In previous games, all the AI teams did race against the own team. Does this happen here too? I mean, if one of my riders is on the GT lead, would I have to ride at the front of the race to make sure that the early breakaway does not win by 20 minutes? Or in cobble races, do the AI riders attack constantly and seem to have endless red and yellow bar but as soon as one of my riders is in the group they slow down and let the peloton catch up? Or on flat stages, the AI chases the break away but 15km before the finish they just stop riding making it impossible to win a sprint?

The season planning got slightly better this year, with the possibility of copy pasting the planning between your riders, surely saves a lot of time at the start of the year.

The AI is definitely an improvement since last year's: I noticed a lower amount of breakaways winning races, which was happening too annoyingly often in PCM 14;
Besides, it's easier to get into a breakaway: me and many other players were noticing that it was sometimes inexplicably impossible to get into a breakaway even though your riders weren't considered as favourites.

In PCM 14 it's also happened that if a breakaway wasn't made up of at least 5 riders, you had to relay all the time if you wanted not to be constantly attacked by the rest of the break.

The AI in the mountains is sensibly better as well, this time around in fact the AI's leaders' domestiques will play their role seriously and will stay with their captains at the front.

About Be-a-Pro, although you're unable to give orders to your teammates (which is indeed annoying), they will hardly take any wrong decisions, and that's a really important point. If you're a leader, you'll be protected all throughout the race, and if you're a favourite, they'll even relay to catch the breakaway.

As most others said though, the bad thing is that the development in pro cyclist is a bit too fast... Cyanide is trying to fix it as they demonstrated with the first patch, and I'm sure that we'll manage to have a realistic development after the next patches. It isn't easy as it seems to fix because Freire explained us that our rider's development is connected to the evolution of the rest of the riders, therefore changing it is not quite easy at all.

But they definitely made a step forward with the development in career mode under my point of view: after we experienced a major stat inflation in PCM 14, the evolution of the stats in PCM 15 is almost perfect!


Yeah, as I said above, this changed, and the AI will actually collaborate.

I forgot to mention that in cobble races the AI is better as well. Besides the infinite energy bars, the other riders now won't attack with a bit less than 100 kms to go. They're not that strong anymore in the last kms, either.

I have to add that I had already played 2 seasons before the slowing-down-progression patch and I have played the Tour on 'easy' because I had some troubles with the dot recently (looks like the values changed somehow?)
And even then it looks like I'll win this Grand Tour with only seconds to spare.

So if you start now with the slower patch and on normal or hard, don't expect to win the Tour unless you're 24, 25 or even older.

They can't slow development of be a pro mode too much, because you're basically spawned as a potential 8 talent.

Potential 8 is reserved for the best of the best.. riders that actually are World class by the time they turn pro already. SO if they were to tone it down, all potential 8 talents ever generated by the game would be crap as well until they are at least 25/26

What you really want, is the chance to chose your potential. Like f.e potential 6. You'll be top at what you do best, but are no freak of nature.. It'll be a real challenge to win a grand tour or big classic at all with this potential.

This would indeed be best.
Those who want to win quickly can still play it that way, while others will prefer pot. 4-6 only.

That's a really good idea that Cyanide should implement right now.

I just won my first grand tour aged 25 (post-patch), so not that crazy really.

Although I did manage to do a clean sweep of the Giro, winning all four jerseys plus the team classification, which was fun! The mountain and sprint jerseys were both won by a couple of points each, and the overall by about a minute from Merhawi Kudus, who is a bit of a beast.

The thing is, you are spawned with 8 potential, but you might have stats capped below the AI in some respects. My mountain stat is capped at 83, Kudus, Gaoghegan Hart and Formolo have 84 and Quintana has 85.

Where can i see my rider targets?

Yes, they should give everyone a choice. Not force one way. If you slow development f.e others will become unhappy they can't win the Tour 8 times.

I'm all for free choice, like the dev speed in previous PCM between 0.0 and 1.0.
So I really hope Cyanide does give choice of potential, or choice of growth

Cannot you just set extreme difficulty? (don't have the game yet)

The extreme difficulty does alter the stats but not the speed of progress. It would still be possible to have MO and TT above 80 at the age of 23 in every career.

That raises another question: Does the difficulty affect my rider only? Or my whole team?

No official testing from me but I believe my entire team.
Worked around with easy/normal and hard already and on easy my team performs bloody strong on all terrain, while on hard it was tougher.

This is just personal experience and could be a coincidence, though!

I just signed for Europcar in the second season however they changed their kit to one I really dislike.
Can anyone help in telling me how I could change it back in the 3d race as I can only seem to change its appearance in the main page not in the actual race.
Thanks

scary isn't it, have the same thing (although not with PCM15 cause that's probably unplayable but TdF 2014) I played one stage with Giant, started with Pro Tour Mode and never looked back until now (although I only started playing it today)

Yeah, it is a bit scary. I got into PCM because I like sport management games, so usually I just play long careers. I haven't touched career mode yet and i've been playing for the best part of four days..... This is ridiculously addictive.

I'm already at 28 hours of playing. At this moment I have no need to ever go back to team mode, but I probably will.
Though the speed is amazing and love the gameplay and whatnot.

Good job Cyanide. Real improvement. Thumbs up

Turns out I have been doing the world championships, the game just hasn't been giving me the option to actually play them....

Does anyone know if it's possible to slow down the growth of other young riders? There is a rider in the peloton who is 20 years old and has 85 tt, a rider who is 23 and has 85 mountain and so on. I really don't like it that after only 4 seasons i'm barely competing with real riders. I'm not sure wether I can do this with an editor because these riders are not in the pro peloton from season 1....

If your team says to you that you have to help your leader but you don't do that or you just attack, does it have any consequences for you?

Hi!!! i have a sprinter, but my team doesnt make a train for my sprint... however, they did it once... does anyone knows how it works? tks