retired_marcias

In CM 03/04 I found far more of a problem coming from having too many players from the active nation(s) later on in the game (i.e. too many regens of the nationality of the active league and far too few of all other nations). Apparently that was a problem that was supposed to be being sorted out in FM.

From my experience of a game in CM 03/04 I had Scottish league active with a large db and retained players from the Faroe Islands. 15 years into the game when ~90-95% of the players are now regens, Scottish players have flooded the databbase and unsurprisingly Scotland is by far the best football team. As for the Faroe Islands, the number of their players has progressively dropped over those 15 seasons from ~360 originally to ~280 in 2020 so retaining those players certainly hasn't had any adverse effect as oppose to the league selected.

Maybe the situation would be a lot worse if you retain players from a "big" nation though. And, as I say, I don't knnow what the situation is like in FM

retired_Wnt2Bamodel

I have noticed in my Swedish save that Scandinavian/Nordic national teams have started doing unusually well. I loaded all Swedish, Danish and Norwegian leagues as well as the English Premiership into a 'normal' database (crap PC). Those countries provided 3 of 4 Euro 2016 semi-finalists.

England would have made the 4th except they were beaten on penalties by Germany... So some semblance of realism remains

retired_lapepe

Well, it's not completely impossible. Sweden has a damn great side nowadays, and they got 3rd in WC1994. Denmark has a decent side too. Norway on the other hand...

To be it seems that the countries you're running get overly successful anyway. I'm running Jock and Poof with large DB none nations retained. Poofland has won more or less everything. Jocks hasn't been very successful though.

retired_Wnt2Bamodel

I remembered wrongly. England lost to Germany in one semifinal, Denmark and Norway played in the other. Only Sweden didn't make it - and that's probably because I was managing them

retired_B_RAN

Keep in mind that I can only run a small database with FM 2005 right now. I'm planning to build a new machine within the next two months that will be loaded with processing power and RAM, and I'll get FM 2006 at that time.

Meanwhile, I'm not sure why the huge database issue came into the discussion. Since I can only run a small database, I figure that it's better to retain the players from the active nations that I'm running. However, I haven't really tested what difference there might be between retaining players and not doing so with these game preferences.

One thing I have noticed is that, without retaining players, the small database sometimes makes it imposssible to manage a club with a lot of grey players. There will not be sufficient players to sign in order to field a proper squad and a few substitutes for matches. And there ends up being a general shortage of players and staff among the lowest league clubs.

But, again, I haven't run any games in FM 2005 for long enough to see just how balanced or unbalanced the game might become over long periods of time. But I'd be interested to find out what folks have to say about this issue within the context of a small database.

bodymassindicator

I don't the numbers off the top of my head, but you'll be much better off running a normal database than a small one while retaining all players from Italy, Germany, and Austria. The game will be both faster and more balanced.

retired_tinkfaeree

I usually use the retain players option for neighbouring countries. For example, when I'm playing in Austria, I'll retain players from Croatia, Slovenia, Hungery, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Poland, simply because players from there are very likely to end up in Austria.

On a normal database setting, those countries would be virtually empty when scouted. On a huge setting, those players would exist, but Austria would be full of Caribbean and Southeast Asian players in no time.

retired_jmeshew

To be fair to me , I was referring to 05 and prior where I did indeed find that to be the case. When I first hooked up 06 and checked what I could run and what I could get player-wise, I found the large to be much better than I felt it has been in the past, and the speed is greatly improved. And yeah, I have never been able to use the huge Db due to the speed tradeoff, which was the point of using the retain players.

to Nokem: It doesn't screw up the international squads, because no matter what db you choose, small or huge, the top players and clubs are still in the game. Which means their regens will be there as well. The retain function adds layers of the mid-level and below players. Elite players that comprise the national squads of major nations do not disappear and England does not become better (or Scotland or Ireland or whichever you've retained).

retired_jmeshew

Oh Dale (wish I had a damn edit function):

Try this: start a new game on a large db, as a Scottish side and set all the Scot leagues to active. Then go look at all the non-league teams and see what you find. Then try it with retain Scotland, and look again. You'll notice that the League sides are the same in composition, but all the non-league teams have players. To me, this IS critical as an LLM. It might be different with England because there are so many clubs, but the smaller nations . . .