retired_elpata

Can't even read that it hurts my eyes. Use paragraphs

retired_DonnyLFC

There you go Cleon, read it now.

retired_Mehman

I would say yes, but with the same caveats that have been used above. The big problems are the 424, which is basically a get out of jail free card for the computer. I have no problem with teams coming back in but 95% of the time that the opposition comes back to win/draw it's because they changed to this formation.

There's two parts of this in addition to the far-too effective 4-2-4. One is that there's far too little penalties to changing formation. In real football a team will change formation at most once during a match, maybe twice in an emergency. You just have to look at international friendlies to see the damage fiddling with a team does during a match - after all the substitutions and changes in formation, the second half is nearly always a write-off.

Changing tactics, especially those not practised in training, will most of the time make teams play far worse, upsetting the rhythm, confusing the players and generally upsetting the apple cart. The best way to avoid the AIs advantage of thinking faster than the human is to discourage it from making the vast, sweeping unrealistic changes in tactics that cause people to get annoyed. Managers in real life will tinker with their 'sliders', changing tempo, altering which side of the defense to attack, but generally the base formation and tactic will rarely change a huge amount (again as people said, players have too little influence on results in the current version.)

The second thing that would help matters is giving the ability of the AI managers more weighting. At the moment in the match engine there seems very little difference between the behaviour of say Peter Reid and Arsene Wenger. The Ai behaves in a similar way throughout, changing to the 424 and other goal getting tactics when it must, altering its system again and again to try and break the human one. Whilst this is commendable programming, it's not very realistic behaviour for a football manager.

In addition to the detrimental effect on the players of changing tactics so much, all but the top three or four managers in each country make a fair amount of mistakes in their tactics, either by trying something that doesn't work, not doing their homework or just stubbornly sticking to something that doesn't work. This sense of personality needs to be applied to AI managers - poor ones should be far less likely to change to game-winning formation in the last 20 minutes.

Also, the AI (and perhaps the human too) tactics should be far more linked to training. AI managers should have to teach their team a certain way to play, and that's the way that team plays. Bolton use a lot of set pieces, Arsenal pass the ball into the net, derby and watford are poor and just have to hoof it a lot of the time.

The fact that each AI changes its approach so much and so similarly to the other AIs means that no opposition team has any kind of feel or sense of style. If a team like watford was playing against the human player like watford, defending desperately and relying on luck and a couple of standout performances to keep the ball out of the net, and then nicking a goal from a corner or a rare attack, then I don't think people would be complaining.

The problem comes when a team plays like Watford for 80 minutes and then changes formation, starts stringing together 20 pass moves that outwit your team like brazil or man utd, to score two goals and overturn the deficit. Then when that's done, they go back to playing like watford for the last few minutes.

Of course, there will be arguments from people that you 'can come up with tactics to combat the late rallies' and beat the 424 etc but that's a real straw man argument. Although changing a little defensive to keep a lead is important, the sheer ease and just how often an AI changes tactics late on/when it's behind means that the human player has to change its tactics too often to compensate. It may be that there are things you can do every ten minutes to ensure a perfect match. The thing is, although small changes should be made throughout the match, the match engine is far too weighted towards changes in formation that this simply shouldn't happen so often.

So in summary yes. It's not cheating per se. It's just a clever AI made by clever programmers that haven't given the AI enough restrictions so that it sometimes manages badly. An AI manager should be punished far more for tinkering and should manage in a way far more reminiscent of its personality and ability level. Only when that happens will the claims of bias and cheating go away.

retired_elpata

Most of the people who see the Ai change formation though, don't even make a change themselves. Thats the reason why the AI seems to pull it back, because they don't adapt to suit. You can't expect to stay the exact same with no changes and it not have a negative effect on you.

Using real world examples is kinda pointless to get your point across. Its a game and works a lot different that RL football, you cannot expect a game to potrait RL football to the detail.

retired_slayerbing

Mate, the 4-2-4 by the AI is when my eyes light up! I Switch to a defensive/counter attacking tactic and more often then not I score a goal during that time.

What I am saying is don't fear the 4-2-4 - embrace it by having a tactic that counters it.

Of course they are going to come back and score against you if you keep using an attacking tactic from the start against their 4-2-4.

Do you seriously expect the AI to just play one tactic and stick by it even if your team is romping them? No of course not. The AI should, and does attempt to get a result for it's team. Its all about action and reaction.

retired_jacque90

No, but I control one team at a time. The AI controls a low end of ~18 teams, a high end of (divisions added) x (teams in each division). That's a lot of teams.

What I would seriously expect is for teams not to be carbon copies of each other. Switch to 4-2-4 when they need a goal. Fall back to 4-5-1/5-4-1 to defend. Sure, some teams would play like that, but not all of them. I'd wager not even most of them. In my last game, by 2019/20, about 3 out of 4 teams played me 4-4-2 Defensive, then switched to 4-2-4 or 4-5-1/5-4-1 as needed. That's just ridiculous.

The AI does make tactical mistakes. What it also needs to do is to make strategic ones. The game needs a marked difference between its AI managers. We need some of those AI managers, if they're not up to snuff, to completely misjudge their approaches to some games. Of course we also need some AI managers, if they are very good, to be able to do just the right thing. But right now, the more game times passes, the more teams tend to play the same.

Which leads us to another problem: Human managers are told time and time again, rightly so, to try and reason their tactics over. To take care of them. To make sure to avoid contradicting instructions. To adapt tactics to teams and teams to tactics. And so on.

If the AI tends over time to play in the same way, it means it suffers no such 'restrictions', in the sense that it's theoretically possible for any AI team to play 4-4-2 Def, then switch to 4-2-4 or 4-5-1/5-4-1 at will. Regardless of the type of squad they have, regardless of the type of manager these AI teams have, etc.

Sometimes us human managers take over teams where we know immediately what kind of formations would work, and which ones won't. It's in the squad, and in the player characteristics. But apparently the AI is able to take any team and make it play in that one particular way it loves so much.

So, to answer your question, what I would seriously expect is for both human managers and the AI to at least start on equal footing. I would also seriously expect to see some variety regarding the tactics and formations we meet. If you play the game long enough, it's not hard to see how the AI has been keeping track of what works and what doesn't, and tends to stick to what works. This is logical for one team, or one manager historically. But when you have a large number of teams and a large number of managers, we should be seeing a lot more trials and errors than what we're seeing now. It's too plain to see there's one AI brain behind all the teams, because as time passes all the AI teams slowly degrade into copies of each other, playing what the master AI has deemed to work.

retired_slayerbing

To be honest I actually agree with most of what you have said. I don't believe the game is 'cheating' but I agree with you that an AI intelliegence system of some sort would greatly improve things.

In the managers profiles there is their attributes for coaching and so on so if it was to be implemented it would go in there.

Of course you would expect that at the higher levels the calibre of managers is obviously better so they are less inclined to make those mistakes.

Does that sound like something you'd go along with?

retired_Cat1123

Here's a look at a different aspect of the game i dont like and i think needs a major overhaul!.

When i was playing as Juve, i had Chiellini and Balzaretti, both predominantly left backs and similar abilities and stats.

Now, as i've previously scouted both players as possible signings when playing as West Ham, i found that Chiellini is regarded by far the better player, whilst Balzaretti i am told, is a mediocre player who wont improve much in the future.

During my time at Juve, i started Chiellini ahead of Balzarreti, simply on this basis and the fact that although their individual player stats are similar, Chiellini's are already better.

Now over the two seasons i played as Juve, Chiellini was averaging around 6.7, whilst Balzarreti was one of my very best performers with an average of around 7.6.

By the 3rd season i was getting offers of around £10M for Chiellini, yet noone was interested in Balzaretti?.

I decided to cash in on Chiellini as Juve were seriously short of funds, yet he continued to underperform for his new club with around the same average he had when my player.

Balzaretti however, continued to impress, but was still not regarded as been in the same league(quality wise) as Chiellini?.

I noticed something very similar when playing as the Hammers and bringing Zaccardo to Upton Park. Neill was by far the better performer of the two, yet Zaccardo is regarded as one of the best RB's in the game.

Surely for future instalments this must be put right?. In real life players are judged and priced upon their continued performances and not a feature that allows a scout to see into the future. Surely a players value should rise and fall in this manner?, as it is their performances that they are judged upon and then bought and sold in real life?.

I've seen the exact same thing with strikers, a striker with seemingly good stats and scout report yet just does'nt score goals, will still be worth infinitely more money than a fella knocking in a goal a game, thats just crazy?.

While i'm on this path, i will bring up something else!. Dean Ashton in the eyes of the football world is a top quality TM who also has the skill to take on players. Ashton is strong in the air and is perfect for a lone striker role because of his dual abilities.

Yet on FM07 he is not far from useless?. I've seen him go through a season with worse heading stats than Carlos Tevez?(SERIOUSLY). This is not an anomoly, this is a clear indication that the game on a whole is not performing at a suitable level!.

This is'nt just another moaning session from myself, it should be deemed as another message to SI that this game needs an infinite amount of work to get it anywhere near where they appear to be trying to take it?.

retired_elpata

Where straying off the tactic elements now, this is for another forum.

But I have used all the players you mentioned above and Chiiellini is the best left back I ever used. Maybe you just wasn't getting the best out of him or he found himself struggling to get motivated playing for you? It does happen

As for Ashton on FM he's not classed as a target man. But on nealry all games I start he's wanted by all the top clubs and is clinical in front of goal. He nealy always scored 20+ a season in my games. If you see him having won less headers than Tevez then thats a research issue and the stats need correcting. I suggest you look in the data forum and post about it in the Westham thread.

retired_Cat1123

Did'nt know where to put it tbh Cleon?.

I was going to start that West Ham game this morning, do you have any preferences as to how i should go about it?.

I'll make up a player shortlist and outline my tactic ideas and post in the other thread!.