Disclaimer: these Theories are pure Brutal speculations, and not official ML statements in any way.
The ideas presented here are conclusions drawn from looking at match-reports, team- and player-attributes,
performance stats, tactics, programming experience and imagination. No scientific data has been processed, nor any servers been hacked. There are plenty, better written guides and howtos in the ML eco-system, but IMO they all spin around Soccer being the common denominator - which is wrong. My hope is that this blog will kickstart more thought and discussions, as well as teach Spinner a thing or two about ManagerLeague. 
I always claim that I like playing with open cards, and here they are.
{Denominator}
The first thing you need to know is that ML is not soccer, and it's not real life. There is no ball and
if you play hard tackles nobody actually breaks anything. It's all a game of numbers and chance.
Each game (match) is played with a minimum set of 220 numbers/dice for each player (manager) + an additional
random number thrown in by the simulator-engine. I call this random number "42".
Additionally there are a few non-match-related numbers you need to know about:
Fitness/Resting:
- * resting on training gives 2+(stamina/10) in fitness-gain
- * if injured below 75 there is only 33% chance of getting a stamina fitness-gain. 50% if excellent Physio.
- * fitness below 78 means your player will not participate in individual training.
- * fitness below 73-79 will not participate in camp training, depending on accommodation stars.
- * the camp accommodation fitness gain levels are: 1, 3, 5, 7
- * resting on a team training slot gives +1 fitness
- * resting on team-slot in camp is pointless, +0
Pointers:
- * Play 201+ friendlies
- * only buy 4 players per season (Edited: This was 3 prior to season 82)
- * Always choose extreme intensity camps. (number unknown, possibly 50%)
- * squad size must be between 18-31, 25 recommended.
- * players retire at age 34-42
- * a player must play a minimum of 20 league games to be eligible for awards.
- * you can only buy players with <10Q higher than your teams average Q.
- *
A player only needs to play 1 minute of a game to part take in the attribute-gain-lottery.
(The ML manual at http://manual.managerleague.com/node/113 says 15 minutes, but this is wrong)
EDIT: "Fixed" Season 96 - 15 minutes is needed now. www.managerleague.com/ml/showthread.pl
- * The magic number is 42
Stadium/Income:
Excellent post on stadium and income numbers: http://www.managerleague.com/blogperma.pl?id=3240
- * Stadium Priority: Capacity, Youth Training
- * Stadium Secondary - To win games: heating, training-facilities, travel, medical, legal.
- * Stadium Secondary - Increase profit: shop, rest, adv, parking, scoreboard, vip
If you made it (reading) this far, I guess it's time for a "Treat" (or Advice)
Staff:
Just get them. And hire the excellent ones. Staff is cheap, but helps players gain on individual training and camps.
Alternatively, you can make a habit of not developing defenders and goalies, only buy old pre-developed players in these positions. Then you can drop the Gk and Def coaches. Depending on your division you will save between 300.000 - 800.000 per staff each season. It's peanuts really, so save yourself the trouble and get excellent staff all around
.
Lawyers:
When trying to lift a ban, you can ignore the note saying it is not advisable to complain again. It is costly, but the lawyers can normally lift a ban 30% of the time - regardless of the case in question or how many attempts you've failed. It is pure Random.
{Training players}
It shouldn't be a secret that your teams success rate is most heavily influenced by your players. Of the 220+ numbers involved in determining your game, about 198 of them are from players. Unless you somehow find a way to make enough cash to simply buy high-Q players, most of your focus should be on player-training.
There are 2 simple ways to train players: Individual Training sessions and Playing matches.
Individual Training:
One rule - consistency. During a season you should be consistent in what attribute you train your players.
This because, between seasons (BBQ) your players will lose a point from random attributes, but only 1
(exception for old players). And an attribute that has not gained has less chance of losing a point.
So, if your player gained +8 shooting and +0 heading he is likely to lose 1 shooting point. Where as he
would likely lose 1 in both shooting and heading if he had gained +4 in both.
Training-Factor Potential:
A player can have between half a star and 5 stars potential. Each star can be roughly translated to 2%.
So a 5 star player has 10% chance of gaining an attribute during training, camp or game - modified by
the players current attribute levels and age.
Gaining (Friendlies):
If you ask Spinner he will probably tell you that alot of factors are involved to decide gain. Potential,
involvement and performance, minutes played, how high the attribute already is, strength of opponent etc.
All that said, it is random, and the magic number is 42.
But as that doesn't help you squat, here are some simple rules:
- - Make sure your players are at the least 3.5 stars. This is a simple factor involved in the gain-or-not formula.
- - while your players are still 92+ fitness, play your friendlies against stronger opponents (give your opens to higher divisions)
- - when your players are tired, give your opens to weaker opponents (lower division)
- - Minutes played means very little. If you have 3 players you want to focus on, use them as subs the last 30 or 15 minutes. They will lose less fitness and be able to play more games.
- - If you have a relatively weak team - play normal tackles. This could give you slightly better performance.
- - Don't play hard tackles. You will lose more fitness and risk getting more cards. Cards = worse performance.
- - Strong teams can play soft. Losing even less fitness = play more friendlies.
If you want a simple friendly-tactic, here it is:
Fit: 3-5-2 continental attacking shoot-when-safe soft-tackles offside-yes
Unfit: 3-5-2 mixed attacking shoot-when-safe soft-tackles offside-yes
Explained:
team performance is a factor in determining gain. To get good performance you need to be involved in the game.
Your midfield is generally the most busy section of your team, so you place most of your players here.
When your players are fit, they make better passes. Playing continental involves more of your players into the
game, and will give better performance - if they complete the passes.
When your players are tired, they fail more passes - so you don't want them to pass that much.
Shoot-when-safe - if a shot hits the target the players performance goes up. If he misses it goes down. Simple.
Offsides: this is one of the most inconsistent tactics in all of ML. I'm telling you to use it because: the chance
of the offside-trap working is greater than failing. And when the trap works, you get a freekick. A freekick is a
free event for one of your players to make a good pass.
How to get the most out of Open-Friendlies:
Requires aprox 30 minutes twice a day.
Enter the queue to accept opens. And issue 1 open to same-division-and-higher.
Reasoning: When you enter the queue, you will likely have 200 teams in front of you.
60% of these 200 are likely non-paying customers, which means they get max 10 minutes in the queue.
So, by issuing 1 friendly yourself you get 12 minutes in the queue and will cut down the number of
competitors in the queue to 80. Most of the paying customers are likely in same division or higher,
which is why we issue our friendly to them - we pop one more competitor out of the queue.
Now, you just have to wait for your position in the queue to be #1 and have your free friendly played.
Then enter the queue again and do the same thing all over.
This way you can play 6 friendlies in ~30 minutes.
If you do this twice a day, before team training, it works out to 200.
Don't look at my team for evidence - my time-schedule doesn't allow playing consistently like this.
To help you track how you're doing towards playing 201 friendlies, multiply the current round by 5.
If you're ahead of this number you're all set.
Oh, 201. When you have played 199 friendlies, enter the queue to accept a free open. Then issue an
open challenge yourself (to same and higher div). You will not be kicked from the queue just because
you've played your friendly number 200.
If at 199 played you spam-issue as many opens as the system will let you, you can get multiple challenges
into the queue and even go beyond 201. This will likely work best if you are on a slow network-connection,
and doing it when the server is under high load. (Edit: Spinner changed the queue-code to stop spam-requests)
Thought on Gain Distribution:
How is GAIN distributed? The sim could be taking shortcuts by first picking a number between 0-6 as
to how many players should gain. Then draw X players from the roster. Faster than looping the roster and
randomly drawing gain-or-not for each player. This could mean:
- players with below 80 fitness will not be pickable, so if you fill your lineup with alot of 80-82 fitness
players along with some young 100-fit players, and spam-issue opens - you could get greater chance of gain on
the youngsters.
- but if the sim does not check fitness before picking who will gain, you could lose gain-points on the tired players.
EDIT: Spinner has later confirmed more or less that the Sim is looping each player. So you can't increase the gain-chance
for youngsters by using low-star or injured fodder-players.
Advice on Stamina/Injuries:
Make sure to practice the players stamina from an early stage. It helps reduce injuries.
There is a hidden attribute, injury proneness, that you can't do anything about.
Playing soft tackles allegedly results in less injuries. High stamina is also an advantage
when you play 201+ friendlies during the season, for obvious reasons.
Also keep in mind that your medical center is useless below 70 fitness.
Note on Training Camps:
A player regains fitness before the camp begins, so a player with 73 fitness does not need to rest
on the camp if you chose 5 star accommodation. He will regain to 80 fitness and participate in the training!
Using team-rest slots on training camp has no effect.
Always book the most expensive camp before the End-of-Season BBQ. You can always cancel the camp when the new
season starts, and you will save a penny in taxes.
Before we look at the Crème de la Crème (the Simulator), lets look at a couple key situations and tactical decisions.
{Set-Pieces}
Set-Pieces are the situations in which you have a freekick, corner, penalty or throw-in. Besides the obvious Team-attributes,
you also need to set designated players for each play - except throw-ins. Who would you choose?
Freekicks:
If you don't know who to set as your freekick taker, let your worst midfielder do it. He might not work
out (due to hidden abilities), but if he does you will accomplish 2 things:
- - your worst midfielder will get a good rating
- - your better midfielders will be available receivers
Back in the days you used to be able to score quite a few direct freekick goals, which warranted designating
your best shooter as freekicker. This is not the case anymore. Although you will get the occasional direct
shot, more goals are scored indirectly.
The ability to not fumble freekicks is determined by a hidden attribute. For old ChampMan fans you can think
of this as Set-Pieces. The good news is that this attribute will increase with number of taken freekicks.
The third attribute you should consider is Perception, which is used to determine shot or pass, and to whom the ball is passed.
Passing is not that important for freekicks and can largely be ignored, as most of the time the other numbers involved will overshadow it.
Corners:
Most managers will tell you to use a player with good passing and perception. I will tell you something else:
use your goalie! Remember the numbers. By using your goalie you will have 10 open receivers. Use any other
player and you will have 9.
I also believe the hidden Set-Pieces skill is naturally high in goalies, and could be used in goal-kicks.
PS: the simulator doesn't know anything about the position of your players from one move to the next. Your
goalie will be back tending his goal in no time. As a bonus you might very well win the Golden Glove award.
And although a goalie probably has good perception, it does very little for his corners. A corner is more or
less a random pass-event into an array/heap of mixed players from both teams.
Note: if you depend on corners as part of your strategy you should really not use Hard tackles. With harder
tackling there is a greater chance that the ref will give the defending team a freekick (spot something).
EDIT: As of Season 91 the goalie-code has been changed! If you use goalie to take corners the other team
might counter-attack. Usage of hidden atts in goalies has also been tweaked, but unsure to what affect.
Penalties:
There are 3 things to consider when picking your designated penalty-shooter. Age, Flair and Shooting.
Again for ChampMan-fans, think of Age as Pressure. Shooting is the least important. My 33 year old goalie
with 57 shooting scored easily in a game against a relatively-fit Keeping=94 goalie, team had 4 stars on
penalty. Did I mention that my goalie had 90 fitness...
So there you have it.. the first part of the Brutal ML Chaos Theories. In the next part(s) I will unriddle the mighty Simulator, Tactics, Mojo, Important attributes, Hidden attributes and 42.
