retired_cricria

Actually, it's the number of times i'd wished I slept with Liz Hurley, also the year Bristol Rovers were founded in England. </BLOCKQUOTE>

that is a remarkable coincidence!

retired_e_fores

This thread isn't to point out anyone's tactical mistakes (as it may slowly become) so I think we should return to the debate "does the d-line do anything?"

My answer would be: Yes. However it doesn't do very much. The defenders don't seem to move very quickly to enact it which I think is a flaw. It is also not so clear in the manual.

Eg. The manual says you should play a high d-line if you play a short passing game. This would make a lot of sense if the d-line applied when you are in possession, but sinced d-line only applies when you are out of possession, surely your passing strategy is irrelevant now the other team has the ball.

Personally I adjust d-line to deep if I play a counter game and push it up when attacking, though play it deeper if the opposition has fast attackers (and they almost always do according to the scout) or if I play more direct. I don't know if it does a huge amount, but ATM I am winning, so that's good enough.

PS. Leroy, though you don't claim to be a tactical genius you seem to know more than most. Your input is great.

PPS. Once again - the game don't cheat.

retired_kellyk

Defensive line does work.

The position of the backline is constant. What changes when you adjust the Defensive line is not how far back your defenders go, but how far up or down your defenders begin their closing down. So if you were playing with a low dl, your mids would begin their closing down in your half...if its high they begin higher up the pitch.

Luketi

Ok, so we both agree that this slider is not as useful as it could it be. If there is actually a closing down slider, the defensive line slider is a bit redundant. And finally there is no way (still) to change the defensive line position.

retired_kellyk

Like I said before...the position of the backline does not change. And we did determine that months ago in an older thread. The thing is the slider for DLine works in a way that would affect how early or late your CD instructions start A high CD on mids who have a deep defensive line, would mean that these defenders would drop back first before beginning their closing down instructions. This would be relative to where the whole team was on the pitch.

For me defensive lines are simple. Don't try looking for the way they work in the middle of possession. Look at it when the keeper kicks the ball. or when they bring the ball slowly up the flanks. That's when you see DLine in action.

In the way my tactics are set up. The key to winning the game lies only in managing the defensive line slider. If I'm looking to pressure the other team and make more chances I push the defensive line up

Sky King

I guess the term "Defensive Line" is misleading then. I would assume, like other people, the term "defensive line" refers to how high you want to keep your back four at. If there is no way to manipulate it in FM, we can get burnt by a long through balls to the fast striker no matter what we do.

retired_kellyk

We did notice this for long times during the demo. It was annoying cos if it was the positions of the back four then yeah it was difficult to read. But, when you use it in conjunction with Closing down then its different. Try setting your front line and your midfield on max closing down then play your game on full highlights and then watch carefully to see where the different dots engage the ball when not in possession.

I'm pretty certain of this, the way I play my game is pretty straightforward. I set up my defense first and then once I see the players close down properly, I then look at defensive lines. If I notice that the AI is having too much possession in midfield I push it up. This has the effect of setting my midfield to close down higher up on the pitch and try to win those balls there.

Right now that's my major tweak in fact the only real tweak in the game. Yeah I go narrow sometimes but that's down more to those x'mas tree formations I sometimes get to face. In some books I've read the definition of a defensive line is not the back four but an imaginary line between the midfield and the defensive back 4. Now if we apply it to this game, it makes a whole lot more sense. The higher the DL the higher the line between midfield and defense, which often happens when you play a high dl. And because of the high line balls over the top through the centre are notoriously annoying.

This has been mentioned before by testers as well of the game. I know its really annoying cos ideally you want a low defensive line to literally mean...put those back 4 deep. I want the midfield to do all the work until the 25 yard line before my back 4 engages. That is not happening, for now at least.

In the meantime the best way to play the game and to account for defensive lines is to imagine it as a line between the two. Knowing that pushing it up really high means that you need to account for this in your tactics, and that is not hard to do, unless of course you're a really poor side. If you do not have the players with high anticipation and pace do not play with high dlines.

retired_e_fores

Rashidi thanks a lot. Your explanation does make sense, but the fact we are haing this debate further proves that the manual is poor.

retired_rayrhi

I've always been of the opinion that it is a 'broken slider' since the defensive line should control....the defensive line. But it doesn't. Rashidi, your theory makes good sense, but why on earth where we not told this in the manual? If it is indeed true, of course. A lot of frustration has been created with this particular slider since it is not possible to have your defence sit deep. It's simply IMPOSSIBLE. This is just one more example of how poor the manual is.

retired_hope

I am very interested in the idea of closing down and defensive line being related.

I have done some basic testing and will give more details as I go.

Basically to test this I have created a new game with Hearts.

What I did was play with a flat 4-4-2 formation, no arrows on the wingers.

I set eveyone to low forward runs, except the front two on mixed. I set closing down and creative freedom globally to 1 Rarely.

This was so I could view the positional influence with minimal interference from the above sliders.

Then I played the match in full, and observed the d-line effects, changing it between 1, 10 and 20.

Afterward, I replayed the match again this time I changed mentality between 1, 11 and 22.

Again, I replayed the match this time I closing down between 1, 10 and 20.

My conclusion was that D-Line did not influence closing down other than positioning the player higher up the field and hence closer to the forward receiving the ball. The closing down was because the defender was closer to the player with the ball, you could conclude that this is what Rashidi is witnessing.

However, D-Line seemed related to the mentality, especially in terms of the space between the midfield and the defence.

Rashidi, I do not want to dismiss your theroy straight away, but could you elaberate a bit further. I honestly tried to see what suggested in your above post, but I couldn't see it. I would like to understand your theory better.

In the mean time I am going to continue to test D-line extensively again.

If anyone has any ideas on how best to do this then please post them.

Luketi, I still haven't forgotten about the freekick positoning of players, but I would like to test this over the course of a season and so could you bare with me. I'll post my conclusions as soon as I have finished testing.