If you register for free, you will be able to post threads, vote on polls and lots more. If you have problems with the registration or logging in, please contact the administrator.
Managing 'Private' Shortlists: Does the AI have too much of an advantage?
Picture the scenario. You’ve been keeping tabs on an up and coming youngster for a few months.Your scouts tell you he has the potential to be a world beater. You put him in a private shortlist so that no other club knows of your interest, and effectively scout him yourself, looking at his match ratings/stats, even watching the occasional match to see him 'in the flesh'. While keeping tabs on him you check his profile to see if any other clubs are interested and seeing no other clubs appearing in the ‘Interested’ line of his profile you start to get excited that you have discovered an unknown diamond in the rough. With the transfer window quickly approaching you decide now is the time to strike and make a bid. A few days later you get a rejection, but when you return to the players profile to make a second bid you discover a host of clubs have come out of the woodwork to steal your thunder.
While you are still negotiating furiously the AI teams have all managed to get bids accepted without appearing to have to go through the same back and forth you have. In fact I have rarely seen an AI club take more than 2 bids to hit the 'sweet spot' i.e. the perfectly structured bid that the selling AI controlled club is willing to accept. While you have been haggling over a price your potential wonderkid has already accepted a contract from an AI controlled club whose negotiating only required 2 rounds!!!
Two of my issues with this:-
1. The ease with which the AI offers an acceptable bid
2. Why doesn't the AI team come back and say we have accepted this exact bid from another club instead of continuing the negotiating process with me (this in the absence of being a rival club or poor manager relationships)
Both of these have been discussed, and possible solutions suggested, in another thread by Ackter
so I won't go over ground already covered. But what I will cover is my third problem with the above scenario, namely AI Manager Private Shortlists vs. Human Manager Private Shortlists.
As the game stands there is an air of pointlessness to having a private shortlist and making private bids as the bid still appears in the ‘Offers’ section of a player’s profile and the AI seems to instantaneously be aware of every bid a human manager makes. The assumption is that AI managers have all the same tools as a Human manager in the transfer market so if prior to me bidding for a player no club is listed as interested then any AI controlled club who are interested must also have this particular player on their private shortlist. Thus the only way they would become aware of a bid is if they were to do the equivalent of what a human player must do to maintain a veil of secrecy, which is to continuously go to the profiles of all the players they are interested in to see if any bids are listed in the ‘Offers’ section.
Herein lies the advantage the AI holds and which creates the perception of instantaneous awareness amongst AI managers of every player a human manager bids for. The AI is a computer and can scan through every private shortlist players profile in a nanosecond and can do so in a scheduled manner. Yet us mere mortals have to tediously click through every player we are interested in and remember to do so on a regular basis for fear of missing the boat. The tedium of doing this might just be a manifestation of my tendency to have an overflowing shortlist of players but it still can’t be denied that the AI has a distinct advantage if the assumption of AI managers having access to the same tools holds true.
I know that the AI does not instantaneously become aware of every player I bid for as I have purchased plenty of youngsters with obscure reputations without any kind of competition. It is the way that they become aware of my bids for players on their private shortlists that is extremely frustrating, particularly when in control of a non glamorous club where I know that as soon as the Man Utds of the world start bidding then I may as well throw in the towel. I am not arguing against the realism of this situation, rather the way that the AI can manage a private shortlist 1000 times more efficiently than a human manager.
My question for SI, or any programmers reading this, would be is there any way that the AI can be modified to possibly level the playing field a little. Maybe create a piece of code that somehow cloaks the ‘Offers’ data for random players in AI managers’ shortlists to mimic how a human manager would miss out on a player if they had them on their private shortlist and had neglected to check if any offers had been made. Would doing this make it a more level playing field?
It would potentially reduce the frustration that the 'out of nowhere' bid by the AI creates.
Although I have said in the transfer market the efficiency of the AI managing their shortlist is a possible explanation for their awareness of a human manager making a bid, an interesting case is Adriano at Inter. So I load up a non patched new game in control of Arsenal. The first thing I do is check Adriano's profile and no one is interested:-
An interesting point here is that it appears that the AI still doesn't seem to judge it's squad and need for players as Liverpool with their abundance of strikers have made a bid. It might be a case that the AI Rafa Benitez doesn't think the players his real life counterpart signed are up to the task. This could be due to how AI managers perceive a player's ability using CA/PA and the real life research assigned values not meeting the hard coded criteria. But only someone from SI, or someone with knowledge of the code, could offer an explanation as to why that happens.
Back to the test. I then reload the game and make no offer for Adriano at all, and 2 weeks later no one is interested:-
A reasonable explanation for this is that Adriano was on these clubs private shortlist but they didn't think Inter would be willing to let him go. And when they see my offer accepted they jump into the bidding war. But this begs one question of the AI behaviour: Why do they not give it a go just like I did when the worst that can happen is that Inter say no?
Any opinions/criticisms/counter arguments? Have other people experienced these things as well? Has using the beta patch had any effect on these quirks of AI Transfer Market behaviour?
11-19-2007, 10:19 AM
Managing 'Private' Shortlists: Does the AI have too much of an advantage? Post #2
Adriano's reputation doesn't really allow for privacy I believe. Stuff like this almost always gets out. Only for high rep players though. If you make a private offer for an obscure player and the same thing happens, that's definitely wrong.
11-19-2007, 12:51 PM
Managing 'Private' Shortlists: Does the AI have too much of an advantage? Post #3
I have noticed the exact same thing, not with someone so prestigous as Adriano however, that may be one explanation for this. Perhaps they didn't consider the prospect of signing him until you had your bid accepted, then thought well since he is such a good player, we might as well try if it works for you.
However I've had this problem with relatively unknown players to, and especially with loan players. If I'm playing with a mid level team such as my beloved Parma, I'll make a loan bid for half of the Arsenal reserve team, instantaneously triggering 5+ bids for each player, if I leave it for a month or until the last minute, almost always, little or no interest has been shown in any of the players.
Managing 'Private' Shortlists: Does the AI have too much of an advantage? 
Linear Mode
