retired_chanelallen

I read for several times the following guideline:

One grey area is the use of the "RETAIN_PLAYERS" .ddt files. This seriously unbalances a game. If, say, you retain all the players of Italy when you're playing a game in England and Scotland you end up with Clubs full of Italian players in all the Divisions in Scotland and England.

This explains quite well why you shouldn't use these file but, in my opinion, you can use them in order to setup a "realistic" database when you start a new game.

I thought about a "right" use of DDT files while i was playing a game in Greece. Seeing that this country is located in Southern Europe, i ran also Turkish leagues in order to have some more players of this area. But what about other leagues which aren't active in FM like Cyprus, Albania, Malta, etc.?

Why can't I consider the possibility to use DDT files for teams of those countries, in order to expand this particular area?

I believe that using in this way DDT doesn't unbalance the game, as the guideline instead says for "RETAIN-NATION-PLAYERS".

what do you think about? let me know...

ciao.

retired_pmetzger1

Here are a number of reasons to avoid DDT

http://www.pan-uk.org/pestnews/Actives/ddt.htm

retired_chanelallen

Are you good for a laugh through this old joke? :p

Try again with something else next time... bye!

KingsbayYHPE

You know what we think about it.

What do you think about it, do you think it's realistic?

It's your game, play it as you will.

retired_pmetzger1

I have never retained players in any version of FM and I've never had a problem with the mix of the nationalities of players 20, 30 years down the line.

I can see no reason to use it.

retired_chanelallen

First off: play the game as you see fit :thup:
Secondly: It will however unbalance your game as explained in the piece of the guidelines you quoted:
You'll end up with lots of players from the retained countries. But where to stop then: could you retain Mongolia in a 'Greece Save'?
According to your logic, you can balance a game by retaining all countries close to the one you're playing in.
According to me you are just making an attempt to balance it, but you will only have the illusion of balance based on your definition of 'close countries'.
As allready explained: why not retain Mongolia for a Greece save? Too far? Well, that's ok for me, but then your bound to unbalance your game because you'll have lots of Cypriotic blokes but no Mongolians.
And if you would retain all countries 1500 miles out from Greece, what about retaining the countries 1600 miles away?
In my opnion you either retain all or nothing.
I choose to retain nothing because my computer would disagree </BLOCKQUOTE>

My PC thinks the same.
Thanks for your very clear explanation.
The only road to realism is to retain all leagues and all world players but you need a computer manufactured ny NASA!

Another question...
What about the leagues loaded? Which is your criterion?

retired_mandyrae30

Simple.... loads the leagues where you wish to manage in

retired_dfhern

What exactly do you mean?

I tend to either load 1 nation, bottom-league to top-league or, as I have done with my current FM08-save, a number of countries that are pretty much linked geographically.

I personally wouldn't load USA, Brazil, England and Greece for example. I'd rather go for Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands and France.

Also, I would load all leagues from all the countries I have selected. I know this is mainly a personal preference because I guess that a lot of LLaMa's do sometimes select 1 or 2 leagues from certain countries.

retired_angeliwuoma

I've just kept it simple & load all the leagues in Europe & S.America, too hard to choose which ones to exclude.

retired_berrysale

As many leagues as my PC allows.

As FM goes to slowly will all leagues, I cut out all countries that have annoying U-21 or U-18 rules.