retired_mcwlopez

On second thoughts your probably right to slightly disagree with me on this one. It was just a theory that i thought seemed logical, however, i then went to try and implement it with my middlesbrough team and i had the exactly problem you described. against chelsea, they were playing with their usual 4-1-3-2 formation and played very narrow.The only width they had was coming from their fullback steaming forward at every oppotunity, even to my by-line at times. i was playing a 4-3-1-2 formation with 3 centre mids and one attacking mid. I tried to make a narrow formation when i didnt have the ball and when i had the ball my team created as much width as possible as i believe this is the only way to beat chelsea. i was looking to get down their flanks on the counter attack once their fullbacks steamed forward. So on the outer 2 centre midfielders which was morrison and downing i place Farrows going diagonal to AML/R. This way when i had the ball downing and morrison would sprint to the touchline and fullbacks would come forward. However, i played with a narrow width setting and matched the passing to near short. So when i did get the ball and was looking to break quickly, they would pass it because the ball that was on wasnt short enough. So, i am now going to try something which may or may not work. seeing as though i am playing with 3 centre mids i am compact anyway due to numbers.and i can become fluently wide instantly when i have the ball. but what i may do is alter the width setting to somewhere near wide so that that gaps are slightly bigger but means my players will have slightly more time to receive the ball due to it taking the team to close me down slower because my plaers are more spaced out. Then im going to alter the passing to direct. This should allow my players when they get the ball to look for the slightly longer option of downing and morrison on the wings so i can counter attack quickly.

If anyone can think of any reasons why this may not work or fail completely then i would be pleased to hear feedback.

retired_mcwlopez

My game crashed before i had chance to save it however, im working on a new tactic at the moment. Not tested it yet but looks to me to have a lot of potential going forward and defending. When in posession of the ball the formation is a 2-2-1-3-2 but this (in theory) is able to fluently revert to a 4-1-3-1-1 when not in posession. Will do a bit of testing to see how this fares. as long as the setting are right i dont see any reason why liquid formations shouldnt work. As you can see. when im not in posession it reverts to a neat, compact system, which can quickly mechanise into an attacking system of play. If i am not having much luck i might post the tactic and ask for suggestions on how to tweak the players they make the system perform better.

retired_janellewood86

As a foot note...

I'm now not convinced that team and individual go hand in hand. In fact, many recent discussions and testing have led me to the conclusion that it's best to assume that all ticked individual sliders will overide the team ones.

There could well be an effect from changing the team slider, but this is for each individual player to decide. As for me, I don't feel confident one way or the other to definitively say "this is how it works". I am, however, leaning towards the idea that individual overrides team. You can decide for yourself whether to believe that or not.

retired_B-Scott

is there any evidence of these tips working in practice? ie a tactic that can be downloaded to show how the team improves with a formation that uses these principles?

retired_janellewood86

wwfan's frameworks work on the basis that tempo, passing and width should remain the same/similar in order to keep the team tight and the passing at a decent rate and length. So, in some respects, yes, as his "Rule of One" frameworks work on the principle that these sliders should re-enforce each other, not against each other.

Most tactics you'll find on this board, either consciously or otherwise, will take many of the assumptions made above as true. However, this wasn't a thread designed as a theory or framework, but a point of discussion on what the sliders do.

Cleon's thread shows how he tweaks his settings using the sliders, and most of his changes would follow the above. But as I say that you can use the different instructions to re-enforce a tactical style (such as playing a slow tempo and short passing in order to make sure the team build slowly with no long passes) or combat unwanted effects (such as playing a quick tempo with short passing to get up the pitch faster but with short, precise passes) it's a question of individual taste as to how you impliment them.

If you were to use this thread as a basis for your own tactic (which I wouldn't advocate doing before you read a few other threads - certainly Slider Apathy, TT&F and the Sheffield United Project) then work out how you want to play. Attacking, short passes, and patient? Then look at each slider and set them to how you want them. Then, look at how your team play on full highlights in a friendly and ask yourself how the style can be improved. Does it need to be more patient? Then you have options - lower tempo, increase timewasting, lower passing, lower mentality. If you don't feel you want to do one of those, then there are alternatives. This thread is really a guide to show how you can ballance the sliders against each other to heighten or dampen the effects of one slider or another.

The other use of the thread is to show you the options available by suggestion how each slider affects another.

I hope that makes sense. I was beginning to lose myself there.

retired_B-Scott

Im more intersted in practical solutions than theorums, but each to their own. Theres a lot of literature on the different sites, and each has their own set of 'bibles' with authors defining a lot of football terms in extrapolated language telling us this does that etc but serve little practcal function ie as far as im concerned what is going to beat the ai being the only question worth answering.

And please dont take this personally as Ive read your work and I commented on the thread as it was one of the only ones that showed some deeper thought, but many of the changes advocated by these bibles simply doesnt qwork well in practice - for example: recommending to change mentality, creativity, aggression etc of the back line according to each position - in my tests your much better off leaving all the sliders central and everyone on the same mentaility - but i dont see this sort of approach anywhere because all the authors writing the bibles seem more obsessed with mentally tweaking every possible element without showing any proof that it actually works.

Personally I work out the affects of different tactics and sliders against opponents on the pitch, not on paper.

Nothing personal. Good work.

retired_janellewood86

No offence taken.

Believe me, the whole point of many bible and theory threads is exactly the goal you pointed out - beating the AI. Whether you favour a simple or complex approach to that is down to the individual player.

The goal of this particular thread was purely theoretical and offers no solutions. However, I don't feel you can say that the practical threads out there make contentions without backing them up. TT&F with its Rule of One principles, for instance, works. At least, it does for me. Similarly, Cleon's threads are virtually devoid of overt theorising yet they are clearly based on principles.

I always look at what happens on the pitch before commiting it to paper. Anything else would be highly foolish (anyone remember that "Grid Theory" thread?). I may make hypotheses from time-to-time, but I would never give definitive advice without testing it and actually using it myself.

Theory threads, proposals, hypotheses and all that jazz are a way of showing people struggling with the game a different approach. And since it has become nigh-on impossible to win with an unchanged tactic over a season, knowing how a tactic (and more broadly the game engine in general) works is crucial to getting the most out of it. This particular thread just shows what sliders you can move, and what those sliders are likely to do to your team.

How, if, when you use them is completely up to you.

retired_elpata

Same here, but a lot of people come up with theories without even testing them and putting it into practise

retired_B-Scott

Thanks for replying. I did write that after spending an hour looking through different tactical threads and finding nothing that i was confident of bringing to my tactics (when i make a tactical change, i test the effcts over 4 or 5 replays of the exact same game, moving a single slider accordingly to stand a chance of analysing the result over a few game sand in the same condition).

I think the problem is, you dont know who to trust when you read their work - i would still like to see some downloadable tactics which demonstrate and prove any particular notion, and also the affect this has on an opponents players and movement, not just on your own players (which is also generally lacking!).

I will be putting my money where my mouth is and publishing an example of how i go about testing slider movements shortly, so i hope you pay me a visit and let me have it, both barrels

I'll post a link here when its done so you and other people can follow our discussion and methods.

cheers, socks

retired_myhomeuphere

Can i ask what the difference is between direct and short passing is?