******* Official Football Manager 14 Thread *******

...also Marc, you could be really anal about this and micro manage the micromanagement ;) I like to keep on top of the scouting network. I let the chief control the assignments but I also send a few blokes off now and then to keep on top of things. I've got one scout doing all the oceanic islands at present, and he now had a very thorough knowledge of them all. But he found a 17 year old from a tiny island who has a lot of potential. So it really is worth experimenting with.
 
The__Malteser said:
Well then, I'm a cheater.

Hate having unseen attributes. It just saves me 1/2 days scouting. I don't really see a problem with it. Still scout them, but at least I can have a general idea of how good they are.
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haha.. Each to their own. Like you say it is an option within the game itself. Unfortunately the scouting side of things is half the game in my opinion. You're missing out :( That's the best thing about the game.
 
philstanbridge said:
haha.. Each to their own. Like you say it is an option within the game itself. Unfortunately the scouting side of things is half the game in my opinion. You're missing out :( That's the best thing about the game.
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I do hire scouts to find me players. Although I do find some myself (there are those few teams who seem to provide some very good regens.

If I send a scout to scout S. America (for example) he will find players AND have their attributes up to date. It just helps with the players I find myself.

I already try to have different nation scouts and different nation coaches.
 
philstanbridge said:
No, it doesn't work like that as far as I am aware. Your database is the only thing that matters - if you have a small one you have less players, if you have a huge advanced one like me, then you have upwards of 100,000 players to choose from. It doesn't matter if you add or remove leagues - the players will still remain. The only difference with adding and removing leagues is that you become part of it, if you follow. You will be able to follow the foreign tournaments etc etc. I only run with the British leagues. Nothing else. I do that for speed purposes and it works fine. I still have a huge/advanced database with 100,000+ players.
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When I added the new leagues the number of players included in the game went up by 8 or 9 thousand.

philstanbridge said:
That thing with the scouts is strange - do you have worldwide scouting? Do you have a chief scout who manages them? Finally, maybe they haven't managed to find any players - but that seems rather remote. Take control yourself to begin with. Cancel ALL scouting assignments and create new ones so that they go immediately. Then give it time and check their knowledge when they have finished. If they have high adaptability and determination they will keep that knowledge. If they don't then they will lose it.
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Worldwide scouting? As in knowledge or the ability to send scouts wherever I want? Only the latter. I do have a chief scout but we've been on about 50-52% scouting knowledge for ages with him in charge.

Weirdly they haven't found any players but they do show knowledge of particular countries where they've been sent to scout a region. One of the scouts is quite new and is in his early 60s so he could retire any time soon.

I think cancelling all the current scouting assignments is a good idea. I can then target individual countries to help bump up a region's knowledge. When I specify a scouting mission I remove the star potential requirement for the scout to inform me of players equal to or above the number of stars. So if I left it at 4 stars then the scouts would only inform me of players they felt had a certain potential. Am I right to remove this limitation or am I in fact hindering myself because they will report to me anyone they find, with no minimum requirement sent, instead of reporting only those with a certain level of potential?

philstanbridge said:
Right, the next step. Coaches. VITALLY important and at absolutely any level. Don't just go looking for the best, not until you can afford it. Just search for coaches with roughly the attributes you want, from a country you want and hire them for one year. Their knowledge is imperative to your scouting network. When their contract is up you can let them go. But in the mean time, you will have access to their knowledge. See what country you are lacking in, and go hire a coach. Then scouts will appear from that country, and more importantly, players.
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I cleared up some coaches earlier to leave a core of good coaches. I've now made sure that I have a minimum of 4.5 stars in each category of training for senior, U21 and U18 teams. I can now complement those coaches with 4 star coaches from various regions around the world to bump up my scouting knowledge.

The__Malteser said:
Well then, I'm a cheater.

Hate having unseen attributes. It just saves me 1/2 days scouting. I don't really see a problem with it. Still scout them, but at least I can have a general idea of how good they are.
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Well if you're doing it, I might! ;) From FM15 perhaps. :)

philstanbridge said:
...also Marc, you could be really anal about this and micro manage the micromanagement ;) I like to keep on top of the scouting network. I let the chief control the assignments but I also send a few blokes off now and then to keep on top of things. I've got one scout doing all the oceanic islands at present, and he now had a very thorough knowledge of them all. But he found a 17 year old from a tiny island who has a lot of potential. So it really is worth experimenting with.
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I'm sorely tempted to permanently remove my chief scout from having anything to do with setting assignments and anally micro managing the micro management! :D

Just out of interest, I sometimes get reports from scouts saying that they feel the current assignment/country is a waste of time and they feel their time would be better spent doing another assignment/country. Is this something to do with their determination? Should I keep them at their current assignment or replace them with another scout, whether someone already at the club or sign a new scout with better determination?
 
philstanbridge said:
It is an option but it also takes away a huge amount of the game. It's cheating in my book.
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It depends on whether you look for talent or potential. Even when I manage in the lower leagues, where talent would be of immediate benefit, if realistically possible I always opt for a happy balance between ability and potential, as while ability has a benefit immediately, potential can either improve your team as you move forward, or used well can vastly increase your budget.

While I used it when it was initially introduced, I now disable attribute masking as I came up through CM without it and it has started getting on my nerves; but since Salas and Barrera in CM(something in the 90s) (and scouts didn't exist in CM), I can't say I've bought many players based on attributes and their current ability. Scouts are still invaluable in judging whether they will improve. There are plenty of players who, performance wise, peak at 20, and while they're sometimes good as squad players, they often do little to improve you overall - Adam Pepper at Liverpool is a rare exception I've had - he'd regularly score around 20 a season down to his long shot ability, but the rest of his game was only average in the Premier League.


philstanbridge said:
Right, the next step. Coaches. VITALLY important and at absolutely any level. Don't just go looking for the best, not until you can afford it. Just search for coaches with roughly the attributes you want, from a country you want and hire them for one year. Their knowledge is imperative to your scouting network. When their contract is up you can let them go. But in the mean time, you will have access to their knowledge. See what country you are lacking in, and go hire a coach. Then scouts will appear from that country, and more importantly, players.
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I've played FM/CM for a couple of decades now, and I'm yet to see coach to have an effect, direct or otherwise, on scouting. Am I stuck in my ways? I'm happy to be proved wrong, but I've only ever seen coaches as a means to improve ability to enhance attributes. I can't say I've ever seen an increase in scouting knowledge through hiring global coaches.
 
this_is_gav said:
I've played FM/CM for a couple of decades now, and I'm yet to see coach to have an effect, direct or otherwise, on scouting. Am I stuck in my ways? I'm happy to be proved wrong, but I've only ever seen coaches as a means to improve ability to enhance attributes. I can't say I've ever seen an increase in scouting knowledge through hiring global coaches.
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I think it does. In the course of tidying up my coaches today I released a few of them. I found my scouting knowledge had dropped by 2% and that my scouting knowledge map showed that South America was grey whereas before the whole continent was a fairly green shade. I didn't release any scouts only coaches, the ones I had hired at the beginning of my save game. It is counter-intuitive that coaches help but from what I've seen they do. It's as if coaches help to give you a basic platform in terms of knowledge of a country whilst scouts go in and give you detailed knowledge of players and their potential.
 
this_is_gav said:
I've played FM/CM for a couple of decades now, and I'm yet to see coach to have an effect, direct or otherwise, on scouting. Am I stuck in my ways? I'm happy to be proved wrong, but I've only ever seen coaches as a means to improve ability to enhance attributes. I can't say I've ever seen an increase in scouting knowledge through hiring global coaches.
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I mean scouting knowledge yeah, not scouting per se. It definitely has an immediate effect on scouting knowledge. Try it yourself. Find an area you have no knowledge in, and find a coach from that region. Hire the coach and check your overall knowledge. It will be improved. This has a more immediate effect than scouting for me, as I can hire more coaches than scouts.
 
MarcLister said:
When I added the new leagues the number of players included in the game went up by 8 or 9 thousand.

Worldwide scouting? As in knowledge or the ability to send scouts wherever I want? Only the latter. I do have a chief scout but we've been on about 50-52% scouting knowledge for ages with him in charge.

Weirdly they haven't found any players but they do show knowledge of particular countries where they've been sent to scout a region. One of the scouts is quite new and is in his early 60s so he could retire any time soon.

I think cancelling all the current scouting assignments is a good idea. I can then target individual countries to help bump up a region's knowledge. When I specify a scouting mission I remove the star potential requirement for the scout to inform me of players equal to or above the number of stars. So if I left it at 4 stars then the scouts would only inform me of players they felt had a certain potential. Am I right to remove this limitation or am I in fact hindering myself because they will report to me anyone they find, with no minimum requirement sent, instead of reporting only those with a certain level of potential?

I cleared up some coaches earlier to leave a core of good coaches. I've now made sure that I have a minimum of 4.5 stars in each category of training for senior, U21 and U18 teams. I can now complement those coaches with 4 star coaches from various regions around the world to bump up my scouting knowledge.

Well if you're doing it, I might! ;) From FM15 perhaps. :)

I'm sorely tempted to permanently remove my chief scout from having anything to do with setting assignments and anally micro managing the micro management! :D

Just out of interest, I sometimes get reports from scouts saying that they feel the current assignment/country is a waste of time and they feel their time would be better spent doing another assignment/country. Is this something to do with their determination? Should I keep them at their current assignment or replace them with another scout, whether someone already at the club or sign a new scout with better determination?
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Okay adding leagues does add players - but it will add every player from that league. I don't really understand it. How does that effect your database size? I mean, I have 100,000+ players maximum available, yet adding 9,000 from Ligue 1 has no bearing on that figure. I don't get it.

If a scout reports that area as being potentially a waste of time then cancel it. I would personally let you chief scout control the assignments but make sure your best scouts are doing the major countries, for 4 star+ potential and 17 age max. This will help find the best youth available. There is talk of letting your backroom team 'settle in' together and they will improve. This does have a slight increase in scouting knowledge but its only ever a few percent max over the season. You would be better off employing a top rated continental scout with lots of tasty knowledge. I've got a guy from Scandinavia who has about 20 countries in his database. Scouts like that are brilliant.
 
philstanbridge said:
Okay adding leagues does add players - but it will add every player from that league. I don't really understand it. How does that effect your database size? I mean, I have 100,000+ players maximum available, yet adding 9,000 from Ligue 1 has no bearing on that figure. I don't get it.

If a scout reports that area as being potentially a waste of time then cancel it. I would personally let you chief scout control the assignments but make sure your best scouts are doing the major countries, for 4 star+ potential and 17 age max. This will help find the best youth available. There is talk of letting your backroom team 'settle in' together and they will improve. This does have a slight increase in scouting knowledge but its only ever a few percent max over the season. You would be better off employing a top rated continental scout with lots of tasty knowledge. I've got a guy from Scandinavia who has about 20 countries in his database. Scouts like that are brilliant.
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By adding a league it will add all the players and staff from that league

When you setup a game you can customize the database rather then using the preset ones this can add far bigger range of players/staff but most people just select large.

A scout that has a big country list will start losing them I noticed that with this game and it's due to keeping his knowledge up he has to report for all those countries which wont really be possible.
 
NooBish AbbZ said:
What folders do i need to put graphics into for them to work with Fm? It's player faces, club badges mainly
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Your My Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2014\graphics. After that make folders for 'faces', 'kits', 'pictures' etc for each sub-type of graphics.

philstanbridge said:
Okay adding leagues does add players - but it will add every player from that league. I don't really understand it. How does that effect your database size? I mean, I have 100,000+ players maximum available, yet adding 9,000 from Ligue 1 has no bearing on that figure. I don't get it.
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Is a bit weird isn't it?

philstanbridge said:
If a scout reports that area as being potentially a waste of time then cancel it. I would personally let you chief scout control the assignments but make sure your best scouts are doing the major countries, for 4 star+ potential and 17 age max. This will help find the best youth available. There is talk of letting your backroom team 'settle in' together and they will improve. This does have a slight increase in scouting knowledge but its only ever a few percent max over the season. You would be better off employing a top rated continental scout with lots of tasty knowledge. I've got a guy from Scandinavia who has about 20 countries in his database. Scouts like that are brilliant.
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Think it's all stuff to take into account when I get FM15. :) Hopefully SI will start telling us about the new features in the next few months. It's normally a late October/early November release so perhaps July/August for an FM15 announcement? I swear they squeeze their new FM stuff into a smaller period of time closer to release dates now than they did with the early FM games.
 
The__Malteser said:
Icon Faces (Small faces when you search for a player):
https://mega.co.nz/#!ZJpxlThQ!IXC_2HAx60H4qfAR6X93Bf_bMdlT13W_9bUGSs7zWn8

Megapack (all player faces):
https://mega.co.nz/#!BV4CRSjZ!OtOgAA-0XbAbo9SBKSZwbO0HWqvkieAdkGr80bUraeg

Logo Pack (All logos):
https://mega.co.nz/#!UMZxkSDa!N6kpTRKRermmMYq2BidisGGS8UtXPKB86SAZ0m5jc0Y

Feel free to send the links to anyone you want. Extract all of them to Documents/Sports Interactive/Graphics

Something like that
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Sortitoutsi only lets you download them in a number of parts, and speeds are quite slow. You can use my download links (don't worry, I do not get paid or anything)
 
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