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Ever since discovering tactical attributes of managers in the Editor I went on a personal quest to investigate how the AI plays. I know loads of people on this forum are dedicated to different frameworks and theories but at the end of the day it’s a game not real life. Their efforts are recognized and people have been successful using these but personally I never read them as it always involved micro managing the team and spending hours setting up the tactics. Anyway back to the topic, I used the editor to make Mourinho and Ferguson my assistants in 2 save games. This allowed me a chance to watch them as they controlled my team in friendly games.
While watching these games I took periodic pauses or after any major events to watch any changes in my assistants tactics, As you will see in the following screen shots there is a visible change in tactics but this needs to be examined further. Now one thing that was common in both tactical approaches of Mourinho and Ferguson was the closing down instructions to their defenders.
Here is a sample game from Ferguson as my Assistant:
Conclusion of sorts:
Now I've used similar was to alter my tactics during games, e.g. when I'm in need of a goal I push the mentality of one of my strikers I play a flat 442 along with pushing up my closing down to everyone except the defense. This has achieved reasonable success in that there are less mistakes in my defense and I win the games I should and I lose few games because my team isn't world class. In my most recent place I guided Portsmouth to 4th in the first season.
Now a little disclaimer:
I do not claim that thats the way the AI plays nor did I use those instructions to achieve any success
I made this thread in a hope it can benefit the community to analyze AIs tactics. Was anyone aware of this and did they use this approach if so were they successful? If I'm way off the mark I apologize for wasting your time, if you found this interesting please leave a comment or suggestion.
I like this idea a lot and it would be very interesting to see how much success you had if you used these tactics for a season or 2. Or if you left your ass man in charge for a season or 2 to see how much success they have and monitering how they played against different levels of opposition.
In particular I find it very interesting that initially he has 4 players on free roles and the whole team on 'try through balls'. This is something I'd never do, I rarely give anyone but the most creative player a free role and usually have no more than half my team playing through balls.
Sadly there is limitations to this method in that I can only monitor the tactics during the pre-season(just friendly games).
As you said "free roles" is very interesting in deed. I never used them before didn't see any real impact but I did notice that Ferguson gave his wingers and strikers free roles while Mourinho using his 433 formation gave them to the top three and occasionally when chasing a game to one of the CM's
Interesting to see the Free Role on the striker in the 4141, if any formation gives me problems and shouldn't it's that one and in particular that striker.
There are definitely patterns emerging from the analysis. Another interesting point is the target man supply both Mourinho and Fergueson used to "feet" supply. Which makes sense to an extent because up to now I always used to "head" as I had strong strikers in my teams. It makes sense because the player can get the ball under controller faster while the midfielders join in the attack, rather than hoping that someone will convert flick ons meaning your depending on the 2 strikers alone.
Very interesting thread, mate!! I know the experiment is limited, but it shows some points: the AI uses global mentality, except for 1 or 2 players. Same with other instructions. Unexpected: Whole team running with ball!!??!! 4 players with free role, all players with TTB often....
Thats a very good experiment well done, to take it even further you could try using the same asistant managers with different clubs. This way we could tell if each individual manager played exacly the same for every club or whether they would adapt their styles for each individuals.
If it is the former it would be possible to counter all of the managers exactly because we could see what they were playing!
Another way to utilise this experiment would be to see how the Asistant manager plays when he is using the deadly 4-2-4 formation that seems to always score, we could then replicate it and grab lots of late winners ourselves!
I've certainly adopted this approach and it is working for me to an extent. After finishing 4th in the first season with Portsmouth I expected re-ranking to kick in as that what kept happening to me in all the previous saves, but this time no effect at all I'm 2nd on goal difference after 7 games played.
I will continue this experiment and I will gather more and more data. I've yet to encounter the 4-2-4 but I shall report if I do.
Another interesting point is "closing down" it seems that its best suited to be used in short bursts. e.g. when needing a goal or just after conceding
I am just about to under go an experiment with arsene wenger by making him asistant manager of wycombe and then man utd and watching the games to see if he plays in exactly the same way for both.
Therefore if he did we would know exactly how to counter him and always beat arsenal, I will report back later.
Abramovic, if you want to see the AI in full effect you should take over the national team and select one of those managers as assistant. When they play friendlies they play quite "simple" whereas when I saw it at international friendlies it was intresting to see the AI actually change more mentalities and not just the strikers.
AI tactical behaviour 
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