If you register for free, you will be able to post threads, vote on polls and lots more. If you have problems with the registration or logging in, please contact the administrator.
I finished up my last CM game about February 2003, with the last edition of CM3. I didn't get the first edition of CM4, and just got 03-04 about a month ago. I started a game as Huddersfield, but wasn't having alot of fun, so I'm looking for advice as to how to have fun with CM4 in LLM. So let me just run through some of my concerns, some big and some small.
1. One of the fun little joys of CM LLM is taking a Div. 3 or conference side, and getting them promoted, and seeing the club grow. I got Huddersfield promoted, but attendance barely changed. (I did draw >20,000 when I hosted a couple of Premiership sides in the League Cup.) Is this just a problem with Huddersfield (and I grant, I only got them from 3 to 2), or in general do LLM teams not grow attendance like in CM3?
2. I was a big tactics geek. I loved discussing tactical theories and tweaking and re-tweaking and perfecting my tactics. I really, really, really miss the w/wo ball screens. For any of you who also loved the tactics part of the game, and not so much the scenery of a long LLM ride...do you think tactics are less fun now? Or are they just really different, and I need to step back and completely re-orient my approach? (Yeah, I get that the tactics are much, much more realistic. But I'm just asking about "fun.")
3. I don't know if this concern can be addressed without violating LLM forum rules, but here goes. CM4 obviously is missing all of the "free" teenagers from CM3. Realistic, but I think less fun for LLM. And playing as Huddersfield, we had no money for transfers and were under extreme wage limits. So as far as building my squad, I was only left with the short-term fix of finding the best loaners to cover for an injury or to fill a hole on my club. Am I missing something, or is squad building just not as much fun in CM4? (It's that "am I missing something" that might get responders in trouble. So, just tell me if I am missing something, not "what" it is. )
4. I'm gonna start a new savegame, and I'm sorely tempted to commit the apostasy of turning off FOW. Here's why.
a) CM4 scouts are quite retarded.
b) The fogging is overdone...I was interested in loaning into Div. 2 an EPL player who had started 10 matches by December, and the guy was fogged!!??!!?? As a side note...I'm disappointed that the designers didn't take up the suggestion of having "all fogged," "alot fogged" and "slightly fogged."
c) Often with an LLM team, if you want to sell a player to an interested club, they want to do a player exchange...for fogged players!! OK, I get that that is realistic, but it would also be realistic that I would send a scout over to watch practice. But my scout takes weeks to report back, so it's useless. I even tried the trick of scouting the interested team, in anticipation of the inevitable player exchange offer, but that didn't really work. Is there a "quick scout" option for player exchanges I missed? Or did the designers f'up?
In general, I loved CM3 because I really felt in control of my club...the tactics, the squad. I only played 1 1/2 season of CM4, but I had only a fraction of that sense of control. Is my problem that I haven't adjusted my expectations and gameplay, or do you guys agree?
DIGRESSION ALERT...Are any of you guys familiar with Civilation II and Civilization III? In many, many ways, Civ 3 is the better game. But in one way, it's vastly inferior, namely, that because of the radical changes in the game, the number of paths to victory was dramatically reduced in 3. Civ 3 is supposed to be a strategy game, but it really lacks strategy. It's all tactics, at least until late in the game. It's impossible to build a large civ (at higher levels of the game), and it's impossible to win as a small civ. So you're forced into one general civ size. As a result, a player is much, much, much more dependent on his starting position.
And that's kind of how I feel about CM4. Like Civ 3, it feels like they made the game more realistic but alot less fun.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by David G:
1. One of the fun little joys of CM LLM is taking a Div. 3 or conference side, and getting them promoted, and seeing the club grow. I got Huddersfield promoted, but attendance barely changed. (I did draw >20,000 when I hosted a couple of Premiership sides in the League Cup.) Is this just a problem with Huddersfield (and I grant, I only got them from 3 to 2), or in general do LLM teams not grow attendance like in CM3?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Some clubs will never increase their attendance unless the town itself grows. That is reflected quite well in CM03/04 IMO
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
2. I was a big tactics geek. I loved discussing tactical theories and tweaking and re-tweaking and perfecting my tactics. I really, really, really miss the w/wo ball screens. For any of you who also loved the tactics part of the game, and not so much the scenery of a long LLM ride...do you think tactics are less fun now? Or are they just really different, and I need to step back and completely re-orient my approach? (Yeah, I get that the tactics are much, much more realistic. But I'm just asking about "fun.")
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I hated Wibble/Wobble. It took the fun out because you controlled exactly where everyone would be. Without the Wibble/Wobble, you have to expect them to be where they should be.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
3. I don't know if this concern can be addressed without violating LLM forum rules, but here goes. CM4 obviously is missing all of the "free" teenagers from CM3. Realistic, but I think less fun for LLM. And playing as Huddersfield, we had no money for transfers and were under extreme wage limits. So as far as building my squad, I was only left with the short-term fix of finding the best loaners to cover for an injury or to fill a hole on my club. Am I missing something, or is squad building just not as much fun in CM4? (It's that "am I missing something" that might get responders in trouble. So, just tell me if I am missing something, not "what" it is. )
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
That's what RL football is like
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
4. I'm gonna start a new savegame, and I'm sorely tempted to commit the apostasy of turning off FOW. Here's why.
a) CM4 scouts are quite retarded.
b) The fogging is overdone...I was interested in loaning into Div. 2 an EPL player who had started 10 matches by December, and the guy was fogged!!??!!?? As a side note...I'm disappointed that the designers didn't take up the suggestion of having "all fogged," "alot fogged" and "slightly fogged."
c) Often with an LLM team, if you want to sell a player to an interested club, they want to do a player exchange...for fogged players!! OK, I get that that is realistic, but it would also be realistic that I would send a scout over to watch practice. But my scout takes weeks to report back, so it's useless. I even tried the trick of scouting the interested team, in anticipation of the inevitable player exchange offer, but that didn't really work. Is there a "quick scout" option for player exchanges I missed? Or did the designers f'up?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I think it's fine the way it is. You'd have kept your eye on so many players, you would forget most of them anyway.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by LFCfan:
I think it's fine the way it is. You'd have kept your eye on so many players, you would forget most of them anyway.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
[laments the loss of 76 page shortlists]
To answer the original point - vaguely:
CM4 feels different to CM3 did, partly through the speed of the game (much slower for pretty much everyone) and partly through the relative speed at which things are done.
eg. in CM3 your scouts would often point out so many players so quickly that it was fine to sign someone on a free, try them out for a few months and if you weren't happy get rid of them and try again. In CM03-04 your scouts take longer to find players and find fewer, so each player you sign seems like more of an investment.
It's also worth bearing in mind that CM3 took 3 incarnations and a number of patches to get close to 'perfection'. So far with CM4, they're getting closer to making it as playable as 01-02 eventually became.
[laments the loss of bulk-buying enemy cities in Civ3]
Best advice is to forget 01/02. 03/04 is a different game, with different priorities and a more realistic approach to Club finances, supporter base and tactics.
I was a "nothing will beat 01/02" dinosaur, but now I've played 03/04 I'd never consider going back.
Thanks for your responses. I'm not seeing alot of response directly on the "Is it fun" point. Alot of it seems to be of the "the new way is more realistic" variety. I get that part. Do you guys have more fun? Less fun? Or are you all so hardcore, that "realistic" and "fun" are synonyms?
Turnip...my big Civ3 complaint is that you can't play as a small civ and just have a great small civ and compete (I really, really miss the caravans, for example), and you can't play as a large civ. because of the aggressiveness of the AI civs and the corruption. I heavily edited the game to tone down corruption, so it's less of a problem. The thing is, it's almost impossible (for me, anyway, but I'm a pretty good player) to win unless you are somewhat warlike, but not too warlike. It all adds up to a situation where if you're hemmed in, you lose. If you're not industrious and you're in one of the ludicrously large junglelands, you lose. I play at emperor, because otherwise the endgame is just too darn easy. But, at emperor, the early game is almost imposssible without a good starting position. So I end up trying out about 10 maps before finding a playable one. In particular, while I see the logic of how they designed the luxury and resources, it was like a brilliant buildup with an awful finish. Because in practice, it means you have to have a pretty big civ to have a prayer of competing. A more sensible approach would have been to make all that stuff more common, but not have one iron resource be just as useful as 5.
I used to go to the Civ 2 message boards, and people were always suggesting this or that change to make the game more realistic. But 9 times out of 10, it would PLAINLY make the game less playable. My response was always, if you're such a realism freak, play two turns and die of old age.
My initial, barely-informed take on CM4.2 is similar...OK, it's more realistic, but if you want realism, the game would be called Championship Ticket Taker. Cuz that's the only job any of us could get.
In particular, when people would say that CM4.x should get rid of the "unrealistic" w/wo ball screens, I would respond that without them, the game devolves into Championship Financial Manager.
The game must be fun of sorts or none of us would dedicate our lives to playing it. One thing you can be sure of, it must be better playing 03/04 because none of us LLaMas would accept playing ****e if 01/02 was better, as proven by the mass exodus away from CM4 back to 01/02.
Marc Vaughan made it perfectly clear that the reason for getting rid of w/wo ball was that the game would tan the majority of our arses if it was there. I don't miss it at all, I used it a hell of a lot in 01/02.
Bottom line, there's nowt we can do about w/wo ball, the game must be fun because we play it, realism can only be utilised to a certain extent...and most important, this is the SI Football Management Sim Game Forum, not Civilisation.
I never found out what the use of wibble/wobble screens was all about. Never been arsed to check it out, because it would get extremely boring, changing a winger's position a little to the left or to the right, and having to do so in every feckin grid. It wasn't very realistic either IMHO.
I agree with the Financial Manager part. But there's an awful lot more in this game. CM01-02 gave one the impression that all was explored and there was nothing new (and mind you, for me it was the best CM game ever).
No, fun and realism don't always coincide, i think. We too draw a line between them, but it's not always visible (see Johny Jakuza).
It's a game, in the bottom line. A theatrical act at most.
Help me have fun in LLM with CM4 
)
Linear Mode
