wwfan

There's a hell of a lot of crap being spewed there. </BLOCKQUOTE>

Less of that, Millie. Grogsy is obviously one of the best Championship/Football managers of all time as his astute comments about

a: how real life football works

and

b: the inadequecies of the current match engine

prove beyond reasonable doubt. Once you get your poor befuddled head around his razor-sharp insights you will see that the success you have had in FM07 is due to dull-witted luck rather than thoughtful and logical strategy.

Please refrain from posting your negative and unhelpful comments again and try instead to learn from such enlightened genius. It is rare that we get the privilege of such a wonderous player sharing his thoughts with us, and I, for one, feel honoured.

haven

I think what surprises me even more about the AI's 4-2-4 end-of-game tactic is how few goals it concedes when going to this. Even if there's a flaw in the game engine that makes this excessively effective, you'd think it would leave the AI more exposed than it actually does.

Millie

There's a hell of a lot of crap being spewed there. </BLOCKQUOTE>
Unlike wwfan, I don't believe you know what you're talking about, and whether I win by dumb luck or not is not the point. wwfan doesn't have a clue what he's talking about most of the time anyway. He only invented RoO because he lives in Australia.

Let's disect this and out line your major points, which quite frankly show a complete lack of understanding:

Very interesting analysis there. Is this based on the match engine? Because if I remember correctly the match engines of 3.x.x and 4.x.x were abysmal. Wibble/Wobble and the 2d engine of 4.x.x were so full of holes and exploits it would be impossible for you not to have a great amount of success if you just downloaded the right tactic and went with it. Thank god those days have gone, I say.

I'd also like you to show me a coding house in the Western (or Eastern) world that could produce a manager game as intricate and complicated as FM with the few bugs (comparitively) that it has.

Aside from the hilarious fact that you think Newcastle and Tottenham are crap, re-ranking does occur in real life, and it doesn't happen as majorly as people seem to think in FM. Let's just take me and my football watching life. Now, I've been heavily into football since about the 1994 season. Therefore, should I still treat Coventry as a Premier League team? Are Chelsea still a bunch of over-rated high-mid-table foreigners? Are Wigan still in "Division 3"? Are Oldham a Premier League team? No. The impression we have of clubs changes all the time. At the start of the season, Reading would be seen as easy pickings - now they're UEFA Cup contenders. Are you telling me teams don't expect a different game against them now? Or the opposite with Charlton or West Ham? People's impressions change - re-ranking is how that is reflected in FM. But it won't suddenly make your tactics obsolete or make you team fancied as league winners when they have a bunch of misfits playing. Too much emphasis is placed on this by players, not SI.
England's best XI would probably have to play a 6-3-1 formation or some weird thing like that. Even if we do play 4-4-2, can Gerrard and Lampard play together in the middle? Should we play Crouch and Owen or Rooney and Johnson. Or Defoe? Think of the teams we've played as well who are crap and yet come away with results. Macedonia is the prime example. Good players does not necessarily equal a good team.

As for the 'Boro example, that seems to be taken from real life! They did get awesome results against United, Chelsea, Arsenal and the did **** up against some pretty average teams. That's why they've been looking over their shoulder all season. They play a style of football which works well against skillful sides who give them a little more room to play and aren't watching for the counter attack. They may even have unprofessional players who can only get themselves up for the big games. The same could be said of real-life West Ham this season. So, no, that isn't unrealistic at all. If you can't adapt to the opposition, you'll get hurt. No matter who you are.

The idea that a team play the same tactic and same team regardless because they have good players is a complete non-sense. They may play variants on the same tactic, but never the same for the whole season, not even over 90 minutes in some cases.

gavinkil

I admit I have not read all the thread but that was a slightly harsh post.

Could we not relate a lot of the instances to the managers profiles and how they work. Such as the thread suggests with 4-2-4, I have noticed most managers will do this. Although in real life this is not the case. It may just be a more attacking variation of their standard tactic.

Perhaps this does happen and there is just in inability for the human player to notice this, unless watching the full game or some other feature.

Marseille07

Millie, I think the point here is not that a good team performing poorly, but that a good team dominates the game until 70th minute then all of a sudden 4-2-4 comes in and the game is drawn.

While I admit it does happen, it definitely does not happen as often as some managers witness here.

Thunda

Its not that it doesn't happen in real life or things similar - its the sheer effectiveness that the problem with it.

I've mentioned through this thread that if it so good as to turn a decidely dodgey team into a pack of world beaters in the last 10 minutes, then why not use it more often?

I'll use an example - imagine current bottom of the table (and now relegated) Watford, going to Man Utd (currently top) and playing 4-2-4 for 10 or 15 minutes when a goal or 2 down .. what would happen in reality?

The attacks that are launched would get eaten up by the Man U defence and Watford would get ripped apart on the break and would probably end up losing 4 or 5 .. Ok, Watford might nick the odd goal every now and then, but more often an not they'd lose goals ..

Look at Man U vs Roma a couple of weeks back .. in the opening 20 minutes, Roma had a fairly attack minded mentality - not all out as a 424 - but they we're pushing people forward and we're 4-0 down in next to no time ..

In FM, the worst team in the league can visit the top of the table team and the team with the best defensive record in the division - get totally dominated for 75 minutes, be a few goals down - switch to 424 and come the 89th minute could be easily looking to win the match outright and looking solid as a rock all of a sudden in their own defense ..

Pushing more people forward in a close game near the end - think we can all accept that - but switching to Brazil mode and suddenly making the best team in the league look like a fat pub team is stretching things a little bit ..

wwfan

That was the point until the thread was hijacked by an idiot with a God-complex. The 4-2-4 is annoyingly potent but there are strategies you can use to defend against it. Regard it as a border guard against ridiculous levels of user dominance and learn to love the achievement of winning games you deserve to win through tactical nous alone. It's not as if the 4-2-4 comes as a surprise. You know it's going to happen!

Luketa

That was the point until the thread was hijacked by an idiot with a God-complex. The 4-2-4 is annoyingly potent but there are strategies you can use to defend against it. Regard it as a border guard against ridiculous levels of user dominance and learn to love the achievement of winning games you deserve to win through tactical nous alone. It's not as if the 4-2-4 comes as a surprise. You know it's going to happen! </BLOCKQUOTE>

That´s why I say the 4-2-4 is a robotic and stupid way to complicate things for the human players. If this is the way the programmers have chosen to make the game more difficult, well...the result is very poor, boring and unrealistic, and it needs to be improved in the next version.

gavinkil

Yes I do see what your saying, but I am thinking about fixes.

Such as codeing in how good managers are at certain things, as I was saying not all managers are going to goto that 4-2-4.

However if Man Utd played 4-4-2 against Watford that were playing the same 4-4-2 I would expect Man Utd to win.

I certainly think within the game there are certain situations in which, I would whole heartly expect the opposition manager to make tactical errors. Although what I have spectated this does not happen.

As I stated previously things may happen if you watch the full match, I do not notice on highlights.

Marseille07

wwfan, it is actually rare that a manager switches to 4-2-4. Not many managers pull two midfielders and bring in two strikers...Switching from 4-4-2 to 3-4-3 or 4-3-3 maybe, but rarely 4-2-4.