Lincoln Imp2

I know a fair amount of football success depends upon good luck but am I the only one who has noticed a big difference in the part played by sheer luck in FM07 compared to the previous version.
I remember on FM06 playing a long game where I became particularly hacked off at getting knocked out of a Champions League semi...so I reloaded the game and tried again (I know..I know..it'c cheating!). It took five or six times before, evenutally, I narrowly won.
In FM07 I can reload a game a few times, use the same tactic and team and get completely different results.
For example playing as Newcastle (using M&M 4-4-2) I lost 2-0 to Locomotive Moscow. In frustration I reloaded the game and played it again using exactly the same tactic and team and won 7-1 !! Intrigued I've reloaded the game several times and the results and scorelines are wildly different.
Have the developers programmed the match engine to take a greater account of luck?
In FM07 you just feel you are at he mercy of fortune so much more than in previous games.
I think this may be at the root of the some of the inconsistencies so many people are suffering in their game.
I know luck plays some part but surely 2-0 defeat to 7-1 victory is bizarrely disproportionate!

rashidi1

I don't think that Luck plays such a role that it completely randomizes your game. If you remember wibble/wobble...that was the highlight of making the game too easy. This time around sliders were included and more random elements were introduced, the impact of training on your particular style of play has also been improved. Teamtalks were added to increase the random.

In the ol days the only random element I felt I had to take into account was the weather and pitch condition, right now there are so many that no matter how many times you replay the game. You may not get the same result. But if you do build a tactic that is defensively sound then there is a good chance you will be hard to break down, and then slowly you begin to control these elements.

What we need to determine is what do we do to swing the game in our favour...well this is what i do:

1. I hate teamtalks, honestly they don't really enhance my enjoyment of the game, though i will admit, if you say the right thing to the right person at the right time, you may get the right result. Too many right turns for me to take, I like to keep things simple. So i leave this all up to the AssMan. I make sure he at least is tactically good, is good at managment and can motivate. Then I leave him on auto. Works fine for me.
I do this so I can remove one random element.

2. Other random elements can be your training. Look at the tactics you use. Are they attacking in orientation or are they defensive? Do your front pair require teamwork. You need to incorporate them into your regime. Never download a training schedule without knowing the impacts. For some people they may consider targetmens important. SO for their targetment they need to make sure aerobic training is important.

3. Other random elements include, pitch conditions, refereeing styles...these I think most people know how to handle.

4. Morale drops...you will notice the beginnings of this in training....there is some kind of waterfall effect as it runs through all the modules of FM. Different players react differentlly. Defenders can have great morale, the moment they get nutmegged it plunges. For strikers you fail to score, they may need friendlies, or you may need to bump up their training.

Essentially you need to make sure the random elements are in your favour. Control as many of them as possible and you can remain consistent.

It took my side almost 3 seasons of training and working together from the depths of the conference. 3 consecutive promotions now..and they are on a 6 match winning streak and they haven't conceded a goal yet. Making the game consistent is possible, it takes a bit of time to figure things out, but its not that impossible. The linkages between the modules takes a lot of time to figure out.

Lincoln Imp2

rashidi1...I accept all that you have said but what random affects can possibly explain a 2-0 defeat against a 7-1 victory...with the same team and the sam tactic and even the same team talk.
It's my view that this may be why all the tactics so far posted NONE have been universally successful with the same teams because there is a random effect that no tactic or team can account for.
It would be interesting to see a 10 game stint for the same team run a few times to see how different the outcomes are.

Asmodeus

Don't you think that's the way it should be?

Lincoln Imp2

I agree that there should be an element of luck - just like real life - but I suppose it's a question of how much it plays a part.
An unlucky Chelsea/Man Utd will still win 9 games out of ten. A lucky Watford might still only win 2/10.
Take last season as an example - if you replayed the season 100 times with the team and the tactics they play Chelsea would still have won the league in the vast majority of cases.
I'd be interested to hear from the developers about the extent to which the game is programmed to take account of a random factor and how that has changed from the first game.
In my view you could play on FM07 with the same team and the same tactic and get a really wide range of results.
Football may be a funny ol' game but it isn't that strange!

Asmodeus

I know what you mean- when you're on a downward spiral you don't know what to change, and ostensibly you're never sure whether it is just your luck or deficiencies in your system. I'm always inclined to blame the former.

rashidi1

The game definitely takes more time to understand, the fact that there are now more "sliders" than before makes it even more harder to find the balance. I generally find that if you reduce the effect of these randomn elements then you stand a fair chance. The good thing now is that you can simply drop a tactic on a team and see them race off an win the season.

Perhaps the game has gotten harder..but I assure you Lincoln the basic concepts remain the same. When I was playing the demo I was irked just like many others when I would see Liverpool smash some team 5-0 then lose to some other team 5-0. I then looked at removing as many random elements, working from creating what basically was a solid defensive base and then work up.

There are some frustrating elements, even I have to admit, and this version has taken me a really long time to figure out. Take your time figure it out and if in doubt start with Asmodeus thread on building a solid back four.

Honestly I was not a big fan of 2006. I think this version has more potential. It seems harder but the linkages are beginning to get clearer now. At least this aint one of the other versions, when the engine got licked a month after the demo, 3 months later people were complaining the game was too easy.

Lincoln Imp2

rashidi1....again I agree with you. There are many complexities and the game is tough.
But that simply does not explain away my point.
Take the Newcastle v Loc Moscow scenario.
The tactics were EXACTLY the same, the team picked was EXACTLY the same, the team talk was EXACTLY the same and the opposition was EXACTLY the same.
In a scientific experiment these would be called the control factors...they are the elements of the scenario which remain unchanged.
yet the game played several times throws up a crazy number of different outcomes.
yet in real life football the random element only plays a small part (big teams will nearly always beat small teams as the EPL shows).
I think the game seems to have over-exaggerated the random effects.

rashidi1

You are probably right which is why I work so hard to control as many random elements as possible, which I have to admit is really difficult to do

Lincoln Imp2

The conspiracy theorists may feel that the programmers have coded in some huge random factor to prevent this very thing happening!!
Let's be honest IRL Chelsea buy all the best players because they have a huge budget and frankly, it doesn't matter that much what tactic they play they win because they are better, man-for-man, than most teams.
FM07 doesn't seem to work quite that way!!