Guide how to set up an optimal database for a balanced savegame and ways to increase realism
Added 2020-12-27 14:49:47 +0000 UTCI realized, that many people don't really understand how the setup works exactly. So I made this guide to give you some kind of overview how it works. Any constructive feedback is welcome.
It's impossible to show everyones different way of play. This is only a rough guideline for a orientation.This is my view of fm, so if you are seeing it different, that's completely fine. Maybe some mechanics changed in fm21 which I haven't tested yet, I will update the guide if necessary.
General:
There are differences between unloaded Nations, view-ony, playable and playable with full details. In a Nation, you can select some leagues playable, view-only, or unloaded. The effect is roughly the same as for a whole Nation:
unloaded Nation
- No schedule, games are fully simulated in background
- No visible league table
- No full squads (only if you load them via the advanced db)
- No staff (After the first sacking of the real manager, there will be in most cases no new head-coach and other staff members)
- Low transfer-activity
- Games will be simulated with the quick Match-Engine
- Less injuries
Nation view only
- League-schedule
- League table
- No full squads (only if you load them via the advanced db)
- No staff (After the first sacking of the real manager, there will be in most cases no new head-coach and other staff members)
- Low to medium transfer-activity
- Games will be simulated with the quick Match-Engine
- Less injuries
Nation playable
- League-schedule
- League table
- Full Squads
- Existing Staff
- Realistic transfer-activity
- Some games will be simulated with the Full Match Engine.
- increase of injuries
Nation playable + full detail
- League-schedule
- League table
- Full Squads
- Existing Staff
- Realistic transfer-activity
- Games will be fully simulated
- More injuries than only playable
What is the benefit of simulating Leagues in full detail?
You will get more realistic stats and results. The player development takes more calculations into account. If you simulate other Leagues and Nations with full detail you will get a stronger AI, especially when you play against them.
What slows the game processing speed down the most:
- Setting leagues to simulate in full detail uses multicore pretty heavy.
- A lot of leagues playable
- custom data in general slows down performance. There are big differences what kind of custom data is used. As orientation you can go by file size. Larger files need more processing time. LLM-files for example are quite heavy.
- Incredible amount of players loaded also affects performance. Down to my experience, if you don't load 200k+ players, this effect is not that big compared to the others
- All custom graphics loaded do not have any influence at game speed at all. As far as I know it has some influence in terms of RAM usage
Extra Tip:
As a human manager you have some "benefits" over the AI. You can be much better in transfers because you don't "feel" pressure or concerns which teams have IRL. I think that's a reason why the AI is not that aggressive vs a human player fighting against a specific talent. It looks like a weak programmed AI, for me it is just insane programming-skills by SI-devs. WIth that in mind, you might not just buy a wonderkid for 20 million while managing a team that would never do that IRL, even if it would be possible. This gave me a much more immersive game-experience.
Most important Nations to load according to my database for a balanced world is attached (1 highest, 4 lowest)
Excel-File is attached
My recommended setup for a longterm or just a balanced savegame:
detail level
I recommend to set all national teams simulated in full detail as well as the european competition if you play in Europe. You can change this to every other continent if you play there. Also the top 20 leagues. I would set at least the top division and the cup as simulated in full detail.
These are some examples of setups that I think people use most. It's not that easy to create a compact overview. I hope it's not too much info
- Loading top 5 nations and top 2 in South America playable and top 20 as view only with a small/medium/big db:
This is the lowest setup I recommend
- Loading top 5 nations and top 2 in South America playable and top 20 as view only with players loaded from the top 20 nations with the advanced-db option:
You will have a higher player count, and these players from the top 20 will be newly generated in the future. This leads to a more balanced gameworld. It will give you a decent db for low to mid-range systems.
- Loading top 5 nations and top 2 in South America playable and all others as view only with players loaded from all nations with the advanced-db option:
It gives you a big db an a overview of players around the world. IMO it feels much better than the setup above, because there is a wider variety of players from different nations. The loss of processing speed is little but maybe already too much for low-end systems.
- Loading top 20 nations playable, all the others leagues view-only, international games, games from National-Teams and the games in your league simulated in full detail, with small/medium/big db:
This is the start of a balanced world for longer saves. It depends how many playable leagues your system can run at a decent speed. For some it's 15 nations for some 30.
- Loading top 20 nations playable, all the others view-only, international games, games from National-Teams and the games in your league simulated in full detail, with the advanced db-option for all players from first divison and national reputation
This setup Is IMO the general sweetspot for a realistic longterm-save. Mid-range processor recommended.
- Loading all nations playable, international games, games from National-Teams and the games in your league simulated in full detail, with players loaded from all nations with the advanced-db option (ca 194k players):
This setup guarantees you a balanced game world and high transfer activity around the globe. Leagues which aren't available with the vanilla version will have problems in being competitive in the long run. As soon as you are setting games to simulated in full detail, I recommend a modern 8-core 16-threaded processor
- Loading all nations playable, all games simulated in full detail:
Without a monster CPU or plenty of time, I do not recommend this setup. Processing-speed is very long and the gain of realism doesn't really weights up the time of processing compared to the setup above. But if your CPU can handle it, it really does make a lot of fun!
- Loading all nations playable, all games simulated in full detail with all players in the db(ca 500k players):
This setup will give you all players in the db. So there will be a player from 6th. division in sweden without seeing the league being active in the game. This slows down your system pretty much in relation to what you are getting for. I do not recomend this setup.
- Loading all nations playable + custom files from all over the world:
I highly recommend the megapack from Timo61 if you want custom files too. it can be found here:
https://community.sigames.com/topic/543113-fm21-leagues-mega-pack-by-timo/
If you don't know if your PC/Laptop is low/mid/high-end you can check the following thread:
https://community.sigames.com/topic/539412-fm21-performance-benchmarking-thread/
To discuss about realism in FM21 Junkhead has created this wonderful thread. Sharing ideas, your own and all other stuff that can be linked in this area.
https://community.sigames.com/topic/539688-fm21-realism-thread/
There is a Cooperation between me and majesticeternity. We created a much more realistic transfer preferences-file. It can be found here:
I highly recommend the files from majesticeternity which can be found in the editors hideaway download forum too. I work on projects with her and I have to say, her work is just amazing!
https://community.sigames.com/forum/834-editors-hideaway-download-forum-fm21/
Cheers
Daveincid
