Team Learns Tactic Ridiculously Slowly

[Zoetermeer]

I started a Southampton save, and immediately set two main tactics on my first day. Set match preparation to the highest level, tactics only. We played 6 friendlies, and now it's the eve of our season opener. And still, we're only 'competent' at best on any of the facets of tactic familiarity -- and 'awkward' at worst (on mentality and passing style). What else can I do? We used the same tactic for the entire offseason. I understand a team needs time to grasp a tactic, but seriously -- over a month with 6 games, and at this rate it'll be December before we're anywhere near a fluid level.

[parsdaft1982]

I have read a few tactics forums, and one of the best ways to this is set your main tactic twice and play 10 friendly matches. it wont be done by start of the season but by the 1st Oct, your tactics should be near enough fluid.

[gipsy]

this is indeed what Cleon hinted but I mus say the suggestion is erroneous (the 10 games, no rest, setting staff for all training categories etc. and it didnt take 10 games to have everything at 100% it took at least 20-25 games (I was at 100% by mid November playing with Barca)

[Cleon]

this is indeed what Cleon hinted but I mus say the suggestion is erroneous (the 10 games, no rest, setting staff for all training categories etc. and it didnt take 10 games to have everything at 100% it took at least 20-25 games (I was at 100% by mid November playing with Barca)

Then you did it wrong or are a part time club .

And I never suggest learning 2 tactics and the games you need is 12. It's all explained here for those struggling;

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/375145-The-Santos-Project-Tactical-and-Player-Development

[Maestro_DK]

I takes time for a team to get used to a new tactic, and I think you get to fluid to quick in the game. Perhaps it should go to accomplished fairly quick and then slow down and take a lot of matches and training time to get to fluid?

[thomit]

I don't think there's much wrong with the time it takes a team to become 100% fluid with a new tactic, ie a tactic that is very different from what the players are used to. New manager, new style of play - that sort of thing. If there's a new manager, with a very different style of play than the previous one, I wouldn't expect a team to be 100% fluid with his new approach for many months, maybe a whole season.

What is a bit iffy is all those little things that suddenly make the team forget what they allready know. Tactical familiarity drops too much when you make relatively small changes to the tactic, the whole team's familiarity is affected if you buy a new player, they forget most about how you played last season during the summer holidays, if you replace your main tactic with a new one for one match, then switch back again the match after that, the team will have forgot most about how they played a week ago - and so on. Tactical familiarity mechanics are poorly balanced, and crudely implemented.

That being said, I think many are giving far too much weight and importance to tactical familiarity. The difference between "competent" and "fluid" is relatively minor. A sound tactic that is "competent" will still beat one that is poor but "fluid". Me, I have stopped paying much attention to it. I do a "normal" amount of pre-season friendlies, set training and match prep as I would if I were managing for real, not managing FM - and forget about it. I have even given my ass.man the tasks of setting training and match prep focus now, because a) he does a good job, and b) he manages to get tactical familarity increasing faster than I can, even if he never (as far as I can tell) has used "tactics only" as match prep focus, and is very rarely setting match prep focus to the max. The only part of training that I oversee myself, is player individual focus, specially with young and "unfinished" players.

[gipsy]

Then you did it wrong or are a part time club .

And I never suggest learning 2 tactics and the games you need is 12. It's all explained here for those struggling;

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/375145-The-Santos-Project-Tactical-and-Player-Development

no no no, i followed your tips to try as I was actually starting a new game so I did this:

•Set up around 12 friendlies.

•Do not allow rest before or after a game.

•Make sure you have someone taking control of the 'tactics' catergory in training.

•Signing new players will reduce tactic familiarity, so the more signings you make the longer time you need to become fluid in all areas.

•You must set the scheduling bar in the training section all the way to the left so its set on 50%. The end of the bar is 50% and not the middle like some assume.

•When you've set up the friendlies check on the training calendar to make sure you have a training day before each game. If not cancel the game because its pointless.

I forgot to do point 5 but did all the rest and the tactic familarity was at 100 % only by mid November. anyway all I wanted to say is that it might take more than 12 games before reaching 100% (100% everywhere, not only for the general familiarity bar)

[MrPompey]

Agreed. I'm in season 3 using the same formation and I've yet to reach 100%

[Mr U Rosler]

Stockport County. Part time. Maximum match training possible. 12 friendlies.

Fully fluid on 4th January. First season.

[jayahr]

no no no, i followed your tips to try as I was actually starting a new game so I did this:

•Set up around 12 friendlies.

•Do not allow rest before or after a game.

•Make sure you have someone taking control of the 'tactics' catergory in training.

•Signing new players will reduce tactic familiarity, so the more signings you make the longer time you need to become fluid in all areas.

•You must set the scheduling bar in the training section all the way to the left so its set on 50%. The end of the bar is 50% and not the middle like some assume.

•When you've set up the friendlies check on the training calendar to make sure you have a training day before each game. If not cancel the game because its pointless.

I forgot to do point 5 but did all the rest and the tactic familarity was at 100 % only by mid November. anyway all I wanted to say is that it might take more than 12 games before reaching 100% (100% everywhere, not only for the general familiarity bar)

Point 5 is extremely important however.

That said, I agree that it's rubbish that no team can realistically be fluid in just one tactic by the start of the season.

It gets better in year two, but what's up with year one? Did they not play any tactics whatsoever before the start of the game???

Comparing this with rl football, I see teams being familiar with a variety of tactics irl which is plain impossible to recreate on FM14 And they don't falter the way we do because familiarity is lacking.

Thus, either the development of familiarity is way too harsh or the effect of a lack in familiarity is overstated by FM14.

Seeing my familiarity levels go down somewhat due to signing three U19 youngsters for the U19 team and knowing that familiarity levels go down when making a tactical change and even further down when reverting it, I strongly lean towards the former option.

[milnerpoint]

I dont see why people get hung up over this. I rarely get to 100% during a season because im always changing little things, roles, instructions ect.

[Zoetermeer]

I dont see why people get hung up over this. I rarely get to 100% during a season because im always changing little things, roles, instructions ect.

Well how am I supposed to evaluate a tactic if my team never learns it fully?

[milnerpoint]

By playing the games i guess. I honestly pay no attention to that thing. I set my team up, i do pre-season my own way and get on with it. I change things quite regularly that throw it off a bit so i see no need to try and get a tactic learned 100% before the season starts.

[Zoetermeer]

Well, I certainly could be making too big a deal out of it. You probably know a lot more about tactics than I do. I read through a thread the other day in which somebody from SI -- I can't remember the specific thread -- said that unfamiliarity can cause big performance penalties on the pitch. If that's true, then it's difficult to diagnose problems. The symptom may be obvious, but who knows what the disease is. But that's probably a little off-topic for this particular thread.

My basic point is that, assuming that unfamiliarity causes a significant drop in effectiveness, it is kind of unfair that we have no chance of avoiding this drop especially by the start of season 1. But maybe the consensus is that it's realistic for that to be true given a new manager and (possibly) new tactics.

Like jayahr, though, I'm not sure I like the fact that new signings seem to negatively affect familiarity in a uniform way (that is, making a £50m splash on a new core player affects it in the same way as signing some bit-part aging veteran or U19 player on a free). If I sign a squad-depth player why should that affect how well my usual starting XI plays within my tactical system?

[YKW]

Other situations where this doesn't make sense.

• If you sign a player from the club you just left, but use the same tactics as at your old club, familiarity will still drop, even though the player that joined had full familiarity with the tactic.

• If you get sacked and add a new manager at the same club and load the same tactics familiarity resets.

• A player who joins but isn't in the first team squad makes familiarity lower. Loaning the player out immediately does not raise it again.

• There is no way of finding out what tactical set-ups a player would be more or less familiar with

For me, the root cause of all of these is that tactical familiarity isn't tied to anything logical, it is just an arbitrary penalty that will diminish or grow based on certain, illogical triggers.

It should be tied to the players, and I should be able to see what tactical set-ups my players are used to, and use this to build my tactics.

If my tactics involve playing a high line then I should be able to sign players that I know (after extensive scouting) feel comfortable in this set-up. In these situations I should suffer a minimal dent in my tactical familiarity, perhaps sometimes it should also increase.

For example, consider this slightly unrealistic situation. You get appointed Madrid manager in January. Your previous team, Newcastle, were 'fluid' at their tactic, the same tactic you want to use at Madrid. You sign the entire first 11. Your tactical familiarity should be high shouldn't it? Perhaps not 'fluid,' but certainly not 'awkward,' as it would be in the current system, as far as I can tell.

[Zoetermeer]

Other situations where this doesn't make sense.

• If you sign a player from the club you just left, but use the same tactics as at your old club, familiarity will still drop, even though the player that joined had full familiarity with the tactic.

• If you get sacked and add a new manager at the same club and load the same tactics familiarity resets.

• A player who joins but isn't in the first team squad makes familiarity lower. Loaning the player out immediately does not raise it again.

• There is no way of finding out what tactical set-ups a player would be more or less familiar with

For me, the root cause of all of these is that tactical familiarity isn't tied to anything logical, it is just an arbitrary penalty that will diminish or grow based on certain, illogical triggers.

It should be tied to the players, and I should be able to see what tactical set-ups my players are used to, and use this to build my tactics.

If my tactics involve playing a high line then I should be able to sign players that I know (after extensive scouting) feel comfortable in this set-up. In these situations I should suffer a minimal dent in my tactical familiarity, perhaps sometimes it should also increase.

For example, consider this slightly unrealistic situation. You get appointed Madrid manager in January. Your previous team, Newcastle, were 'fluid' at their tactic, the same tactic you want to use at Madrid. You sign the entire first 11. Your tactical familiarity should be high shouldn't it? Perhaps not 'fluid,' but certainly not 'awkward,' as it would be in the current system, as far as I can tell.

Yes, exactly! This is what I was getting at in my third paragraph in the previous post.

[dsch]

It used to be that tactical familiarity is at least partially tied to players, because we'd get ass man comments during matches like, "So and So is used to playing a more direct style than we are doing."

[Zoetermeer]

Right, I forgot about that. Is that gone now (player affinities for instructions)?

[ademac]

Other situations where this doesn't make sense.

• If you sign a player from the club you just left, but use the same tactics as at your old club, familiarity will still drop, even though the player that joined had full familiarity with the tactic.

• If you get sacked and add a new manager at the same club and load the same tactics familiarity resets.

• A player who joins but isn't in the first team squad makes familiarity lower. Loaning the player out immediately does not raise it again.

• There is no way of finding out what tactical set-ups a player would be more or less familiar with

For me, the root cause of all of these is that tactical familiarity isn't tied to anything logical, it is just an arbitrary penalty that will diminish or grow based on certain, illogical triggers.

It should be tied to the players, and I should be able to see what tactical set-ups my players are used to, and use this to build my tactics.

If my tactics involve playing a high line then I should be able to sign players that I know (after extensive scouting) feel comfortable in this set-up. In these situations I should suffer a minimal dent in my tactical familiarity, perhaps sometimes it should also increase.

For example, consider this slightly unrealistic situation. You get appointed Madrid manager in January. Your previous team, Newcastle, were 'fluid' at their tactic, the same tactic you want to use at Madrid. You sign the entire first 11. Your tactical familiarity should be high shouldn't it? Perhaps not 'fluid,' but certainly not 'awkward,' as it would be in the current system, as far as I can tell.

Great post. And God only knows why players having 6 weeks off from the club completely forget the exact tactic they have been playing for the previous "x" amount of years. No new signings, nothing changed at all. Just feels like a penalty to mess up the start of your season.

[Äktsjon Männ]

Great post. And God only knows why players having 6 weeks off from the club completely forget the exact tactic they have been playing for the previous "x" amount of years. No new signings, nothing changed at all. Just feels like a penalty to mess up the start of your season.

Or to force you through certain routines in pre-season. But yeah, this part of the game has never made sense. How does one train tactics anyway? I mean defensive line, passing drills and things like that I understand, but how do you prepare creative freedom, mentality, tempo etc? Surely it's all a long term process that has to tie in with player tendencies and ability, not some arbitrary routine you go through every pre-season?

[RobertPage]

Am i the only person who thinks the whole tactic system is just rubbish on this years FM? Don't like any of it. The match engine does a terrible job of showing what the tactics do and the biggest difference between a working tactic and a non working tactic is that your players will not make silly mistakes and will score good goals when the tactic is working but when it's not they make silly mistakes and fail to score easy chances.

[jayahr]

Am i the only person who thinks the whole tactic system is just rubbish on this years FM? Don't like any of it. The match engine does a terrible job of showing what the tactics do and the biggest difference between a working tactic and a non working tactic is that your players will not make silly mistakes and will score good goals when the tactic is working but when it's not they make silly mistakes and fail to score easy chances.

I wouldn't go this far.

And in the context of the current discussion I would also prefer to keep any such argument out of it, not because it's invalid per se, but because it has the potential to derail the discussion from a dinstinguishable issue to something generic.

I totally agree with YKW.

The familiarity system as it is must be considered to be an arbitrary penalty which often does not follow logical lines of cause and effect. Examples have been provided and I'm sure there would be many more if people cared to think carefully or to experiment with the feature.

Any such system must frustrate the hell out of the users.

It would be interesting to learn why this 'feature' was changed from how it worked before. I'm pretty certain that no one will argue that it's realistic that a team plays worse after adding a player to the u19 team, so realism it can't be. Or was it just poorly implemented because making it realistic would have required too much work and one didn't foresee that the system had the illogical behaviour on its face and not just in the background (much like the new Sim City)? Was this changed to inprove the balance of the game? Who knows?

It would furthermore be interesting to know the familiarity levels of AI teams. My gut feeling keeps on telling me that this is a penalty which is exclusive to human users or that AI teams at least develop familiarity quicker or at a lower penalty...

There were issues with this before. Already in FM12 I only once switched jobs during a season. At the new club the tactics screen showed nothing but a generic 4-4-2 with which the team had low familiarity. Just as if my predecessor had played no tactic at all. Trying to build on a base of no familiarity with anything in the middle of a season tought me to not take over a club at this stage anymore which was daft and stupid already. Now that penalty has been increased even further

[Os]

Though Cleon's method may work it is hardly realistic is it.

Therefore the OP is essentially right it is too slow, especially when the tactic has been used in previous seasons.