thepunisher23 said: ok thanks and how do you determine if the opponent has a stronger team? compared to the match odds? Expand
Just by "feeling", trying to identify which teams I probably can't win in a normal day. For example, if I'm West Brom in Premier League (first year), then I know Liverpool and Manchester City are almost impossible to beat in normal conditions. For those teams I need a special strategy, different than what I would use for weaker teams like Aston Villa, Leeds and West Ham.
thepunisher23 said: @ZaZ hello, what do you advise in case of a red card and depending on the results? Expand
I usually remove the CM and try to keep the rest of team shape. Other than that, just team motivation and finger crossing.
P.S.: Below are two matches were I got my players sent off very early in the match. My team was the weakest from Brazilian first division, while Santos and Flamengo were among the strongest. For some reason, opponents get complacent when that happens, so you can try to take advantage on that by holding on cautious until half time, then going back to positive in second half, when they start feeling nervous for not winning.
Stan Seymour said: Test results can be deceiving. I don't think Tank can dominate as much as this tactic. It is almost impossible to increase the attack power to this level without making a gambit. Expand
Tests are not exactly deceiving. Each methodology has a different bias, and the goal of testing is usually to minimize possible biases. Most tactics over 6.0 are good and will overachieve, as well as some tactics under that score with good management. Tests are important because they are usually less biased than personal feeling, which is specially important when you are overoptimizing something (like optimizing more than what you need to win).
Metal said: I wanted to keep the exact same shape with the three man midfield and same attack philosophy/mentality because I think it's genius and easy to build the team around. I also didn't want to do a disservice to the original creator and change the formation around just to concede less and then calling it an improvement.
There are many easy ways of tightening the defence but then the attack is compromised and I didn't want to take that facet of play away in this tactic where the attack is an endless barrage of shots to goal where you always have a high xg
I used inspiration from my own experience with the M.E, knowing the exploits and previous tactics that I've made and used where I enjoyed certain patterns of play and carefully synthesized them all together so on the pitch it plays exactly how I want the game to play out which is complete total domination and supremacy over the opponent whether big or small and making the most of out the forwards to ensure they get high numbers and become candidates for individual awards Expand
It's fine, I was just showing the tactic with best results in FM-Arena with three defenders and goals scored over 3 per match. I thought it could have some interesting insights for what you are looking for.
I think you could look for inspiration in the Tank tactic. It also uses three defenders and has similar attack power, but the defense is more solid and the results are more consistent.
Metal said: No they were the original tactic where I went unbeaten.
In fact ignore/scrap those modifications they're not working out as well as I thought they were i.e inconsistent and finding losing more games with the mods.
I'm still trying to find a way to tweak it to maximise this tactic's potential because I still think the defense can be improved Expand
As a tip, Mezzala don't work in this version. Try some other role if you want to use players in that position.
Middleweight165 said: What do you do when you need a goal because your are losing? Expand
When I need goals I use Blue 3.0, it's already a very offensive tactic. My other two spots go to Solid and Light because I am more often winning than losing, so they help way more in the long run.
alex said: @ZaZ what's your opinion on using BWM on support instead of DLP? I've seen people talking on diff forums that BWM would get higher ratings than the DLP. Do you think this change would impact the tactic on a higher scale? Expand
Maybe the DM would get better scores, but the tactic would definitely perform worse as a whole. I already tested it in the past.
The low scores of a specific position say very little about the tactic performance. DM might be the only one in the team scoring under 7, but he is directly responsible for the others scoring well. When you change his role, all other positions perform worse, which isn't worth it in the end.
Middleweight165 said: Thanks @ZaZ. How does one isolate the variables? I'm assuming this how the tests are run on this site? Expand
Yeah, that's how they do here.
If you make both sides have maximum morale, for example, then you know no side is taking advantage of higher morale. That means morale is not influencing the result of the match for either side, or in other words, the tactic and morale are now two independent variables.
The same can be applied for injuries, happiness, fatigue, condition and fitness, for example. That way, you know the thing being evaluated is the tactic, and not player management. Since the same is also applied to the opponent, then no team is taking advantage of having a better or worse management (or larger squad).
There are different ways of freezing those things, but you can easily find about it with a Google search or creating a topic asking that here.
Another variable you can remove is making sure all teams have capable players for all positions, so a tactic doesn't fail because some team doesn't have good wingers, for example. That is one of the main differences between here and FM-base, if I remember correctly.
Middleweight165 said: Yeah I guessed that, how do do test the impact of throw-ins then? Eye test? Just interested to know how i can test if adding different throw ins like @Nebuuuu has a positive effect Expand
Make a save file at the start of the game with one or two teams. Set the conditions you want to test and run the entire season, then take note of points, goals scored and goals conceded. Reload, set up again and re-run until you have five results. Discard the two best scores and the two worst scores (sorted by points), and you will have your median, meaning you expect half of any other tests to be above this threshold and half to be below. This is how good your tactic is. Now do the same to the second variant, with a different throw-in setting, and compare the medians. The one with best points per match is probably better.
To have higher confidence in your result, you can either isolate variables, like freezing attribute growth, removing injuries and setting some stuff to maximum (like morale, condition and tactical familiarity), or you can increase the number of runs (always discarding the best and worst to pick the middle one), or you can increase the number of matches in a season.
If you want even more confidence, then instead of median you can make plot boxes, or do a rank test like mann-whitney, but that would probably be too much for just a game.
I usually do the first option, five tests on vacation mode then compare the medians.
P.S.: The point of discarding best and worst scores instead of using the average value of all runs is to avoid outliers, which are runs that didn't reflect what you really want to test. For example, a season full of injuries, or a season where the team played too well and all opponents too badly because of RNG. Those outliers can cause distortions, so they should be handled somehow before drawing conclusions.
Middleweight165 said: Is there anyway to see how many goals I've scored from throw-ins? Expand
Team Report -> Analyst Report -> Scoring -> Assists.
However, you shouldn't look at throw-ins only by assists. In my setup, it usually gives no assists at all, but put players in position to make key passes. Unfortunately, you can't check the stats for pre-assists.
Ok, I did an experiment with the following setup: - Run a whole season in vacation mode with Manchester City and Fulham, using the same tactic, 5 times, and store the results. - Repeat the experiment in the same save file, reducing the height of all players by 5 cm (or 2 inches, for those that still use that primitive measurement unit). - Compare the medians of points and goal difference.
Results were inconclusive. For Fulham, there was no noticiable difference, with exactly the same points per match and goal difference. For Manchester City, short players did worse, with a median 6 points below normal height players. However, the best run of both sides were similar, with 102 points and 86 goal difference.
Therefore, I believe height doesn't make that much of a difference on performance, and if there is a difference, then taller is better.
That experiment was considering all positions, because it would be hardly noticiable if I changed only for DM.
Chatin said: Amazing. Third Champions League in a row, I won the Premier without losing any game, only 2 draws. I lost the final in the Carabao Cup by penalties and in the 1/4 final in the FA Cup also by penalties against Manchester United but I took my revenge in the Champions League. Expand
Gratz! Very good team management there, I can tell you rotated well by the short squad (23 players) with very few injuries, no fatigue and everyone happy with play time. Good job!
Stan Seymour said: I see. This is a topic that can be discussed. Also this is my experience about the game, it depends somehow, but i can say this clearly, i just prefer more skill than the height and power in that position. Told you, i already have three giant there. I think the 4th one will cause waste and monotony. The purpose of using anchor is already dynamism. After all, it's nice to have different opinions on these details. Expand
I'm not arguing that you want more dynamic player in that position, I'm just not convinced that height has anything to do with that. The only way to know is isolating this variable and checking it's impact in performance, which I am trying to do. Gonna show results later.
I'm not convinced that height has any influence in the game other than aerial reach, which works in combination with jumping reach. I can't say for sure that height can translate to jumping reach (@Zippo would need to test to confirm that), but I believe it does to a certain degree. When attributes got tested, jumping reach was the fourth most important attribute for defense (goals conceded), which makes me believe it's fairly important for defensive roles.
I mean, I understand your point of wanting a cerebral player in that position, and that tall players are often strong instead of technical or cerebral. However, I can't see the correlation between height and those attributes. I'll run some experiments here with height using the in-game editor and see how short x tall players compare.
Stan Seymour said: Anchor: The brain of the team. He must be a player with a good relationship with the ball. All attributes must be at a certain level. He must be cool. He should not be too tall (between 178-183 is ideal) and should not be physically weak. Even if he doesn't get a high rating, this guy does the real work. Expand
I couldn't get why the anchor can't be too tall. Can you elaborate on that, please?
Nebuuuu said: The Squad after the 2nd Season (4-5 talented young players arrives@3rd season). I think there will be more goals for the Strikers etc. the coming season, because they are way better now.
What we won (Bundesliga, German Cup, German Supercup, Champions League)
72 (!) unbeaten matches since Saturday, the 30th January 2021.
League-Table at the end of the season. Could be a little more goals, a little less conceded goals in some matches. But overall an awesome endresult! And yeah...Haaland is a beast.
That`s it. If anyone didn`t tested this tactic, try it. And try my Boost if someone isn`t full convinced. The Morale, like always in FM, is pretty important. And with the Tactic-Talk-Praise 1d before matchday, it helps + Throw-ins from the Phoenix-Tactic. (big shoutout to the Magician!)
That`s from me. I will play a little now, FIFA Club Worldcup is waiting. Expand
You know it's a game when you see Bayern Munich in 6th at local league. Anyway, thanks for testing the tatic and gratz for the results!
P.S.: By the way, FIFA Club Worldcup is just a friendly competition, like UEFA Super Cup or FA Community Shield. I hope they fix it someday giving a more entertaining format, because it would be awesome to see european teams play seriously against the likes of Palmeiras, Flamengo, Boca or River.
kyle4921 said: I've already been doing this every game. Starting to think all of my players just have the worst hidden attributes possible because I see no reason for their performance to be so consistently bad. Watching them play it just seems like they're incredibly uninterested in actually trying to get the ball up the pitch. Did you change any player instructions at all in the lower leagues or just leave as is? Expand
Well, it might be. After every season, I like to renew around 10% to 20% of my squad. At that time, I usually cut players that have good attributes, but didn't perform well for the whole season. Without seeing hidden attributes, you need to guess who has high injury proneness, low consistency, high dirtness and so on. If the player has very good attributes, you can always give him one more season, but if you find someone better to replace him, just let it go.
Anyway, it's hard to guess why teams go into bad spells. There are too many variables other than tactics that affect the game, which is nice or FM would be very boring.
Gpassosbh said: Hello @ZaZ , do you have a plan for FM22 yet? Or you think it's too early? Expand
My plan is to start with three tests: 1. Blue 3.0. 2. Blue 3.0 with AF, in case they are more effective in the next version. Would also try moving CM to SS and see which does better. 3. Blue 3.0 with three defenders, using the new role. The extra defender would move to SS/AF, and I also plan to try with the CM moved to DM.
Those would be my initial tactics. After knowing which one does better, I will start tweaking player positions, roles, instructions and set pieces. For example, I want to know if AML/R are doing good next version, so I would get the best version and move ML/R position up.
Most of those tests will be done on my own, and only the most promising would be posted here. Blue 3.0, however, will be posted right away, since I believe any top tactic is worth converting to the new version at start.
Just by "feeling", trying to identify which teams I probably can't win in a normal day. For example, if I'm West Brom in Premier League (first year), then I know Liverpool and Manchester City are almost impossible to beat in normal conditions. For those teams I need a special strategy, different than what I would use for weaker teams like Aston Villa, Leeds and West Ham.
I usually remove the CM and try to keep the rest of team shape. Other than that, just team motivation and finger crossing.
P.S.: Below are two matches were I got my players sent off very early in the match. My team was the weakest from Brazilian first division, while Santos and Flamengo were among the strongest. For some reason, opponents get complacent when that happens, so you can try to take advantage on that by holding on cautious until half time, then going back to positive in second half, when they start feeling nervous for not winning.
Red Star for the win!
Tests are not exactly deceiving. Each methodology has a different bias, and the goal of testing is usually to minimize possible biases. Most tactics over 6.0 are good and will overachieve, as well as some tactics under that score with good management. Tests are important because they are usually less biased than personal feeling, which is specially important when you are overoptimizing something (like optimizing more than what you need to win).
Metal said: I wanted to keep the exact same shape with the three man midfield and same attack philosophy/mentality because I think it's genius and easy to build the team around. I also didn't want to do a disservice to the original creator and change the formation around just to concede less and then calling it an improvement.
There are many easy ways of tightening the defence but then the attack is compromised and I didn't want to take that facet of play away in this tactic where the attack is an endless barrage of shots to goal where you always have a high xg
I used inspiration from my own experience with the M.E, knowing the exploits and previous tactics that I've made and used where I enjoyed certain patterns of play and carefully synthesized them all together so on the pitch it plays exactly how I want the game to play out which is complete total domination and supremacy over the opponent whether big or small and making the most of out the forwards to ensure they get high numbers and become candidates for individual awards
It's fine, I was just showing the tactic with best results in FM-Arena with three defenders and goals scored over 3 per match. I thought it could have some interesting insights for what you are looking for.
In fact ignore/scrap those modifications they're not working out as well as I thought they were i.e inconsistent and finding losing more games with the mods.
I'm still trying to find a way to tweak it to maximise this tactic's potential because I still think the defense can be improved
As a tip, Mezzala don't work in this version. Try some other role if you want to use players in that position.
When I need goals I use Blue 3.0, it's already a very offensive tactic. My other two spots go to Solid and Light because I am more often winning than losing, so they help way more in the long run.
just me said: The best.. thanks again zaz
You're welcome! Thanks for using it!
Maybe the DM would get better scores, but the tactic would definitely perform worse as a whole. I already tested it in the past.
The low scores of a specific position say very little about the tactic performance. DM might be the only one in the team scoring under 7, but he is directly responsible for the others scoring well. When you change his role, all other positions perform worse, which isn't worth it in the end.
Yeah, that's how they do here.
If you make both sides have maximum morale, for example, then you know no side is taking advantage of higher morale. That means morale is not influencing the result of the match for either side, or in other words, the tactic and morale are now two independent variables.
The same can be applied for injuries, happiness, fatigue, condition and fitness, for example. That way, you know the thing being evaluated is the tactic, and not player management. Since the same is also applied to the opponent, then no team is taking advantage of having a better or worse management (or larger squad).
There are different ways of freezing those things, but you can easily find about it with a Google search or creating a topic asking that here.
Another variable you can remove is making sure all teams have capable players for all positions, so a tactic doesn't fail because some team doesn't have good wingers, for example. That is one of the main differences between here and FM-base, if I remember correctly.
Make a save file at the start of the game with one or two teams. Set the conditions you want to test and run the entire season, then take note of points, goals scored and goals conceded. Reload, set up again and re-run until you have five results. Discard the two best scores and the two worst scores (sorted by points), and you will have your median, meaning you expect half of any other tests to be above this threshold and half to be below. This is how good your tactic is. Now do the same to the second variant, with a different throw-in setting, and compare the medians. The one with best points per match is probably better.
To have higher confidence in your result, you can either isolate variables, like freezing attribute growth, removing injuries and setting some stuff to maximum (like morale, condition and tactical familiarity), or you can increase the number of runs (always discarding the best and worst to pick the middle one), or you can increase the number of matches in a season.
If you want even more confidence, then instead of median you can make plot boxes, or do a rank test like mann-whitney, but that would probably be too much for just a game.
I usually do the first option, five tests on vacation mode then compare the medians.
P.S.: The point of discarding best and worst scores instead of using the average value of all runs is to avoid outliers, which are runs that didn't reflect what you really want to test. For example, a season full of injuries, or a season where the team played too well and all opponents too badly because of RNG. Those outliers can cause distortions, so they should be handled somehow before drawing conclusions.
Team Report -> Analyst Report -> Scoring -> Assists.
However, you shouldn't look at throw-ins only by assists. In my setup, it usually gives no assists at all, but put players in position to make key passes. Unfortunately, you can't check the stats for pre-assists.
anyway how fm-arena give test result rating?
total win / total match?
I believe what matters is points per match, which is the formula you stated above.
- Run a whole season in vacation mode with Manchester City and Fulham, using the same tactic, 5 times, and store the results.
- Repeat the experiment in the same save file, reducing the height of all players by 5 cm (or 2 inches, for those that still use that primitive measurement unit).
- Compare the medians of points and goal difference.
Results were inconclusive. For Fulham, there was no noticiable difference, with exactly the same points per match and goal difference. For Manchester City, short players did worse, with a median 6 points below normal height players. However, the best run of both sides were similar, with 102 points and 86 goal difference.
Therefore, I believe height doesn't make that much of a difference on performance, and if there is a difference, then taller is better.
That experiment was considering all positions, because it would be hardly noticiable if I changed only for DM.
Gratz! Very good team management there, I can tell you rotated well by the short squad (23 players) with very few injuries, no fatigue and everyone happy with play time. Good job!
I'm not arguing that you want more dynamic player in that position, I'm just not convinced that height has anything to do with that. The only way to know is isolating this variable and checking it's impact in performance, which I am trying to do. Gonna show results later.
I mean, I understand your point of wanting a cerebral player in that position, and that tall players are often strong instead of technical or cerebral. However, I can't see the correlation between height and those attributes. I'll run some experiments here with height using the in-game editor and see how short x tall players compare.
I couldn't get why the anchor can't be too tall. Can you elaborate on that, please?
I think there will be more goals for the Strikers etc. the coming season, because they are way better now.
What we won (Bundesliga, German Cup, German Supercup, Champions League)
72 (!) unbeaten matches since Saturday, the 30th January 2021.
League-Table at the end of the season.
Could be a little more goals, a little less conceded goals in some matches.
But overall an awesome endresult! And yeah...Haaland is a beast.
That`s it. If anyone didn`t tested this tactic, try it.
And try my Boost if someone isn`t full convinced.
The Morale, like always in FM, is pretty important. And with the Tactic-Talk-Praise 1d before matchday, it helps + Throw-ins from the Phoenix-Tactic. (big shoutout to the Magician!)
That`s from me. I will play a little now, FIFA Club Worldcup is waiting.
You know it's a game when you see Bayern Munich in 6th at local league. Anyway, thanks for testing the tatic and gratz for the results!
P.S.: By the way, FIFA Club Worldcup is just a friendly competition, like UEFA Super Cup or FA Community Shield. I hope they fix it someday giving a more entertaining format, because it would be awesome to see european teams play seriously against the likes of Palmeiras, Flamengo, Boca or River.
Well, it might be. After every season, I like to renew around 10% to 20% of my squad. At that time, I usually cut players that have good attributes, but didn't perform well for the whole season. Without seeing hidden attributes, you need to guess who has high injury proneness, low consistency, high dirtness and so on. If the player has very good attributes, you can always give him one more season, but if you find someone better to replace him, just let it go.
Anyway, it's hard to guess why teams go into bad spells. There are too many variables other than tactics that affect the game, which is nice or FM would be very boring.
Gpassosbh said: Hello @ZaZ , do you have a plan for FM22 yet? Or you think it's too early?
My plan is to start with three tests:
1. Blue 3.0.
2. Blue 3.0 with AF, in case they are more effective in the next version. Would also try moving CM to SS and see which does better.
3. Blue 3.0 with three defenders, using the new role. The extra defender would move to SS/AF, and I also plan to try with the CM moved to DM.
Those would be my initial tactics. After knowing which one does better, I will start tweaking player positions, roles, instructions and set pieces. For example, I want to know if AML/R are doing good next version, so I would get the best version and move ML/R position up.
Most of those tests will be done on my own, and only the most promising would be posted here. Blue 3.0, however, will be posted right away, since I believe any top tactic is worth converting to the new version at start.