New to the game... My amazing assistant

[Charly]

I have recently upgraded from FM2014... It felt the right time after over 100 seasons or so... So I thought I would play a trial season in fm2019 to work out the way the tactics now work, get a feel for transfers and all the other new features, before going back to start again for real.

I play with Liverpool, and was actually quite surprised how much the inbuilt engine matched gegenpress matched Liverpools general play... except for one major point... Id get 30 shots and score once... the Defence was not too bad though, so I felt that I just needed to fiddle a bit... (I think I ended up "overfiddling" but hey...)

To make sure morale was not an issue, I would reload losses, and just let my assisant play (while I took a mini trip to Barca for the weekend, obviously on a scounting mission... on the beach), and in every game he managed, we spanked the opposition using a standard looking 4-4-2.

So obviously I thought... Ill try that with the 4-4-2, but try as I might, I cant scrape more than a goal or two a game, and my defence is really leaky.

This makes me think perhaps the assistant get some kind boost, or some kind of super 4-4-2 tactic?

I think I want to head back to my custom 433 gegenpress, and work out why nobody can shoot straight, but I was wondering about the assistant manager mechanics... IS he automatically spotting the best formation for my team, or is that a complete red herring...

 

Cheers in advance!

[Fribbe]

Staff Members have favorite formations and will use one of them when put in charge of a team.

In regards to team instructions and roles, I'm not sure how they decide on them. 

[Charly]

But would they get any unfair advantage, or "ai bonuses"... Or is the playing field level... so to speak?

[herne79]

26 minutes ago, Charly said:

But would they get any unfair advantage, or "ai bonuses"... Or is the playing field level... so to speak?

There are no AI bonuses.

However the playing field is very far from level as it's actually us humans managers that have all the advantages over the AI (believe it or not).  That's because we have the ability to be far more creative with our tactical set ups than our AI counterparts, whose AI brains simply aren't as advanced as our own.  However, the AI can be pretty good at their own relatively simple set ups, whereas we tend to over complicate, over think or just not fully understand how to translate our thoughts into FM tactics speak.

[BMNJohn]

3 hours ago, Charly said:

But would they get any unfair advantage, or "ai bonuses"... Or is the playing field level... so to speak?

The AI isn't good, notably because AIs don't actually exist. An AI cannot think, and your AssMan certainly doesn't considering their comments during matches... That said, simple AI setups that follow's FM's common sense, coupled with huge amounts of reputation and cash can result in very hard to take down AIs. For example, in FM17 and FM18, Mourinho's Man Utd was notoriously ridiculously strong. But you can equally end up with managers like Diego Simeone pairing a BWM with another supportive central midfield role in a 4-4-2, basically leaving a huge hole in the middle of the pitch. Or you can have Leonardo Jardim playing Griezmann as an AP(S) in a 4-2-3-1 Wide with Atletico. I wish I had taken screenshots of that stuff, it was hilarious. Too bad the home bias saved their asses...

Well, have this one instead from FM15. I wonder how I made that stuff work, but this CL final against Ancelotti's Bayern wasn't even close even though they had much superior players. If Ancelotti had played anything that made sense, Bayern would've destroyed me. It shouldn't have been too hard to get past a one legged and at least 35 years old Nigel De Jong and a RPM... It feels as if the AI would rather have a player in what they consider his best role and duty instead of having a player in a role and duty that makes sense within the tactical setup of the team.

[Charly]

Lol... I missed out on all of those versions... that said it does not seem to be that much different from FM2014... But I am appreciating the graphical improvments.

And the players moan a lot more.

But I can still go to the transfers screen on a nations homepage, and scout the complete list of intakes... Still cant believe the hours I used to spend manually trawling through each club individually to scout the kids.

Its just the tactics I find confusing... There is a lot of feedback which I dont understand. I can appreciate the level of detail, but it does feel a little overwhelming.

[Charly]

Oh yeah... Is the "suitability" of the role meainingless?

Do players receive a penalty to their stats?

 

I guess the same question if you play a player out of their designated positions? How does the game penalise you?

[Snorks]

4 hours ago, Charly said:

Oh yeah... Is the "suitability" of the role meainingless?

Do players receive a penalty to their stats?

 

I guess the same question if you play a player out of their designated positions? How does the game penalise you?

You can;t really play a player out of the designated position as they don;t really have one. The Familiarity Disc thing as a pretty little thing that can be ignored for the most part.

The players, and what they do on the pitch is influenced by their attributes, personality, traits (formerly PPMs), any instructions you;ve given them, and the surrounding players behavior as well as the opposition behavior. If you have a set-up that is well balanced with players that suit it then the green/yellow/red disc means nothing tbh.

The discs are a rough guide indicator that is arrived at by a formula of the player attributes - so they can perform perfectly well in other positions and roles as long as they have the attributes to support that.

A forward with 18 Heading and 6 Tackling will still be 18 Heading & 6 Tackling if played as a ball-winning midfielder. He would give away heaps of fouls but win lots of kicks from the Goalkeeper.  A Striker with 14 across the board may get a full green disc as a Target Man because if has 15 Heading - but he still has 14s for the CF or AF  attributes.

[Rashidi]

7 hours ago, Charly said:

I guess the same question if you play a player out of their designated positions? How does the game penalise you?

If he has the attributes to play a position, he can. It will depend on how versatile and consistent he is. It may take him some time, some players do better than others and make fewer mistakes. It all depends on his attributes and how versatile he is.

[Svenc]

On ‎24‎/‎06‎/‎2019 at 22:22, BMNJohn said:

It feels as if the AI would rather have a player in what they consider his best role and duty instead of having a player in a role and duty that makes sense within the tactical setup of the team.

 

Unfortunately, FM's tactical process is overly complicated for the AI also. If the AI's only "mistake" was that it would purely pick roughly a Fitting Duty/role within the Overall Framework of the Team, then Things would be easier. However, whilst the possession/counter/Gegenpress pre-sets may have made the Picking process for the AI easier, there's likely still tons of conflict here with how ist dynamic match Management works.  As in: The AI reacts to scorelines, and (to simplify) either Plays more agggressively or less so depending on the curent score in a match (and what Kind of result it Targets, which can be a draw, and sometimes just not getting "thrashed"). It doesn't simply cycle through mentalities. It also changes duties. And may make a formational switch wholesale.

Whilst I honestly think the entire process isn't as straight forward as it should be; and whilst nobody would really want an "impossible AI" across the shop; I don't think the AI will be ever "too" decent, as there has been this theory of "Cheating AI" all over the place. Oft a case of simply confirmation bias, or the fact that the AI is the only Entity in the game for many that even tries to grind out defensive Football for the majority of of a match...… (and thus occasionally wins a match where it had x times fewer shots, which really should be a simple statistical probability, even if there was some actual quality in there. ). Aforementioned confirmation bias is also ignoring all the counter evidence, which is human Managers en masse on just about any FM board trumping the AI's seasonal shot to Goal conversion by edges unheard of in competitive Football anywhere (oft regardless  of Player Quality). 

Even my proposed improved tactical assistant, not at all unrealistic, see ten Cate under Rijkaard, etc. would therefore be seen as just another proof of an inherent AI bonus if it were to do better than the player.   This Kind of stuff is an actual concern in games development. Nobody would Keep playing a game they perceive as inherently unfair. Unless they go by the first Name of Gary and last name of Gazhammer (FM community inside joke ). https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/116071/Analysis_Game_AI__Our_Cheatin_Hearts.php My personal short-term hope is that SI take out all the "nonsensical" you and the AI can still microtweak themselves into. Pumping the ball to wholly isolated Target Men. Shoving every player boxside for 90 minutes, 38 Matches. Assigning playmakers who have no options to feed to once they get the ball. Trying to play a Possession game with no midfield / pivots controlling the center of the pitch. They are simulating semi/Pro Management, after all, not some School class in Team Sports Basics 101!

[BMNJohn]

5 hours ago, Svenc said:

And may make a formational switch wholesale.

I agree with your overall comment, but I want to highlight this part. You often see the AI do that mid match and suddenly peg you in a way it simply hasn't been able to. The AI just switches into their favourite attacking formation with the FM17 and 18 special three ST up front and gets dangerous. It's not so much that it's not working, but it doesn't feel very smooth. It's like a truck changing gears. Obviously the AI shouldn't be able to just dominate with a formation change, but they should also not have been dominated nearly as much if they're able to simply switch gears that easily.

Cue the now legendary mid-season slump just from a slight adjustment to the Reputation. You shouldn't have been so good, but you shouldn't be so terrible either. Now I just know in the CL/EL that if my team is on par with the opposition or at worst slightly weaker, I'm going to win the match bar some bad FMism. The AI isn't good enough tactically to make it really competitive... unless they do like Mourinho's FM17-18 ManUtd and buy all the good players on the planet (including yours) and put them in a simple but effective setup. But then they're competitive more because of player quality than tactical ability. As I keep saying: AIs do not actually exist, and certainly do not exist in FM.

That said, I most likely wouldn't have played my 4-2-3-1 like that nowadays. Kuhar and Maicon probably wouldn't have played other roles effectively, and they were effective; however my left winger was about as good, if not better of a playmaker than the one in the AMC slot. Nigel De Jong was so incredibly slow but with such incredible mental attributes that I could get away with him being a BWM; he also was retiring so I really wanted him on the pitch. My main RPM had very good overall attributes and physicals but horrible Nat. Fitness, so I probably would've trained him as a DM instead, with the other two playmakers in the CM strata in a 4-1-4-1 flat as I don't like AML/R strata as much nowadays. However said RPM was unavailable for the final, so that takes care of that question. That said, thee RPM role was just so good in FM15, so you kinda had to use one anyway, Nat. Fit. or not.

The tactic makes sense in hindsight, but it probably goes against most stuff you read about FM left and right. I would most likely criticize someone who attempted that today and complained that their tactics didn't work. But mine did.