I'd like my chances to make up 31 seconds on Stage 20 if I was actually playing this stage on PCM because of how the CPU handles downhill finishes. And for that same reason, I think this one is pretty much over. Would be cool to see Tenorio try and make up the difference with one last effort, but odds are that's not happening.

This game is the biggest joke. I swear it picks like 7 or 8 teams to be active for a race, and the rest just do nothing on every single stage. Compare my team I brought here to every other, and I should easily be in the Top 10 for scoring from this race. I'm pretty sure I'll end up in the bottom 2, in reality.

The game rewards teams with terrible riders. Sprints are a joke, hills are a joke, TTs are a joke, and grand tours are a joke. Can we please switch back to 15 where things made sense (for the most part). Like sure Shikai can't get a Top 10 here, probably because of his weak Hill and ACC. But if Tvetcov and Brambilla can be in the Top 10, I think Shikai should be able to as well. Iino should be strong enough for breakaways then as well, but he's been invisible. Shirota was the only rider to go into the breakaway in the entire race for us, on one single stage. Because of my sprinters I wouldn't expect to be in the breakaway on flat stages, but hill and MO stages we should easily be sending a rider every single stage, if Shikai cant even outperform a 77 MO rider.

In old versions people used to say "x manager was a great planner" or something along those lines. With PCM 18, you can't convince me that anyones successes are down to good planning anymore, its all down to luck.

Now THIS is pod racing!

Our third second place this race, but I can't complain about this one the way I might have with Arndt's, considering how incredibly we raced today.


Three guys in such a large break is in itself not a feat to applaud yet, but keeping all three among the Top 10 in the end certainly is!

I'd even go as far as saying the best ride of the day across the entire peloton belongs to Lukas Meiler.
He worked for Helme and Mager all stage long and yet held on to the front group longer than the KoM leader and finished just seconds off very strong riders in Teuns and Sepulveda, who both exceed Meiler's MO stat by 11 and HI stat by at least 6 points.

While Mager certainly could've won the stage, he was the driving force behind the final selection and can proudly say that he would've deserved the win more than Boonrathathanakorn (I spelled that from memory, in case it happens to be correct ), who outsmarted us today.
Congrats to King Power, for winning the Simon Gerrans Award!

Helme held on nicely to a good place on the day as well, but obviously more importantly he gained a buttload of time in the GC, entering the Top 40 and making it as far as third in the U25.
I do expect him to suffer for today's efforts on stage 20, but if we get lucky, he can hold onto those extra rankings points and make a positive impact on the team as a loanee I'd certainly consider trying to keep around if Atlantius doesn't return.


Now for the last serious stage, thanks to it being mountain rated again I hope the team gets Arndt in one last break to defend or even improve his KoM position as well as going for one last attempt at a stage win.

Isn’t there 50 points or so to the winner and then lower and lower from there? I agree that Lecuisinier could likely get 11th or so like he did before, but I would think a Stage podium for Grosu is enough. But it’s just a guess though. If he wins the jersey it’s well deserved atleast :-)

There are 50 points for the winner, but the gap between first and second or first and third is quite big. Looking at the first stage, Jakobsen, who finished second, only got 30 points.

So Grosu would need to win the last stage. If he finishes second, it will really depend on how much points Lecuisinier will score in the last two stages.

Thank you again for the quality of your reports, Nemolito! They make the race easy to follow


This I agree on.

It looks like we're not even trying for the breakaways, which is the painful part. Also, that was a very, very bad stage by Galta. No good reasons for him to not be in the first peloton crossing the finish line, and this probably cost us a spot in the final GC too, with Tvetcov passing him.

This race has been painful from the very start, and there's no light in the tunnel, it seems, quite the contrary

It's true. That's why said - prior to the race - that I hope for my team being in the breakaway "matrix" here. Didn't end up with much scoring, but opposing to the Giro, we were at least in those breaks here. And the game does not change this matrix during a GT/stage race, that's indeed frustrating for any team, that's on the wrong side of the system. That's why riders like e.g. Dion Smith or (earlier in the race) Willie Smit are repeatedly in those breaks instead of too high GC positions and other guys not attempting despite sitting low in the GC. Or teams not attempting at all despite a situation, where they should do, and other teams like e.g. Gazelle (Giro) still floating breakaways despite having the GC lead for "no reason" (no offense).

Throwing an unpopular idea into the room to mitigate the issue somewhat:

We could give less ranking points for breakaway wins.

Actually that's what I've been thinking about, too.

I think the idea is horribly stupid.

All the AI complaining is horribly stupid and annoying in a race discussion thread.

Horribly stupid. Okay. Enough said, I guess...

I was just giving feedback to a manager's frustration, that I totally got in this moment. If you would know me or my race discussion's behavior, you should know, that I usually don't lose too many words about the AI, but just actual rider performances from a role play view. This is not the place to discuss AI in a big/general way, yes. But a frustration coming from this specific race can be discussed exactly in this thread. Imo.

The "breakaway reward thing" , yes, should be discussed elsewhere. It hasn't been a discussion here, actually, just a short note/idea.

Feel free to extend your "horribly stupid" shutdown maybe with some more content in a thread, where it belongs to.

I wouldn't be quite as explicit as Croatia14. I don't think the idea of lowering the amount of randomness in terms of final expression is a bad idea as such. I just don't think it can be implemented fairly and to an extent where it won't be more harmful than beneficial.

Some managers pay quite some money for riders that they expect could be gloryhunters rather than domestiques for a top leader. And I think the issue rather (in this race atleast) is a combination of PCM AI's complete lack of understanding subtop GC riders and then the races themself.

I must admit that I didn't pay much attention to the route of the Vuelta before throwing Lecuisinier into it. I looked at the amount of mountains, and the anticipated competition - but now I look at it (knock-on-wood) the final TT was the final interesting stage of the race. From that point, it would be obvious that no time would be gained, which isn't ideal at all! We have 2 very difficult hilly stages and 1 mountain stage after the TT which would/should play into the hands of the GC battle, but unless the final mountainstage turn out better than the looks of it, we have automatically thrown the GC battle on the ground to allow more breakaway succes. That is something we need to look at.

As Lecuisinier have the jersey I'm OK with handing the wins to the breakways, but I would have been very frustrated to see 3 passive stages in the final week if he wasn't leading. And therefor I also have to take that party even when things are going my way.

It is very very hurtful for the game that riders like Reis and Shikai are tossed around finishing far behind where they should be. Both should be safe top 10 bets, rather than 14th and 20th. It's OK that a rider like Tvetcov, Brambilla, Goos, Smith and Warchol from time to time break into the top 15, but all of them at the same time is hurtfull. Like one said, it completely erases the feeling of "good planning", when random gloryhunting is as important as it is right now.

I know I have Lecuisinier in this race, and have had a couple of races with strong leaders, but this is the list of breakaways I have been in this season (I have a couple of missed tries, that I haven't counted - Being caught before the break is allosed):

Badaling International | Giannoutsos in the morningbreak | Caught 25km to goal
Tirreno - Adriatico, Stage 4 | Giannoutsos in the morningbreak | Caught 30km to goal
Paris - Roubaix | Miltiadis in the morningbreak | Caught 175km to goal
Giro d'Italia, Stage 6 | Kastrantas in the morningbreak | 4th after being caught by the pack
Giro d'Italia, Stage 8 | van Niekerk and Zoidl in the break | Both dropped fast and caught
Giro d'Italia, Stage 12 | van Niekerk in the break | Dropped and caught 20km to go
Giro d'Italia, Stage 15 | Kastrantas in the break | Dropped and caught 18km to go
Giro d'Italia, Stage 20 | Zoidl in the break | Dropped and caught 12km to go

A total of 87 racedays have been ridden. We have been involved in the break 8 times, which is aproximately 9 %. I have scored a total of 15 points from these, throughout the entire season! I still don't have a single succesful breakaway (stage podium) and no early attacks from the likes of Bongiorno, Boily, Budyak or Koretzky (The latter have overperformed elsewhere though). 2 from Kastrantas and van Niekerk respectively who are my main breakaway riders that are usually planned in races to attack.

Yay! Greatest day for Thai cycling so far. Boonratanathanakorn is with me since my first season where I overpaid for him. He is a great breakaway rider who gets a win from those every few seasons. It’s great to see that he can also do it at the highest level in a grand tour. Smart riding letting Mager do all the work!

A few days ago it looked like this would be another poor GT from my team but then we got in 5 consecutive stages podium finishes which makes up for Reis’ performance here and in the Giro. In none of t he stages (except maybe the tot) I had a preface favourite. I can feel valverde’s frustration. I brought some riders that should do well in breaks but to the extent it is at the moment definitely not. I think I did well to select the two Gts for Reis where the competition is not as strong and the route can suit him. If he had done well I could’ve said I was rewarded for my planning but now despite that not happening this will probably still be my most successful GT but it’s just down to luck. It would feel better if it was the other way.

Let’s see whether Smith will fight for the KoM prize but I fear he might be too far up in the GC by now to join breaks.

I’m sure the race discussion thread would be a much better place if everyone would just post a one liner every few days OlegTinkov style.
Where else than in here should we discuss race specific AI? It’s definitely part of discussing results to also take the AI into account.

Guys, I didn't want this to become personal.

Well its been a quiet Vuelta recently for us, and it does suck. Bellis has been a lead weight around the team for no reason, instead of him joining the breaks as you'd expect for a rider like him to do in the third week, he just sits in the peloton and does nothing. Even worse we don't even chase or have a rider in the break and then Bellis sprints to a stage win/podium - but its a terrible shame its happens after about 5 minutes after the stage winner finishes.... :/
Its happened 3 times now and it quite frankly sucks, especially since Bellis was our only reasonable chance of success apart from Kennaugh in the breaks and so on.

At least there's some solace in seeing Tvetcov light up the race. Its great to see a former leader do so well in such a race!

Fingers crossed for today, or else I'll be very sad...

There's one thing to come in here and say you are disappointed in how your team is doing and constantly saying how bad the AI is because it's not doing what you thought it should be doing. That's what Oleg meant, I think.

When crashes were enabled I had Gesink crash in like half of his races. I was disappointed sure and I showed my disappointment, but I wasn't spamming the discussion threads with how shit the game is for making my rider crash so much.

This is not directed at you, but at the constant AI trash talking in the discussion threads. It was always part of the ManGame to have riders perform bellow or above their stats. Or teams not joining the breakaway when they manager thought they should.

And the idea to give different points based on which group the stage winner was from is ludicrous.

This sounds like a horrible idea when it comes to organizing it as it must be done manually obviously as the result sheet can`t really divide break and non break wins automatically.

Even if it might be a decent idea on paper, I fear it`s just not doable from a organization point of view and would often lead to mistakes as most things that are done manually here and there.

Which is why it`s good that ranking calculations are basically automated by now thanks to Fabianski.

Congrats to Hirt. Didn't see that coming two days ago. Haig kinda throwing away his second GT Top-5 this season and our chance to possibly Top-5 all GTs this year. Disappointing. In general probably another rather low scoring GT result despite being in some breakaways now and then.

A good final stage there with Bongiorno controlling things for Lecuisinier, and the latter taking a couple of stagepoints and also moves from 19 to 28 points deficit between him and Grosu. Still not enough for me to feel confident by any means, but atleast enough to have a fighting chance.

Bongiorno climbing from 34th to 29th in the last stages which is very nice indeed. That's an extra 10 points unless something happens tomorrow. Barta also climbing from 11th to 9th in the U25 competition (Not important at all though), which makes it look a bit better, despite the fact that I would have hoped for him in top 5. Team GC in 8th is atleast 5 spots worse than anticipated, but no breakaways all race and a lot of "free time" for many of my riders each day made it impossible to strive higher.

Behind Bongiorno I have 6 riders in the 50-100th GC spot, to add 6x15 points. I would have thought maybe Barta and Ioannidis could make the top 50 quite easily, and Budyak could score a point or two from the hills, but it's not important.

One last stage to go - and it would be amazing to see Lecuisinier keep the green jersey and maybe see Bouglas interfere with Grosus chances too... He was really strong looking on stage 19 and didn't seem to struggle at all today either.

Congrats on a nice Hirt-win Roman! To see him surpass Haig in the final moment is both cool and really hurtful. Especially since tsmoha is one of those managers that isn't lucky in terms of breaks, and now 6th instead of 5th with his direct competitor even taking and additional 70 points from a stagewin.

Tvetcov finishing a GT in 7th is just a retarded good result for Evonik. I fully understand that coming with a good sprinter, the best puncheur and a good overall breakaway team is to expect some points - but 195 points from Tvetcov + whatever stagepoints he gathered is atleast 100 points more than could have been anticipated We seem to get away from the race with something like 1.350-1.400 points depending on the final stage. Significantly lower than the highest scoring teams of any GT last season, but It's not bad, and much better than what ember got from the Giro this season.

How is the OTL calculated btw? Have we seen any rider drop at all this GT? Kopfauf losing over 1 hour today...