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Second, in my admittedly limited experience, the more balanced a team is the more likely it is to punch above its salary weight. It makes sense because of the exponential nature of skill cost: a 10k increase in salary will buy a lot more skills on a 15k player than it will on a 25k player. Now of course there are viable tactics and strategies that make certain players more important that can be quite effective, and I'm not saying your top 8 players should always have the same salary. But I think that especially for newer managers, a more balanced approach will win more games for the same salary most of the time.

+1

Punching above your salary weight is key.

What's interesting with this theory is that you can transpose it from the team level to the player level. Basically, "Team" becomes "Player" and "Player" becomes "Skill".
Each player is much more cost effective when he's versatile.

On another note, Manon said(221642.4):

every skill in this game has its highest gain at the first levels.

He forgot to say that for game shape, it's actually the reverse phenomenon.

Last edited by Thelonious at 9/13/2012 4:13:08 PM

I agree. This game has changed very much since the beginning (this is my third team, I have been playing on and off since season 3...mostly off though). This thread has opened my eyes a bit to training being not so valuable as it has previously in a traditional buy-sell sense. However, the above point about punch per dollar spent is clearly quite valid in the revised battlefield.

With the focus on rounded players, it may yet be valuable to carry great trainers. Not to exhibit unwieldy Joe Bronson characters who sell for a boatload of profit in mid range 3-5 years, but to create well rounded players in short time.

The vision of my Chuckers was to start a rotation of 9 players who received significant training while on my roster. To mold a team to fit my liking. It is difficult and expensive to locate and purchase well-rounded players. It is substantially easier, with the right training plan, to create those players. The profit isn't made on the market increase, but by crafting a team that is constantly improving and winning games while still making a profit like a team that is tanking.

Not to use my team as an example of success, because I haven't done jack squat just yet (went AWOL for 2 months in the peak training time of my first batch and undercooked my Christmas hams), but I am fully capable of beating any team in my competitive IV league with a thrifty salary expense and a phenomenal profit margin. My strategy has been to buy value trainees with average to sub average potentials to force myself to use every skill point wisely. Each step of my build will buy trainees with the next level of potential to keep moving forward, upwards, onwards while learning how to build compact killing machines.

Perhaps this could be a valid strategy going forward instead of an idealistic, overconfident and snobish way of running a team?

Last edited by Alan Ellis at 9/14/2012 1:04:40 AM

Having said this, I don't understand why raising the salary floor was picked as the solution against tanking, since I'm sure plenty of teams, including myself, are competitive at lower salary masses than the salary floor. I objected the salary floor reform since the beginning, and with this year's raise, I can tell you it penalizes versatile players and versatile teams. Simple as that.

Like I said in another thread, the solution to tanking should be the more money there is in your balance, the more fans stop showing up to the arena when you're consistently losing, because they simply realize you're not investing in the current season.

Hi There!!

Great Post!

I was just wondering what a NT player means?

National team

Thank You, i feel a bit stupid hehe :)

Having said this, I don't understand why raising the salary floor was picked as the solution against tanking, since I'm sure plenty of teams, including myself, are competitive at lower salary masses than the salary floor.

It's not the perfect solution but it's still a very good anti-tanking measure. I can't speak for every league in every country but I've played the last 4 seasons in either D1 or D2 and there's no way on earth that a team using today's salary floor would make the playoffs in any of those leagues.

No it's not a "very good anti-tanking measure", because it effectively discourages tanking yes but it encourages teams to buy salary inefficient players. Frankly I think tanking is a big problem, but this is a poor fix that doesn't attack the root of the problem and the solution I provided, even if it may require some additional coding, is way, way better.

The question isn't why teams are not competitive. The question is why do fans continue to go watch uncompetitive games when their team refuses to use the money it has in the bank which, by the way, is there because of the fans.

And I appreciate you putting my league's lack of competitiveness into perspective, but it doesn't matter. At the end of the day I am punished for being smarter than my opponents.

Edit: In this game fans are dumb. Make them smarter and you won't have to worry about tanking.

Last edited by Thelonious at 9/19/2012 4:14:06 PM

Raising the salary floor was the simpliest way to battle against tanking. There has been many other propositions and we are still hoping for them to be implemented, but for the moment, it's not possible. We have to do with what we have.

You may have salary efficient players, but no way you would be able to be in PO in D3 (yes D3) in France.

Managers in other countries aren't dumb, they just have to face good competition, so you should be happy to still get more money than them.

What's the TV contract in French D3?

I didn't say anybody was dumb, apart from the simulated fans of this game who get taken advantage of by teams who make money and don't spend it on players because they want to relegate. And I also acknowledged that if anybody was smarter it's people in D2 of a more populated country because they had to face more competition.

Take my league for example: Is it my fault that some of them buy inefficient players, costing them lots of money, driving the TV contracts and salary floor up? Why should I be punished for that by having to adopt the same unsound strategies? I just promoted, my priority is to avoid relegation. I don't need a payroll of more than 125k to achieve that (in part because I manage enthusiasm well, game shape well and I have expensive staff). Why do I have to pay 50k penalty every week? Are they saying I should buy inefficient players instead and less expensive staff so that they get injured every once in a while? According to what dogma should I apply this failed formula in this particular context?

I don't see a staff salary floor for those who chose to save money on staff?

If this is a temporary fix, fine, but I'm afraid it's might not be. It is flawed in many ways. BTW I'm not anti-regulation in the real world, I'm not a liberal, so I'm not against this for ideological reasons. But it attacks the symptoms not the root cause, and I'm afraid it has severe side effects.