I am in career mode where my team needs to be exclusively made of French riders.

I was wondering how to create a mountain “train� (hopefully it is the same word in English than it is in French), like you do for the sprint, as I’m always lacking a little bit of energy towards the end of the climb.

What I do at the moment, for example, is I have Pinot as my leader on the Tour and riders like Bardet, Barguil, Elissonde etc… as team mates. So I have Bardet who protects Pinot and during the last climb, I have Pinot in cursor mode (between 75 and 85 depending on length of climb etc…) and Bardet who does the hard work for Pinot to finish. But there is always something missing and the better riders almost always finish a few seconds before me.
So I was wondering if I could build a train like in a sprint where I would have for example Elissonde do the dirty work first, then Barguil, then Bardet for Pinot to finish it off.
What I have tried to do is to have one or two others riders in infinite relay mode (between 80 and 88, sometimes 89 or 90) but they either get tired too quickly or they don't follow the pace of Bardet/Pinot or the other teams so I am back to square one.

This has been asked and answered before, did you try the forum search?

Generally said, you can do it, but you should always protect your leader so that he has more energy for the last km.

Yeah I've had a look but couldn't find a similar thread, not sure if the question has been asked in another thread.

I always protect my leader but I wonder if there is a way that the rider who protects the leader has to do less work.
I don't know why I didn't think about this before, but is it possible to protect the protector and therefore build a "train" like that?

Yes, you can F.e. if you are using Sky on the Alpe d'Huez you can do as they +/- IRL. Froome being protected by Nieve, being protected by Deignan, being protected by Lopez etc. etc.

Are you able to do that?

Great to know...

Can't believe I didn't think about this before!! Thanks for the confirmation, indeed it's great to know

Pretty sure you cant protect a rider that is protecting someone else, unless thats been changed in 14.

Maybe 14 is bugged, and that is why this goes...i once protected my leader with all his teammates at once.

Actually no, pretty sure I recall it being mentioned since irl more than one rider can protect someone, so the ability to only protect with one rider (without the fetch water glitch) was removed.

So disregard my post above (most likely)

I'm pretty sure that in PCM 14 you aren't able neither to protect your leader with all his teammates nor making a domestique protect more than a teammate. You're only able to make something like a train AFAIK. So that rider 1 protects rider 2 that protects rider 3 etc.

@matt17br You can protect a rider with all teammates. If you call the protector for water and his 2nd "work" is to protect someone and you put another rider protecting the leader while he is going for water, the 1st protector will give water and then will protect the leader, aswell the 2nd protector (I explained it too bad, maybe...)

@valverde123 So, I can´t protect a protector...

This is how I do my Mountain trains (using 5 Sky Riders as example)

Put Pate on 'Infinite Relay', with Nieve and Deignan behind on 'Normal Relay'. Have Porte protecting Froome, and Froome on 'Hold Position' to Nieve.

Pate will set the pace, with Deignan and Nieve waiting behind. When Pate is dead, change Deignan and so on. When Deignan is dead, Nieve takes over in the same way.

Froome will stay at the front on the back of Nieve, and Porte will be keeping him fresh. When Nieve is dead, put Froome on 'Effort' to finish off the train.

Keep adjusting the effort of the lead rider in the 'train' to avoid killing the others Hope that helps

According to Cyanide it does not work: The protected rider will not be protected "more".
Instead of trying to exploit a bug, you should protect your best 2 mountain riders.

Thanks!

Or use it but not by protecting leader with all domestiques, but kind of cascading protection: like Froome is protected by Porte, who is protected by Nieve, who is protected by Henao etc. Personally I find a problem that some of my domestiques get blocked during the climb etc and they either start to fall back or lose all energy trying to go back to front before even I use them to protect my leaders, so this kind of 'train' is helpful to keep them all do their share of protection work.

The additional riders don't protect anybody.
But they would be riding at front of the race and therefore get tired faster.