Yep, a competition and league addon are always a necessity for me. I get the face packs too. I also tried a few mods in 13 that altered nation/league structures to try and create more interesting competitions, creating a Soviet level league and such.
One of the mantras of the lower level manager, (the Llama, or the Divot, depending on your roots), is to nickname everyone who plays for you, primarily so that other people in the same situation don’t get tipped off to players who are prepared to come and be other worldly on no money for terrible teams. But it was habit forming enough that I still do it, to this day, even in games I don’t write about anywhere.
As a result I have a string of tales about players with weird names where I couldn’t buy them again if I wanted to, because even I don’t remember who they really were.
In one game, starting at the bottom of the English pyramid I got into the playoff final in my first season and went into extra-time at 0-0. We shipped two quick goals and I was trying to console myself that losing the final was much higher than we’d expected to be when a forward I had on loan from Leyton Orient who was only on the field because everyone else was shattered from 100+ minutes of football, banged in a 10 minute hattrick. His name was “Sunday School Exile.” I followed him for years after his loan ended, even though he never really did anything else notable in the game, loitering in the lower levels forever.
When he got old I bought him for buttons and put him in my reserve team, where he never got a game because I was in the Prem by then. But he retired in my colours.
Then there was the last minute panic buy as the transfer window shut in League Two - “Shaven Shins” - a Forward with 20 finishing who hardly ever scored for no reason I ever determined, but became an absolute fixture in his second position in the centre of midfield. So much so that when I eventually got the England national team job, I handed him a few caps and none of them were out of sympathy/loyalty.
“Seriously Stimulating” was a Croatian forward who put in 20 goals a season for me for five straight seasons in Russia, helped out by “Gene Pitney’s Typing School”, who showed off his Brazilian trickery with the ball on the left wing.
And I can never forget my brilliant and rock-solid Centreback combination of “Viking Haircut” and “No Egrets”, playing in front of future England Goalkeeper “Cockney Razor.”
Half the time I can’t remember where my keys are, but I have a head full of old CM/FM nicknames. So that’s nice.
‘The Editor’ in FM2011 is enough to tweak the now old changes the latest fan mods made to FM2011. It took a while (and is not complete) but many of the players in the Premiership are now where they should be in my game.
It’s not hard to add mods in the non-steam version, mostly it is just about making sure they go in the right folder and activating it in the game menu before you generate your game.
I’m going to introduce some pathetic elitist snobbery here and claim that the ONLY way to play Football manager is to start off unemployed in a crap lower league club and work your way up the pyramid. Anything else is just glory hunting (playing the easy mode sides, basically), rampant fanboyism (playing your favourite IRL side – how dare you?!) or blatent meta-game cheating, as football fans tend to know the names of all the players in the top flight and know who to spend their dosh on based purely on IRL data, whereas the lower clubs live and die by how good their scouts are at finding those auto generated players, their youth clubs and the cast-offs from the higher uand so on are.
Of course I haven’t played since 2010, so what do I know?
To steal from and paraphrase Brian Phillips: at lower league clubs “when it comes to judging player ability, the difference between my scouts and a six-month-old baby is that my scouts are under contract through 2014.”
I usually just sign anyone who’ll dirty a shirt for me, (on a trial if no one else is sniffing around), and then jettison the 65% of them who turn out to have only a metaphysical grasp of football. My entire checklist for signing players in Russia’s Pervy Divizion was
Q1 : Do you have two legs?
Yes ◘
No ◘
Almost ◘
Yes, while I always play by starting unemployed in the UK and taking a crappy LL club, then working my way up, and I always play with the player stats “hidden”, the crappy nature of scouts and coaches when it comes to evaluating talent has me tempted to start my 2014 career with the stats unveiled. Not the hidden stats (and I know there are editors that reveal all) but my one biggest frustration with FM is how much my coaches don’t really understand my own players’ true strengths and weaknesses in their recommendations. That and the guessing game that goes into things like press meetings and match talks.
I’m going to introduce some pathetic elitist snobbery here and claim that the ONLY way to play Football manager is to start off unemployed in a crap lower league club and work your way up the pyramid. Anything else is just glory hunting (playing the easy mode sides, basically), rampant fanboyism (playing your favourite IRL side – how dare you?!)
As a fan of a crap lower league club, I’m quite happy to play my favourite IRL side and work my way up the pyramid. I do find the LLM elitism a bit frustrating as a result - I’m not really into Football Manager for the challenge - managing a shit, perpetually on the edge of bankruptcy club is challenging enough as it is. I just want to have fun while taking Oxford United to as much success as I can and I’d quite like to be able to ask for advice while doing so, but the LLM culture and the dearth of OUFC Let’s Plays makes it more of a chore than I’d like.
Agreed on the lower league level stuff being great fun. But I do enjoy getting that little club up to the big time (eventually) and rolling around in the money you find there. It’s fun to spend in a week more than what your club was worth when you first took over.
Starting at the bottom in other countries is fun as well, for those of you have stick to England. I spent much of my FM13 time in Italy, and the bottom tier there (Serie C1 or C2) was a nice place to start. The clubs there are not quite as “local” as the bottom rung in England, but the finances are just as dire.
Playing the lower reaches of Brazil is also fun. There’s some decent talent even in the bottom league, but man, that season schedule is a bit crazy (fun)! Then when you reach the top division, you have to be ready for rich Euro sides to come in for your best talent.
The Brazilian lower league system is like quantum mechanics - almost anyone who claims to understand it is lying. Split seasons with results averaged over a number of different seasons… dotted lines appearing during one part of the season and then vanishing and regional leagues with one promotion spot and seemingly a thousand play off places.
I had a good time at Tigres do Brasil, but half the time I’d get messages about “Tigres confirm a play off spot!” and I’d be “Yay! I did? I had no idea.”
Meh - I just ignore the LLM ethos and play as I like. I’m not much for people trying to tell others how they should enjoy their games. I do always start with a team on the lowest level in DK (since I find that most fun), but I just pick one to start with based on them having a jersey and name that I like. If I’m going to lead a team for X many years - which I invariably tend to do - I don’t want to lead a team with a horribly ugly jersey - and besides, if I’m starting up a game it is to play it - not wait 6 months of in-game time for a job to become available.
Playing outside England, at least, I’ve never seen the point of not just writitng straightforward AARs. For one, there is enough variability in LL player abilities that repeat signings make little sense; a player can be a key player in one game session, and yet be a bit player in another. If a player is good enough to be someone worth signing at all costs, it is usually because he is already very well known. Pretty much every star player I’ve had in games has been a regen, since established star players won’t go to a low reputation league. But I like it that way. Few things are better sim-gaming fun than finding a 15-year old youth player and watching him develop into a complete forward with 20 OTB+20 FIN star player who debuts internationally in the World Cup at age 17 with two goals.
Yeah, I know this feeling! This is why I normally create a club using the editor so that I can get a look that I can live with and adjust things to how I feel like playing and what league I end up picking.
To take out the worry of knowing decent players for a LLM run, I’m actually thinking about letting the game sim some years, maybe 5, before starting to look for a job. Get a nice variety of leagues, let the game sim while I’m at work, and hopefully come back to some interesting jobs, interesting situations, and regens starting to become important. Anyone ever done this before and can tell me that it’s not worth it?
I’ll absolutely always start in a lower league, have never started a game below the second division and will usually start in the lowest available. However, I can’t make myself play in countries with a bunch of squad restrictions. My most played country is germany because at the top level you can sign anyone you want and register 99 players. It would be so much fun to play for some east russian team and make clubs travel 5000 miles for a champions league match but I can’t stomach the squad restrictions
I think I asked this in another FM thread but I’ll ask again: what is the best way to learn this game? The tutorial in FM2012 wasn’t that great (or didn’t hold my attention), and then I did not know what to do once I started the game. Would you all recommend Let’s Plays or a walkthrough?
Another who prefers to start in the lower leagues as a rule of thumb. After a bit of success i will sometimes transition across to a higher league team (one of my favourites if a space comes up for the manager spot).
Just for information i use these mods/set ups for my FM2011 games:
Official 11.3.0 update (last one)
LG’s Summer Update - Season 2011-2012 (these changes i then ‘update’ using the FM Editor tools to keep major player club moves upto date).
fmscout.com Standard Polished Logo’s
And i use the games default Dark UI skin (all that white is just way too bright imho), which means i have to create my own (well invert/adjust the default one) club badges sometimes, as the in-game ones can clash with the darker UI skin.
In my current game i started out as Wrexham (for a season), then moved onto Swansea whom i took into the Premiership and are now having a good run in the Euro Cup. FM2011 is nearly the perfect football management game.
I used this site for some general explanation about player roles and attributes and found it pretty helpful.
http://www.guidetofootballmanager.com/
Other than that I think I just went through a season and tried my best. You don’t really have to do much to complete a season, but of course to optimize your results and the club’s future there is quite a bit to do.
And this is very detailed, but worth the time IF you really want to get a handle on the games complexity, even if based on FM2011, much of the info is handy for the series in general:
That site has a lot of good info. I can’t say I put that much thought into my team talks. I tend just use the same speech every time. The talks by position usually get a good reaction with the “I believe in you!” choice.
Also, the full release is in just a few days. There was at least 1 update to the beta, but SI didn’t release any notes on what was fixed and the match engines widgets still don’t work properly. If you look at the official forums there are tons of small issues but I think overall the game seems to be in a pretty good place.
Well i support Everton and only manage them, have no interest in managing anyone else.
If you are new, i would suggest starting at a lower level (League 2 in England or such or lower). I say that because it is easier to see who is better for certain positions. Instead wondering if an 18 in one is better than a 17 in another; at the lower level if you have someone with a 12 in finishing and everyone else is 8, you know you want them out there.
You can also keep it simple in tactics. Have a speedy striker and a tall/strong striker and build off that. Start with 4-4-2 and then adjust that based on your players. Then adjust your formations so you have a ‘home’ formation were you play a little wider and more aggressive and an ‘away’ were you are more conservative.
Dont be afraid to restart or even to reload a game to try something else. You are learning.
There is a lot of good information out there. Good luck.