Soccer Gaming Catch-All

If anyone fancies breaking Football Manager 18, I have the tactics for you.

It's turned Arsenal into Man City - we've played 14 and won all but 1, which we inexplicably drew 0-0 at West Brom, scoring an average of 4 per game with the best defence too. So, yeah it's basically cheat mode (someone in the thread even finished 4th with Swansea), so don't use it if you want any form of challenge whatsoever, but do use it if you just want to feel like the best manager who ever lived, ever ever ever.

I was using FM Golden's Napoli attack tactic - which is on the Steam workshop. I started at Celtic.

And lost 1 league match in 3 years, doing the domestic treble every year. Damn you, Partick Thistle !!

Not so good in Europe though, probably not helped by my team not being very good compared to the big teams.

davet010 wrote:

I was using FM Golden's Napoli attack tactic - which is on the Steam workshop. I started at Celtic.

And lost 1 league match in 3 years, doing the domestic treble every year. Damn you, Partick Thistle !!

Not so good in Europe though, probably not helped by my team not being very good compared to the big teams.

Realistic game then

Pretty much

Celtic have got some decent players that can be picked up for a reasonable fee - Kristopher Ajer is a 19 yr old DM who can play CB as well - I ended up selling him to Dortmund for about £35m after 3 seasons. James Forrest makes a decent winger (prob not quite PL standard), and Callum McGregor will do you a good job at AM.

davet010 wrote:

Pretty much

Celtic have got some decent players that can be picked up for a reasonable fee -

I got Dembele with Arsenal for about £20m. I needed more strikers because the formation uses 3, and Welbeck and Walcott can't finish their dinner. (Had to loan out Walcott, it's the only way I could get him off the books, but Welbeck is hanging around for Carabao cup games). Dembele was actually top scorer for a while but Lacazette has recently nudged ahead. My last two results have been 5-1 Vs Spurs and 6-0 at Liverpool. I thought I'd get bored if it was too easy but I'm tempted to win the 8 titles required to put Arsenal ahead of United in the all time list

Spoiler:

I'll stop after 2 seasons as usual.

I was sacked by Celtic at the start of season 4 - I expressed an interest in jobs at Bayern and Juventus, the Board asked me to clarify my position, I said that I had a right to look at larger clubs and they fired me.

When I looked in mid-season, they'd appointed someone I'd never heard of, and were 5th. Oh how I laughed..

Didn't you play as Celtic in FM17 too? What's the attraction to that job out of interest?

I remember a crazy good tactic in CM 01/02, if memory serves. It destroyed everyone.

davet010 wrote:

I was sacked by Celtic at the start of season 4 - I expressed an interest in jobs at Bayern and Juventus, the Board asked me to clarify my position, I said that I had a right to look at larger clubs and they fired me.

When I looked in mid-season, they'd appointed someone I'd never heard of, and were 5th. Oh how I laughed..

That's hilarious. I laughed out loud.

kergguz wrote:

Didn't you play as Celtic in FM17 too? What's the attraction to that job out of interest?

It's quite an easy start when you are trying to work out what has changed from game to game, and also interesting to see whether domestic overpowering of teams can be translated into improving the standing in Europe (which in my case was more no than yes, although I did get knocked out of the CL group stage on goal difference twice).

The problems for Celtic are quite difficult to overcame to make European progress

- They always end up in Pot 4, so the group draw is usually horrendous.
- They haven't got mega money, and few of the players can be sold for big money other than Dembele. The second best player in season 1 is Patrick Roberts, and he's on loan from Man City.
- Even younger players won't come to Scotland because they don't believe that it will enhance their careers. I tried to get Kasper Dolberg from Ajax, but he was having none of it. So you end up with loans (I can recommend Man City's Phil Foden, but be wary of Martin Odegard...if he ain't playing every week, the toys rapidly exit the pram), or players at either end of the age spectrum.

RnRClown wrote:

I remember a crazy good tactic in CM 01/02, if memory serves. It destroyed everyone.

Was it called the Diablo tactic? If I remember right it was basically two strikers and an AMC with a forward arrow. Wrecked.

kergguz wrote:
RnRClown wrote:

I remember a crazy good tactic in CM 01/02, if memory serves. It destroyed everyone.

Was it called the Diablo tactic? If I remember right it was basically two strikers and an AMC with a forward arrow. Wrecked.

I think I recall the Diablo tactic, now that you mention it. I definitely had a setup like you described. I think I deployed van Nistelrooy and Ronaldinho as a strike force, with Zidane as the AMC. It was brilliant to see just how far it could go with said players.

CM4 was the one I really got into. My lord did Manchester United have some overrated youth. Richardson and Djordjic became the greatest wingers in history, and Steele was Schmeichel and De Gea become one between the sticks.

My ever lasting memory of CM4? Roma destroying me in Europe. Always. Well, Vincenzo Montella, namely. He always scored and it was always the difference.

In the early days of CM I used to enjoy how the simulation threw up weird stuff after 10-15 seasons. I remember one save (when I was supposed to be writing my dissertation no less) when AI managed QPR became absolute giants, winning the league several times, champions league, the lot. In FM16 I did a little test where I went on holiday and let the sim run for 30 years. Sadly (spoilers), the same 4 or 5 teams are going to keep on winning the premier league for the next 30 years Ditto for Germany, Spain, Italy etc...

I guess it's the way the game is set up. The top 5 or 6 have the best teams, the best stadia, the best finances, the best youth setups and scouting to get the regens, etc.

The early CMs did used to throw up odder results as some of the above wasn't modelled in game, I don't think. I do still have fond memories of a Man City game (probably CM 94/5 ?) where I'd won the league 7 times in 10 years, won the CL 4 years on the trot and had one player end the year with an average (AVERAGE) rating of over 9. Think I only stopped because I'd bought the CM Italia disk and was taking Fiorentina to glory - with the bizarre pairing of Steffan Effenberg and Paul Warhurst running the show.

Couldn't have been that realistic....Effenberg didn't punch anyone or have a tantrum.

Unfortunately I forgot to save my Parma game to the cloud when I formatted my PC, I was top of Serie B too.

Finding it hard to bring up the motivation to start again.

kergguz wrote:

In the early days of CM I used to enjoy how the simulation threw up weird stuff after 10-15 seasons. I remember one save (when I was supposed to be writing my dissertation no less) when AI managed QPR became absolute giants, winning the league several times, champions league, the lot. In FM16 I did a little test where I went on holiday and let the sim run for 30 years. Sadly (spoilers), the same 4 or 5 teams are going to keep on winning the premier league for the next 30 years Ditto for Germany, Spain, Italy etc...

FM2007 didn't have the club dynamism you want but there was a bug that messed up the origin of newgens that was pretty great. I don't remember it exactly but I think it was newgen players were influenced by the player's scouting knowledge. Since I scouted Canada it meant there were a bunch of pretty good Canadian players as my save went on and I made a run to the World Cup final with them. My World-class striker for my club team was also from the Cook Islands which was pretty neat.

That sounds cool Roke! I don't think I played much FM2007, I was in the depths of my WoW addiction in those days so foot-to-ball took a backseat.

Out of curiosity, is there a game from a past version you wish you still had? Apart from a large network game I had going at uni with my housemates, I think it was the same version (2010) I had an amazing Bayern Munich game going good (started at Southend) where I was undefeated in the league over three seasons. I’d love to play it again, I had that feeling of accomplishment that I’d just made them unstoppable; they finished 5th the season before I took over.

I also had a game of CM01/02 where I pushed it to its limits, about 30 seasons in it started to corrupt. La Liga only played half a season and Toluca beat Toluca in the world club cup final! A good and bad day for Toluca fans

I think it would also be 01/02 for me. Winning about 7 league titles with Arsenal before going on to manage England to a couple of World Cup wins. Then, like your game, the save got borked.

FM 2006, absolutely.

I had taken St. Albans from the Conference South to a Premier League title, then finished second behind Chelsea the following year.

IMAGE(http://i20.tinypic.com/2ey9gg0.jpg)
Not sure which is sillier - St. Albans winning the league or Villa in second.

The year after that we'd reached the Champions League semi-final and somehow come from behind to beat AC Milan 6-5 on aggregate after losing the first leg 4-2 at home. We were set to play the other Milan in the final.

In the league, there was one game left and we were level on points with Liverpool. They had a home game against Reading and we were away to alternate universe, (read: very average), Manchester City.

That meant I was probably not going to get the title, but Liverpool could have sealed it the week before when I could only draw with Arsenal, but they somehow lost 0-2 at home to Norwich. So there was still hope.

This was the point my hard drive ate itself.

I powered on the laptop that day before work and then had to call in and take the day off I was that gutted.

New game time. After some umming and ahhing, I decided to check out the German leagues. To my delight, they now model the leagues below 3.Bundesliga, and so I am once more taking the reins at 1860 Munchen, who were relegated to the Bayern-Sud Oberliga (one of many Tier 4 leagues) last season.

Aaaannnd - they've got no money, you can only register players with an EU nationality, and they are already over the wage budget. Right then (girds loans for an epic fail, removes everything remotely breakable...)

You all know we have a FM thread, right?

Strangely enough - I didn't !

Me neither! Heading there now! Davet I had no idea Munich1860 had fallen so far. Good luck!

Just quickly, my favourite CM memory was when I was at Uni we had a half dozen people in my dorm all managing Premier League teams in a multiplayer game. I was managing Liverpool, my real life favourite team.

the engine through up a random regen player and I had to have him. he was amazing. The legend of Guilermo Hernandez the 67 year old Mexican striker that Liverpool had in the first team was amazing. If he ever did anything everyone cheered and was blown away. this pre-dated a 2D pitch and it was just the text but when he used to step up to take the penalties it would get everyone going.

Surprised no-one's mentioned this yet, but PES just lost their license for the Champions League.

I don't think we all need to guess what enormous video game company that is probably sitting on literal billions of dollars from their microtransaction trading card game mode will almost certainly swoop in to grab it for next year (although, this would be a bit late in development to do so, wouldn't it?).

That was probably Konami's one shining advantage over EA (even if I preferred PES's gameplay by far). I wonder what next year's title will look like, and if the robust mod community will be able to step in and basically render the news moot.

Well.

This shouldn't have been a surprise, and yet, I am surprised at how fast they turned this sucker around.

While playing my usual Friday night PUBG, AlwaysBlack told me that Rock, Paper, Shotgun reviewed Football, Tactics and Glory.

It's got a lot of good reviews from a lot of people who have hundreds of hours clocked in. Anyone tried this? I'm very tempted to get it.

(RPS review)

Clusks wrote:

While playing my usual Friday night PUBG, AlwaysBlack told me that Rock, Paper, Shotgun reviewed Football, Tactics and Glory.

It's got a lot of good reviews from a lot of people who have hundreds of hours clocked in. Anyone tried this? I'm very tempted to get it.

(RPS review)

I put close to about 50 hours in to the pre-release version about a year ago. I think my daughter put in about 30 hours or so into it; my son about 20. Both are teenagers who like soccer. I liked it quite a bit, and now that the full version has been released, I'm tempted to revisit it.

Random thoughts...

I'd best describe it as relaxing beer & pretzels Football Manager. But a lot of beer.

On the surface, it's a fairly simple looking game. Underneath the hood there is a good amount of complexity to keep you coming back.

You're basically building up a club and climbing up through the various leagues, so it scratched much of that same "develop your players, build your club" itch that sports sim management games have, but at an accelerated pace and with a pretty simple structure.

Things do get pretty grindy at times, and I always felt that having a great club was going to be matter of time rather than skill.

There is a decent amount of RNG stuff going on, and you can lose a game you do well in just because the gods struck you down. Individual games are super short, just a few minutes with just a few shots, so if the numbers are against you, you can just lose, even though you're better and used better tactics. If that drives you nuts, then this isn't the game for you. Most of the reviews were quite positive. When they weren't, that seems to be the biggest complaint I saw against the game.

Having said that, you learn a lot of the ins and outs of the game as you play more, and you certainly have a huge influence in the outcomes of games. There is also a decent amount of tactical thinking going on. Players have certain abilities, and coming up with a game plan that takes advantage of your players' traits can have you beating stronger teams fairly regularly. You can also bring in and develop players to play within a certain system or playstyle that you latch onto.

It looks like they've added a fair amount of stuff since I played it. Even then, a year ago, it felt quite complete. I'm not sure how much stuff is new, or how much that changes gameplay.

On the whole, my kids and I really liked it. I don't believe I ever made it to the highest league, and won all there was to win. But I probably played a good ten seasons with it, and had a lot of fun. I'd recommend it if the sports sim management genre interests you, and you're looking for a less demanding game in that genre.

EDIT: I just read the RPS review after posting this, and I wonder if they've upped the difficulty some and reduced the number of leagues to lighten the grinding factor. I thought for sure I had climbed up a bunch of leagues (more than the four they mention in the review).

I played about ten hours of Football, Tactics and Glory, promoted a couple of times but found it way to grindy to keep going. I had great fun while it lasted though - and my tolerance for repeating mechanics is fairly low.

What I just wrote may seem like a tl;dr version of Godzilla's review, but it's really how I feel

Prederick wrote:

Well.

This shouldn't have been a surprise, and yet, I am surprised at how fast they turned this sucker around.

This flew right past me, but FIFA now has the rights to the Champions League now?