KingsbayYHPE

The Rules, Guidelines, and Spirit of LLM – Playing the Game and using the Forum

The playing of the game falls into two categories:
1) Choosing the Team.
2) Playing the game.

Choosing the Team’s easy enough. Look for any Nation with more than one Division. Look at the Clubs in the Lowest Division. Choose one of these Clubs.

By definition, Lower League management can only involve Teams with more than one Division, but it’s been a sort of unwritten rule in the LLM community that playing a Club from a Nation with only one Division will be tolerated in the LLM Forum.

Certain Teams are best stayed away from because of unusually high reputations or financial state. These included Peterborough in CM3, Rushden and Diamonds, Fiorentina Viola, and the like. They’re not generally played by regular LLaMas, but may be looked upon as a good introduction to the LLM way, given that they give a slightly easier ride than the real LLM Teams, like Leigh RMI.

A good way to choose a Club is to utilise the LLM Random Team Generator, link located at the top of the LLM Forum Index Page.

G.A's Three Rules of playing LLM.

1) Choose a team. Play the same team until you've won everything you can, regardless how long it takes, or until you're sacked. Then start a new game.
2) Choose a team. Play until your reputation attracts the interest of ever increasingly bigger teams; change Clubs as and when you're offered jobs until you're in charge at Real Madrid, Juventus, Man Utd or a World Cup winning Manager with San Marino.
3) Choose a team. Do crap. Get sacked. Wait for another team. Do crap. Get sacked. Wait for….ad infinitum.



Playing the game.

First thing to remember is…LLM is a way of playing the game, it’s not just playing with a Team from the Lower Leagues.

It is just a game, though. It’s counter-productive to get bogged down by rules, although there are a few guidelines which should be heeded in order to play the game in the LLM Spirit.

There’s a rule, though, which is best described as “set in stone”.

Play the game as SI programmed it. That is, install the CM Game, apply the latest official SI Patch, Choose a Team and play the game. That means do NOT use editors or third party updates (i.e. Updates on squads, competitions, etc, made up by persons other than SI).

The reason for this is that playing LLM is about playing the game as realistically as possible. This means trusting the data provided by SI is as good as you can get. Third Party Updates are done by persons who may be tempted to give an advantage/disadvantage to favourite/hated Clubs or Players – note MAY. It doesn’t benefit SI to provide faulty data, so steer clear of other updates.

Editors (The Spawn of Satan) are banned for two reasons. They can corrupt your game and they allow you to cheat, whether it’s producing super-players or swapping Teams from one Division or Nation to another.

Guidelines:

Scout Where You Can Tour, or SWYCT. This is a guideline that was devised as a method of determining where you should be able to send your Scouts when managing a Lower League Club. Financial constraints would make it highly unlikely that a Manager could send a Scout from England to Africa, South America or other faraway places, so the best way to decide where you could send them was to look at where the game would allow you to tour, in the United Kingdom Leagues this would be any of the Home Countries and Ireland, and only send your Scouts there.

It was later decided that it would probably be fair to scout your borders (SYB), i.e. send scouts from a German Club to surrounding Nations like Denmark, Austria, France, Poland, etc. when not managing in the UK.

The Search Screen. Some LLaMa’s use the search screen to shortlist players in their area and then send off their scouts to find out how good a player he really is. Other more zealous LLaMas avoid this screen entirely letting their scout do the job for which he was hired ie: finding players. Signing “known” players is a big no no. Known players are ones that are known to you through outside influences, or have been signed and performed well for you in previous games of CM. Regardless of what you tendency is with the Search Screen, no player should ever be signed unless he is first given the once over by one of your scouts.

The Transfer Screen. Stricter LLaMas would never attempt to sign players purely based on the fact they appear as freed in the screen that lists all transfers Worldwide as such a list does not exist in real life. It’s possible to find out such information in the Press, online, etc., but a real life manager doesn’t have access to a transfer screen.

Less scrupulous LLaMas use the screen by identifying freed players and sending their scouts to watch them, signing them or otherwise based on the scouts’ recommendations.

The “Find” button. Not used by LLaMas. In order to use the “Find” button you have to know who you’re searching for. This can only be done by having prior knowledge of the player, either by having past experience of him in a previous game or by listening to a recommendation by a player tipper.

Signing Staff. LLaMas usually only sign Staff that speak the language of the players they’ll be involved with. In Britain it’d be guys who spoke English. In Germany, German, and so on. The exception to this is scouts. Scouts don’t have day to day contact with players on a verbal communication level and can rely on their observation skills to identify worthwhile signings. It’s sometimes extremely difficult to sign a scout and you have to sign a foreign guy, so it’s looked upon as a “needs must” situation when signing scouts.

Signing Players. All players should be first scouted before signing for an LL Club. Send your scouts out to Regions or Nations using the SWYCT or SYB (Scout Your Borders) guidelines, and decide which of the recommendations you’ll sign. Once the financial situation of your Club is better, and the Club’s reputation is such as you’d be able to attract foreign players, send your scouts further afield, keeping it as realistic as possible.

The exceptions are loans, in which it’s fine to use the player/staff search using minimum filters (e.g. for loan, free). Some feel that players that you loan in should be first discovered by your scouts. This is a personal preference used by some LLaMas. Again let your conscience be your guide

If you have no scouts it’s ok to use the player/staff search screen to identify players and to invite them for a trial period to ascertain whether they suit your squad.

Tactics. Best to start off using a default tactic and altering formations or giving individual or team instructions to players based on the strengths or weaknesses of your squad, and NOT to use other people’s tactics or formations. The idea of LLM is finding out the errors of your ways though trial and error. Pinching other people’s ideas is not the way of the LLaMa.

What English Clubs count as LLM?

By definition, a Lower League Club must come from the Lowest Division available in any given Nation, as mentioned above.

In England, and any other Nation with "Feeder Leagues", e.g. Portugal or Italy, then the lowest available League is the "Feeder League", in England The Conference, but if the spec of your PC doesn't allow the "Feeder Leagues" to be loaded, then the Lowest available League becomes Division 3.

In Summary:

Conference - Lower League
Division 3 - Lower League, but with reservations.
Division 2 - Pushing it.
Division 1 - You're having a laugh.

KingsbayYHPE

Some notes on Scouting Abroad and Identifying/Signing non-Scouted targets.

Several Nations have historic links with other Countries and as a result have a considerable number of foreign players with Teams that perhaps wouldn't normally be there, e.g. Brazilians in Portugal, Senegalese and North African Nationals in France or Middle Africans in Holland.

The way LLaMas "get round" this problem is usually to employ one Scout of the Nationality of the Country the players come from, e.g. Brazilian Scout in Brazil for a Portuguese Club, and he only Scouts in Brazil, again "normally" once a season but this can vary.

It can be argued that if you play against another Team twice in a season (four times in Scotland) that you would gain enough knowledge of players in that Team through those meetings or watching how the players do in the League against other Clubs to make a bid for them without relying on a Scout report.

SWYCT was originally formulated for playing with Conference Teams in CM3, but it doesn't lend itself easily to 03/04. However, it's still a good and fair guideline but use commonsense to guage "reality".