Bogdan said: thank you very much! and now for the total noob follow up question - how would you arrange it for a 2 match week? Expand Just fit it in best you can
If your players are too tired, I would just do all rest sessions for that week
Usually I would make it an attacking session + rest, but after testing training a bit, I see that that might have unintended negative consequences. The results of session combinations aren't exactly intuitive, you need to test it to know. At least with full rest, one knows what one is going to get - the best pace/acceleration gains, but losses in mental/technical areas.
Bogdan said: can you please explain what do you mean when you say "Quickness + Match Practice + 2xAttack"? i think they might be parts of a training schedule and if so can share a screenshot about how to use them in game? i'm a bit of a noob when it comes to training Expand
Sure
You can move them around, but don't add extra training or change rest to recovery, otherwise it will change and give different (inferior) training results. There is a delicate balance between rest sessions and training sessions going on.
This seems best, but you can change it if you want to, it seems to be mainly injury vs training tradeoff. This favors low injury rate.
Quickness focus for outfield Agility & Balance focus for GK
Leave position as default (i.e. AMR) instead of specific role, as it (can) negatively impact attribute allocation if you set specific role
Bar2 said: Thanks for the reply. Based on what you’re saying, do you think focusing our match preparation more on physical training would be more beneficial for overall performance? Expand Yes, the meta is Quickness + Match Practice + 2xAttack + Quickness focus
I played around with training a fair bit, it's very hard to beat, and it seems to do very well for match performance too not just attribute increases
Pace and acceleration are the two key attributes, not the other physicals
I was wondering about the hidden attributes though. Since they can influence things like consistency, pressure handling, important matches, professionalism, natural fitness, etc., do you plan to test how much impact these hidden attributes have in a 1 CA/PA environment?
It would be really interesting to see whether hidden attributes change the results as much as physical attributes do. Expand I keep them all at optimal since they cost 0 CA
Consistency theoretically should have zero impact because 1 CA - (any) CA = 1 CA, and I tested 1 CA a few times. There didn't seem to be any difference, but I can't say conclusively.
Professionalism, natural fitness, important matches, I know would all impact results significantly without needing to test. Others theoretically have some minor effects.
If you want to know what these attributes are relative to pace/acc, here is my conclusion I've arrived at previously:
Important matches I forgot to take notes properly on, but my general impression was that it's significantly more important than what I initially thought. Because from vague memory it affects all high rep league matches (i.e. premier league), not just the FA cup final say. Maybe like a 5% performance difference for every match say. Compare that to consistency, where consistency is only say ~10 non-physical CA less for the match, which could make 0 difference.
The original test was done on young players with enough PA to develop. I was wondering, if a player is already fully developed, can I mould him into a faster player by quickness training and resting? Or in other words, does a fully developed player loose technical and mental attributes to free up CA points which then are redistributed into physical attributes by this type of training?
Thanks in advance for any answers. And if this was answered earlier and I overread it, then I apologize for it. Expand I don't know if you can boost or even maintain the acc/pace on older players, but I do know that attribute growth slows down a lot as CA approaches PA. These older players would in most cases be at PA limit, so I would assume that even if you could convert mental/technical stats into physical, it would do so at a very slow rate that is also then being eroded by the player's aging.
clox said: Yo, I registered just because I keep wondering if you somehow adjusted your GS values in accordance with your recent findings about player stats and match engine.
When FM26 came out, and you posted your ratings in this thread, I based mine on yours but made some changes, mostly trying to 'highlight' acc and pace more.
Now that you said in a different thread that acc and pace are basically a huge game changer only if a player reaches 20 in both, I wanted to ask if you adjusted your GS values as well. Much appreciated. Expand I'll probably update the GS filter in the next 2 weeks. It's a bit outdated now.
I'm thinking I will make the updated GS filter use pre-training values. For instance, I now know that in an optimal scenario, the best overall training schedule does +6-7 acc and +1-2 drib on DC after 4 years. If you put on 'ball control' focus it's +4 drib, but that comes at expense of acc/pace. For 2 years, and presumably less optimal conditions, it's +3 acc and +1 drib. So for DC filter I'd want to configure it to favor players that are ~17 acc and ~19 drib. Maybe I'll have to make 2 filters though, as GS can be used to choose players to play too, in which case you'll want the % to be based on their current stats.
I'm also thinking about player availability, i.e. max values you will typically find are far lower at ~15 acc and ~13 drib, but if I'm thinking about this correctly, I don't think that has to be taken into account in the GS filter numbers themselves (it's the scoring system we're talking about, not the filter).
Acc/pace are highly valuable in any amount. A team of low acc/pace players will never be competitive, regardless of what other stats they have. What I meant was that in order for them to get away with acc/pace/jump/drib alone, the acc/pace needs to be ~17+ at least (for premier league). So the implication here isn't favor 13 acc 18 ant over 15 acc 10 ant, it's more like favor 17 acc 4 ant over 13 acc 18 con. The 15 acc 10 ant would still beat the 13 acc 18 ant.
FM24 I think someone said the training .jsb file is same in FM26, but I'm not sure if that's all that controls the training variables. I'd guess it does.
I was mistaken about HarvestGreen not including the breakdown of all attributes. I had actually seen it before but forgotten. However, it doesn't breakdown by each position. It would be good if this could be provided.
Anyway, I've been having a crack at it, and the long and short of it is that quickness + match practice + 2xAttack is still king.
I think I found one combo that may edge it out slightly:
Quickness + Match Practice + Aerial Defence + Play From The Back + Handling
After 4 years:
GK +1 dec (compared to Quickness + Match Practice + 2xAttack) DL/DR +1 pac, -2 flair, +1 work DC +1 acc, -1 dec, -1 con, -1 work DM +1 dec, +1 work AML/AMR +1 pac, +1 dec, -1 tech ST -2 acc, +1 pac, -1 dec, -2 tech, -1 flair, -2 finish, -2 drib
7 injuries (1 major, 1 moderate) vs 13 (2 major, 5 moderate) for Quickness + Match Practice + 2xAttack.
Hard to say if it's better, the results are so close it could be just statistical noise, but overall it is +2 speed as well as 3 less of CA wasting attributes (basically another +3 speed). That's +0.45 speed per position after 4 years.
It seems at least some sessions, such as match practice and match tactics, changed for FM24.
BulldozerJokic said: @GeorgeFloydOverdosed what I am getting from your data is that I can actually focus less on pace/acc on my wingers in my saves. Potentially opening up a carreer where I get a winger regen I can play until his 40s Expand No, I strongly recommend maxxing out pace/acc for all positions including wingers.
This is a bit complicated to explain, so I'll just put it in separate points:
- I think you can get away with 1-2 slow players because of the red card system where teams lose 1-2 players in matches sometimes yet can still play on decently. This is pure speculation though. - My players were constrained to 1 CA, and wingers are most CA demanding, so I had no choice but to make them the least useful players. - If you make a player useless, another team member will seemingly pick up the slack where they can. For instance, my STs had 1 finishing, so my 6 finishing AML/AMRs did most of the goals. If I made AML/AMRs 1 finishing, my ST or DL/DR would score the goals. - 10-20 CA is adequate to make wingers non-useless - Because I only had 1 CA, I basically made my AML/AMRs into extra striker pressure while my DL/DRs did all the heavy lifting, but I think how it's supposed to work in the tactic is that the AML/AMRs are an extra set of runner options who do strong pressing work to reclaim the ball quickly as well - My testing was in premier league, and I found even 16/16 pace/acc for all players to fail badly. So you can't skimp on pace/acc, unless in low leagues I guess.
BulldozerJokic said: Also, I know that jumping reach on wingers is quite important as I saw a lot of goals from them when they respond to crosses and score headers. From your tests, having tall striker didn't make a difference? And what about short DMs, is that a no-go? Expand I think I fiddled around with jumping reach a bit but not too much. Mainly on the STs and DCs, because jumping reach on all other positions such as AML/AMR is so cheap.
As you can see, 1 jump ST won out. I don't know if this is because AML/AMR picked up the slack. I think heading also ties in with a bit - and you can see heading was 6 or 20 on my AML/AMR in spite of the painfully low CA to go around.
I did try a slow tall strong ST + fast short finish ST combo. It did high mid-table, but was inferior to fast 1 jump 1 drib STs in the end. I tried 20 pace/acc/jump STs early on of course.
With DM, they have 20 jump, but I think I didn't bother testing 1 jump because their jump CA cost is minuscule and DMs have the highest abundance of CA as well. I doubt it would be significantly detrimental if they were short, but I can't really say.
Kma said: After that 1 CA test please can you make a liste of attributes for : - GK - DC - DR/DL - DM - AMR/AML - AMC - ST I will create filters in game Expand If you mean updated attributes for my 'ideal' ~140 CA players, I made improvements to them before the 1 CA test which are ~10% better, and I've also made a ~70 CA version, but these 1 CA results have thrown a lot of attributes into question. So I'm sitting on it right now.
My plan is to test each attribute one by one at ~140 CA. And I'll have to test certain attribute combos as well to be sure.
Not sure how long it will take me to get this done, could be a few days, could be a few weeks.
BulldozerJokic said: So, basically retrain wingers into DL/DR, retrain DL/DR into wingers Expand Yes, this is what kind of struck me about it.
In my post, you'll see I say "(Only) wingers 1 pace/acc = high mid-table". The reason I tested this is because if you look at the knap tactic, the wingers are told to dribble more, cross less often, but also hold up ball, while the fullbacks are to dribble all the way up the pitch. I put all those leftover CA points into making the wingers technical/mental geniuses. My thinking was that that way my team would dominate in every area appropriately.
While 1 pace/acc for wingers surprisingly did ok, it didn't make things better. I had also tried making them decent tacklers/defenders with minimal pace/acc decrease, that didn't work either. I tried this with other positions too, i.e. 1 tall/strong/passing/slow DC, 1 fast/dribbling DC. Didn't work. By contrast, 20 pace/acc/drib on fullbacks seems to make them the most valuable players on the pitch.
And in looking at training, I notice that 'play from the back' aligns well with my attribute distribution. In fact a lot of training sessions names seem to match what they say they do in practice. So for example, 'play from the back' is the best way to give your defenders dribbling skill (+0.65 DC, +0.45 DL/DR), whereas 'defend from the front' gives forwards +1 drib but defenders get 0 drib. You can't actually simply just fill up your training with all these sessions, but in cases where you're deciding between two of the same types of session, i.e. 'endurance' vs 'quickness', you can pretty much rely on what the name is telling you in terms of what it will tactically achieve.
Kma said: I think that the 210cm height who make all the difference can you please test with 180cm height???? Expand Changed to more realistic heights & weights (173-190cm, 67-89kg)
No significant difference:
I didn't expect it would change it much, if at all. I can't remember if height is taken into amount in jumping calculations, or if it just influences what jumping reach players are set initially with. Even if it is in jumping calculations, most of the players have 20 jumping reach already anyway, and pace/acc are more important
keithb said: Come across as? Bit? Expand I guess a better way of putting it is that I don't want to come across as being snide, as I'm not driven by putting other people down and I also think there's a lot of great info being posted by this Zippo fellow (does he run the joint as well? I don't know).
The obvious retort is, well don't be snide. But how else are you meant to point out contradictions? It's not like I'm calling him an idiot. I'm just saying, look I think you're mistaken on this matter and here's my reasoning why. My name is a reference to this problem. A lot of people will read it and get their knickers in a knot. But it's just a factual claim. Even if it's not true, the real point of contention here for me is apparently we can't debate the facts out in the open on certain matters because it is tantamount to humiliation for people. I don't want to humiliate people, I just want to have a sober discussion about the facts as I see them. And aside from that, what's wrong with getting some enjoyment out of saying 'ackshally you're wrong' sometimes?
In my other thread you said you agreed with the comment that my name isn't appropriate for a FM forum. I chose it for an FM forum because my experience with SI staff has been that if you point out inconvenient truths about the game mechanics, you get hounded as ruining the game for people and banned for being 'insulting' or 'trolling'. Whereas here seems to be a forum where you can say such truths about the game openly. This is an pseudonymous forum, which lessens the need for decorum than in everyday human interaction, but I recognize that there's still a fellow egotist on the other side of the screen.
BulldozerJokic said: @GeorgeFloydOverdosed Great write-up! One question tho, do you think GK impact on the overall result is worth four training sessions per week? Or do those sessions also greatly boost important outfield player attributes? Expand This was one of the surprising realizations I had reading EBFM's excel file, that the GK sessions are actually also very good for the outfield.
match practice = 0.05 drib DC, 1.15 con DC, 1.05 con DL/DR, 0.4 acc DC, 0.4 acc DL/DR, 0.65 pac DC, 0.6 pac DL/DR (2.05 physical) (4.3 key attributes) (12 CA). +0.2 agil/+0.6 aer/+0.3 ref for GK.
Handling does a lot for all positions too, not just defenders.
When I changed GK attributes in my 1 CA testing, it did make a difference, so GK has some significance. I'd say a fair bit more than I intuitively thought. Not sure exactly how much, but I'd guesstimate their worth is at least that of 1 of the 11 players.
What I didn't really mention in my post btw is that my thinking is that these sessions like handling that boost physicals moderately (~0.3) are perhaps particularly worthwhile because with a bunch of them maybe you could replace a whole quickness/resistance/physical session which gives you +1.2 but lowers a whole bunch of technicals and mentals.
Yarema said: These tests really need a bigger number of data points. Doing one 3 season test can maybe point in the right direction but far from conclusive, you can easily get deceived by random chance. Even EBFM's training videos I'd say are underpowered and probably harvestgreen's too (to my knowledge).
Don't get me wrong they are a great start and eye opening in some cases but people make way too strong conclusions from them. None of those tests can differentiate between 0,35 and 0,31 with enough accuracy. Expand Yes, I would agree with you there.
Though, as I think about it now.. given it seems to show patterns accurately enough (i.e. aerial defense gives 1.25 con DC, 1.25 con DL/DR, 1.2 con DM, 0.8 con MC, 0.5 con AMC, 0.65 con AML/AMR, 0.5 con ST) maybe it is actually non-random. Maybe the 'random' variation between different players is simply their professionalism, matches played, CA-PA diff, etc. downscaling a set max amount, and then you have different boosts for different positions giving the appearance of each player progressing seemingly randomly compared to other players.
I suppose it's something I should try and test.
Yarema said: Also you can't add up different benefits with various sessions as it was already tested by EBFM for example. Expand I haven't got that far yet
I see now he has an excel file with combo sessions, with positional breakdown. I'll examine it to try and deduce what's going on
I've been having a bit of a thinkle about training
In trying to create the best performing 1 CA players, I found that all that seems solid is pace, acc, jump, dribbling, concentration and perhaps flair. And only pace & acc is needed in all positions. For GK, it's clear that agility + aerial reach + reflexes are the key three.
I also know that decisions, technique, tackling, marking, and some others are often highly weighted but make no significant difference to results.
I was looking at EBFM's more precise breakdown for training session effects by position, albeit it is for FM23. But I've created a schedule based on its info, and it seems to still work the same.
The schedule I've created is:
1 x Quickness 1 x Goalkeeping 1 x Resistance 1 x Shot Stopping 1 x Match Practice 1 x Handling 1 x Match Tactics 1 x Aerial Defence 1 x Chance Conversion 1 x Play From The Back 1 x Distribution Quickness focus (Agility on GK)
This is a significant departure from HarvestGreen's recommendations.
I've analyzed each session, and have chosen ones that favor pace & acc, whilst retaining/boosting as much as possible drib in relevant positions + concentration in DC+DL/DR + minimize decisions & technique gain (to free up CA) + agil/aerial/reflexes for GK + some other lesser considerations.
In my initial 3-year test of it, I'm seeing the best improving players getting +5 to +6 pace/acc, +4 agil/aerial on GK, and lesser but positive movement in the other attributes I mentioned. Requires refinement, but seems to be working close to as intended. I'm testing using just the default Bournemouth starting players, put the knap tactic on, and just let things run for 3 years. I did a test of Quickness + Match Practice + 2 x Attack + Quickness focus to compare. My schedule was competitive with it, but fell a bit short. GKs improved significantly better though I think.
Here is my critique of HarvestGreen's training:
Combinations are assessed according to acc+pace+jump and overall team CA boost/cost.
If you go with minimal CA cost for max acc+pace+jump, you have to do a lot of rest which usually results in match sharpness becoming unsalvagable which significantly affects win rate. A lot of the other attributes decline, yet some of these attributes must matter to some extent as acc+pace+jump alone fails to win.
Additionally, match practice possibly impairs team performance and may be unnecessary. And there are still a lot of rest periods.
If you go for high acc+pace+jump and high CA boost, a lot of that CA could be junk attributes and it doesn't tell you how much of other important attributes such as dribbling & concentration and whether they are put in the right positions or not. For instance, it seems dribbling is good on DL/DR, but unnecessary on ST.
I'll compare 2 training sessions (using EBFM's FM23 excel file) to illustrate the issues:
Attacking - +0.74 drib, boosts to many stats with no declines, +11.46 CA. Aerial defence - +0.47 drib, boosts to many stats with no declines, +10.3 CA.
Attacking seems like the logical choice here. However if you look at the differences:
Attacking - +0.8 drib AMC (position not used in knap tactic), +0.2 drib ST (unimportant), +0.05 drib DL/DR (important). +0.38 decisions, +0.26 technique (costly near useless attributes that should be minimized).
Aerial defence - +0.35 con DC (important), +0.3 con DL/DR (important). +0.32 ant (semi-important?), +0.31 cmp (semi-important?). +0.13 acc, +0.18 pace. For 1.16 less CA.
Now Aerial defence is the no-brainer choice. Perhaps moreso if you consider that CA growth is limited to only a dozen or so CA a year on average.
This is where I get confused though. Maybe someone can help me understand. I understand that HarvestGreen is showing us that as rest boosts physicals by default, training is essentially an allocation process. But if I do quickness (+4.61 CA) + match practice (+12.01 CA) + attacking (+11.46 CA) does that all get compressed proportionally into say 12 CA?
Zippo said: One of its purposes is to limit how low the value of the "Condition" attribute can drop.
For example, if a player has "20" for Natural Fitness attribute then his Condition attribute can NOT drop lower than "7,800" value. Expand This simply isn't true. I just played a game with my 1 CA 20 NAT players to confirm, my ST went down to 61% in-match, 67% post-match. Perhaps it is true if match sharpness is also 100%. And if memory serves me correctly, natural fitness does not even affect condition fall rate, it is stamina that does.
Zippo said: No, a task to achieve 10,000 value for the Condition is almost impossible because the rate at which the Condition attribute is restored after 9,000 level is very low.
So you should look for 9,000 - 9,300 range. Expand As your stats show, the performance loss would be significant. It's not impossible to maintain ~100% condition, it's quite easy. Another reason is that you will also otherwise suffer exponentially greater injuries, as EBFM found injury rates of:
And those injuries create a vicious cycle of low match fitness & condition leading to more injuries. I would guesstimate injuries double overall if starting at 90-93% condition.
Zippo said: How much does the Condition attribute decrease after a match? It depends on many factors. The rate differs for positions and roles. Also, the Intensity of a tactic greatly affects the rate at which the Conditions are consumed. Expand Is that really so? According to EBFM's data, the difference between the most intense and least intense settings were 1-2% condition difference by end of match.
Zippo said: Also, the Team Cohesion and Match Sharpness drops a bit when players are "Resting" but it isn’t a big issue. Expand Match sharpness is very important, more important than condition. It's performance impact is greater, and it's harder to maintain. So using rest is usually a bad idea, from my analysis of it.
These results might not be directly comparable, but you say that starting at 88% condition results in 16% worse performance. EBFM found that match sharpness 100% > 90% reduces win rate by 33.3% and injuries increased by ~25%.
I know I come across as a bit of a knob here with all of this, but it's partly that I can't resist knocking down falsehoods, and partly that I wrote a post on here about this very topic recently so I'm a bit of a zealot about it. I know I state a lot of things that turn out to be erroneous myself. This is just part of the process of discovery.
Jolt said: A couple of quick questions to harvestgreen22 or someone that knows.
The training sessions generally show lowering "Condition"
But from my observations, condition always improves after each day with just training, and only lowerswhen playing matches (or getting injured, but that's beside the point). So my question, has it ever been tested whether these trainings actually: 1. Lower condition? OR 2. Training sessions with heavier condition reduction don't allow the players to recover condition as much as training sessions with lighter condition reduction? Expand
I did a quick test:
match practice doesn't decrease condition 1 x match practice recovers condition same rate as all rest 1 x match practice doesn't boost match sharpness (identical to all rest)
2 x match practice + quickness on one day, is identical to full rest in regards to condition recovery & match sharpness
What you might not know is that condition recovery doesn't have a randomness factor, unlike many other FM mechanics, so there shouldn't be any need for a ton of tests.
Seems EBFM found this back in 2022, and additionally found that match practice actually negatively impacts match performances, even though it has no condition impact.
This is strange. Maybe the 'injury risk' and 'fatigue' labels are also falsehoods and the whole training meta needs a rethink if one is not looking solely for attribute gain.
BaZuKa said: To see if I understood the post correctly, this striker is very strong because he has acceleration, pace, flair, and work rate. Expand
It would be at least most of the reason why.
You have to be a little careful extrapolating the 1 CA results to higher CAs. Even at 1 CA, it's clear other attributes do matter, just not much. For instance, I can say for certain that if you give ST higher finishing, he will do most of the goals instead of the wingers (that doesn't mean a necessarily better overall team performance though). But also it's possible that consideration of certain attributes only kicks in at say 120+ PA. This was the case in Championship Manager based on what I've read, and whilst that mechanic is probably gone now, I think there's a fair chance something similar still exists.
Another thing btw is that apparently the match rating is skewed towards technical ability, and biased against physical ability, even though physical ability beats the technical ability. Source. This is particularly interesting to me, because it helps to explain why Orion's coefficients doesn't produce a winning 1 CA team, even though it gets most of the way there - Orion's coefficients are basically comparing the match ratings, and if its biased towards lesser-performing technical ability, this would explain it.
Also I'm not 100% confident on flair yet, I should test it more, but I did a little testing, and so far it seemed it was beneficial in spite of what HarvestGreen found.
I'd heard it in a few places that someone had won the Premier League with a team of 1 CA/PA players. As it turned out, it was done back in FM21 with a strikerless tactic, exploiting the low weighting cost of DMs. I had a go at recreating it, mainly as a bit of fun, but also to confirm it for myself as I've heard people deny it's possible. And it needs an update for FM24.
Mid-table results were easy with just 20 pace/acc/drib (not sure if I included jump), but it required careful tweaks — closer to Orion’s data than HarvestGreen’s — to push into the top four. Winning is barely possible and inconsistent, but the experiment taught me a lot about how attributes, combinations, fitness, morale, and form affect outcomes. I wanted to wait until I'd worked out a way to win consistently, but I'm a bit burnt out by it now - at least the main point is proven, that you can actually win with just 1 CA/PA players, and I may try and improve it more later on. Coming 2nd I can do consistently. I may also retest without the 210cm height & player traits, I actually doubt those impact the results much.
The winning result:
Scroll to bottom for attribute stats by position
Setup:
• Use Knap’s EF 424 IF HP V2 P101 AC tactic and Blue Routines set pieces. • No strikerless exploit. • Allowed: friendlies, training, captains; no reloads. • Squad: 22 players, all 1 CA.
Findings:
- It is possible to win with 1 CA players without strikerless exploit - Concentration ~16+ on CBs+FBs (no other combo) was key to winning the league - Pace+Acc alone = 0 points, 0-7 loss typical - Jump+Acc alone = a draw or two, 1-7 loss typical - Drib+Pace+Acc alone = mid-table - HarvestGreen data skew = bottom to mid-table - Orion data skew = mid-table to top 4 - Orion data skew + pace/acc 16 or less = bottom - Orion data skew + pace/acc 20 = mid-table - Orion data skew + pace/acc ~17-20 (mix) = top 4 - 20 in key attributes + maxxing out other lowest weighted ones = high mid-table - Lowest weighted attributes (i.e. finishing '1' weight on CBs) had negligible effect (i.e. no extra goals or overall team dominance) - Most attributes make no statistically significant difference, very low values will even dominate many in-game stats - (Only) wingers 1 pace/acc = high mid-table - (Only) one slow ST target man = high mid-table - League position more consistent than points (i.e. one case, almost always finish 2nd but was 66-91 points) - Winning formula finishes ~4th majority of the time, 2nd place was more consistently 2nd - Fitness management, particularly of match sharpness, is important - difference between ~mid-table and ~4th say - Morale & form somewhat important, difference between ~4th and ~2nd say - Squad rotation (even if perfectly done) or too much rest detrimental to results (maybe this is why AI managers rarely rotate, and why the game says 'I want to play you but X is in the form of his life right now' when players pipe up for more playing time) - Altering knap tactic (i.e. 'very attacking'/'defensive', 'work into box', etc.) was worse than default - 1 consistency doesn't matter, since consistency reduces CA but 1 is already the minimum; seemed to be the case in testing, but hard to verify 100% - Biggest premier league win I got was 9-0
What stayed the same/correlated with top results:
GK - agility 15-20, acc 5-6, pace 5-8, sta 3-6??, composure 6-10?, work rate 6-7, aerial 16-20, communication 3-8?, reflexes 10-13 DL/DR - acc 20, pace 20, jump 20, off the ball 20? (unlikely), vision 5-7?, work rate 7-11, dribbling 20, finishing 20 DC - acc 15-20, pace 18-20, jump 17-20, strength 4-6, flair 20?, vision 15-20?, dribbling 20 DM - acc 19-20, pace 20, jump 20, bravery 12-20?, flair 20?, vision 3-4?, work rate 7-10? AML/AMR - acc 15-18, pace 16-18, jump 20, flair 20, positioning 18-20, work rate 7 ST - pace 20, acc 18-20, flair 20, work rate 7
Question mark indicates I think it's unlikely to be essential.
I tested certain attributes (at '20', with CA boost added so no decrease of other attributes) specifically to see if they mattered (i.e. changed league position), most didn't. Some examples:
ST - finishing, agility, dribbling, work rate, decisions, stamina, strength, off the ball - not any of these DM - strength, vision, dribbling - none of these DC - agility, balance, strength, tackling, marking, heading - these do win/make close 2nd, but only slightly
I haven't tested all attributes and their combos exhaustively, so there may be some things left, but I tested a lot of them.
You can deduce a lot of the above yourself from the following images (I've kept the roles highlighted to show how misleading they are):
GK:
DL/DR:
DC:
DM:
AML/AMR:
ST:
Note: If you're wondering *why* I've changed certain attributes and in the way I do, it's that I'm following the money. The reason finishing went from '5' to '3' for strikers isn't because I never tested above 5, but because I probably did a dozen different combos with finishing above '5' that didn't work out. I think there are knock-on effects to other positions as well (i.e. if your winger has better finishing, he'll probably do most of the goals), so I'm kind of forced to just take the approach of 'if it works, it works' and I move on to try and improve another position until I can't squeeze anymore out of it and then move on to the next one.
It is certainly complex rather than simple. It is mainly the training & weighting system that is broken.
The two most important player attributes are speed & work rate. This reflects reality accurately. The problem is when you can use HarvestGreen22's training regimes to turn literally any player into an elite player (pace/acc 8 > 20), and when you can give a full back 20 pace/acc/jump/nat/long/fin/drib/det/agg/off the ball/work rate and he'll be 1 CA with a handful of points left to spare.
I think you are correct in your hypothesis about how attributes are processed by the ME. Of course until we can see the game's code, we have to make our best judgement based on results and what SI staff have said over the years.
So this is what I understand to be the case:
The ME uses typically 2-3 attributes (sometimes up to 5) for each game event (i.e. passing + work rate = pass attempt)
An ATTEMPT ('choice' ) is made FIRST A COMPLETION ('execution' ) is made SECOND
i.e. passing + work rate = pass attempt passing + decisions = pass completed
As you hypothesize, for many/most players, the only way to win is not to play at all. Instead of going for a slim chance of a slim chance of a pass leading to a slim chance of a goal, if you go with passing '1', then decisions can also be '1' since it almost never comes into play now, and you can now instead rely on dribbling '20' with pace/acc '20' to run up the park and score in ~17% of instances with [dribbling (20) + balance (7) = 67%(?) evasion chance] x [finishing (7) + composure (7) + decisions (1) = 15%(?) scoring chance].
Something I'm observing is that '20' pace/acc will win games where even '17' pace/acc would see you get demolished. I suspect this is because you simply run past/around the opposition's players, so the intercept & block chances are left out of the calculations. This is showing up in my 1 CA player testing, but I think it would still hold partially true for normal gameplay where you have weaker technicals/mentals/other physicals than your opponent.
Another thing I have observed is that while changing full backs to have drib/long/finish 20 (all players still only 1 CA) resulted in a lot more premier league wins, the full backs themselves rarely scored goals, or even assists. And looking at the match highlights, it doesn't appear to me to be that say fullbacks are making big forward runs up the side leading to later goals. This is still a mystery to me right now.
I do suspect that tactics give favor to certain attributes, and that meta tactics favor/exploit high pace/acc/drib, but I also think that only meta tactics tend to work, especially since your AI opponents (at least, the better ones) are also going to be utilizing these same meta tactics against you. I have noticed however that you can use a low pace/acc target man with no ill effect.
I think there may be something in thinking about the fact that attributes aren't denoting actual ability (i.e. you can even see in the 3d engine, that a dribbling '1' player can still dribble), but rather the only factors in decision outcomes. So a dribbling '1' player from Bedford Town dribbles just as good as Messi would in the game; it's only when Messi tries to tackle him that there is a difference. I think this partly explains why pace is so important, but technicals could be '1' and still do ok. Pace is active all the time, a slow player is always obvious and hampered in the 3D engine. But often a '1' dribbler looks just like a '20' dribbler (particularly when he has high pace to lengthen it out). Therefore the whole 'a player is only as good as his worst minimum' logic shouldn't be applied.
A similar potential misconception is that an attribute is simultaneously tendency and success rate. It seems true, but only to an extent: passing '20' gives you both more attempts & success, however a player with '1' passing still makes passes anyway, so probably '1' passing & '20' pace does more actual passes than '20' passing and '1' pace. So really '20' pass you could look at as say +5% tendency, +20% success, rather than +95% tendency +95% success.
Here's two other quirks I feel are worth mentioning:
If you go by what the staff-written guides say, strength alone can be used in lieu of tackling + marking + aggression. Strength is pretty highly weighted, but then again, it isn't subject to the consistency CA decrease like tackling/marking is, and it also says that strength reduces fouls as they can muscle the player off the ball instead of sliding in. For ST, tackling/marking is 1 weight, strength is 6, and a foul probably won't result in a penalty against you, so low strength probably makes sense here. But for DC, marking is 8 weight, tackling 5, and strength 6, and sliding in probably results in more conceded penalties. I'm yet to test this though.
If you think about it, you can set consistency to 1 for 1 CA players and it will make no difference, as consistency reduces CA for technicals to use. My early testing of this finds it does indeed make no difference. I suppose you could utilize this in a very low league team.
How much do the latest findings indicate the importance of pace/acc/dribbling and overall physical attributes?
Let me explain what I mean:
Player X: 18 Dribbling, 18 Pace, 3 Flair, 2 Technique Player Y: 15 Dribbling, 15 Pace, 6 Flair, 12 Technique
In this scenario, Player X would clearly perform better than Player Y, right? Expand
My impression is:
Orion's attribute coefficients are most accurate to use for each position, more effective than HarvestGreen22's attribute ratios
HOWEVER Pace/acc/jump 20 will override this (possibly some other attributes in certain positions too)
Pace/acc 15 will not be sufficient for the override. But this doesn't mean they still aren't highly valuable attributes, I'm just talking about having it override other attributes to the point where you could have a DC with 1 tackling, marking & positioning and it wouldn't matter, the 20 pace/acc player would still be better than the more balanced pace/acc 15 one
Details from old SI staff-written manuals, such as [forward runs - stamina, anticipation, off the ball] seem generally correct
HOWEVER such rules/combos can and should be broken to shift valuable high weighting attributes to valuable low weighting attributes. I.e. [DC - Positioning 2, Dribbling 1] should be changed to [DC - Positioning 1, Dribbling 20] (same CA cost) even though both Orion's attributes and the guides tell you to get positioning
My theory is that putting high weights on key attributes for the relevant position carries an implicit necessary corollary: those attributes are so heavily weighted simply to dissuade you from making 20 marking/tackling/strength DC beasts out of thin air, not because marking has 8x performance and your DC will actually only be hampered by ~1x performance if you decrease marking to 1. You take that 7x leftover and make 20 dribbling/finishing/long shot beasts instead and utilize them with a knap forward-throwing tactic
I've come to these conclusions by trying to get a 1 CA team to win the premier league. Here's a brief summary of how it's progressed:
Base my 1 CA players off my combined HarvestGreen22/Orion/etc templates - Near bottom of table. Base it more on Orion's attribute coefficients - Mid table finish. Try Orion's + decrease pace/acc to ~15 to put some 7s and 8s on some key mentals/technicals - Back to bottom of table. Do the opposite, try to get pace/acc/jump 20 for most players while preserving what I can of what Orion & manual says - High mid table finish (6th, 66 points). Reduce positioning to 1, get dribbling 20 instead, etc. - 4th, 74 points.
In your example, player X performs better. But there are some nuances. Flair and technique are generally unimportant, even detrimental in certain positions. However let me show something that astonished me:
Player X (ST): 20 pace, 19 acc, 1 jump, 1 strength, 6 finish Player Y (ST): 14 pace, 9 acc, 19 jump, 8 strength, 3 finish
You would assume that Player X is far superior. However I used these 2 players as STs in my 1 CA testing, and they got me to that 6th-66 points result. But what's more, Player Y scored 7.08 rating with 29 goals in 55 appearances, while Player X scored 6.42 rating with 15 goals in 57 appearances.
Now you could theorize and say, well that's because set piece headers are the only way you're going to score goals with 1 CA, or that perhaps the wingers are doing the work throwing it to the target man, or something else. But my point would be is that your attribute choice, even pace/acc and down to such low levels, is genuinely subject to your tactical setup in a certain minority of cases. Note that if either player were actually *bad*, the team wouldn't have ended up in 6th spot.
That does not mean we are back to where we started. I suspect ST target man is one of 2 or 3 roles that can work with low pace/acc. On the other end of the spectrum, for DC, 20 pace/acc is simply essential.
I suppose a general rule of thumb you could use is physicals over mentals, and mentals over technicals. If you choose strength 16 over 16 dribbling or 16 composure, it's almost a sideways trade and this is one of the worst you could do with this rule, whereas trading pace/acc for anything is going to be iffy or catastrophic.
Just fit it in best you can
If your players are too tired, I would just do all rest sessions for that week
Usually I would make it an attacking session + rest, but after testing training a bit, I see that that might have unintended negative consequences. The results of session combinations aren't exactly intuitive, you need to test it to know. At least with full rest, one knows what one is going to get - the best pace/acceleration gains, but losses in mental/technical areas.
i think they might be parts of a training schedule and if so can share a screenshot about how to use them in game?
i'm a bit of a noob when it comes to training
Sure
You can move them around, but don't add extra training or change rest to recovery, otherwise it will change and give different (inferior) training results. There is a delicate balance between rest sessions and training sessions going on.
This seems best, but you can change it if you want to, it seems to be mainly injury vs training tradeoff. This favors low injury rate.
Quickness focus for outfield
Agility & Balance focus for GK
Leave position as default (i.e. AMR) instead of specific role, as it (can) negatively impact attribute allocation if you set specific role
Yes, the meta is Quickness + Match Practice + 2xAttack + Quickness focus
I played around with training a fair bit, it's very hard to beat, and it seems to do very well for match performance too not just attribute increases
Pace and acceleration are the two key attributes, not the other physicals
I was wondering about the hidden attributes though.
Since they can influence things like consistency, pressure handling, important matches, professionalism, natural fitness, etc., do you plan to test how much impact these hidden attributes have in a 1 CA/PA environment?
It would be really interesting to see whether hidden attributes change the results as much as physical attributes do.
I keep them all at optimal since they cost 0 CA
Consistency theoretically should have zero impact because 1 CA - (any) CA = 1 CA, and I tested 1 CA a few times. There didn't seem to be any difference, but I can't say conclusively.
Professionalism, natural fitness, important matches, I know would all impact results significantly without needing to test. Others theoretically have some minor effects.
If you want to know what these attributes are relative to pace/acc, here is my conclusion I've arrived at previously:
1 pace = 2 professionalism = 5 dirtiness = 17 consistency
Important matches I forgot to take notes properly on, but my general impression was that it's significantly more important than what I initially thought. Because from vague memory it affects all high rep league matches (i.e. premier league), not just the FA cup final say. Maybe like a 5% performance difference for every match say. Compare that to consistency, where consistency is only say ~10 non-physical CA less for the match, which could make 0 difference.
The original test was done on young players with enough PA to develop. I was wondering, if a player is already fully developed, can I mould him into a faster player by quickness training and resting? Or in other words, does a fully developed player loose technical and mental attributes to free up CA points which then are redistributed into physical attributes by this type of training?
Thanks in advance for any answers. And if this was answered earlier and I overread it, then I apologize for it.
I don't know if you can boost or even maintain the acc/pace on older players, but I do know that attribute growth slows down a lot as CA approaches PA. These older players would in most cases be at PA limit, so I would assume that even if you could convert mental/technical stats into physical, it would do so at a very slow rate that is also then being eroded by the player's aging.
When FM26 came out, and you posted your ratings in this thread, I based mine on yours but made some changes, mostly trying to 'highlight' acc and pace more.
Now that you said in a different thread that acc and pace are basically a huge game changer only if a player reaches 20 in both, I wanted to ask if you adjusted your GS values as well. Much appreciated.
I'll probably update the GS filter in the next 2 weeks. It's a bit outdated now.
I'm thinking I will make the updated GS filter use pre-training values. For instance, I now know that in an optimal scenario, the best overall training schedule does +6-7 acc and +1-2 drib on DC after 4 years. If you put on 'ball control' focus it's +4 drib, but that comes at expense of acc/pace. For 2 years, and presumably less optimal conditions, it's +3 acc and +1 drib. So for DC filter I'd want to configure it to favor players that are ~17 acc and ~19 drib. Maybe I'll have to make 2 filters though, as GS can be used to choose players to play too, in which case you'll want the % to be based on their current stats.
I'm also thinking about player availability, i.e. max values you will typically find are far lower at ~15 acc and ~13 drib, but if I'm thinking about this correctly, I don't think that has to be taken into account in the GS filter numbers themselves (it's the scoring system we're talking about, not the filter).
Acc/pace are highly valuable in any amount. A team of low acc/pace players will never be competitive, regardless of what other stats they have. What I meant was that in order for them to get away with acc/pace/jump/drib alone, the acc/pace needs to be ~17+ at least (for premier league). So the implication here isn't favor 13 acc 18 ant over 15 acc 10 ant, it's more like favor 17 acc 4 ant over 13 acc 18 con. The 15 acc 10 ant would still beat the 13 acc 18 ant.
FM24
I think someone said the training .jsb file is same in FM26, but I'm not sure if that's all that controls the training variables. I'd guess it does.
Anyway, I've been having a crack at it, and the long and short of it is that quickness + match practice + 2xAttack is still king.
I think I found one combo that may edge it out slightly:
Quickness + Match Practice + Aerial Defence + Play From The Back + Handling
After 4 years:
GK +1 dec (compared to Quickness + Match Practice + 2xAttack)
DL/DR +1 pac, -2 flair, +1 work
DC +1 acc, -1 dec, -1 con, -1 work
DM +1 dec, +1 work
AML/AMR +1 pac, +1 dec, -1 tech
ST -2 acc, +1 pac, -1 dec, -2 tech, -1 flair, -2 finish, -2 drib
7 injuries (1 major, 1 moderate) vs 13 (2 major, 5 moderate) for Quickness + Match Practice + 2xAttack.
Hard to say if it's better, the results are so close it could be just statistical noise, but overall it is +2 speed as well as 3 less of CA wasting attributes (basically another +3 speed). That's +0.45 speed per position after 4 years.
It seems at least some sessions, such as match practice and match tactics, changed for FM24.
No, I strongly recommend maxxing out pace/acc for all positions including wingers.
This is a bit complicated to explain, so I'll just put it in separate points:
- I think you can get away with 1-2 slow players because of the red card system where teams lose 1-2 players in matches sometimes yet can still play on decently. This is pure speculation though.
- My players were constrained to 1 CA, and wingers are most CA demanding, so I had no choice but to make them the least useful players.
- If you make a player useless, another team member will seemingly pick up the slack where they can. For instance, my STs had 1 finishing, so my 6 finishing AML/AMRs did most of the goals. If I made AML/AMRs 1 finishing, my ST or DL/DR would score the goals.
- 10-20 CA is adequate to make wingers non-useless
- Because I only had 1 CA, I basically made my AML/AMRs into extra striker pressure while my DL/DRs did all the heavy lifting, but I think how it's supposed to work in the tactic is that the AML/AMRs are an extra set of runner options who do strong pressing work to reclaim the ball quickly as well
- My testing was in premier league, and I found even 16/16 pace/acc for all players to fail badly. So you can't skimp on pace/acc, unless in low leagues I guess.
BulldozerJokic said: Also, I know that jumping reach on wingers is quite important as I saw a lot of goals from them when they respond to crosses and score headers. From your tests, having tall striker didn't make a difference? And what about short DMs, is that a no-go?
I think I fiddled around with jumping reach a bit but not too much. Mainly on the STs and DCs, because jumping reach on all other positions such as AML/AMR is so cheap.
As you can see, 1 jump ST won out. I don't know if this is because AML/AMR picked up the slack. I think heading also ties in with a bit - and you can see heading was 6 or 20 on my AML/AMR in spite of the painfully low CA to go around.
I did try a slow tall strong ST + fast short finish ST combo. It did high mid-table, but was inferior to fast 1 jump 1 drib STs in the end. I tried 20 pace/acc/jump STs early on of course.
With DM, they have 20 jump, but I think I didn't bother testing 1 jump because their jump CA cost is minuscule and DMs have the highest abundance of CA as well. I doubt it would be significantly detrimental if they were short, but I can't really say.
- GK
- DC
- DR/DL
- DM
- AMR/AML
- AMC
- ST
I will create filters in game
If you mean updated attributes for my 'ideal' ~140 CA players, I made improvements to them before the 1 CA test which are ~10% better, and I've also made a ~70 CA version, but these 1 CA results have thrown a lot of attributes into question. So I'm sitting on it right now.
My plan is to test each attribute one by one at ~140 CA. And I'll have to test certain attribute combos as well to be sure.
Not sure how long it will take me to get this done, could be a few days, could be a few weeks.
BulldozerJokic said: So, basically retrain wingers into DL/DR, retrain DL/DR into wingers
Yes, this is what kind of struck me about it.
In my post, you'll see I say "(Only) wingers 1 pace/acc = high mid-table". The reason I tested this is because if you look at the knap tactic, the wingers are told to dribble more, cross less often, but also hold up ball, while the fullbacks are to dribble all the way up the pitch. I put all those leftover CA points into making the wingers technical/mental geniuses. My thinking was that that way my team would dominate in every area appropriately.
While 1 pace/acc for wingers surprisingly did ok, it didn't make things better. I had also tried making them decent tacklers/defenders with minimal pace/acc decrease, that didn't work either. I tried this with other positions too, i.e. 1 tall/strong/passing/slow DC, 1 fast/dribbling DC. Didn't work. By contrast, 20 pace/acc/drib on fullbacks seems to make them the most valuable players on the pitch.
And in looking at training, I notice that 'play from the back' aligns well with my attribute distribution. In fact a lot of training sessions names seem to match what they say they do in practice. So for example, 'play from the back' is the best way to give your defenders dribbling skill (+0.65 DC, +0.45 DL/DR), whereas 'defend from the front' gives forwards +1 drib but defenders get 0 drib. You can't actually simply just fill up your training with all these sessions, but in cases where you're deciding between two of the same types of session, i.e. 'endurance' vs 'quickness', you can pretty much rely on what the name is telling you in terms of what it will tactically achieve.
can you please test with 180cm height????
Changed to more realistic heights & weights (173-190cm, 67-89kg)
No significant difference:
I didn't expect it would change it much, if at all. I can't remember if height is taken into amount in jumping calculations, or if it just influences what jumping reach players are set initially with. Even if it is in jumping calculations, most of the players have 20 jumping reach already anyway, and pace/acc are more important
I guess a better way of putting it is that I don't want to come across as being snide, as I'm not driven by putting other people down and I also think there's a lot of great info being posted by this Zippo fellow (does he run the joint as well? I don't know).
The obvious retort is, well don't be snide. But how else are you meant to point out contradictions? It's not like I'm calling him an idiot. I'm just saying, look I think you're mistaken on this matter and here's my reasoning why. My name is a reference to this problem. A lot of people will read it and get their knickers in a knot. But it's just a factual claim. Even if it's not true, the real point of contention here for me is apparently we can't debate the facts out in the open on certain matters because it is tantamount to humiliation for people. I don't want to humiliate people, I just want to have a sober discussion about the facts as I see them. And aside from that, what's wrong with getting some enjoyment out of saying 'ackshally you're wrong' sometimes?
In my other thread you said you agreed with the comment that my name isn't appropriate for a FM forum. I chose it for an FM forum because my experience with SI staff has been that if you point out inconvenient truths about the game mechanics, you get hounded as ruining the game for people and banned for being 'insulting' or 'trolling'. Whereas here seems to be a forum where you can say such truths about the game openly. This is an pseudonymous forum, which lessens the need for decorum than in everyday human interaction, but I recognize that there's still a fellow egotist on the other side of the screen.
This was one of the surprising realizations I had reading EBFM's excel file, that the GK sessions are actually also very good for the outfield.
handling = 0.05 drib DC, 0.05 drib DL/DR, 1.15 con DC, 1.1 con DL/DR, 0.45 acc DC, 0.4 acc DL/DR, 0.55 pac DC, 0.4 pac DL/DR --- (1.8 physical) (4.15 key attributes) (11.4 CA). +0.9 agil/+0.8 aer/+0.6 ref for GK.
match practice = 0.05 drib DC, 1.15 con DC, 1.05 con DL/DR, 0.4 acc DC, 0.4 acc DL/DR, 0.65 pac DC, 0.6 pac DL/DR (2.05 physical) (4.3 key attributes) (12 CA). +0.2 agil/+0.6 aer/+0.3 ref for GK.
Handling does a lot for all positions too, not just defenders.
When I changed GK attributes in my 1 CA testing, it did make a difference, so GK has some significance. I'd say a fair bit more than I intuitively thought. Not sure exactly how much, but I'd guesstimate their worth is at least that of 1 of the 11 players.
What I didn't really mention in my post btw is that my thinking is that these sessions like handling that boost physicals moderately (~0.3) are perhaps particularly worthwhile because with a bunch of them maybe you could replace a whole quickness/resistance/physical session which gives you +1.2 but lowers a whole bunch of technicals and mentals.
Yarema said: These tests really need a bigger number of data points. Doing one 3 season test can maybe point in the right direction but far from conclusive, you can easily get deceived by random chance. Even EBFM's training videos I'd say are underpowered and probably harvestgreen's too (to my knowledge).
Don't get me wrong they are a great start and eye opening in some cases but people make way too strong conclusions from them. None of those tests can differentiate between 0,35 and 0,31 with enough accuracy.
Yes, I would agree with you there.
Though, as I think about it now.. given it seems to show patterns accurately enough (i.e. aerial defense gives 1.25 con DC, 1.25 con DL/DR, 1.2 con DM, 0.8 con MC, 0.5 con AMC, 0.65 con AML/AMR, 0.5 con ST) maybe it is actually non-random. Maybe the 'random' variation between different players is simply their professionalism, matches played, CA-PA diff, etc. downscaling a set max amount, and then you have different boosts for different positions giving the appearance of each player progressing seemingly randomly compared to other players.
I suppose it's something I should try and test.
Yarema said: Also you can't add up different benefits with various sessions as it was already tested by EBFM for example.
I haven't got that far yet
I see now he has an excel file with combo sessions, with positional breakdown. I'll examine it to try and deduce what's going on
In trying to create the best performing 1 CA players, I found that all that seems solid is pace, acc, jump, dribbling, concentration and perhaps flair. And only pace & acc is needed in all positions. For GK, it's clear that agility + aerial reach + reflexes are the key three.
I also know that decisions, technique, tackling, marking, and some others are often highly weighted but make no significant difference to results.
I was looking at EBFM's more precise breakdown for training session effects by position, albeit it is for FM23. But I've created a schedule based on its info, and it seems to still work the same.
The schedule I've created is:
1 x Quickness
1 x Goalkeeping
1 x Resistance
1 x Shot Stopping
1 x Match Practice
1 x Handling
1 x Match Tactics
1 x Aerial Defence
1 x Chance Conversion
1 x Play From The Back
1 x Distribution
Quickness focus (Agility on GK)
This is a significant departure from HarvestGreen's recommendations.
I've analyzed each session, and have chosen ones that favor pace & acc, whilst retaining/boosting as much as possible drib in relevant positions + concentration in DC+DL/DR + minimize decisions & technique gain (to free up CA) + agil/aerial/reflexes for GK + some other lesser considerations.
In my initial 3-year test of it, I'm seeing the best improving players getting +5 to +6 pace/acc, +4 agil/aerial on GK, and lesser but positive movement in the other attributes I mentioned. Requires refinement, but seems to be working close to as intended. I'm testing using just the default Bournemouth starting players, put the knap tactic on, and just let things run for 3 years. I did a test of Quickness + Match Practice + 2 x Attack + Quickness focus to compare. My schedule was competitive with it, but fell a bit short. GKs improved significantly better though I think.
Here is my critique of HarvestGreen's training:
Combinations are assessed according to acc+pace+jump and overall team CA boost/cost.
If you go with minimal CA cost for max acc+pace+jump, you have to do a lot of rest which usually results in match sharpness becoming unsalvagable which significantly affects win rate. A lot of the other attributes decline, yet some of these attributes must matter to some extent as acc+pace+jump alone fails to win.
Additionally, match practice possibly impairs team performance and may be unnecessary. And there are still a lot of rest periods.
If you go for high acc+pace+jump and high CA boost, a lot of that CA could be junk attributes and it doesn't tell you how much of other important attributes such as dribbling & concentration and whether they are put in the right positions or not. For instance, it seems dribbling is good on DL/DR, but unnecessary on ST.
I'll compare 2 training sessions (using EBFM's FM23 excel file) to illustrate the issues:
Attacking - +0.74 drib, boosts to many stats with no declines, +11.46 CA.
Aerial defence - +0.47 drib, boosts to many stats with no declines, +10.3 CA.
Attacking seems like the logical choice here. However if you look at the differences:
Attacking - +0.8 drib AMC (position not used in knap tactic), +0.2 drib ST (unimportant), +0.05 drib DL/DR (important). +0.38 decisions, +0.26 technique (costly near useless attributes that should be minimized).
Aerial defence - +0.35 con DC (important), +0.3 con DL/DR (important). +0.32 ant (semi-important?), +0.31 cmp (semi-important?). +0.13 acc, +0.18 pace. For 1.16 less CA.
Now Aerial defence is the no-brainer choice. Perhaps moreso if you consider that CA growth is limited to only a dozen or so CA a year on average.
This is where I get confused though. Maybe someone can help me understand. I understand that HarvestGreen is showing us that as rest boosts physicals by default, training is essentially an allocation process. But if I do quickness (+4.61 CA) + match practice (+12.01 CA) + attacking (+11.46 CA) does that all get compressed proportionally into say 12 CA?
For example, if a player has "20" for Natural Fitness attribute then his Condition attribute can NOT drop lower than "7,800" value.
This simply isn't true. I just played a game with my 1 CA 20 NAT players to confirm, my ST went down to 61% in-match, 67% post-match. Perhaps it is true if match sharpness is also 100%. And if memory serves me correctly, natural fitness does not even affect condition fall rate, it is stamina that does.
Zippo said: No, a task to achieve 10,000 value for the Condition is almost impossible because the rate at which the Condition attribute is restored after 9,000 level is very low.
So you should look for 9,000 - 9,300 range.
As your stats show, the performance loss would be significant. It's not impossible to maintain ~100% condition, it's quite easy. Another reason is that you will also otherwise suffer exponentially greater injuries, as EBFM found injury rates of:
(starting) 100% condition = 8 in-match injuries
(starting) 80% condition = 20 in-match injuries
(starting) 60% condition = 87 in-match injuries
And those injuries create a vicious cycle of low match fitness & condition leading to more injuries. I would guesstimate injuries double overall if starting at 90-93% condition.
Zippo said: How much does the Condition attribute decrease after a match?
It depends on many factors. The rate differs for positions and roles. Also, the Intensity of a tactic greatly affects the rate at which the Conditions are consumed.
Is that really so? According to EBFM's data, the difference between the most intense and least intense settings were 1-2% condition difference by end of match.
Zippo said: Also, the Team Cohesion and Match Sharpness drops a bit when players are "Resting" but it isn’t a big issue.
Match sharpness is very important, more important than condition. It's performance impact is greater, and it's harder to maintain. So using rest is usually a bad idea, from my analysis of it.
These results might not be directly comparable, but you say that starting at 88% condition results in 16% worse performance. EBFM found that match sharpness 100% > 90% reduces win rate by 33.3% and injuries increased by ~25%.
I know I come across as a bit of a knob here with all of this, but it's partly that I can't resist knocking down falsehoods, and partly that I wrote a post on here about this very topic recently so I'm a bit of a zealot about it. I know I state a lot of things that turn out to be erroneous myself. This is just part of the process of discovery.
The training sessions generally show lowering "Condition"
But from my observations, condition always improves after each day with just training, and only lowerswhen playing matches (or getting injured, but that's beside the point). So my question, has it ever been tested whether these trainings actually: 1. Lower condition? OR 2. Training sessions with heavier condition reduction don't allow the players to recover condition as much as training sessions with lighter condition reduction?
I did a quick test:
match practice doesn't decrease condition
1 x match practice recovers condition same rate as all rest
1 x match practice doesn't boost match sharpness (identical to all rest)
2 x match practice + quickness on one day, is identical to full rest in regards to condition recovery & match sharpness
What you might not know is that condition recovery doesn't have a randomness factor, unlike many other FM mechanics, so there shouldn't be any need for a ton of tests.
Seems EBFM found this back in 2022, and additionally found that match practice actually negatively impacts match performances, even though it has no condition impact.
This is strange. Maybe the 'injury risk' and 'fatigue' labels are also falsehoods and the whole training meta needs a rethink if one is not looking solely for attribute gain.
It would be at least most of the reason why.
You have to be a little careful extrapolating the 1 CA results to higher CAs. Even at 1 CA, it's clear other attributes do matter, just not much. For instance, I can say for certain that if you give ST higher finishing, he will do most of the goals instead of the wingers (that doesn't mean a necessarily better overall team performance though). But also it's possible that consideration of certain attributes only kicks in at say 120+ PA. This was the case in Championship Manager based on what I've read, and whilst that mechanic is probably gone now, I think there's a fair chance something similar still exists.
Another thing btw is that apparently the match rating is skewed towards technical ability, and biased against physical ability, even though physical ability beats the technical ability. Source. This is particularly interesting to me, because it helps to explain why Orion's coefficients doesn't produce a winning 1 CA team, even though it gets most of the way there - Orion's coefficients are basically comparing the match ratings, and if its biased towards lesser-performing technical ability, this would explain it.
Also I'm not 100% confident on flair yet, I should test it more, but I did a little testing, and so far it seemed it was beneficial in spite of what HarvestGreen found.
Mid-table results were easy with just 20 pace/acc/drib (not sure if I included jump), but it required careful tweaks — closer to Orion’s data than HarvestGreen’s — to push into the top four. Winning is barely possible and inconsistent, but the experiment taught me a lot about how attributes, combinations, fitness, morale, and form affect outcomes. I wanted to wait until I'd worked out a way to win consistently, but I'm a bit burnt out by it now - at least the main point is proven, that you can actually win with just 1 CA/PA players, and I may try and improve it more later on. Coming 2nd I can do consistently. I may also retest without the 210cm height & player traits, I actually doubt those impact the results much.
The winning result:
Scroll to bottom for attribute stats by position
Setup:
• Use Knap’s EF 424 IF HP V2 P101 AC tactic and Blue Routines set pieces.
• No strikerless exploit.
• Allowed: friendlies, training, captains; no reloads.
• Squad: 22 players, all 1 CA.
Findings:
- It is possible to win with 1 CA players without strikerless exploit
- Concentration ~16+ on CBs+FBs (no other combo) was key to winning the league
- Pace+Acc alone = 0 points, 0-7 loss typical
- Jump+Acc alone = a draw or two, 1-7 loss typical
- Drib+Pace+Acc alone = mid-table
- HarvestGreen data skew = bottom to mid-table
- Orion data skew = mid-table to top 4
- Orion data skew + pace/acc 16 or less = bottom
- Orion data skew + pace/acc 20 = mid-table
- Orion data skew + pace/acc ~17-20 (mix) = top 4
- 20 in key attributes + maxxing out other lowest weighted ones = high mid-table
- Lowest weighted attributes (i.e. finishing '1' weight on CBs) had negligible effect (i.e. no extra goals or overall team dominance)
- Most attributes make no statistically significant difference, very low values will even dominate many in-game stats
- (Only) wingers 1 pace/acc = high mid-table
- (Only) one slow ST target man = high mid-table
- League position more consistent than points (i.e. one case, almost always finish 2nd but was 66-91 points)
- Winning formula finishes ~4th majority of the time, 2nd place was more consistently 2nd
- Fitness management, particularly of match sharpness, is important - difference between ~mid-table and ~4th say
- Morale & form somewhat important, difference between ~4th and ~2nd say
- Squad rotation (even if perfectly done) or too much rest detrimental to results (maybe this is why AI managers rarely rotate, and why the game says 'I want to play you but X is in the form of his life right now' when players pipe up for more playing time)
- Altering knap tactic (i.e. 'very attacking'/'defensive', 'work into box', etc.) was worse than default
- 1 consistency doesn't matter, since consistency reduces CA but 1 is already the minimum; seemed to be the case in testing, but hard to verify 100%
- Biggest premier league win I got was 9-0
What stayed the same/correlated with top results:
GK - agility 15-20, acc 5-6, pace 5-8, sta 3-6??, composure 6-10?, work rate 6-7, aerial 16-20, communication 3-8?, reflexes 10-13
DL/DR - acc 20, pace 20, jump 20, off the ball 20? (unlikely), vision 5-7?, work rate 7-11, dribbling 20, finishing 20
DC - acc 15-20, pace 18-20, jump 17-20, strength 4-6, flair 20?, vision 15-20?, dribbling 20
DM - acc 19-20, pace 20, jump 20, bravery 12-20?, flair 20?, vision 3-4?, work rate 7-10?
AML/AMR - acc 15-18, pace 16-18, jump 20, flair 20, positioning 18-20, work rate 7
ST - pace 20, acc 18-20, flair 20, work rate 7
Question mark indicates I think it's unlikely to be essential.
I tested certain attributes (at '20', with CA boost added so no decrease of other attributes) specifically to see if they mattered (i.e. changed league position), most didn't. Some examples:
ST - finishing, agility, dribbling, work rate, decisions, stamina, strength, off the ball - not any of these
DM - strength, vision, dribbling - none of these
DC - agility, balance, strength, tackling, marking, heading - these do win/make close 2nd, but only slightly
I haven't tested all attributes and their combos exhaustively, so there may be some things left, but I tested a lot of them.
You can deduce a lot of the above yourself from the following images (I've kept the roles highlighted to show how misleading they are):
GK:
DL/DR:
DC:
DM:
AML/AMR:
ST:
Note: If you're wondering *why* I've changed certain attributes and in the way I do, it's that I'm following the money. The reason finishing went from '5' to '3' for strikers isn't because I never tested above 5, but because I probably did a dozen different combos with finishing above '5' that didn't work out. I think there are knock-on effects to other positions as well (i.e. if your winger has better finishing, he'll probably do most of the goals), so I'm kind of forced to just take the approach of 'if it works, it works' and I move on to try and improve another position until I can't squeeze anymore out of it and then move on to the next one.
The two most important player attributes are speed & work rate. This reflects reality accurately. The problem is when you can use HarvestGreen22's training regimes to turn literally any player into an elite player (pace/acc 8 > 20), and when you can give a full back 20 pace/acc/jump/nat/long/fin/drib/det/agg/off the ball/work rate and he'll be 1 CA with a handful of points left to spare.
I think you are correct in your hypothesis about how attributes are processed by the ME. Of course until we can see the game's code, we have to make our best judgement based on results and what SI staff have said over the years.
So this is what I understand to be the case:
The ME uses typically 2-3 attributes (sometimes up to 5) for each game event (i.e. passing + work rate = pass attempt)
An ATTEMPT ('choice' ) is made FIRST
A COMPLETION ('execution' ) is made SECOND
i.e.
passing + work rate = pass attempt
passing + decisions = pass completed
As you hypothesize, for many/most players, the only way to win is not to play at all. Instead of going for a slim chance of a slim chance of a pass leading to a slim chance of a goal, if you go with passing '1', then decisions can also be '1' since it almost never comes into play now, and you can now instead rely on dribbling '20' with pace/acc '20' to run up the park and score in ~17% of instances with [dribbling (20) + balance (7) = 67%(?) evasion chance] x [finishing (7) + composure (7) + decisions (1) = 15%(?) scoring chance].
Something I'm observing is that '20' pace/acc will win games where even '17' pace/acc would see you get demolished. I suspect this is because you simply run past/around the opposition's players, so the intercept & block chances are left out of the calculations. This is showing up in my 1 CA player testing, but I think it would still hold partially true for normal gameplay where you have weaker technicals/mentals/other physicals than your opponent.
Another thing I have observed is that while changing full backs to have drib/long/finish 20 (all players still only 1 CA) resulted in a lot more premier league wins, the full backs themselves rarely scored goals, or even assists. And looking at the match highlights, it doesn't appear to me to be that say fullbacks are making big forward runs up the side leading to later goals. This is still a mystery to me right now.
I do suspect that tactics give favor to certain attributes, and that meta tactics favor/exploit high pace/acc/drib, but I also think that only meta tactics tend to work, especially since your AI opponents (at least, the better ones) are also going to be utilizing these same meta tactics against you. I have noticed however that you can use a low pace/acc target man with no ill effect.
I think there may be something in thinking about the fact that attributes aren't denoting actual ability (i.e. you can even see in the 3d engine, that a dribbling '1' player can still dribble), but rather the only factors in decision outcomes. So a dribbling '1' player from Bedford Town dribbles just as good as Messi would in the game; it's only when Messi tries to tackle him that there is a difference. I think this partly explains why pace is so important, but technicals could be '1' and still do ok. Pace is active all the time, a slow player is always obvious and hampered in the 3D engine. But often a '1' dribbler looks just like a '20' dribbler (particularly when he has high pace to lengthen it out). Therefore the whole 'a player is only as good as his worst minimum' logic shouldn't be applied.
A similar potential misconception is that an attribute is simultaneously tendency and success rate. It seems true, but only to an extent: passing '20' gives you both more attempts & success, however a player with '1' passing still makes passes anyway, so probably '1' passing & '20' pace does more actual passes than '20' passing and '1' pace. So really '20' pass you could look at as say +5% tendency, +20% success, rather than +95% tendency +95% success.
Here's two other quirks I feel are worth mentioning:
If you go by what the staff-written guides say, strength alone can be used in lieu of tackling + marking + aggression. Strength is pretty highly weighted, but then again, it isn't subject to the consistency CA decrease like tackling/marking is, and it also says that strength reduces fouls as they can muscle the player off the ball instead of sliding in. For ST, tackling/marking is 1 weight, strength is 6, and a foul probably won't result in a penalty against you, so low strength probably makes sense here. But for DC, marking is 8 weight, tackling 5, and strength 6, and sliding in probably results in more conceded penalties. I'm yet to test this though.
If you think about it, you can set consistency to 1 for 1 CA players and it will make no difference, as consistency reduces CA for technicals to use. My early testing of this finds it does indeed make no difference. I suppose you could utilize this in a very low league team.
How much do the latest findings indicate the importance of pace/acc/dribbling and overall physical attributes?
Let me explain what I mean:
Player X: 18 Dribbling, 18 Pace, 3 Flair, 2 Technique
Player Y: 15 Dribbling, 15 Pace, 6 Flair, 12 Technique
In this scenario, Player X would clearly perform better than Player Y, right?
My impression is:
Orion's attribute coefficients are most accurate to use for each position, more effective than HarvestGreen22's attribute ratios
HOWEVER Pace/acc/jump 20 will override this (possibly some other attributes in certain positions too)
Pace/acc 15 will not be sufficient for the override. But this doesn't mean they still aren't highly valuable attributes, I'm just talking about having it override other attributes to the point where you could have a DC with 1 tackling, marking & positioning and it wouldn't matter, the 20 pace/acc player would still be better than the more balanced pace/acc 15 one
Details from old SI staff-written manuals, such as [forward runs - stamina, anticipation, off the ball] seem generally correct
HOWEVER such rules/combos can and should be broken to shift valuable high weighting attributes to valuable low weighting attributes. I.e. [DC - Positioning 2, Dribbling 1] should be changed to [DC - Positioning 1, Dribbling 20] (same CA cost) even though both Orion's attributes and the guides tell you to get positioning
My theory is that putting high weights on key attributes for the relevant position carries an implicit necessary corollary: those attributes are so heavily weighted simply to dissuade you from making 20 marking/tackling/strength DC beasts out of thin air, not because marking has 8x performance and your DC will actually only be hampered by ~1x performance if you decrease marking to 1. You take that 7x leftover and make 20 dribbling/finishing/long shot beasts instead and utilize them with a knap forward-throwing tactic
I've come to these conclusions by trying to get a 1 CA team to win the premier league. Here's a brief summary of how it's progressed:
Base my 1 CA players off my combined HarvestGreen22/Orion/etc templates - Near bottom of table.
Base it more on Orion's attribute coefficients - Mid table finish.
Try Orion's + decrease pace/acc to ~15 to put some 7s and 8s on some key mentals/technicals - Back to bottom of table.
Do the opposite, try to get pace/acc/jump 20 for most players while preserving what I can of what Orion & manual says - High mid table finish (6th, 66 points).
Reduce positioning to 1, get dribbling 20 instead, etc. - 4th, 74 points.
In your example, player X performs better. But there are some nuances. Flair and technique are generally unimportant, even detrimental in certain positions. However let me show something that astonished me:
Player X (ST): 20 pace, 19 acc, 1 jump, 1 strength, 6 finish
Player Y (ST): 14 pace, 9 acc, 19 jump, 8 strength, 3 finish
You would assume that Player X is far superior. However I used these 2 players as STs in my 1 CA testing, and they got me to that 6th-66 points result. But what's more, Player Y scored 7.08 rating with 29 goals in 55 appearances, while Player X scored 6.42 rating with 15 goals in 57 appearances.
Now you could theorize and say, well that's because set piece headers are the only way you're going to score goals with 1 CA, or that perhaps the wingers are doing the work throwing it to the target man, or something else. But my point would be is that your attribute choice, even pace/acc and down to such low levels, is genuinely subject to your tactical setup in a certain minority of cases. Note that if either player were actually *bad*, the team wouldn't have ended up in 6th spot.
That does not mean we are back to where we started. I suspect ST target man is one of 2 or 3 roles that can work with low pace/acc. On the other end of the spectrum, for DC, 20 pace/acc is simply essential.
I suppose a general rule of thumb you could use is physicals over mentals, and mentals over technicals. If you choose strength 16 over 16 dribbling or 16 composure, it's almost a sideways trade and this is one of the worst you could do with this rule, whereas trading pace/acc for anything is going to be iffy or catastrophic.