Sanfierro said: One last question Are U-18 leagues or custom made friendly tournaments enough matches for development? Or does the player have to play in the senior team’s league instead? Expand
For age 14-18, no matches will cap growth at ~60% (~12 CA/season). 20-30 matches ~20 CA/season.
For age 19-20, no matches will cap growth at ~35% (~5 CA/season). 20-30 matches ~14 CA/season.
For age 21-26, no matches will cap growth at near 0% (0 CA). 20-30 matches ~12 CA/season.
For GK, no matches is viable 14-20, but growth will be capped at ~20-35% throughout.
For age 14-18, u18/u23 friendlies are worth ~75% of proper senior matches.
For age 19-20, it's ~64%.
For age 21-23, it's ~50%.
For age 24-26, it's ~30%.
At all ages, senior friendlies are actually a bit worse than u18/u23 friendlies.
So u18/u23 matches are fine up to age 18, even 20 is ok, but 21+ you should loan them out even if it's to a team with poor training facilities. If you can play your best youth player(s) every match in your first team, do so even at age 14.
Subbing players in after 70th minute may actually make growth worse than no appearance, possibly due to foregone training. A crucial point I'll make here is that the game counts cumulative minutes played, not appearances.
As you can see, EBFM's videos have a ton of gold in them that isn't immediately obvious. I also recommend watching the second half of this video for anyone who wants all the precise detail on a bunch of other factors affecting player development. I'm surprised it only has 900 views still.
Trappkjeller said: I really want to try out this method so I just want to kinda get it right. But it seems like my striker would be something like this if I got this right.
Age max 22, preferably only Striker position thats dark green. Good Professionalism
Acceleration/Pace 14 min Bal 12 min Ant/Con 11 min Fin/Head/Comp/OffBall/Work/Det/Aggro/Brave/Jump/Sta/Agil/Drib/Tech/Touch 10 min Long/Pass/Vis/Team/Dec 9 min Cross/Tack/Mark/Pos/Nat/Strenght 8 min
and preferably low on the rest of the stats like Pen/Corner/Free Kick etc..
Am I doing this right or am I dead wrong? Haha! Expand
So what I wrote is the nitty gritty of it all, but really you can reduce it to these general principles:
1. It doesn't matter much what player you sign, because even a low PA 8 pace/acc player can still become a beast with HarvestGreen22's training regimes. 2. What will matter is training progress rate. So sign young players with at least decent professionalism and give them 15-30 matches/season or loan them out. 3. If you want extra performance and/or more rounded players, sign players with mid/high mentals/technicals to begin with. These mostly stagnate or drop with HarvestGreen22 training. 4. Sign players with low 'decisions'. 'Decisions' is a very costly attribute in terms of CA for all positions, yet it's performance impact is negligible. Low decisions frees up CA for better attributes like pace/acc/drib/jump. 5. Sign 'natural' (20) position players only. They have the equivalent of a starting +2 pace advantage over 'accomplished' (18) players, and 18 cannot even be later trained to 20. 6. Try to sign or train up players in line with the ~140 PA ideal attribute templates if really want to optimize things. 7. Avoid dirty players. Worry less about consistency, injury proneness, set pieces. Get a captain GK.
So let's look at 2 examples:
Both of these players will do good when paired with HarvestGreen22 training, but if I had the choice I would choose the second player because he has decent to strong starting technicals/mentals, whereas the first player will always be stuck with his ~3 long shots and whatnot.
Neither player would pass your filter, and this is why you need to be careful about setting filter attributes too high or having too many. If you do use a filter, something as low and simple as 8 pace/acc min can be enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, then just do an overall visual judgement of the attributes.
Possebrew said: I am beginning to develop the suspicion that the single most important attribute for a striker is not pace, height or acceleration. It's "off-the-ball". Expand
Above + 20 off the ball (for 2 strikers) = +93, 93 2nd sample = +92, 90
Looking at the striker stats specifically, there was no improvement, taken together they were overall slightly worse in line with the overall team result.
what do you think about the find that CA can win games? as mentioned i increased my player’s CA and PA (but not the attributes) directly before a match (so that everything stayed unchanged) and suddenly i started winning against the same team I always lost against (reloaded a savegame many times) it would mean that mental and technical attributes can make a difference because the game assigns CA to them.
maybe this is sports interactives trick to make attributes matter - even if they cannot show things like passing in the match engine (pace / acceleration are very easy to show in the match engine) they just generally change the odds of winning 😀
that’s why i made another small experiment, i gave a player a 20 in passing/technique/vision/flair and compared this to him having a 1 in these attributes. My team won more games because of higher CA but the “passing match stats” like “passes completed” or “key passes” did not change at all Expand
I did a few tests
---------------
(All outfield) 20 pace/acc/jump/drib + 8 other attributes:
I didn't isolate things 100% or take many samples, but I think it's good enough to draw a few key conclusions.
Those technical/mental attributes don't do much, even in combination. And the extra cost is ~40 CA, which is really the nail in the coffin. ~40% extra cost for ~18% extra performance.
It's more difficult to draw a conclusion about whether attribute combos compound performance, but I would say it doesn't seem so. HarvestGreen22's data showing effect of 12 > 18 of each attribute has ~2-3% increased win rate for each of these attributes I boosted. 5x2.5% = 12.5%. I boosted from 8 to 20 and got ~14%-21% extra depending on how you look at it, which is about the same as you'd expect from each attribute alone.
Also it shows that its not just judging based on CA, and my ideal 140 CA templates which are around about the same CA did significantly better
very attacking + shorter passing + be more expressive + shoot on sight = +259, 114 very attacking = +270, 112 very attacking + shorter passing = +286, 114
very attacking + shorter passing, other adjustments + 9 subs = +306, 114 very attacking + shorter passing + work into box, other adjustments + 9 subs = +309, 114 very attacking + shorter passing, other adjustments + 9 subs = +312, 114 attacking + shorter passing, other adjustments + 9 subs = +312, 114
very attacking + shorter passing + work ball into box, other adjustments + 9 subs = +339, 114
Some observations:
The +339 result was not from the test with the most optimizations. So training schedule, pre-season team talk morale boost, match plans, all that mustn't have mattered much. I'm guessing what made the key difference was match fitness. A repeat of the same settings produced +309.
The changes to the tactic of 'very attacking', 'shorter passing' and 'work ball into box' seemed to produce slightly better results, or at least they weren't worse, whereas some others obviously were.
Biggest premier league game win I saw was 23-0.
I realized that penalty taking, and other set pieces, for goalkeeper has 0 weighting. This is potentially useful. I've said before that set piece attributes are not worth picking for. But you may as well select a goalkeeper with decent penalty taking and composure (which there are quite a few of), and make them your penalty taker. It will also have the satisfying effect of making your GK a goalscorer.
However I think I created this before I created my templates so it will be a little different perhaps, and GenieScout also doesn't allow negative weighting for certain attributes. But overall it should be close enough.
Alxy said: Thanks for this post - please can I ask you which skin did you find had the largest player faces (e.g. when you check attributes)? Or is there any skin that would allow you to fit in a whole shot of a player instead of just the player face?
Also is there any way to get player faces in-match (so rather than seeing player shirt numbers you see the player faces?). Thanks Expand
For face size:
WTCS Gold 24 1.3.1 - 9 Sas2025Final-Hidden - 4 (what brought this skin down from no. 1 for me) Dark Polish FM24 Skins v7 - 6 FusionDB FM24 Classic Dark v1.1 - 9 Chove Skin for FM24 - 9
Tato is a popular skin I didn't rate highly, I gave it 5 for face size.
In my view, WTCS 'profile' page for viewing attributes is usable as your default attribute view page, unlike many skins were its just too cluttered. And I like that it gives you 4 different options (i.e. face with kit behind, or just face, etc.)
Chove has perhaps the biggest face for attribute + profile pages (and its centered on profile page), but its quite non-vanilla.
FusionDB is smallish on profile page, but large on attribute page.
I definitely didn't see any skin with full body, and to me face pic can be too big because it just stretches it too big at a certain point (though I only used the sortitoutsi pack).
I took into account 2 other minor face things when giving my overall score btw, which is face icons on squad list screen, and big photos of the board members on the club vision screen. Many skins don't have either of these at all.
5 or above is good/playable 3-4 may even be great in some ways but has serious issues 1-2 trash
I am strongly inclined towards a default-style skin, but I've tried to be somewhat open-minded.
My criteria is:
font clarity responsiveness hidden attributes (footedness, CA/PA, personality, instant result, fitness %, etc.) lack of crowdedness stadium imagery info/data lack of logo intrusiveness comfyness face size lack of bugs
For score 6 or less, I just went with overall initial impressions, with the criteria in mind.
WTCS Gold 24 1.3.1 - 7.64 Sas2025Final-Hidden - 7.09 Dark Polish FM24 Skins v7 - 7.09 Chove Skin for FM24 - 7.09 FusionDB FM24 Classic Dark v1.1 - 7.00
No, I will eventually but they're not very useful anyway; it would give you a better idea of what attributes are realistic I guess. It would be basically an in-between of the shortlist filter and the template ideals.
The Genie Scout ratings I posted in the other thread would be a more useful method, as it accounts for all the attributes in its rating system, but doesn't rule out anyone.
The problem with shortlist filters is that the more attributes requirements you add, exponentially fewer players match them. To make this more concrete, here are a few stats in my data:
~20% of players have 8+ long shots ~17% of players have 10+ dribbling ~27% of STs have 12+ finishing ~25% of AMRs have 10+ finishing ~5.4% of STs have 12+ finishing, 10+ dribbling, 8+ long shots ~12.8% of AMRs have 10+ finishing, 10+ dribbling, 8+ long shots ~4.5% of CBs have 8+ long shots, 8+ dribbling
You can see the problem here with my ~140 DC 'ideal template' having 14 long shots; this would be reduced to say ~6-8 in my 'in depth filter', whereas my 'shortlist filter' doesn't set a minimum on long shots at all.
Bill W said: Regarding the first bit there, since I think a lot of people are going to use tactics where players change positions (DMs <> CMs, AMC<>Strikers, etc), what's the recommendation?
Ensure they're natural in both tactical positions? Ensure they're natural in at least the IP tactic? The OoP tactic? Break the above rule and ensure they're like 18 in both instead of 20 in one?
Also. In that last line, what's considered the minimum conditions to hit the 12.5 and 25.5 CA gains in a year? Expand
As someone said in another thread, it may be that having IP and OoP tactic be the same will be the meta due to the player proficiency downside. But who knows at this point.
Roughly speaking, 18 vs 20 proficiency is around -1.5 pace.
For hitting the yearly CA cap, see my 'ideal growth' details. You won't need all of them to hit the cap. High professionalism can largely make up for lack of game time. Professionalism and game time are the two main contributors to growth. From memory, friendlies/youth matches will count as game time to some extent (maybe even 100% up to age 18, I can't recall exactly now), but after 18 proper first team matches is really whats needed. And the game measures the minutes rather than appearances, so putting on the player for last 10 minutes will count as 10 minutes towards the full 2520 minutes that's optimal. How many games will be 'adequate', once they're age 20 say? About half the optimum, say 15 full games. This is why loaning out at that age is so important if they can't get first team games, even if its at crappy clubs.
For those who are interested, I'll add some more detail about my methodology and thoughts.
I didn't just guess the ideal combo of attributes for each position, although it is very much just an approximation. Essentially what I did is I took HarvestGreen22's attribute performance data, the CA weightings for each position, and used ChatGPT to help me distribute attributes accordingly given a certain PA (for instance, 'long shots' is often high because its also often cheap yet performs well). This is a bit of an oversimplification though, because I have also taken into account the availability of attributes to some extent, and some squad-level adjustments (i.e. there should be a captain and ~2 backups). So for instance you will note that even in my 200 PA players, decisions is kept to just 12. This is because decisions does hardly anything (especially in situations where you already have 1 good decision maker it is suggested), yet it has very high CA cost for all positions. So I biased against 'decisions' specifically, and yet you will also notice that it isn't lower than 6 in the lower PA players - this is because few players will actually have decisions lower than 6. In fact in my filter you can see I suggest setting max 12<. The general idea is pick a player with high pace/acc/jump, and ~10 decisions, and then let the training get 'decisions' down closer to the ideal; maybe it will drop to 8 say. This frees up CA for more pace/acc/jump/drib, etc.
Some things need extra context
If you dig into HarvestGreen22's posts there are some things that turn up that aren't immediately obvious. For instance, it seemed that flair was a pure negative, but in another post he noted flair and certain other attributes can be positive, and what its about seems to be whether you have 1 high flair player (good) or 3 (ok) or 10 (bad).
Another trait that needs extra context is aggression. High aggression is good so long as there is low dirtiness, or if it is position where neither come much into play anyway (i.e. AMR). And this one isn't really a nothingburger either, as dirtiness is 10x more important than injury proneness. It can lead to conceded penalty or one man down with no sub which is worse than a mid-match injury.
Some attributes interact, such as finishing & composure, whereas others such as positioning & tackling don't. Pace/acc/drib/finish scale linearly; work rate scales massively from 1-6 but above 6 it doesn't matter so much.
At the end of the day, the main thing to keep in mind is that you want to look for players with decent starting pace/acc/jump/drib, but 5 'decisions' should also look like 20 pace to you because that's what its enabling you to get.
I would reiterate that position proficiency is a very important attribute, so pick players that have 20 natural proficiency, don't get one with '18' or try and train them into it from another position. Another reason not to do the latter is that there's very little leeway in tricking the CA weighting system. That is, you can't have your DC have high finishing and play them as 18 ST, it doesn't work that way. At best you can give your players a 12 proficiency for 'free', which is useful for saving a sub perhaps, but even this isn't really free because you're spending training time building it up to 12.
A few more tips/info I could have included:
Do not set a 'role' for position training of player, leave as default player position (i.e. AMR). Otherwise it will funnel CA gain to role attributes instead of proven winning attributes such as pace and acceleration. For example, DM 'enganche' role has no focus on physicals at all except agility. Assigning roles weight highlighted attributes a further ~3%. Roles reduce the training efficacy by ~3%.
Train weaker foot if it is 'very weak' (1-4 rating). This can get it up to 9, which is worth it in terms of CA cost/performance tradeoff. The performance/CA tradeoff is best at about ~6 I'd say (so proper dual-foot is a bit bad and certainly a waste of time to train).
CA gain cap per year is ~12.5 CA without matches. ~25.5 CA with matches.
Bill W said: I just wanted to be crystal clear here... So, if I'm filling in an average week of training with a game on Saturday... Your recommendation is basically:
Sun: Rest/travel x3 (assuming game day before) Mon: Quickness / recovery / rest Tues: match practice /recovery / rest Wed: Attacking / Recovery / Rest Thurs: match practice /recovery /rest Fri: rest / recovery/ match focus Sat: Match / rest x 2
Is this correct? Expand
So I had to look into this again to jog my memory, and it appears recovery isn't simply interchangeable with rest when it comes to attribute gain from training. And I should have been more clearer too. I will have to do some more research on rest vs. recovery and edit my post.
Regardless, the schedule is still:
[Quickness]+[Match Practice]+[Attacking]+[Double Intensity]+[Addtional Focus Quickness] I do 'no pitch or gym work' for first 3 health icons, and 'double intensity' for last 2
What I meant with rest/recovery mix was that you should mix it according to the condition & match fitness needs of your players. Match fitness is more important than condition, so I would lean towards more recovery sessions, or otherwise schedule more friendlies.
If you do use rest, I would try and make full days of rest where possible for the double rest effect, and have that rest immediately after the last match.
CryosFeron said: thanks for all your hard work - but how is it that people here seem to be happy and thankful rather than disenchanted and sad (like I am)? Expand
I 100% agree, and you've explained the problem with the game more succinctly than I've thought up. I don't bother posting that thought; I think it's better to just stick the SI simps and sycophants with the truth, which they'd rather silence and gloss over.
Really what motivates me though is that I enjoy much more working out the underlying mechanics than playing the game now. I started doing this with FM19, when I reverse-engineered the newgen mechanics. It turned out SI staff had been giving out a lot of false, even self-contradicting, information over the years, and their attitude when you try to share the data was 'I couldn't replicate that. Did you do 10,000 samples? You did? Well do you have a data science degree, otherwise how do you know what 'average' and 'mean' means?', etc., before closing the thread with 'If you think you've found something, you should email your save to our team for them to look at'.
Brexit rules, press conferences, horrendous newgen faces, health icons, and obfuscating newgen-maxxing in various ways ruined FM19-FM24 for me, but you could get around 90% of it with ~12 hours of custom editing and prep before playing. With knap tactics and now EBFM + HarvestGreen22's info, the game has lost a fair bit of its lustre, but its still playable. FM26 appears to have screwed the pooch.
I think what we need right now is a backport of the FM26 database to FM24. I'm not a believer in those projects that try to fix up the training system or match engine or even those 3rd-party DB updates, I think a big part of the enjoyment is in knowing other people are playing the exact same game as you. As custom skins show, the UI isn't really a necessary part of this shared enjoyment. And FM26 is even largely the same under the hood, so you could play FM26 database on FM24 and legitimately feel you're playing FM26 just with the old UI.
Not even sure I've done it right, trying to translate it to a 0-100 system confuses me, but I've done it comprehensively using careful guesstimates. Any math wizards welcome to critique.
Genie Scout also doesn't always allow negative values, which would be good for attributes such as 'decisions' and 'technique'.
I also heavily buffed up some attributes like set pieces and leadership for certain positions - they hardly matter at all in terms of performance, but it wouldn't feel right for my captain to have 11 leadership.
Oh, this is for FM24 btw, but FM26 doesnt seem like it would be too much different.
Club Selection Choose your nation carefully as it has a significant permanent hidden effect on newgen quality. Your club choice only carries some very minor permanent effects.
These very minor permanent effects are:
Weather - Minor effect on performance and injuries. Altitude - Significant effect on fitness at high levels. Consider a low altitude club. City attraction - Affects willingness of players to join your club potentially. Does not effect newgens. Inhabitants range - Cosmetic effect only (newgen birth city) Local Region - Does not effect newgens, with possible exception of nationality & language proficiency.
So if you start thinking your only possible choice is Burton because they're the only club with 20 Youth Facilities, but then think 'hang on, they only have a city attraction of 5', then it will relieve you to know that you can let go of all that nonsense and chose any starting club without being permanently handicapped in any meaningful way.
Game Setup:
Outdated findings, but probably largely still true. Processing time is mainly number of teams in division + active status + detail level. Player numbers make negligible difference.
Recommendation based on newgens + processing time + immersion:
England Div 1 France Div 1 Portugal Div 1 Brazil Div 1 Argentina Div 1 Germany Div 1 Italy Div 1 Spain Div 1 Netherlands Div 1 Belgium Div 1
Optional:
Belgium Div 2 Croatia Div 1 South Korea Div 1
Set detail level to minimum/none for all competitions except for the following:
- Any competitions your club is involved in (i.e. Premier League, FA Cup, Club World Ch'ship, etc.) - Any relevant international competitions (if managing international, or expect player call-ups) - Youth competitions (i.e. u18s/u23s) if you're willing to tolerate the added processing slowdown
Attribute Template: The minimum set of attributes to survive the English Premier League, determined through extensive (but not exhaustive) testing. This set of attributes finished 7th with a Knap tactic. When all '1' values were set to '8', 1st place was even achievable.
The idea is to buy players fulfilling these required attributes as closely as possible, train up their pace/acc to ~18, and thereby dominate the 2nd season onwards.
GK DC Rest of outfield
Attribute Weightings
Current version: Premier League 2.1 weights
FMST26 weights (copy paste this into statistics > custom metrics (advanced)):
Because of bugs Genie Scout has, it cannot utilize weightings for hidden attributes correctly. I strongly recommend using FMST26 or alternatively FMSuperScout for this reason, but the GS file provided above will do a reasonable job nonetheless.
Fitness Management: Maintaining high match sharpness is critical to performance and is difficult to manage without careful planning. Condition matters of course, but is relatively easy to manage. Fatigue doesn't matter much, because it is easily avoidable.
In order to manage match sharpness correctly:
Squad of 23 players No natural fitness 7 or less ~30-50%+ squad natural fitness 14+
7 pre-season home friendlies against u18 team of worst local club. Sprinkle in mid-season friendlies during lulls or losing streaks.
Morale:
Perfect - 50.2% win rate Very Good - 49.1% Okay - 38.7% Quite poor - 37.2% Abysmal - 33.0%
Morale factor is roughly equivalent to:
- 100% vs 90% match fitness - 20 vs 8 consistency
It is of minor to moderate impact, and momentum (i.e. winning/losing streaks affecting future performance) appears to be a real thing. Some tips to manage it:
- The friendlies against dud teams mentioned previously will boost morale significantly - Set up your training calendar for the season, then delegate 'general training' to a staff member. No more training unhappiness complaints. - Avoid somewhat players that are disloyal, highly temperamental, highly ambitious. - Favor a compact squad with fairly easy training
Development: 34% Natural growth 25% Randomness 21% Competitive matches ---> 85% Division Reputation ---> 8% Loan club training facilities (if loaned out) ---> 7% Club Reputation 20% Training
Age 14-18 - Keep at club, u18s/reserves friendlies sufficient Age 19-20 - Play minimum 15 games/season or loan out, but keeping at club playing reserve friendlies still decent Age 21+ - Must be playing competitively or loaned out to develop further
Loans: - CA growth requires competitive matches played. Game time should be 1st priority. - CA growth hard-capped by division reputation. Division level is 2nd priority. - Inactive division best (South Korea Div 1 appears the ideal choice for loans) - Training facilities and club rep minor factors
Affiliates: - For loan feeder, choose mid-table team or division with no relegation (high chance of being played, low chance relegated) - For newgen intake feeder, choose Brazilian club for high youth rating. One of your newgens will be partially determined by the higher nation youth rating. - Cut bad default affiliates. Foreign affiliates can drag down one of your newgen's PA (low nation youth rating), have mandatory friendlies you pay for, and charge you an annual fee.
Newgen quality: 50% Randomness 13% Unique Nation ID (i.e. England vs Romania) 13% Junior Coaching 8% Youth Recruitment 8% Nation Youth Rating 5% Nation Game Importance 1% Youth Facilities 0.3% Brazilian affiliate 0.2% HoYD 0.1% Youth Coaches -0.6% Kiribati affiliate
Note: These % numbers are oversimplified and should not be taken as precise figures, though they wouldn't be that far off. It's to give you a picture of what matters and what doesn't, and to what extent you can influence things.
Yarema said: I feel there is still some hidden information. Specifically I feel that some effects are immediate as in the day before intake, some before preview and some (and this might be a bit tinfoil hat theory) might take 2-3 seasons to show. Expand I've done some testing of this, just to rule out the possibility that reloading my saves just prior to intake wasn't affecting results of PA testing I was doing. There was no difference, for reloading just before intake as compared to starting new save from scratch each time.
EvensenFM said: Thanks for this! I think I read somewhere else recently (probably Reddit) that Youth Facilities don't impact the PA of newly generated players at all. This is really good to know. Expand
I actually posted a comment on your youtube recently, that was it.
You do pretty good videos, enjoying watching them alongside doing things, even though I wouldn't have thought football history would be my thing.
kvasir said: Great test, man. Thoughts about the affiliate clubs thing:
There are 7 countries with a higher Youth Rating than England(136), highest being Brazil with 163. If my top English club gets an affiliate in Brazil, wouldn't that be a good thing? Seems like swapping an English newgen for a Brazilian should be an upgrade most of the time.
The question is, I guess, how the game makes the Brazilian kid: does he get generated in my youth intake with my own 20/20 JC and YR? or is he made at his own club, with their stats (probably lower than mine), and just moved to my team?
If it's the first option then its a win. If not, then its a gamble. Any ideas? Expand
Yes, you are entirely correct in your first hypothesis. I just removed the affiliates from Man City because I'm trying to work out the newgen mechanics accurately.
To the question, a few days ago I would have said to you that its just Brazil's youth rating + it must be your own facilities, because in some testing I did before on it I found that it only takes the youth rating, not any of the affiliate club attributes.
But recently I was watching EBFM's video on affiliate clubs, and his data shows that while nation youth rating is still the most important factor, affiliate club attributes do in fact influence the quality of the newgen. So now I'm not sure, but I'd say believe what EBFM says on this because it's likely I only took like 5 samples or something in my test, because intake from affiliate clubs isn't really a part of the formula for newgen mechanics that I've been testing for.
tl;dr 'Youth Facilities' have no effect on newgen PA in any way. The 'club reputation' of OTHER clubs in your nation has a small effect on newgen PA. 'Corporate facilities' may also have a minor effect on newgen PA, but this could be just statistical noise.
----------------------------
I did testing before in FM19 and found that youth facilities affect newgen CA but not PA.
I have done a decent amount of testing with FM24 and have found the same, and that median PA continues to be the most reliable measure of newgen quality, with peak PA having much more of a randomness factor.
What I found in my previous testing was roughly the following:
Junior coaching ~40% PA effect Nation youth rating ~25% PA effect Youth recruitment ~25% PA effect Club reputation acts as tie breaker for youth recruitment Either unique nation or division ID ~25% (or perhaps even more) PA effect (a hidden, unchangeable factor - it may be 'Nation attribute template' that is listed as an inaccessible debug option in the editor, which sounds like it would be similar to the 'Nation personality template' before it was removed in recent versions) All other factors no effect
But I wanted to test a few new theories I had this time as well.
First, the data:
Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams normal: 141.5 median, 170 peak Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams YF1: 138.1 median, 161.4 peak Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams YF20: 143.7 median, 171.4 peak Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams JC1: 143 median, 163 peak Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams ClubRep/Train/YouthImp/Corp 1: 124.3 median, 176.3 peak Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams Train/YouthImp/Corp 1: 137.25 median, 165.5 peak Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams YouthImp/Corp 1: 136 median, 171.6 peak Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams YouthImp 20/Corp 1: 135.6 median, 164.9 peak Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams ClubRep1: 130.6 median, 177 peak Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams ClubRep1/YF1: 142 median, 174 peak Man City normal (no affiliates), premier league normal, all other England teams ClubRep1/YF1/corp1: 138 median, 163.5 peak Man City normal (no affiliates), premier league ClubRep/YF1/Corp1, all other clubs normal: 138.8 median, 177.4 peak Man City normal (no affiliates), north-west local region normal, all other clubs ClubRep1/YF1: 138.4 median, 176 peak Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams ClubRep/Corp 1: 133.9 median, 167.3 peak
Margin of error I'd guesstimate at ~3-5 median PA. This isn't up to EBFM's standards, but it's 'good enough' in my opinion. I've always been of the view that if you can't replicate it reliably in a few seasons of FM, then its not significant enough of a result to include anyway.
In case you're wondering, keeping the affiliates for Man City reduces median PA by ~15-20, and I deliberately removed them because I know affiliates mess with the newgen intake results as they can replace one or more of them with one from an affiliate club. I wanted to get a pure English club result.
I noticed that Man City often gets some purely Scotland/Ireland only players, and that once their top player (194 PA) was Ireland only. This is notable because Ireland has low enough of a nation youth rating that a 194 PA Ireland player is pretty highly unlikely. It gave credence to the idea that newgens are tied to local region in some way, so I thought I'd re-examine that aspect too (I'd previously tested 'local region' and found it had zero effect on CA/PA).
Hypothesis: Youth facilities have insignificant effect at a single club, but a nations or divisions teams YF contributes cumulatively to a pool of PA that clubs then draw upon. Conclusion: False.
Hypothesis: Youth facilities don't effect median PA, but they effect peak PA or the skew. Conclusion: False.
Although YF1 always eventually produced a high peak PA, I did notice that YF1 alone had a long run of ~155-160 peak PA. This wasn't the case in other YF1 tests, and YF20 produced peak PAs all over the place from 159 to 194. Skew is difficult to definitively conclude on, but I didn't get the impression looking through the results that youth facilities effected the skew.
Hypothesis: Youth facilities contribute to a division pool only. Conclusion: False.
Hypothesis: Youth facilities contribute to a 'local region' pool only. Conclusion: False.
Hypothesis: Junior coaching/Training Facilities/Youth Importance of other clubs has an effect somehow. Conclusion: False.
Hypothesis: Club reputation of other clubs has an effect somehow. Conclusion: Tentatively, yes.
This was a somewhat surprising finding. From memory, I did find before that club rep had a ~10% CA effect, but not on PA. In this case, we can see that ClubRep1 reduced median PA by ~7.7% alone, and ~12.2% when combined with other low club attributes. I took extra samples to be sure and got the same result.
The strange thing is that ClubRep1 result is normal when combined with YF1. I think there's a clue as to what's going on in the fact that the low median PA results only happened when *all* other England teams had low club rep. But that still doesn't make sense of it.
Hypothesis: Corporate facilities of other clubs has an effect somehow. Conclusion: Unclear.
Corp 1 did produce lower median PAs consistently, but the difference of ~3-7 may not be statistically significant. Consider that the typical variance of a club each year is ~5 median PA, even after stripping away the outliers.
Hypothesis: Starting CA affects PA, say that +20 CA due to factor contributes +20 PA as well. Conclusion: False.
SaMaHaJoGu said: What was the difference in his different Long Throws? Expand Long throws must have increased from 1 lot of 'set piece routines' in my 'mixed' screenshot. Even 'match practice' doesn't seem to do it, as long throws is not a highlighted role attribute. Sessions do seem to train the attributes they say they do. My theory was that sessions with low priority for outfield players, like set pieces, have greater overall growth (which turned out to be wrong).
SaMaHaJoGu said: If you do further testing for set pieces, please do help fill the rest of us in. Expand I'm making another post here soon that will say my conclusion about set piece attributes (and surmising everything else), which is that they're pretty much useless and it doesn't matter even if your best takers have only say '6' attribute.
For example:
A season may have ~10 penalties. The difference between '6' and '16' penalty taking is perhaps ~30% success rate, so 3 goals total. Top teams probably give away less penalties due to better 'decisions', so realistically this may be just 1 key goal over the season - which may be 1 key game win. However this would no doubt be outweighed by the CA cost or rareness of the high 'penalty taking' player. Only ~30% of good striker options age 20 or under have 10 or higher penalty taking. Therefore it should be considered a luxury and a tie-breaker between 2 equal ~180+ PA players.
HarvestGreen22's data shows us that +6 pace = +40 goals. We can guess +10 penalty taking = +3 goals. So +10 penalty taking = +0.45 pace. So you're better off glancing at the pace/acc/dribbling stats and choosing the one that has 1 extra pace/acc/dribbling.
The Zippo data also suggestively shows corners and free kicks only giving +1 season goal each from +12 each.
Two other ways it can be expressed is 1 consistency = 1.25 set piece = 3 important matches, but this is just a fun piece of trivia not useful for deciding between players.
If you do want a good set piece taker for comfort, best to buy one instead of training up one.
Are U-18 leagues or custom made friendly tournaments enough matches for development? Or does the player have to play in the senior team’s league instead?
For age 14-18, no matches will cap growth at ~60% (~12 CA/season). 20-30 matches ~20 CA/season.
For age 19-20, no matches will cap growth at ~35% (~5 CA/season). 20-30 matches ~14 CA/season.
For age 21-26, no matches will cap growth at near 0% (0 CA). 20-30 matches ~12 CA/season.
For GK, no matches is viable 14-20, but growth will be capped at ~20-35% throughout.
Source: EBFM
For age 14-18, u18/u23 friendlies are worth ~75% of proper senior matches.
For age 19-20, it's ~64%.
For age 21-23, it's ~50%.
For age 24-26, it's ~30%.
At all ages, senior friendlies are actually a bit worse than u18/u23 friendlies.
So u18/u23 matches are fine up to age 18, even 20 is ok, but 21+ you should loan them out even if it's to a team with poor training facilities. If you can play your best youth player(s) every match in your first team, do so even at age 14.
Source: EBFM
Match winning rate does not matter at all for development
Source: EBFM
Subbing players in after 70th minute may actually make growth worse than no appearance, possibly due to foregone training. A crucial point I'll make here is that the game counts cumulative minutes played, not appearances.
Source: EBFM
For age 14-18, u18/u23/II squad placement is ~95% of senior placement.
For age 19-23, it's ~90%.
For age 24-26, it's ~55%.
I didn't look into what is going here, but I can only suspect it's due to difference in training rather than the squad placement itself.
Source: EBFM
As you can see, EBFM's videos have a ton of gold in them that isn't immediately obvious. I also recommend watching the second half of this video for anyone who wants all the precise detail on a bunch of other factors affecting player development. I'm surprised it only has 900 views still.
Age max 22, preferably only Striker position thats dark green.
Good Professionalism
Acceleration/Pace 14 min
Bal 12 min
Ant/Con 11 min
Fin/Head/Comp/OffBall/Work/Det/Aggro/Brave/Jump/Sta/Agil/Drib/Tech/Touch 10 min
Long/Pass/Vis/Team/Dec 9 min
Cross/Tack/Mark/Pos/Nat/Strenght 8 min
and preferably low on the rest of the stats like Pen/Corner/Free Kick etc..
Am I doing this right or am I dead wrong? Haha!
So what I wrote is the nitty gritty of it all, but really you can reduce it to these general principles:
1. It doesn't matter much what player you sign, because even a low PA 8 pace/acc player can still become a beast with HarvestGreen22's training regimes.
2. What will matter is training progress rate. So sign young players with at least decent professionalism and give them 15-30 matches/season or loan them out.
3. If you want extra performance and/or more rounded players, sign players with mid/high mentals/technicals to begin with. These mostly stagnate or drop with HarvestGreen22 training.
4. Sign players with low 'decisions'. 'Decisions' is a very costly attribute in terms of CA for all positions, yet it's performance impact is negligible. Low decisions frees up CA for better attributes like pace/acc/drib/jump.
5. Sign 'natural' (20) position players only. They have the equivalent of a starting +2 pace advantage over 'accomplished' (18) players, and 18 cannot even be later trained to 20.
6. Try to sign or train up players in line with the ~140 PA ideal attribute templates if really want to optimize things.
7. Avoid dirty players. Worry less about consistency, injury proneness, set pieces. Get a captain GK.
So let's look at 2 examples:
Both of these players will do good when paired with HarvestGreen22 training, but if I had the choice I would choose the second player because he has decent to strong starting technicals/mentals, whereas the first player will always be stuck with his ~3 long shots and whatnot.
Neither player would pass your filter, and this is why you need to be careful about setting filter attributes too high or having too many. If you do use a filter, something as low and simple as 8 pace/acc min can be enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, then just do an overall visual judgement of the attributes.
It's "off-the-ball".
I was curious about this so I did a test
20 pace/acc/jump/drib/pass + 8 others = +100, 96
2nd sample = +96, 95
Above + 20 off the ball (for 2 strikers) = +93, 93
2nd sample = +92, 90
Looking at the striker stats specifically, there was no improvement, taken together they were overall slightly worse in line with the overall team result.
what do you think about the find that CA can win games? as mentioned i increased my player’s CA and PA (but not the attributes) directly before a match (so that everything stayed unchanged) and suddenly i started winning against the same team I always lost against (reloaded a savegame many times)
it would mean that mental and technical attributes can make a difference because the game assigns CA to them.
maybe this is sports interactives trick to make attributes matter - even if they cannot show things like passing in the match engine (pace / acceleration are very easy to show in the match engine) they just generally change the odds of winning 😀
that’s why i made another small experiment, i gave a player a 20 in passing/technique/vision/flair and compared this to him having a 1 in these attributes. My team won more games because of higher CA but the “passing match stats” like “passes completed” or “key passes” did not change at all
I did a few tests
---------------
(All outfield) 20 pace/acc/jump/drib + 8 other attributes:
+96, 93
+71, 92 (2nd sample)
(All outfield) 20 passing + technique + decisions + composure + decisions + first touch:
+96, 103
+107, 107 (2nd sample)
(1 DM only) 20 passing + technique + decisions + composure + decisions + first touch:
+127, 102
+55, 85 (2nd sample)
+94, 98 (3rd sample)
(All outfield) 20 passing:
+100, 96
+96, 95 (2nd sample)
---------------
I didn't isolate things 100% or take many samples, but I think it's good enough to draw a few key conclusions.
Those technical/mental attributes don't do much, even in combination. And the extra cost is ~40 CA, which is really the nail in the coffin. ~40% extra cost for ~18% extra performance.
It's more difficult to draw a conclusion about whether attribute combos compound performance, but I would say it doesn't seem so. HarvestGreen22's data showing effect of 12 > 18 of each attribute has ~2-3% increased win rate for each of these attributes I boosted. 5x2.5% = 12.5%. I boosted from 8 to 20 and got ~14%-21% extra depending on how you look at it, which is about the same as you'd expect from each attribute alone.
Also it shows that its not just judging based on CA, and my ideal 140 CA templates which are around about the same CA did significantly better
(EF 424 IF HP V2 P101 AC) very attacking + shorter passing + work ball into box, GK 200 CA, other adjustments + 9 subs = +339, 114
20 pace/acc/jump/drib, 8 rest (~100 CA) - 1st, 86 Points, +82
20 pace/acc/jump/drib, 12 rest (~150 CA) - 1st, 107 points, +151
Low (~140 CA) Ideal Template - 1st, 108 points, +132
20 pace/acc/jump/drib, 14 rest (~180 CA) - 1st, 109 points, +162
20 pace/acc/jump/drib, 16 rest (~200 CA) - 1st, 112 points, +214
High (~200 CA) Ideal Template - 1st, 114 points, +268
very attacking + shorter passing + be more expressive + shoot on sight = +259, 114
very attacking = +270, 112
very attacking + shorter passing = +286, 114
very attacking + shorter passing, other adjustments + 9 subs = +306, 114
very attacking + shorter passing + work into box, other adjustments + 9 subs = +309, 114
very attacking + shorter passing, other adjustments + 9 subs = +312, 114
attacking + shorter passing, other adjustments + 9 subs = +312, 114
very attacking + shorter passing + work ball into box, other adjustments + 9 subs = +339, 114
Some observations:
The +339 result was not from the test with the most optimizations. So training schedule, pre-season team talk morale boost, match plans, all that mustn't have mattered much. I'm guessing what made the key difference was match fitness. A repeat of the same settings produced +309.
The changes to the tactic of 'very attacking', 'shorter passing' and 'work ball into box' seemed to produce slightly better results, or at least they weren't worse, whereas some others obviously were.
Biggest premier league game win I saw was 23-0.
I realized that penalty taking, and other set pieces, for goalkeeper has 0 weighting. This is potentially useful. I've said before that set piece attributes are not worth picking for. But you may as well select a goalkeeper with decent penalty taking and composure (which there are quite a few of), and make them your penalty taker. It will also have the satisfying effect of making your GK a goalscorer.
Have you came up with a rating system for those ideal players to implement on GenieScout?
Yes, here
However I think I created this before I created my templates so it will be a little different perhaps, and GenieScout also doesn't allow negative weighting for certain attributes. But overall it should be close enough.
Also is there any way to get player faces in-match (so rather than seeing player shirt numbers you see the player faces?). Thanks
For face size:
WTCS Gold 24 1.3.1 - 9
Sas2025Final-Hidden - 4 (what brought this skin down from no. 1 for me)
Dark Polish FM24 Skins v7 - 6
FusionDB FM24 Classic Dark v1.1 - 9
Chove Skin for FM24 - 9
Tato is a popular skin I didn't rate highly, I gave it 5 for face size.
In my view, WTCS 'profile' page for viewing attributes is usable as your default attribute view page, unlike many skins were its just too cluttered. And I like that it gives you 4 different options (i.e. face with kit behind, or just face, etc.)
Chove has perhaps the biggest face for attribute + profile pages (and its centered on profile page), but its quite non-vanilla.
FusionDB is smallish on profile page, but large on attribute page.
I definitely didn't see any skin with full body, and to me face pic can be too big because it just stretches it too big at a certain point (though I only used the sortitoutsi pack).
I took into account 2 other minor face things when giving my overall score btw, which is face icons on squad list screen, and big photos of the board members on the club vision screen. Many skins don't have either of these at all.
5 or above is good/playable
3-4 may even be great in some ways but has serious issues
1-2 trash
I am strongly inclined towards a default-style skin, but I've tried to be somewhat open-minded.
My criteria is:
font
clarity
responsiveness
hidden attributes (footedness, CA/PA, personality, instant result, fitness %, etc.)
lack of crowdedness
stadium imagery
info/data
lack of logo intrusiveness
comfyness
face size
lack of bugs
For score 6 or less, I just went with overall initial impressions, with the criteria in mind.
WTCS Gold 24 1.3.1 - 7.64
Sas2025Final-Hidden - 7.09
Dark Polish FM24 Skins v7 - 7.09
Chove Skin for FM24 - 7.09
FusionDB FM24 Classic Dark v1.1 - 7.00
--------------
Make FM24 Better Skin v2.5 Desktop - 6
FM.Zweierkette Skin v24.0.55 - 6
Kojuro Skin v6.2.0 - 6
Cheetah Skin 24.1.3 - 6
FM24 Light Skin - 5 or 6 (with fixes)
Tato24 FM24 Skin 2.0 - 5
Classics24 1.3 - 5
Classics24 Dark Version 1.4 - 5
DoubleX Skin - 5
Vincechup FM24 Skin - 5
LIVID 24 - 5
Zealand Skin FM24 - 5
Default skin - 5
--------------
Trung FM24 Skin v1.7 - 4
Jimbo Skin 3.0.1 - 4
Rensie Dark FM24 Skin - 4
NY Light FM24 - 4
Electric Panther - Mustermann Edition - v1.2.0 - 4
Echo Skin for FM24 - 4
OPZ Elite 2024 Blackout 2k (for 1440p) 19.3.0 - 3
Vince Skin 1.2 - 3
Mixed Skin 24.4.1 - 3
Statman FM24 Skin v1.5 - 3
TangFu Skin V24.3.0 - 3
Statman - NUMBERLESS v1.02 - 3
JMFM Base Skin24 2.0 - 3
Royal Crown Skin by Vasf 2025-04-13 - 3
--------------
Mustermann Iconic v1.2 FM24 Dark - 2
FM 2024 Flut Skin Dark 9.0 - 2
Just 24 - 2
Andromeda FM24 Final - 2
Vince Skin 1.2 Star Attributes - 2
Material Skin 2.0.24 V2.0.1 - 2
NARIGON Skin FM24 V1.00 - 2
Dark Gold FM24 Skin v2 - 2
Just 24 Attributeless - 1
Mixed Skin 24.4.1 (Colored) - 1
Priisek Retro 24 Skin Updated 30.12.24 The Final Cut - 1
Ciki Skin FM24 Skin - 1
Enganche Light Skin for FM24 - 1
Priisek Green 24 Skins Updated 30.12.24 - 1
FM24 in 25 LIVERPOOL Edition - 1
Fusion Skin FM24 - 1
No, I will eventually but they're not very useful anyway; it would give you a better idea of what attributes are realistic I guess. It would be basically an in-between of the shortlist filter and the template ideals.
The Genie Scout ratings I posted in the other thread would be a more useful method, as it accounts for all the attributes in its rating system, but doesn't rule out anyone.
The problem with shortlist filters is that the more attributes requirements you add, exponentially fewer players match them. To make this more concrete, here are a few stats in my data:
~20% of players have 8+ long shots
~17% of players have 10+ dribbling
~27% of STs have 12+ finishing
~25% of AMRs have 10+ finishing
~5.4% of STs have 12+ finishing, 10+ dribbling, 8+ long shots
~12.8% of AMRs have 10+ finishing, 10+ dribbling, 8+ long shots
~4.5% of CBs have 8+ long shots, 8+ dribbling
You can see the problem here with my ~140 DC 'ideal template' having 14 long shots; this would be reduced to say ~6-8 in my 'in depth filter', whereas my 'shortlist filter' doesn't set a minimum on long shots at all.
Ensure they're natural in both tactical positions?
Ensure they're natural in at least the IP tactic? The OoP tactic?
Break the above rule and ensure they're like 18 in both instead of 20 in one?
Also. In that last line, what's considered the minimum conditions to hit the 12.5 and 25.5 CA gains in a year?
As someone said in another thread, it may be that having IP and OoP tactic be the same will be the meta due to the player proficiency downside. But who knows at this point.
Roughly speaking, 18 vs 20 proficiency is around -1.5 pace.
For hitting the yearly CA cap, see my 'ideal growth' details. You won't need all of them to hit the cap. High professionalism can largely make up for lack of game time. Professionalism and game time are the two main contributors to growth. From memory, friendlies/youth matches will count as game time to some extent (maybe even 100% up to age 18, I can't recall exactly now), but after 18 proper first team matches is really whats needed. And the game measures the minutes rather than appearances, so putting on the player for last 10 minutes will count as 10 minutes towards the full 2520 minutes that's optimal. How many games will be 'adequate', once they're age 20 say? About half the optimum, say 15 full games. This is why loaning out at that age is so important if they can't get first team games, even if its at crappy clubs.
I didn't just guess the ideal combo of attributes for each position, although it is very much just an approximation. Essentially what I did is I took HarvestGreen22's attribute performance data, the CA weightings for each position, and used ChatGPT to help me distribute attributes accordingly given a certain PA (for instance, 'long shots' is often high because its also often cheap yet performs well). This is a bit of an oversimplification though, because I have also taken into account the availability of attributes to some extent, and some squad-level adjustments (i.e. there should be a captain and ~2 backups). So for instance you will note that even in my 200 PA players, decisions is kept to just 12. This is because decisions does hardly anything (especially in situations where you already have 1 good decision maker it is suggested), yet it has very high CA cost for all positions. So I biased against 'decisions' specifically, and yet you will also notice that it isn't lower than 6 in the lower PA players - this is because few players will actually have decisions lower than 6. In fact in my filter you can see I suggest setting max 12<. The general idea is pick a player with high pace/acc/jump, and ~10 decisions, and then let the training get 'decisions' down closer to the ideal; maybe it will drop to 8 say. This frees up CA for more pace/acc/jump/drib, etc.
Some things need extra context
If you dig into HarvestGreen22's posts there are some things that turn up that aren't immediately obvious. For instance, it seemed that flair was a pure negative, but in another post he noted flair and certain other attributes can be positive, and what its about seems to be whether you have 1 high flair player (good) or 3 (ok) or 10 (bad).
Another trait that needs extra context is aggression. High aggression is good so long as there is low dirtiness, or if it is position where neither come much into play anyway (i.e. AMR). And this one isn't really a nothingburger either, as dirtiness is 10x more important than injury proneness. It can lead to conceded penalty or one man down with no sub which is worse than a mid-match injury.
Some attributes interact, such as finishing & composure, whereas others such as positioning & tackling don't. Pace/acc/drib/finish scale linearly; work rate scales massively from 1-6 but above 6 it doesn't matter so much.
At the end of the day, the main thing to keep in mind is that you want to look for players with decent starting pace/acc/jump/drib, but 5 'decisions' should also look like 20 pace to you because that's what its enabling you to get.
I would reiterate that position proficiency is a very important attribute, so pick players that have 20 natural proficiency, don't get one with '18' or try and train them into it from another position. Another reason not to do the latter is that there's very little leeway in tricking the CA weighting system. That is, you can't have your DC have high finishing and play them as 18 ST, it doesn't work that way. At best you can give your players a 12 proficiency for 'free', which is useful for saving a sub perhaps, but even this isn't really free because you're spending training time building it up to 12.
A few more tips/info I could have included:
Do not set a 'role' for position training of player, leave as default player position (i.e. AMR). Otherwise it will funnel CA gain to role attributes instead of proven winning attributes such as pace and acceleration. For example, DM 'enganche' role has no focus on physicals at all except agility. Assigning roles weight highlighted attributes a further ~3%. Roles reduce the training efficacy by ~3%.
Train weaker foot if it is 'very weak' (1-4 rating). This can get it up to 9, which is worth it in terms of CA cost/performance tradeoff. The performance/CA tradeoff is best at about ~6 I'd say (so proper dual-foot is a bit bad and certainly a waste of time to train).
CA gain cap per year is ~12.5 CA without matches. ~25.5 CA with matches.
So, if I'm filling in an average week of training with a game on Saturday...
Your recommendation is basically:
Sun: Rest/travel x3 (assuming game day before)
Mon: Quickness / recovery / rest
Tues: match practice /recovery / rest
Wed: Attacking / Recovery / Rest
Thurs: match practice /recovery /rest
Fri: rest / recovery/ match focus
Sat: Match / rest x 2
Is this correct?
So I had to look into this again to jog my memory, and it appears recovery isn't simply interchangeable with rest when it comes to attribute gain from training. And I should have been more clearer too. I will have to do some more research on rest vs. recovery and edit my post.
Regardless, the schedule is still:
[Quickness]+[Match Practice]+[Attacking]+[Double Intensity]+[Addtional Focus Quickness]
I do 'no pitch or gym work' for first 3 health icons, and 'double intensity' for last 2
What I meant with rest/recovery mix was that you should mix it according to the condition & match fitness needs of your players. Match fitness is more important than condition, so I would lean towards more recovery sessions, or otherwise schedule more friendlies.
If you do use rest, I would try and make full days of rest where possible for the double rest effect, and have that rest immediately after the last match.
CryosFeron said: thanks for all your hard work - but how is it that people here seem to be happy and thankful rather than disenchanted and sad (like I am)?
I 100% agree, and you've explained the problem with the game more succinctly than I've thought up. I don't bother posting that thought; I think it's better to just stick the SI simps and sycophants with the truth, which they'd rather silence and gloss over.
Really what motivates me though is that I enjoy much more working out the underlying mechanics than playing the game now. I started doing this with FM19, when I reverse-engineered the newgen mechanics. It turned out SI staff had been giving out a lot of false, even self-contradicting, information over the years, and their attitude when you try to share the data was 'I couldn't replicate that. Did you do 10,000 samples? You did? Well do you have a data science degree, otherwise how do you know what 'average' and 'mean' means?', etc., before closing the thread with 'If you think you've found something, you should email your save to our team for them to look at'.
Brexit rules, press conferences, horrendous newgen faces, health icons, and obfuscating newgen-maxxing in various ways ruined FM19-FM24 for me, but you could get around 90% of it with ~12 hours of custom editing and prep before playing. With knap tactics and now EBFM + HarvestGreen22's info, the game has lost a fair bit of its lustre, but its still playable. FM26 appears to have screwed the pooch.
I think what we need right now is a backport of the FM26 database to FM24. I'm not a believer in those projects that try to fix up the training system or match engine or even those 3rd-party DB updates, I think a big part of the enjoyment is in knowing other people are playing the exact same game as you. As custom skins show, the UI isn't really a necessary part of this shared enjoyment. And FM26 is even largely the same under the hood, so you could play FM26 database on FM24 and legitimately feel you're playing FM26 just with the old UI.
The old ones were too small, I couldn’t really see the numbers.
Just right click it and open it in new tab, it will show it in full
I would, but I'm too paranoid that there might be some identifier of me in the file. I'm 99% sure there isn't, but it's a needless risk for me.
Someone here could enter in the numbers and upload the file if they want to.
Not even sure I've done it right, trying to translate it to a 0-100 system confuses me, but I've done it comprehensively using careful guesstimates. Any math wizards welcome to critique.
Genie Scout also doesn't always allow negative values, which would be good for attributes such as 'decisions' and 'technique'.
I also heavily buffed up some attributes like set pieces and leadership for certain positions - they hardly matter at all in terms of performance, but it wouldn't feel right for my captain to have 11 leadership.
Oh, this is for FM24 btw, but FM26 doesnt seem like it would be too much different.
Choose your nation carefully as it has a significant permanent hidden effect on newgen quality. Your club choice only carries some very minor permanent effects.
These very minor permanent effects are:
Weather - Minor effect on performance and injuries.
Altitude - Significant effect on fitness at high levels. Consider a low altitude club.
City attraction - Affects willingness of players to join your club potentially. Does not effect newgens.
Inhabitants range - Cosmetic effect only (newgen birth city)
Local Region - Does not effect newgens, with possible exception of nationality & language proficiency.
So if you start thinking your only possible choice is Burton because they're the only club with 20 Youth Facilities, but then think 'hang on, they only have a city attraction of 5', then it will relieve you to know that you can let go of all that nonsense and chose any starting club without being permanently handicapped in any meaningful way.
Game Setup:
Outdated findings, but probably largely still true. Processing time is mainly number of teams in division + active status + detail level. Player numbers make negligible difference.
Recommendation based on newgens + processing time + immersion:
England Div 1
France Div 1
Portugal Div 1
Brazil Div 1
Argentina Div 1
Germany Div 1
Italy Div 1
Spain Div 1
Netherlands Div 1
Belgium Div 1
Optional:
Belgium Div 2
Croatia Div 1
South Korea Div 1
Set detail level to minimum/none for all competitions except for the following:
- Any competitions your club is involved in (i.e. Premier League, FA Cup, Club World Ch'ship, etc.)
- Any relevant international competitions (if managing international, or expect player call-ups)
- Youth competitions (i.e. u18s/u23s) if you're willing to tolerate the added processing slowdown
Attribute Template:
The minimum set of attributes to survive the English Premier League, determined through extensive (but not exhaustive) testing. This set of attributes finished 7th with a Knap tactic. When all '1' values were set to '8', 1st place was even achievable.
The idea is to buy players fulfilling these required attributes as closely as possible, train up their pace/acc to ~18, and thereby dominate the 2nd season onwards.
GK
DC
Rest of outfield
Attribute Weightings
Current version: Premier League 2.1 weights
FMST26 weights (copy paste this into statistics > custom metrics (advanced)):
Outfield:
(acceleration * 90.5 + pace * 94 + jumping_reach * 43 + pressure * 17 + dribbling * 14.3 + work_rate * 66.5 + agility * 16.0 + anticipation * 40 + composure * 26 + stamina * 50 + consistency * 14.05 + determination * 43.5 + balance * 14.25 + strength * 5.0 + concentration * 45 + finishing * 2.0 + important_matches * 10.1 + natural_fitness * 6.45 + professionalism * 15.0 + ambition * 2.0 + loyalty * 1.0 + aggression * 10 + vision * 0.5 + left_foot * 6 + right_foot * 5 - (injury_proneness * (48 / (natural_fitness * 0.75))) - (dirtiness * 32 * (aggression * 0.1))) / 113.2
GK:
((aerial_reach * 28.68 + command_of_area * 15.69 + first_touch * 16.99 + passing * 10.46 + reflexes * 86 + concentration * 82.35 + determination * 88.89 + work_rate * 38.68 + acceleration * 15.03 + balance * 10.46 + agility * 32.68 + jumping_reach * 14.30 + natural_fitness * 10.46 + pace * 28.30 + stamina * 32.68 + strength * 10.46 + technique * 15.69 + pressure * 15.03 + professionalism * 9.80 + flair * 49.02 - injury_proneness * 49.02 + vision * 25 - dirtiness * 16.34 - ca * 9.80)) / 84.5
Genie Scout file: https://files.catbox.moe/9n18q0.grf
Because of bugs Genie Scout has, it cannot utilize weightings for hidden attributes correctly. I strongly recommend using FMST26 or alternatively FMSuperScout for this reason, but the GS file provided above will do a reasonable job nonetheless.
Training schedule:
Choose one of these:
92.45 - [Physical]x2[Attacking]x2
91.01 - [Physical][Match Practice][Attacking][Defending]
Fitness Management:
Maintaining high match sharpness is critical to performance and is difficult to manage without careful planning.
Condition matters of course, but is relatively easy to manage.
Fatigue doesn't matter much, because it is easily avoidable.
In order to manage match sharpness correctly:
Squad of 23 players
No natural fitness 7 or less
~30-50%+ squad natural fitness 14+
7 pre-season home friendlies against u18 team of worst local club.
Sprinkle in mid-season friendlies during lulls or losing streaks.
Morale:
Perfect - 50.2% win rate
Very Good - 49.1%
Okay - 38.7%
Quite poor - 37.2%
Abysmal - 33.0%
Morale factor is roughly equivalent to:
- 100% vs 90% match fitness
- 20 vs 8 consistency
It is of minor to moderate impact, and momentum (i.e. winning/losing streaks affecting future performance) appears to be a real thing. Some tips to manage it:
- The friendlies against dud teams mentioned previously will boost morale significantly
- Set up your training calendar for the season, then delegate 'general training' to a staff member. No more training unhappiness complaints.
- Avoid somewhat players that are disloyal, highly temperamental, highly ambitious.
- Favor a compact squad with fairly easy training
Development:
34% Natural growth
25% Randomness
21% Competitive matches
---> 85% Division Reputation
---> 8% Loan club training facilities (if loaned out)
---> 7% Club Reputation
20% Training
Age 14-18 - Keep at club, u18s/reserves friendlies sufficient
Age 19-20 - Play minimum 15 games/season or loan out, but keeping at club playing reserve friendlies still decent
Age 21+ - Must be playing competitively or loaned out to develop further
Loans:
- CA growth requires competitive matches played. Game time should be 1st priority.
- CA growth hard-capped by division reputation. Division level is 2nd priority.
- Inactive division best (South Korea Div 1 appears the ideal choice for loans)
- Training facilities and club rep minor factors
Affiliates:
- For loan feeder, choose mid-table team or division with no relegation (high chance of being played, low chance relegated)
- For newgen intake feeder, choose Brazilian club for high youth rating. One of your newgens will be partially determined by the higher nation youth rating.
- Cut bad default affiliates. Foreign affiliates can drag down one of your newgen's PA (low nation youth rating), have mandatory friendlies you pay for, and charge you an annual fee.
Newgen quality:
50% Randomness
13% Unique Nation ID (i.e. England vs Romania)
13% Junior Coaching
8% Youth Recruitment
8% Nation Youth Rating
5% Nation Game Importance
1% Youth Facilities
0.3% Brazilian affiliate
0.2% HoYD
0.1% Youth Coaches
-0.6% Kiribati affiliate
Note: These % numbers are oversimplified and should not be taken as precise figures, though they wouldn't be that far off. It's to give you a picture of what matters and what doesn't, and to what extent you can influence things.
I've done some testing of this, just to rule out the possibility that reloading my saves just prior to intake wasn't affecting results of PA testing I was doing. There was no difference, for reloading just before intake as compared to starting new save from scratch each time.
I actually posted a comment on your youtube recently, that was it.
You do pretty good videos, enjoying watching them alongside doing things, even though I wouldn't have thought football history would be my thing.
kvasir said: Great test, man. Thoughts about the affiliate clubs thing:
There are 7 countries with a higher Youth Rating than England(136), highest being Brazil with 163. If my top English club gets an affiliate in Brazil, wouldn't that be a good thing? Seems like swapping an English newgen for a Brazilian should be an upgrade most of the time.
The question is, I guess, how the game makes the Brazilian kid: does he get generated in my youth intake with my own 20/20 JC and YR? or is he made at his own club, with their stats (probably lower than mine), and just moved to my team?
If it's the first option then its a win. If not, then its a gamble. Any ideas?
Yes, you are entirely correct in your first hypothesis. I just removed the affiliates from Man City because I'm trying to work out the newgen mechanics accurately.
To the question, a few days ago I would have said to you that its just Brazil's youth rating + it must be your own facilities, because in some testing I did before on it I found that it only takes the youth rating, not any of the affiliate club attributes.
But recently I was watching EBFM's video on affiliate clubs, and his data shows that while nation youth rating is still the most important factor, affiliate club attributes do in fact influence the quality of the newgen. So now I'm not sure, but I'd say believe what EBFM says on this because it's likely I only took like 5 samples or something in my test, because intake from affiliate clubs isn't really a part of the formula for newgen mechanics that I've been testing for.
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I did testing before in FM19 and found that youth facilities affect newgen CA but not PA.
I have done a decent amount of testing with FM24 and have found the same, and that median PA continues to be the most reliable measure of newgen quality, with peak PA having much more of a randomness factor.
What I found in my previous testing was roughly the following:
Junior coaching ~40% PA effect
Nation youth rating ~25% PA effect
Youth recruitment ~25% PA effect
Club reputation acts as tie breaker for youth recruitment
Either unique nation or division ID ~25% (or perhaps even more) PA effect (a hidden, unchangeable factor - it may be 'Nation attribute template' that is listed as an inaccessible debug option in the editor, which sounds like it would be similar to the 'Nation personality template' before it was removed in recent versions)
All other factors no effect
But I wanted to test a few new theories I had this time as well.
First, the data:
Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams normal: 141.5 median, 170 peak
Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams YF1: 138.1 median, 161.4 peak
Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams YF20: 143.7 median, 171.4 peak
Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams JC1: 143 median, 163 peak
Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams ClubRep/Train/YouthImp/Corp 1: 124.3 median, 176.3 peak
Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams Train/YouthImp/Corp 1: 137.25 median, 165.5 peak
Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams YouthImp/Corp 1: 136 median, 171.6 peak
Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams YouthImp 20/Corp 1: 135.6 median, 164.9 peak
Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams ClubRep1: 130.6 median, 177 peak
Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams ClubRep1/YF1: 142 median, 174 peak
Man City normal (no affiliates), premier league normal, all other England teams ClubRep1/YF1/corp1: 138 median, 163.5 peak
Man City normal (no affiliates), premier league ClubRep/YF1/Corp1, all other clubs normal: 138.8 median, 177.4 peak
Man City normal (no affiliates), north-west local region normal, all other clubs ClubRep1/YF1: 138.4 median, 176 peak
Man City normal (no affiliates), all other England teams ClubRep/Corp 1: 133.9 median, 167.3 peak
Margin of error I'd guesstimate at ~3-5 median PA. This isn't up to EBFM's standards, but it's 'good enough' in my opinion. I've always been of the view that if you can't replicate it reliably in a few seasons of FM, then its not significant enough of a result to include anyway.
In case you're wondering, keeping the affiliates for Man City reduces median PA by ~15-20, and I deliberately removed them because I know affiliates mess with the newgen intake results as they can replace one or more of them with one from an affiliate club. I wanted to get a pure English club result.
I noticed that Man City often gets some purely Scotland/Ireland only players, and that once their top player (194 PA) was Ireland only. This is notable because Ireland has low enough of a nation youth rating that a 194 PA Ireland player is pretty highly unlikely. It gave credence to the idea that newgens are tied to local region in some way, so I thought I'd re-examine that aspect too (I'd previously tested 'local region' and found it had zero effect on CA/PA).
Hypothesis: Youth facilities have insignificant effect at a single club, but a nations or divisions teams YF contributes cumulatively to a pool of PA that clubs then draw upon.
Conclusion: False.
Hypothesis: Youth facilities don't effect median PA, but they effect peak PA or the skew.
Conclusion: False.
Although YF1 always eventually produced a high peak PA, I did notice that YF1 alone had a long run of ~155-160 peak PA. This wasn't the case in other YF1 tests, and YF20 produced peak PAs all over the place from 159 to 194. Skew is difficult to definitively conclude on, but I didn't get the impression looking through the results that youth facilities effected the skew.
Hypothesis: Youth facilities contribute to a division pool only.
Conclusion: False.
Hypothesis: Youth facilities contribute to a 'local region' pool only.
Conclusion: False.
Hypothesis: Junior coaching/Training Facilities/Youth Importance of other clubs has an effect somehow.
Conclusion: False.
Hypothesis: Club reputation of other clubs has an effect somehow.
Conclusion: Tentatively, yes.
This was a somewhat surprising finding. From memory, I did find before that club rep had a ~10% CA effect, but not on PA. In this case, we can see that ClubRep1 reduced median PA by ~7.7% alone, and ~12.2% when combined with other low club attributes. I took extra samples to be sure and got the same result.
The strange thing is that ClubRep1 result is normal when combined with YF1. I think there's a clue as to what's going on in the fact that the low median PA results only happened when *all* other England teams had low club rep. But that still doesn't make sense of it.
Hypothesis: Corporate facilities of other clubs has an effect somehow.
Conclusion: Unclear.
Corp 1 did produce lower median PAs consistently, but the difference of ~3-7 may not be statistically significant. Consider that the typical variance of a club each year is ~5 median PA, even after stripping away the outliers.
Hypothesis: Starting CA affects PA, say that +20 CA due to factor contributes +20 PA as well.
Conclusion: False.
Long throws must have increased from 1 lot of 'set piece routines' in my 'mixed' screenshot. Even 'match practice' doesn't seem to do it, as long throws is not a highlighted role attribute. Sessions do seem to train the attributes they say they do. My theory was that sessions with low priority for outfield players, like set pieces, have greater overall growth (which turned out to be wrong).
SaMaHaJoGu said: If you do further testing for set pieces, please do help fill the rest of us in.
I'm making another post here soon that will say my conclusion about set piece attributes (and surmising everything else), which is that they're pretty much useless and it doesn't matter even if your best takers have only say '6' attribute.
For example:
A season may have ~10 penalties. The difference between '6' and '16' penalty taking is perhaps ~30% success rate, so 3 goals total. Top teams probably give away less penalties due to better 'decisions', so realistically this may be just 1 key goal over the season - which may be 1 key game win. However this would no doubt be outweighed by the CA cost or rareness of the high 'penalty taking' player. Only ~30% of good striker options age 20 or under have 10 or higher penalty taking. Therefore it should be considered a luxury and a tie-breaker between 2 equal ~180+ PA players.
HarvestGreen22's data shows us that +6 pace = +40 goals. We can guess +10 penalty taking = +3 goals. So +10 penalty taking = +0.45 pace. So you're better off glancing at the pace/acc/dribbling stats and choosing the one that has 1 extra pace/acc/dribbling.
The Zippo data also suggestively shows corners and free kicks only giving +1 season goal each from +12 each.
Two other ways it can be expressed is 1 consistency = 1.25 set piece = 3 important matches, but this is just a fun piece of trivia not useful for deciding between players.
If you do want a good set piece taker for comfort, best to buy one instead of training up one.