My boring intro (skip if you like)
I am a relatively unknown member and I know my word probably doesn’t carry much weight around here, but ever since I first got thrashed 3-0 in FM 2012 I wanted to create a really strong tactic and win without too much hands-on managing later in the game. In a sense I like to do the heavy work upfront and reap the rewards. So I headed back to my favorite FM dedicated forums and look at what other great minds have produced. I tried several tactics and I wasn’t getting the success that they were promising. I would look at the screenshots and say: why am I not going undefeated the whole season? Why isn’t MY striker scoring 50 goals this season? Why am I not beating Barcelona 10-0 over two legs?
I smelled a little false advertisement, but I could not say anything out of respect for the people that made those tactics. Don’t get me wrong, most of them are absolutely brilliant. You will play beautiful football and score a lot of goals. You will be able to play like the historic team the authors have recreated. However, your average FMer won’t get the same results. I think that the success these people get is due to their general FM experience (man management, team-talks, ability to spot great transfer targets and the ability to adapt their tactic in a match situation). That is why I decided to test how successful the AI would be with each tactic. Also it is incredibly time consuming to play a whole season and generate a large enough data set, while keeping the number of variables down. Read the testing procedure section on how I decided to test my tactic.
The Testing procedure (skip if you like)
Well, I was inspired to do this by a_ilfandy and his tactic testing project. I wanted to improve my own tactic and I picked Koflok’s goals galore v2 (sorry koflok I didn’t have your latest version at the time) and Xenonf50’s Undefeated 4-2-2-1 v1 to use as a benchmark for my tactic and gauge it’s performance.
Now my goal was noble, I didn’t want to trash their work. In fact I respect them both a lot and they have two of the most popular and most successful tactics, which would serve as a perfect benchmark for success. I thought If my results were anywhere near what those guys got I must be on the right track.
Now like I said before playing a full season would be extremely time consuming, so I decided to holiday and let the team use the tactic I select.
I chose Arsenal to conduct the test, because they have a good depth of players across the 4-5-1 (all tactics are (4-5-1) for the same reason. It’s a very popular formation and it should keep the arguments about formation and results to a minimum.
I holidayed only until January 1st, because I was afraid that if a tactic was underperforming I would get sacked and the whole data set becomes unusable. It means one of the tests is incomplete, but it still holds weight, because the team was doing poorly because of it.
I would do this five time for each tactic and that would be well over 100 matches. It would also mean a chance to play each team in the league at least once.
I did not make any transfers, it’s the default Arsenal team. In fact I didn’t even attend my first press conference. I imported the tactics and went on holiday right away. The match preparation was set to Average and no special focus was selected.
Basically all tactics faced the same initial conditions and the effect of injuries, bad form and so on would be kept low, because I ran the test 5 times for each tactic.
Upon completion of all the tests I took a screenshot of the team’s performance in the league and their entire fixture list. I am not interested in individual statistic, I only care if my team is winning games or not.
I then recorded several interesting statistics such as Goals scored, Goals conceded, Win %, Undefeated % (Win + Draw), Pts per game (League only) and other interesting tidbits. I only looked at competitive matches. Pre-season friendlies were not included in the calculations.
I was hoping to arrive at a conclusive result, but I’ll present my analysis and let you guys draw your conclusions.
The results (probably don’t want to skip that)
Koflok’s Goals Galore:
First test
35 points in 18 matches or 1.94pts/game
Overall Record 19-4-6 (65.5 Win Percentage)
Second test
34 points in 19 matches or 1.79 pts/game
Overall Record 16-5-7 (57.1 Win Percentage)
Third test
38 points in 18 matches or 2.11 pts/game
Overall Record 18-3-7 (64.3 Win Percentage)
Fourth test
36 points in 18 matches or 2 pts/game
Overall record 17-6-5 (60.7 Win Percentage)
Fifth test
40 points in 19 matches or 2.11 pts/game
Overall Record 21-6-3 (70 Win Percentage)
Detailed Analysis:
Over the five tests this tactic gathered 183 points in 92 matches or the equivalent of 1.99 pts/game. Over a 38 game season this puts will put the team at 75.6 points. (Best League Performance)
The Overall Record (Cup, European and Domestic games) is 91 -24- 28
The tactic’s Win Percentage is 63.6%
The Unbeaten Percenatge (Wins + Draws) is 80.4%
Over that stretch the team scored 308 goals and conceded 120
On Average that is 2.15 goals per game versus 0.84 conceded for a difference of 1.31
The Overall performance versus the big 5 clubs (Man Utd, Man City, Tottenham, Liverpool and Chelseas) was 8 -5 -14
That’s a win percentage of 29.6%
And an unbeaten percentage of 48%
The team scored 34 (however 20 of those came versus Liverpool – so use Koflok’s tactic vs Liverpool) goals and conceded 40
As far as outliers go
The club suffered 7 heavy defeats (3 goal difference) and the scores are as follows: 0-3, 1-4, 0-3, 0-3, 0-3, 0-3, 0-3.
The club recorded a total of 21 victories with a winning margin of 4 goals or more. The score are as follows: 6-0, 5-0, 4-0, 6-0, 4-0, 5-0, 5-0, 5-0, 5-1, 4-0, 6-0, 4-0, 6-0, 6-0, 5-0, 4-0, 5-0, 4-0, 4-0, 4-0, 5-1.
The club also recorded 72 clean sheets.
XenonF50’s Undefeated 4-2-2-1
First test
38 points in 18 matches or 2.11 pts/game
Overall Record 22-3-4 (75.9 Win percentage)
Second test
30 points in 18 matches or 1.67 pts/game
Overall Record 14-7-6 (51.9 Win Percentage)
Third test
40 points in 19 matches or 2.11 pts/game
Overall Record 21-3-6 (70 Win Percentage)
Fourth test
40 points in 19 matches or 2.11 pts/game
Overall Record 15-7-5 (57.1 Win percentage)
Fifth test
30 points in 18 matches or 1.67 pts/game
Overall Record 15-7-7 (51.7 Win Percentage)
Detailed Analysis:
Over the five tests this tactic gathered 178 points in 92 matches or the equivalent of 1.93 pts/game. Over a 38 game season this would put the team at 73.3 points.
The Overall Record (Cup, European and Domestic games) is 88-27-28
The tactic’s win percentage is 61.5%
And the Unbeaten percentage (Wins + Draws) is 80.5%
Over that stretch the team scored 273 goals and conceded 141.
On Average that is 1.9 Goals per game versus 0.99 conceded for a difference of 0.91
The Overall performance versus the big 5 clubs (Man Utd, Man City, Tottenham, Liverpool and Chelseas) was 10-5-13. (Best Performer against Big Clubs)
That’s a win percentage of 35.7%
And an unbeaten percentage of 53.6%
The team scored 33 goals and conceded 48
As far as outliers go
The club suffered 8 heavy defeats (3 goal difference). And the results are as follows: 0-3, 0-3, 0-3, 0-3, 0-3, 0-3, 1-5, 0-3, 1-6.
The club recorded a total of 12 victories with a winning margin of 4 goals or more. The results are as follows: 4-0, 6-0, 4-0, 7-0, 4-0, 4-0, 4-0, 5-1, 6-1, 6-1, 6-0, 6-2.
The club also recorded 58 clean sheets.
TK’s Wrecking Ball:
First test
38 points in 19 matches or 2 pts/game.
Overall Record 19-2-7 (67.9 Win percentage)
Second test
37 points in 19 matches or 1.95 pts/game
Overall Record 21-4-5 (70 Win Percentage)
Third test
37 points in 19 matches or 1.95 pts/game
Overall Record 20-6-4 (66.7 Win Percentage)
Fourth test
34 points in 18 matches or 1.89 pts/game
Overall Record 17-6-5 (60.7 Win percentage)
Fifth test
38 points in 19 matches or 2 pts/game
Overall Record 19-5-6 (63.3 Win percentage)
Detailed Analysis:
Over the five tests this tactic gathered 184 points in 94 matches or the equivalent of 1.96 pts/game. Over a 38 game season this would put the team at 74.4 points.
The Overall Record (Cup, European and Domestic) is 96-23-27
The tactic’s Win Percentage is 65.7% (Best Win Percentage)
And the Unbeaten percentage (Draws + Wins) is 81.5% (Best Unbeaten Percentage)
Over that stretch the team scored 310 goals and conceded 127
On Average that is 2.12 goals per game versus 0.87 conceded for a difference of 1.25
The Overall performance versus the big 5 clubs (Man Utd, Man City, Tottenham, Liverpool and Chelseas) was 8-6-12
That’s a win percentage of 30.8 %
And an unbeaten percentage of 53.8%
The team scored 29 goals and conceded 47
As far as outliers go
The club suffered 6 heavy defeats (3 goal difference). And the results are as follows 0-4, 1-4, 0-3, 0-3, 0-4, 0-4.
The club recorded a total of 15 victories with a winning margin of 4 goals or more. The results are as follows: 4-0, 6-0, 7-0, 5-0, 4-0, 5-0, 5-1, 4-0, 5-0, 4-0, 4-0, 5-1, 6-0, 6-0, 4-0.
The club also recorded 70 clean sheets.
Final Thoughs:
As you can see the results are very close, but you can see from the scores that the different tactics have different impacts of the type of results the team gets. One offers more balance between scoring and defending, but when they lose they lose heavy. One offers a great scoring punch, but can be hot and cold also. One offers more protection vs the big clubs, but can be either great or not-so-great at times.
If anybody would like to continue this testing or has any questions about how I was testing this PM me or leave a comment and I’ll upload all the files and settings I used.
I tried to be as impartial as I can be even though my own tactic was being tested as well. I want to reiterate that I was simply benchmarking against two great tactics and not trying to embarrass anybody or prove conclusively that one way is better than another.
I am a relatively unknown member and I know my word probably doesn’t carry much weight around here, but ever since I first got thrashed 3-0 in FM 2012 I wanted to create a really strong tactic and win without too much hands-on managing later in the game. In a sense I like to do the heavy work upfront and reap the rewards. So I headed back to my favorite FM dedicated forums and look at what other great minds have produced. I tried several tactics and I wasn’t getting the success that they were promising. I would look at the screenshots and say: why am I not going undefeated the whole season? Why isn’t MY striker scoring 50 goals this season? Why am I not beating Barcelona 10-0 over two legs?
I smelled a little false advertisement, but I could not say anything out of respect for the people that made those tactics. Don’t get me wrong, most of them are absolutely brilliant. You will play beautiful football and score a lot of goals. You will be able to play like the historic team the authors have recreated. However, your average FMer won’t get the same results. I think that the success these people get is due to their general FM experience (man management, team-talks, ability to spot great transfer targets and the ability to adapt their tactic in a match situation). That is why I decided to test how successful the AI would be with each tactic. Also it is incredibly time consuming to play a whole season and generate a large enough data set, while keeping the number of variables down. Read the testing procedure section on how I decided to test my tactic.
The Testing procedure (skip if you like)
Well, I was inspired to do this by a_ilfandy and his tactic testing project. I wanted to improve my own tactic and I picked Koflok’s goals galore v2 (sorry koflok I didn’t have your latest version at the time) and Xenonf50’s Undefeated 4-2-2-1 v1 to use as a benchmark for my tactic and gauge it’s performance.
Now my goal was noble, I didn’t want to trash their work. In fact I respect them both a lot and they have two of the most popular and most successful tactics, which would serve as a perfect benchmark for success. I thought If my results were anywhere near what those guys got I must be on the right track.
Now like I said before playing a full season would be extremely time consuming, so I decided to holiday and let the team use the tactic I select.
I chose Arsenal to conduct the test, because they have a good depth of players across the 4-5-1 (all tactics are (4-5-1) for the same reason. It’s a very popular formation and it should keep the arguments about formation and results to a minimum.
I holidayed only until January 1st, because I was afraid that if a tactic was underperforming I would get sacked and the whole data set becomes unusable. It means one of the tests is incomplete, but it still holds weight, because the team was doing poorly because of it.
I would do this five time for each tactic and that would be well over 100 matches. It would also mean a chance to play each team in the league at least once.
I did not make any transfers, it’s the default Arsenal team. In fact I didn’t even attend my first press conference. I imported the tactics and went on holiday right away. The match preparation was set to Average and no special focus was selected.
Basically all tactics faced the same initial conditions and the effect of injuries, bad form and so on would be kept low, because I ran the test 5 times for each tactic.
Upon completion of all the tests I took a screenshot of the team’s performance in the league and their entire fixture list. I am not interested in individual statistic, I only care if my team is winning games or not.
I then recorded several interesting statistics such as Goals scored, Goals conceded, Win %, Undefeated % (Win + Draw), Pts per game (League only) and other interesting tidbits. I only looked at competitive matches. Pre-season friendlies were not included in the calculations.
I was hoping to arrive at a conclusive result, but I’ll present my analysis and let you guys draw your conclusions.
The results (probably don’t want to skip that)
Koflok’s Goals Galore:
First test
35 points in 18 matches or 1.94pts/game
Overall Record 19-4-6 (65.5 Win Percentage)
Second test
34 points in 19 matches or 1.79 pts/game
Overall Record 16-5-7 (57.1 Win Percentage)
Third test
38 points in 18 matches or 2.11 pts/game
Overall Record 18-3-7 (64.3 Win Percentage)
Fourth test
36 points in 18 matches or 2 pts/game
Overall record 17-6-5 (60.7 Win Percentage)
Fifth test
40 points in 19 matches or 2.11 pts/game
Overall Record 21-6-3 (70 Win Percentage)
Detailed Analysis:
Over the five tests this tactic gathered 183 points in 92 matches or the equivalent of 1.99 pts/game. Over a 38 game season this puts will put the team at 75.6 points. (Best League Performance)
The Overall Record (Cup, European and Domestic games) is 91 -24- 28
The tactic’s Win Percentage is 63.6%
The Unbeaten Percenatge (Wins + Draws) is 80.4%
Over that stretch the team scored 308 goals and conceded 120
On Average that is 2.15 goals per game versus 0.84 conceded for a difference of 1.31
The Overall performance versus the big 5 clubs (Man Utd, Man City, Tottenham, Liverpool and Chelseas) was 8 -5 -14
That’s a win percentage of 29.6%
And an unbeaten percentage of 48%
The team scored 34 (however 20 of those came versus Liverpool – so use Koflok’s tactic vs Liverpool) goals and conceded 40
As far as outliers go
The club suffered 7 heavy defeats (3 goal difference) and the scores are as follows: 0-3, 1-4, 0-3, 0-3, 0-3, 0-3, 0-3.
The club recorded a total of 21 victories with a winning margin of 4 goals or more. The score are as follows: 6-0, 5-0, 4-0, 6-0, 4-0, 5-0, 5-0, 5-0, 5-1, 4-0, 6-0, 4-0, 6-0, 6-0, 5-0, 4-0, 5-0, 4-0, 4-0, 4-0, 5-1.
The club also recorded 72 clean sheets.
XenonF50’s Undefeated 4-2-2-1
First test
38 points in 18 matches or 2.11 pts/game
Overall Record 22-3-4 (75.9 Win percentage)
Second test
30 points in 18 matches or 1.67 pts/game
Overall Record 14-7-6 (51.9 Win Percentage)
Third test
40 points in 19 matches or 2.11 pts/game
Overall Record 21-3-6 (70 Win Percentage)
Fourth test
40 points in 19 matches or 2.11 pts/game
Overall Record 15-7-5 (57.1 Win percentage)
Fifth test
30 points in 18 matches or 1.67 pts/game
Overall Record 15-7-7 (51.7 Win Percentage)
Detailed Analysis:
Over the five tests this tactic gathered 178 points in 92 matches or the equivalent of 1.93 pts/game. Over a 38 game season this would put the team at 73.3 points.
The Overall Record (Cup, European and Domestic games) is 88-27-28
The tactic’s win percentage is 61.5%
And the Unbeaten percentage (Wins + Draws) is 80.5%
Over that stretch the team scored 273 goals and conceded 141.
On Average that is 1.9 Goals per game versus 0.99 conceded for a difference of 0.91
The Overall performance versus the big 5 clubs (Man Utd, Man City, Tottenham, Liverpool and Chelseas) was 10-5-13. (Best Performer against Big Clubs)
That’s a win percentage of 35.7%
And an unbeaten percentage of 53.6%
The team scored 33 goals and conceded 48
As far as outliers go
The club suffered 8 heavy defeats (3 goal difference). And the results are as follows: 0-3, 0-3, 0-3, 0-3, 0-3, 0-3, 1-5, 0-3, 1-6.
The club recorded a total of 12 victories with a winning margin of 4 goals or more. The results are as follows: 4-0, 6-0, 4-0, 7-0, 4-0, 4-0, 4-0, 5-1, 6-1, 6-1, 6-0, 6-2.
The club also recorded 58 clean sheets.
TK’s Wrecking Ball:
First test
38 points in 19 matches or 2 pts/game.
Overall Record 19-2-7 (67.9 Win percentage)
Second test
37 points in 19 matches or 1.95 pts/game
Overall Record 21-4-5 (70 Win Percentage)
Third test
37 points in 19 matches or 1.95 pts/game
Overall Record 20-6-4 (66.7 Win Percentage)
Fourth test
34 points in 18 matches or 1.89 pts/game
Overall Record 17-6-5 (60.7 Win percentage)
Fifth test
38 points in 19 matches or 2 pts/game
Overall Record 19-5-6 (63.3 Win percentage)
Detailed Analysis:
Over the five tests this tactic gathered 184 points in 94 matches or the equivalent of 1.96 pts/game. Over a 38 game season this would put the team at 74.4 points.
The Overall Record (Cup, European and Domestic) is 96-23-27
The tactic’s Win Percentage is 65.7% (Best Win Percentage)
And the Unbeaten percentage (Draws + Wins) is 81.5% (Best Unbeaten Percentage)
Over that stretch the team scored 310 goals and conceded 127
On Average that is 2.12 goals per game versus 0.87 conceded for a difference of 1.25
The Overall performance versus the big 5 clubs (Man Utd, Man City, Tottenham, Liverpool and Chelseas) was 8-6-12
That’s a win percentage of 30.8 %
And an unbeaten percentage of 53.8%
The team scored 29 goals and conceded 47
As far as outliers go
The club suffered 6 heavy defeats (3 goal difference). And the results are as follows 0-4, 1-4, 0-3, 0-3, 0-4, 0-4.
The club recorded a total of 15 victories with a winning margin of 4 goals or more. The results are as follows: 4-0, 6-0, 7-0, 5-0, 4-0, 5-0, 5-1, 4-0, 5-0, 4-0, 4-0, 5-1, 6-0, 6-0, 4-0.
The club also recorded 70 clean sheets.
Final Thoughs:
As you can see the results are very close, but you can see from the scores that the different tactics have different impacts of the type of results the team gets. One offers more balance between scoring and defending, but when they lose they lose heavy. One offers a great scoring punch, but can be hot and cold also. One offers more protection vs the big clubs, but can be either great or not-so-great at times.
If anybody would like to continue this testing or has any questions about how I was testing this PM me or leave a comment and I’ll upload all the files and settings I used.
I tried to be as impartial as I can be even though my own tactic was being tested as well. I want to reiterate that I was simply benchmarking against two great tactics and not trying to embarrass anybody or prove conclusively that one way is better than another.
Last edited:
