WARNING: As of Season 96 this tactic no longer works! Players now need 15 minutes to gain. http://www.managerleague.com/ml/showthread.pl?thread_id=153695

The Minute-Man Tactic

I've been contemplating writing this for awhile now, but have postponed it with excuses like not having enough data.
I've already answered multiple ingame messages on this tactic, so I'm just gonna put it out there for everyone.

In previous posts I've already covered the fact that you can change tactics and swap players after only 1 minute using the @Anytime-regardless event. I've also claimed that players only need 1 minute on the pitch to be illegible for gain. By combining these facts you get the minute-man gaining tactic.

Player attribute gaining is always a hot topic. Most 1st-division league-winners are experts at training players, and currently the Norwegian 1st division has a relative strength of 96. That basically means the average Q of the 176 top players in the Norwegian 1st division is 96!

Now most of the top player-developers I've seen are swapping their talents in at 60 minutes. They are also using a bunch of old (30+) players alongside the talents. Some even use a bunch of crap keepers, based on the idea that keepers "live" longer and crap players "steal" less gains. The talented youths are supposed to learn from the old, experienced players. Some take this further saying the experience-factor is based on how many league-games they have in their career etc - I personally believe the age is all that matters. Another rumor is that you need an oldie in each section, or need to surround your youth with oldies. I think this too is just a rumor, but I've never been that good at developing players so I might be wrong ;)

Let's cut some cheese.

You have 6 options at your disposal to train players:
 

A) Individual Training
B) playing Friendlies
C) playing Custom Cups (player cups)
D) Regular Cups (League, Dept., CL...)
E) Camp
F) League games


2 of these are training-sessions - 4 are through matches.

In my first blog-post  I covered some of the believed factors involved in gaining.
To simplify everything, here are the 4 things you need to focus on:

1. number of matches
2. player-potential
3. player age
4. average age of lineup

The absolute, most important, factor to massive gains is the number of matches you can give the player.

Put a 4-5 star Q70+ 17-year old in a 28-average-age lineup. Play him in 280 matches, train him on all individual trainings and all extreme camps. Do this for 4 seasons and I can almost guarantee you will have a Q90+ 20 year old player.

The key here is how to accomplish that with the least amount of stress. I'm in a situation where I can't predict or schedule time to manage my team. Most of my friendlies are executed from a mobile phone, on the go. In the past I've struggled to do 200 friendlies, so for a player-training tactic to work for me it would need to be simple:

Create a lineup that includes your 3 (or less) youths in the starting 11.
Set an event @anytime, regardless of result, to swap the 3 youths for any other player.

This accomplishes:
- your youths almost never get tired and can play all games
- your youths never need to rest on individual training
- as you swap @ 1 minute, using the low-Q youths don't affect your teams performance much. This is important to me as I don't want to sacrifice league-position because of player-training.

Personally I have 4 lineups like this - 1 for League and 2 for friendlies and 1 special for Player Cups. This makes it easy to complete friendlies from mobile with a minimum amount of player-swapping.

Prior to this season (88) it also had the positive effect of boosting your moral, as you could play 3 low-Q youths for 1 minute and thus lower your average Q for the game. And Q difference was a big factor in determining moral gain or loss. Spinner has adjusted this and it doesn't make a huge difference anymore.
 

A note of caution
 

If you go all-in with this tactic, swapping 3 players @ 1 minute, you run the risk of losing matches because of injuries. I've used this tactic 4 seasons now, and in every season so far I've had to finish 1-4 games with a man or two less because I've used all my substitutions! 2 or 3 times the player getting injured was the goalie, and you all should know what happens when a ML-defender puts on the gloves. :P

 

What to expect?
 

Training players like this I would expect the youth to gain:
4 atts from individual training
5-6 atts from league games
2 atts from camps
5-6 atts from cup-games (estimated ~45 cup games)
30+ atts from friendlies (201 friendlies)

I still have not managed to gain 50+ atts on any player using this tactic. The top gainer-managers do this, usually with a rigid swap@60 and lots of oldies tactic. I have not combined my tactic with the crap-keeper-oldies tactic, so I don't know if that would make the difference.

EDIT after Season88: 
This is the actual results from my last season - consentrated on 3 players:
3-5 atts from Individual Training
3-8 atts from League Games
2-3 atts from 5 Camps
3-6 atts from Player Cups
25-36 atts from Friendlies

Looking at 1 players gains, the atts from each type of training in %:
Individual Training: 6-12%
League Games: 7-14%
Camps: 4-7%
Player Cups: 7-14%
Friendlies: 60-66%

Nothing beats playing the max amount of friendlies! That should be your no#1 priority.
Second I would say playing League and Cup games.
The gains from training, and specially camps, are so low that these are the ones you can skip now and then - if you absolutely have to.
But I would say the higher Q player you are training, the more important are individual training and camps.

END EDIT

 

The gain formula
 

My theory on gain is a 2-step check. First the Sim picks possible candidates for gain from the roster.
Like I've previously described, this could be done either by looping the 11-14 players who actually played
the match. Or these players could be weighted/mapped, getting X spots in an array, by their potential - then
Y "spots" are randomly picked from the array.

Let's look at the simplest solution: looping the  ̃14 players.
For each player run a formula (check 1) based on potential and age, where potential is a hidden attribute with a value between 1-99.
Draw a random number between 1-99 and compare:
if(randNum1 < (potential-ageMod)){
    proceed with 2nd check
}

The 2nd check involves the actual attribute to gain, current level of the attribute, current level of attribute-gain this season and the type of game.
It would look something like:
if(randNum2 < ((attMod - gainMod) * gameMod)){
    GAIN!
}

I guess the Modifiers should be explained.

• attMod would be the current level of the attribute, modified to a low value based on how high it currently is. I'm expecting this to be something exponential, but simplified it could be: 250-attvalue
• gainMod would be how much this att has gained already this season. This is a limit to make sure a player doesn't become superstar-quality in 1 att in 1 season. Simplified it could be: gain^2  
• gameMod is a modifier to give more weight to league and cup games over friendly-games. I'm suggesting something like:
  League: 0.3
  LeagueCup: 0.35 
  PlayerCup: 0.25   
  Friendly: 0.2   
  Individual Training: 0.2  
  Camp: 0.75

Example formula calc: player with 80 shooting, having gained +5 shooting already this season, friendly-game
((250-80)-(5^2)) * 0.2 = 29
So the randNum2 must be lower than 29 for this player to gain.
If he had 95 shooting, the chance would be: 26
If 80 shooting had already increased by 10 this season: 14

Extreme example:
player with 32 keeping, having gained 0 already, LC-game: 200-32-0 * 0.35 = 76.3

Keep in mind that I don't have scientific data to back this up The actual numbers used here are probably way off
 

What can be gained from this Theory?
 

IF you decide to believe that this theory is on track, then here is what to expect:
- the older the player gets, the less points they will gain in a season
- the higher an attribute gets, the harder it will be to gain it further
- the more you gain 1 att in a season, the harder it will get to increase. An att that has gained 10+ will be quite hard to increase.
- if you have gained +10 already then it might be harder to go from 80 to 81 in this att, than from 96 to 97 in an att with less gain this season.
- consider using camps to gain the hardest atts.
- distribute gains as evenly as possible

-- if you believe all 11-14 players are looped and given a chance to gain, then there is not much point overloading your team with crap keepers - other than to increase average age.
-- but if you believe the Sim pre-determines a number of gainers, giving each player uneven opportunities, then crap keepers might steal less gains than good oldies.

A thought supporting the idea that the Sim pre-determines a number of gainers is the fact that you never get 10+ gains from any one match. Even if the formula makes it highly unlikely that all players would gain at the same time, with the number of matches executed in ML I would think it could happen - unless some limit is implemented.

NOTE: I have not considered here which att is selected for gain. This could be a random draw, possibly modified by a sectionModifier based on whether the player is Keeper, Def, Mid or Attacker.

 If you didn't already, read the other ramblings in this series:

The Brutal Chaos Theory - part 1

The Brutal Chaos Theory - part 2 - the Simulator

Have fun

 

The Simulator

Disclaimer: this interpretation of the simulator is not officially backed by Fifth Season AS. It is purely my view on things.

The simulator (from now on referred to as "Sim") is the single most important piece of the ML-puzzle. Mastering it, however,
is not entirely possible. But understanding certain aspects of how the Sim works might help you understand the good, bad and
downright ugly, match outcomes.

First, let's get into the right mindset. We are not playing soccer here - this is still a game of dice. And 1 match outcome is
decided by ~440 numbers, and 42. Also keep in mind that for every league round, the Sim needs to calculate thousands of matches.
This will result in the odd, ugly result - just like you will get a 6 by throwing a die enough times. It also means the Sim needs to
cut some corners to make this all happen within reasonable time.
 

{Pre-Game}

The Sim divides your team into 3 sections. Defense, Midfield and Offense.
Before the game is even played, the Sim makes some pre-game calculations for each of your sections based on several values:
- avg Q in each section (or a base figure for the combined attributes, if you will)
- teamstats Defense, Teamplay, Understanding for Defense-section
- teamstats Defense, Attacking, Teamplay, Understanding for Midfield-section
- teamstats Attacking, Teamplay, Understanding for Offense-section
- Your tactics
- Morale
- choice of captain
- stadium upgrades
- the Mojo-factor
- the number 42
- the coin toss

The Mojo-factor is a variable based on your teams current flow or performance-Rating. Basically the Sim will look at
the Team Rating in your last game, and adjust your Mojo accordingly. A good Rating in your previous game could
give you a Mojo-boost and the Sim will give you the "ball" more. However, if your last game ended in a draw with
mediocre Rating the sim will distribute the chances more evenly, and you are in for a close game.

{Let the game begin}

The coin toss is not visible, but decides who kicks off the game. This is the first play of the game, and is numbered by 1 in the match-report.
You are supposed to read it as "minute 1", but the Sim knows nothing about time so it is more accurate to think of it as a play
- like in American football. The difference being that in American football, the play stops when the offensive team lose possession of the ball,
whereas in ML the play continues with the other team on the offense.
I'm telling you this because it is important to understand. If you have an underdog-team, you will start fewer plays, BUT with the right tactics,
team- and player-abilities you can hijack the play and counter-attack.

The sim will loop through the numbers 1 to 90, each number representing a chance for a Play. Based on the pre-game calculations the sim
picks a random number (n) between 1-100.
1<n<X = play goes to the Home-team.
Y<n<100 = play goes to the Away-team
X<n<Y = skip (no play)

Example, a weak Home-team vs a strong Away-team - both teams picking a neutral tactic: 20<n<55
If the sim draws a number 21-54, this play is skipped (no line in the match-report)
And basically it's a 45% chance the Away-team will start something.

But the "underdog" Home-team could have very perceptive players and be stronger in freekicks and throw-ins. Thus, even if the Away-team
gets 45% of the plays, 10% of these plays might be freekicks and throw-ins that the Home-team can intercept and turn around (counter-attack).
What was a 20% vs 45% play/attack ratio could effectively be turned into roughly 25% vs 40%
Get the drift?

What we have..
a) pre-game calculations giving each team X,Y sides on a 100-sided die
b) the coin toss, deciding who kicks off
1) kick-off Play
2) Play 2, if any
3) Play 3, if any
...
89) Play 89, if any
90) End (no Play)

{The Plays}
 

Each play is an independent, random pick from an array of Plays. This could be: a freekick, a goalkick, a wing-raid, a defensive pass,
a longpass, a dribble.. The Play knows nothing about the previous play, time, velocity of a football or the weather. A tackled attacker
could be followed by a goalkick at the other end of the field. If you are lucky you draw lots of corner-plays, attacking-freekicks or
side-cross/corner-flag plays that directly (few steps) lead to a scoring opportunity.

A play is guided by a set of attributes - team-attributes and player-attributes - and is challenged by a random pick in the defending teams lineup.
The random pick is however not totally random - it is weighted giving more likely hood to draw players in this or that position.
Example: A left-wing is most likely challenged by the defending teams right midfield/defense.
This is important to know when you are up against imbalanced teams: If a team playing 4-4-2 has 1 superstar attacker and 1 good attacker,
you should consider who to throw at the superstar. If you think you have defenders capable of taking the superstar out of the game then position
them accordingly. If not, then perhaps you should rather focus on taking out the good attacker - and pray the superstar gets few chances ;)

{Set Pieces Play}
These plays often lead to good scoring chances and you would be wise to practice their team-attributes.
 A Set-Pieces Play will consider your Throw-in/Freekick/Corner attribute vs that of your opponents. It will consider the maturity (Age) of your
executing player, his perception and passing skills. Lastly it will take into account the players hidden abilities - Set-Pieces and flair. Flair is perhaps
the least exciting, but will give you more direct shots from freekicks.
The hidden Set-Pieces attribute on the other hand, is magical. It does not behave like the regular, visible player-attributes - a higher value isn't
always better. The "fact" is a value between 80-90 makes your player a capable freekicker, and a value between 70-81 makes him fair at corner-kicks.
Hidden attributes also increase/decrease during a players career and is why a good freekicker could become a bad freekicker between seasons.
If so happens, try moving him to corner-kicks.

Now, the play:
A pass will pick a random challenge from a weighted array:
<10 Fumble
<30 fair pass, likely to be intercepted
<50 good pass, but challenged
<70 unchallenged
<90 magnificent pass
..
If the player making the pass isn't particularly good at it, you will see events in the lower end of the scale.
If the pass-reception is challenged, attributes of the receiver and challenger are compared - most notably speed and tackling. Also team-attributes
like Understanding and Teamplay is important here. When it comes to Set-Pieces situations, as of season 82 the team-attributes freekick, corner
and throw-in are compared through the whole Play!
So if your freekick attribute sucks, expect alot of your freekicks being intercepted.
As you can see there are alot of checkpoints your Play needs to pass to finally result in a scoring opportunity.


An example showing Play-distribution:

1 (Play 1)    Eastern Nordby is lined up for the kick-off.
    1    Tidal Dominated Delta takes the kick-off, and Rafa receives the ball.
    1    The ball is sent backwards to the defense.
    1    Nigel Brook kicks it out long, hoping to start something.
    1    Oh dear! That's over the sideline.
    1    Nice throw by Luthor, towards Seline.
    1    Seline with the ball now, on the left side. Can he cross it?
    1    Nice cross by Seline to Stavia!
    1    Eirik Kittilsen aims for the skies in an attempt to get the ball first!
    1    Eirik Kittilsen timed his jump superbly, and heads the ball out of harm's way.
    2 (Play 2)    Majidi R.W. with the ball now, on the right side. Can he cross it?
    2    Benito Ramirez comes running, eager to block the cross.
    2    But he started his defensive run a little too late.
    2    A nice cross from Majidi R.W. but Lima is stopped by Alexander X.
    4 (Play 3)    Formann Mao with the ball now, looking for alternatives.
    4    Excellent pass by Formann Mao to Geir Meisingset!
    4    Ivo Matias tries to stop him.
    4    Geir Meisingset must have seen him coming, and reacted in time to avoid the tackle.
    4    Great shot by Geir Meisingset!
    4    What a save!
    4    Jericho throws the ball towards Garrik.
    4    Garrik with the ball now.
    4    Garrik passes the ball towards Luthor.
    4    A futile pass by Luthor.
    4    And now there might be consequences, as Formann Mao intercepts the ball!
    4    Formann Mao seems eager to start a counter-attack!
    4    Formann Mao sends the ball towards Jaime Espinosa.
    4    Jaime Espinosa with the ball now, trying to get around Majidi R.W..
    4    The plan was good, but the execution was not. Easy pickings for Majidi R.W..
    5 (Play 4)    Nice throw by Amblaoibh Garvey, towards Quaid.
    5    But Nigel Brook shows great understanding and he clears the ball off to safety.
    6 (Play 5)    Felipe Ruiz plays it safe, kicks it out towards the midfield.
    6    Majidi R.W. has managed to position himself in front of Benito Ramirez and jumps up to win the ball.
    7 (Play 6)    Felipe Ruiz kicks it out, obviously aiming for the midfield.
    7    Stavia used his speed and perception to position himself in the right spot, and Eirik Kittilsen doesn't look too happy.
    8 (Play 7)    Benito Ramirez steps up to the corner flag...
    8    Nice corner! The ball seems to be headed straight for George Mottram!
    8    It seems he timed his run badly there, missing the ball completely.
    9 (Play 8)    Alexander X kicks it out, long and hard.
    9    Tidal Dominated Delta has managed to position himself in front of Stavia and jumps up to win the ball.
    9    A nice pass from Tidal Dominated Delta to Rafa.
    9    But he never manages to get the ball under control! Not his greatest moment.
    10 (Play 9)    Felipe Ruiz kicks it out towards the midfield.
    10    Geir Meisingset got in front of Ivo Matias.
    10    Geir Meisingset is in a good position to cross it now.
    10    A nice cross from Geir Meisingset but Rafa is stopped by Majidi R.W..
    11 (Play 10)    Seline with the ball now, looking for alternatives.
    11    Excellent pass by Seline to Caza!
    11    Formann Mao is in with a tackle.
    11    But all he seems to tackle is grass and dirt.
    11    They tried to set him offside and failed miserably!
    11    Caza shoots! Felipe Ruiz manages to get a hand on the ball and pushes the ball just to the side of the post.
    11    Jericho is waiting to take the corner...
    11    Nice corner! The ball seems to be headed straight for Lima!
    11    But Formann Mao intercepts the ball and it is cleared high upfield.
    19 (Play 11)    Majidi R.W. is in a good position to cross it now.

Here, during the first 15 minutes there are 10 plays that actually play out. Only 3 of these are given to my team, where the other 7 goes to
Eastern Nordby (the first is free as it is the kickoff). But due to how the Plays play out I get the "ball" more than 3 times.
Can we use this in tactics? Oh yes..
You can turn the Play around if you can manage to intercept the ball, or make the other team fail.
The simplest example I can think of is the offside trap. If you catch the opposition in your offside trap, you take over the Play AND get
a freekick. So by being good at both offsides and freekicks you can create chances that your overall, underdog-Q was refused.

Or, with a good Throw-in attribute you will start a good play whenever the other team lose the ball out over the sideline. I would even say
that Throw-In is specially nice against teams playing longball.
(See how I stole the very first play in this match, when Eastern's Nigel Brook fumbled the longpass!)

And good Counter-Attack attribute helps you to turn around Plays where the opposition makes a bad pass!
 

{Strategy}

So how do we use this knowledge to pick a strategy?

1. Evaluate who's the stronger side. If you are stronger you would want to get as high a Play-number (remember the X and Y?) as possible.
   You do this with High Pressure (Attacking). If the oppositions Defending skill is higher than your Attacking, then consider Normal.
   The rumor saying Attack beats Normal, Normal beats Defense, Defense beats Attack/Counter-Attack and Counter-Attack beats Attack is wrong.
   It's simple: The stronger team should Attack, the weaker team should Defend.
   A generic average-Q comparison is often enough, but if there is noticeable difference in the 4 main Team-attributes then consider this too.
2. Choose Mixed, Continental or Longball.
   The old Mixed > Longball > Continental > Mixed equation doesn't hold water anymore.
   You need to consider how well your players fit the style, and the tactics of your opponent.
   How are your teamplay and passing skills?
   How does your speed compare to the opposition speed?
   How perceptive are your attackers vs opposition defenders?
   What pressure do you expect your opponent to use?
   If the opposition outperforms you on perception, you do not want to longball into their half.
   If you are confident in your passing skills, you might want to choose continental style.
   If you expect the opponent to play defensively, you should use more direct-attacks rather than passing the ball back and forth.
   If you don't find any strengths or weaknesses, choose Mixed.
3. Formation
   This is simple. Pick a formation that fits your best players. Secondary look at pressure+style.
4. When to shoot? Simplified:
   If you think your attackers will outrun the opposition defenders, choose only-when-safe.
   If the opposition has a brick-wall defense, but you are overall stronger - choose near goal.
   If hell needs to freeze over for you to even make it passed the center line, choose anytime.
   But again, you should consider what pressure you expect the opposition to use, how many defenders etc. 3 speedy defenders might be
   no match for 3 attackers playing continental.
   Do you expect to get alot of chances? If not, shoot from a longer distance to compensate. But only if your midfielders know how to shoot too.

Evaluate your opponents strengths and weaknesses. Some times you won't find anything in your favour - that's when you fall back and pray to get that lucky shot.
 

{Myths}

Mix old-players with young players to get better gains. It is true - raising the average age of the lineup helps the gains, but the old players do not
need X number of official games in their career, high Q or whatnot. The Age is enough. The main advantage from this "tactic" however is the fact
that old players are poor gainers. So most of the gains in a game will be distributed to your younger players.
So mathematically if you want to monster-gain a few young players, you would put them in a lineup with a set of high-Q, half-star oldies.
The high-Q in itself does not help getting gain-points, but it makes that oldie less likely to gain more.

The more you play a formation/tactic the better you become at it.
This is totally bogus. There is no such team-counter. If there was, Spinner would have implemented an indicator for it already + it has no relevance.
How well a formation works in any one game depends on all the other settings, players in the lineup and the oppositions tactics and players.
It is too complicated.

Players are better in right- or left-side. It might look that way, and there's even a hidden attribute to support this, but it is not implemented. How well
they play in a position depends alot on the players they play with :and: the players they are pitched up against. So even though they are not predisposed
to play better in a specific position, you would do right to take a closer look at underperforming players to see why/what they fail.

 

{Tips}

At the start of the season check your avg Q rank within your department. If you have one of the lowest Q teams, then see how you're doing in team-attributes.
With the first camp and first few training sessions, focus on something that could give you a general advantage or leverage in the department.
Examples:
* you will likely need to defend alot, so train Defense as high as you can.
* make shoot-at-will your strategy and practice those corner-kicks! A long-shot could be deflected to a corner, and the corner team-attribute will boost your finishing.


{Events}
You can not always see what players will have a great day or not. At times you fail to produce chances cause most Plays are generated in one side of the pitch, and the opposing midfielder/defender is having a great day. Unfortunately there is no Event that says "If @60minutes PlayerXperformance<60 AND MyTeamShotsProduced<2 ReplacePlayerX.....
But we can always gamble:
Add an event that says:
@60 minutes : if down by 1+ : Swap players around, or replace worst performing midfielder/attacker.

The coin toss is unfortunately random, but basically gives you a free Play in 50% of the games. If you start your games with a defensive pressure, then you are more likely to get nothing out of this first Play (if you win the coin-toss). That's why you should ALWAYS start with Attacking pressure! Then just add an event that says:
@Anytime : regardless of result : Set-your-real-pressure-here
This way you atleast :try: to do something with the "ball" when you win the coin-toss. Ofcourse 50% of the time you will have to defend first, but the best defence is a good offense - you can't win the game if you don't try to score. And this is why you should also consider to start your games with Hard-Tackling.

Any event will only fire once, after the kickoff Play. The "@Anytime:regardless" is a nice way to mask your playing style too, if you wish. It is also a great way to make sure you play with Soft-Tackles in friendlies, if you so wish.

Do you have attackers with high heading and shooting skills, but they miss the target alot? They are fast and got good perception too? Check what kind of passes they are getting. Could you do anything to improve the passes? Improve Teamplay, freekicks.. or the skills in your midfield?

Does your opponent get alot of redcards? Unfortunately there is no event to pick up on this, but you could gamble again and set an event to up your pressure after 60-75 minutes, hoping he is a man short on the field.

If you base your tactics around Corner-kicks, then you should shoot-at-will and tackle softer than your opponent. With softer tackling you are less likely to get a freekick called against your Corner-Play, and you are more likely to get penalties in your favour.

Most teams put their fastest midfielders and defenders on the sides, so what would happen if you put your fastest midfielder dead-center in a 3-5-2 Attacking? If he also has good Flair he will be more helpfull in defending and attacking, based on your pressure-choice.

No attribute is considered good if it is below 91.

THE most used attributes during a game is: passing, speed, tackling and perception!
Heading is used more than shooting.
Unfortunately, if you don't score you only get max 1 point.

If you are about to win big, consider swapping in a few low-Q players at 75 "minutes". This will lower your avg Q and give you better morale-gains!

I probably should've told you this last tip first: If you are a new manager, take a look at what division and department you are in. If you are in a competitive league, like the Norwegian, delete your team and start over if you are in:
Division 5, Departments 1-64
Division 4, Departments 1-16
These Departments are destined to move up the tree that ends in Division 2, Department 1. Due to how relegation works in ML the best of the directly-relegating 1st division teams end up in 2/1! You are likely to experience smoother sailings starting in a higher-numbered department.

{A note on Fitness}
Highly important. Even a couple points below max (100) can lose you the game. If you think of it like this: Skill-(100-fitness)=CurrentSkill.
So an attacker with 98 shooting skill suddenly has an effective skill of 96. But to hit the target you also need to add speed and perception into the equation,
both of which would have lost points too!
This also makes it a valid tactic to replace tired players towards the end-game. For each quarter of game-play a fitness point is randomly popped from
a few players. If unlucky, or a player has been involved in a bad tackle, a player could have dropped more than 5 points during the game. This would
affect his performance!


And here's a little secret - the hidden player attributes:
There are 6 hidden attributes in use + 2 that are not. And they are:
1: Flair / Technique
2: Potential
3: Temper
4: Set-Pieces
5: Confidence
6: injury proneness
-- not in use --
7: originally Left/Right foot
8: unused: seasonal modifier

 

I hope this post can inspire some discussions regarding ML tactics. Feel free to flame me ;)
 

 

This will be a very short post on the random-factor in ML. I like to think of it as 42.

In every simulated match situation there is a chance Joe-Superstar will lose out to Jim-Oneleg - just to add some fun, excitement
and bloody, frustrating aggravation. Now in most situations, like mano-a-mano speed-duels, jump-offs and tackles it is hard to
pinpoint the randomness of it all. There are many variables involved; some hidden and some guessed; and as of last season you
also need to consider if the play derived from a set-pieces situation. Personally I find the last part a nice improvement, as it is a
known factor.

But the point of this post was to highlight the randomness, the chance, odds and unevens.. limiting the number of factors involved
I came up with Penalties.

{Penalty}

In a previous post I told you that the factors involved in a penalty shootout is Age, Flair and Shooting. And the Penalty team-attribute
- supposedly more important as of season 83. I also said that my 33 year old 90-fitness goalie with 57 shooting scored easily in a
game against a relatively-fit Keeping=94 goalie, team had 4 stars on penalty. Age was supposedly the dominating factor pre
season 83. With the new changes I was sure that the team-attribute would be more important, and it probably is,
but again: never underestimate the 42 chances of randomness that will shatter your tactics.

So I was up against this team.. utterly amazing team-attributes except throw-in 61-65 and PENALTY 1-55 (half a star)!!
In the 78th minute I get a penalty - and I can't believe my luck! What leprechaun flipped a coin into my wishing well to reward me a
penalty against the worst penalty-trained team in my department!? But it wasn't luck - it was evil:

78	Samuel Kuzmanov steps up......
78	He shoots!
78	Amazing reaction by the goalie! Nicely read!

There you have it. My 31 year old, 98-shooting attacker backed by a penalty-team-attribute of 84 failed to score
on the team with <55 penalty-team-attribute, on a 22 year old goalie with 89 keeping skills.
What are the odds...

 

Follow up - Feb 8th 2012:

And so it happens again. A penalty that potentially could decide my relegation.
I will admit my team is no penalty-specialist, but the numbers are still in my favour here:
83 Penalty-attribute Team - that is 3.5 stars;
31 year old, Q91 Attacker, 98 shooting, 85 perception;
vs.
Team with 2 stars Penalty-attribute - 66-70 points;
28 year old Q83, 87 Keeping, 85 perception Goalie;

86	Did you see that? Emanuell Desperados trips him inside the box!
	86	The referee has little choice here, and it's a penalty!
	86	Samuel Kuzmanov steps up......
	86	And it's over the crossbar!

The difference is at the least 13 team-points, 3 years and 11 points in visible skill.

Considering a continuation of this to sum up all my penalties, for and against, this season. Intuition tells me I missed against the worst Penalty-trained teams.
I do realize that Kuzmanov might not be the best choice in these situations, regardless of his 98 shooting.

-------

New Season follow-up

I just had an interresting game. It was directly after a League Cup game so both teams had some fitness loss. For the record, I swapped in a 100% fit goalie for the game.
This game resulted in 4 penalties - 3 for my team, 1 for Lucifer (home team). Kuzmanov shot all 3 for me and scored on all 3. Lucifers penalty was taken by a Q93, 34 yo, shooting 96 attacker. My goalie saved (Q91, 28 yo, 94 keeping). Kuzmanov at this time: Q92, 33 yo, 96 shot. Lucifers goalie: Q94, 30 yo, 97 keeping.
And, the team attributes: I had 83 penalty attribute, and Lucifer was somewhere between 91-95 (wut)

Looking at this game only, the chance of my team scoring a penalty should be far less than Lucifers chance - still I scored 3 for 3 and saved his 1.

Age used to be the dominating factor on penalties, but after the change that made team attributes (supposedly) more important I can't help but feel that "luck" is dominating penalties.

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:

1. - your worst midfielder will get a good rating
2. - 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.