you normally get a quick response. Have a look through the SFraser stuff as well. Incredible amount of absolute top-notch info. If there was ever an FM 'course', thats it.http://bit.ly/TaXcZS If you're on twitter then there's quite a big FM 'scene' so following along is good to catch up on the latest and greatest (and not so greatest!)[/url] Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Odom Posted October 8, 2012 Share Posted October 8, 2012 I think it all comes down to: a) Knowing what you want to achieve b) setting it op roughly in terms of shape and mentality c) cusomizing it slowly while watching a lot of games (in game) Nothing difficult about it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaBossa Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 http://www.guidetofootballmanager.com/players/player-attributes I found the above guide very helpful - its my go to read, when i recheck ideas. http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/football-manager-2012-tactics-training/57437-guide-formations-tactics-football-manager.html Above is a long read... but may help. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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