So I’m a soccer junkie. I’m currently hooked on Hattrick, a free online-based soccer management game… really it’s soccer lite but it’s fun. Check it out at www.hattrick.org if you’re interested… there’s usually a wait of about a week before you get to start playing though…
Anywho… what with all the game experts around here, I thought I’d ask:
Does anyone know of a good Soccer Management computer game I can buy in the USA? I understand Championship Manager 4 is supposedly where it’s at, but I saw a snippet in CGW about some Argentinian company coming out with a management game that looked cool…
Championship manager 4, without a doubt. The season 03/04 version is out now, so get that if you can, there’s no better football management game in existance.
You can purchase CM 03/04 from gogamer.com. Very quick, very reliable.
CM is one of the best role-playing games for the PC. E.g., the designer was describing on another forum how you have to be careful how you treat a prima donna on the first team: let him get away with that type of behavior and the younger players who admire him may see that and attempt to emulate his behavior. Discipline him too harshly and the younger players may develop more mature personalities but the prima donna may become resentful and his playing suffer (or, he may respond by shaping up.) He may tell the media that you’re a lousy manager and the team will never win with you at the helm. Then you find yourself the focus of news stories and sports talkshows, and have to respond (particularly if that player is a fan favorite.) And so on and so on.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Player personalities and interactions, media interactions, interactions with the fans and the board, seeking out that young superstar that no one else has quite picked up, trying to get your poor conference team up the ranks and into the upper leagues, being recruited for a job with a more prestigious team if you do well (and seeking a job to rebuild your reputation if you get fired,), etc. etc. It’s all good - and highly addictive.
Although it’s not as big as the CM series, you might want to give Universal Soccer Manager (http://www.universalsoccermanager.com/) a shot. I havn’t tried it myself, but it seems decent enough.
If you give it a spin let me know how good/bad it is, I’m curious.
If you’re a graphics junkie, TCM 2003 (2004 out soon) is more pick up and play, probably lighter on the heavy duty simulation aspects but uses a 3D engine to watch the matches. There are assistants that will take care of everything you don’t want to mess with as well. TCM is definately more newbie friendly and has a better presentation IMO. There are demos of both games, check them out.
Hattrick is excellent. My team just made the English Premiership this season. With over 6,000 teams competing in my country, I’m very pleased to have made the top 8, to say the least! It’s taken me over two years, but it’s been a very enjoyable journey :D.
If you want “realism”, then Championship Manager is where it is at, whether you want to manage Real Madrid or that Swedish 3rd division side. It can have a fairly steep learning curve, especially if you pick the rong club (high expectations from the board/supporters), but the SIgames forums contain a wealth of player, tactical and training information to help you on your way. Personally I dont think there is a commerical football management game that comes close to this, and I am intruiged to see how the CM3 engine ports over to the Ice hockey manager game.
Hattrick is supposed to be very good but tbh I never really got into it.
I have Baseball Mogul 2004, and it’s pretty good, and I know there’s also a few good football and basketball sims, and of course soccer, but where are the commercial hockey sims?
Eastside Hockey Manager is decent, but the roster hasn’t been updated in a few years.
Eastside is the hockey sim that SIGames are converting using the CM3 engine. Basically Marc Vaughan at SI was a fan of Eastside and when he heard that the developer was going to drop it when he finished college, he offered him a job at SI.
There’s also a text based hockey game from .400 Sports, former publishers of OOTP Baseball, but I can’t say I was too impressed with the demo.
My Hattrick Team name is DB Rangers (I don’t recall the #) and my user name is Darksbane. I’m in the U.S. and I’m bitter for being relegated to series V after just one season in series IV. I honestly don’t know how people get such studs on their team without cheating the transfer market… I’ve got my youth squad up to “excellent” (the highest possible) but can’t seem to get any decent talent in my weekly tryouts… and can’t seem to muster a strong enough economy to afford the 7 figure sum required to pick up worthwhile talent off the transfer market.
I actually downloaded the CM4 demo and despite my preference for incredibly deep, incredibly complex games, found it quite challenging to “pick up and play” and have since been distracted by my Sudden Strike demo (the game I’ve been wishing for since JA2 got stale).
Back to topic, I actually don’t have any desire to manage “real” teams/players and for some reason find “imaginary” teams more enjoyable… that way there can’t be any gripes that “player x doesn’t behave/play the way he actually does/should” since all the players are entirely fictional rather than suppposedly based on a real human being… makes it easier to suspend disbelief IMO.
The key to making money in Hattrick is training. Make sure you are always training, and use all the slots you have available. Just pick a schedule, defenders, midfielders, attackers, wingers or keepers are all good, and buy some cheap young players to fill your first and second teams (league and cup/friendlies). With defenders you can train up to 10 players a week, and if you are skilled at picking your players, and understand how to make the most out of training, you can earn about $50-75k per training slot per week, on average. That’s what I get, anyway, but it takes a lot of time and effort to get that good. However, even if you haven’t a clue, you can easily double your income with a comprehensive training program.
Tim is much further along than I am, he is in the top English series. Obviously, what he says is right on target, you have to train. Im not sure what he trains, all his players look good, but its pretty obvious checking out my team ( USA, username MauxFaux) that i train scoring.
I run a 3-4-3 to get 6 scorers a week training. I carry anywhere from 7 to 8 forward trainees. Although I can only play 6 in a week, i like to have one or two extra just in case I have an injury. I have also had players gain scoring in weeks they didn’t even play. 3 last season, in fact. So, I keep extra players on hand, the wage doesnt kill me and it keeps me from losing training.
There are two ways I train. One is for the longterm. These trainees I buy when they are 17 or 18 years old. There are many types of young trainees i’ll look at buying. 17 yo solids are the most expensive, especially early in u20 pulling years. Passable or even Inads can be good deals, especially if you buy one with solid or better secondaries. For example, an Exc passing, inad scorer will be much cheaper than a Exc scorer with inad passing. He will have a valuable secondary that you didnt have to train, which will help bring in some cash when you sell. 18 yos are fine as well, if trained long term they can bring quite a bit of money.
The short term training i do is different. I buy young players who are high solids in what I train, and I train them to Exc and sell them for a profit. A young player with solid scoring and no secondaries (by that, nothing over weak) will pop to Exc somewhere between 85k and 125k, depending on how high his other attributes are. These players can be had for as little as 100k. In 2-3 weeks, they will hit Exc and can be sold. The prices bounce around, but I always manage at least 400k for an exc. If a player seems REALLY close to making Exc, I may not even play him at forward, instead hoping he can go to exc just on what little ‘splash’ training he’ll receive each week.
The longer you train someone , the more they will bring you on the market. There is a point of diminishing returns though. Watch the markets some and you’ll notice this.
Keep pulling youth players, if they arent any good, sell them, fire them, doesnt matter, just make sure you start a serious training program.
how about a pro-wrestling manager www.adamryland.co.uk its called Extreme wrestling Revenge its pretty good though of course you do need a bit of interest in the subject matter.
