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PCM against my breakaways
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Posted on 22-11-2024 03:06
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juvilado
hi, ive noticed that when i try to make a breakaway, all the peloton goes after me, no matter if im leader, 5th in mountain or nothing to be worried about.

On the other hand, the AI mountain leader breaks away and nobody follows him...

Am i doing st wrong or the AI is agaisnt the human player?
 
trekbmc
Unfortunately it's a known problem that the computer will chase back your breaks, although sometimes you can get away. Sorry



"What done is, is one." - Benji Naesen
 
juvilado
Wow, thats a very important "bug"!

Im getting dissapointed with that issue, im getting tired of this game because of that....
 
King Kunta
I think you're doing something wrong. Do you remember to set effort to 55-60 and relay so you help the grp you're sitting in, that will make everybody in the grp work together, and that is crucial if you want to win in a breakaway grp, otherwise the peloton will chase you down.

I always make sure to have atleast 1 rider in the breakaway, because sometimes the breakaway will hold to the finish. Sometimes i even attack right, at the beginning, and if you just go with a semi-descent rider, the peloton will sometimes not care at all.

Also dont be afraid to try to catch the breakaway with a rider, sometimes you will can catch them even if they have 5-6 minutes, remember they probably only use 50-60 effort in the breakaway, so you can catch them quick at 80-85 effort.

You can always try to attack, and see if some riders in the peloton will start chasing you, if they do, just cancel the attack. You can abuse it a bit so you almost don't use any energy.

Also keep in mind that sprint stages will most of the times end with the big sprint team chasing you, and you can't really do much about it, unless you get 10-12 mins. That is pretty realistic imo :-)
 
juvilado
King Kunta wrote:
I think you're doing something wrong. Do you remember to set effort to 55-60 and relay so you help the grp you're sitting in, that will make everybody in the grp work together, and that is crucial if you want to win in a breakaway grp, otherwise the peloton will chase you down.

I always make sure to have atleast 1 rider in the breakaway, because sometimes the breakaway will hold to the finish. Sometimes i even attack right, at the beginning, and if you just go with a semi-descent rider, the peloton will sometimes not care at all.

Also dont be afraid to try to catch the breakaway with a rider, sometimes you will can catch them even if they have 5-6 minutes, remember they probably only use 50-60 effort in the breakaway, so you can catch them quick at 80-85 effort.

You can always try to attack, and see if some riders in the peloton will start chasing you, if they do, just cancel the attack. You can abuse it a bit so you almost don't use any energy.

Also keep in mind that sprint stages will most of the times end with the big sprint team chasing you, and you can't really do much about it, unless you get 10-12 mins. That is pretty realistic imo :-)


It would be fine if all the riders (IA and me) would be chased the same way, but i find that IA always tries to chase me regardless of my ranking, while other riders almost get a succesful breakaway, even the favourite ones! And if i later try to escape and connect to the breakaway group, the peloton again chases me and the chase ends when they finally catch me, alone or the group. If they catch me before i catch the escapees, then the escapees get their gap increased then on. So that i feel the IA is against me!

Im playing single player pro cyclist (solo career) so i cant manage the team, only one rider.
 
coolrex
juvilado wrote:
King Kunta wrote:
I think you're doing something wrong. Do you remember to set effort to 55-60 and relay so you help the grp you're sitting in, that will make everybody in the grp work together, and that is crucial if you want to win in a breakaway grp, otherwise the peloton will chase you down.

I always make sure to have atleast 1 rider in the breakaway, because sometimes the breakaway will hold to the finish. Sometimes i even attack right, at the beginning, and if you just go with a semi-descent rider, the peloton will sometimes not care at all.

Also dont be afraid to try to catch the breakaway with a rider, sometimes you will can catch them even if they have 5-6 minutes, remember they probably only use 50-60 effort in the breakaway, so you can catch them quick at 80-85 effort.

You can always try to attack, and see if some riders in the peloton will start chasing you, if they do, just cancel the attack. You can abuse it a bit so you almost don't use any energy.

Also keep in mind that sprint stages will most of the times end with the big sprint team chasing you, and you can't really do much about it, unless you get 10-12 mins. That is pretty realistic imo :-)


It would be fine if all the riders (IA and me) would be chased the same way, but i find that IA always tries to chase me regardless of my ranking, while other riders almost get a succesful breakaway, even the favourite ones! And if i later try to escape and connect to the breakaway group, the peloton again chases me and the chase ends when they finally catch me, alone or the group. If they catch me before i catch the escapees, then the escapees get their gap increased then on. So that i feel the IA is against me!

Im playing single player pro cyclist (solo career) so i cant manage the team, only one rider.


Maybe you aren't in an important team (development or continental team), or your team hasn't set your stategy on Stage win, most of times the team only wants you to get a classification win, so they won't ride for your victory. also you need to time your attacks. for example quintana can breakaway in tdf (pro cyclist) because everyone knows that he only is gonna go for the mountain jersey, at the finish he will be shitty tired. and if you attack too early you might be chased, if you are a climber just do it 500 metres before a climb so that if the peleton chase you, dies and will lose you on more then 2 minutes instead of merging with you in the group. i never have problems with it. i always get in a breakaway in the first seasons depending on your riders speciality. and later on you stop doing that. it isn't a bug its just your tactics on the race you ride. they won't let a sprinter attack on a sprintstage and that counts the same for climbers
Edited by coolrex on 26-08-2015 11:46
 
juvilado
It's so evident... I think im not playing anymore. Its a pity because otherwise the game was good enough to have good time with it.

It started happening in La vuelta a España, didn't happen so much before...
 
juvilado
Wait, i just noticed, im the leader of my team (Cofidis). I think this might be the cause of my obsesive chasing?
 
trekbmc
juvilado wrote:
Wait, i just noticed, im the leader of my team (Cofidis). I think this might be the cause of my obsesive chasing?


Yeah, your probably ranked as a contender as such (even if not on the pre-race favourites, meaning they don't let you get away Wink



"What done is, is one." - Benji Naesen
 
Ripley
Agreed. However, should your rider not be strong enough (yet) to play a major role in the general classification (outside the top 10, the more minutes behind the leader the better), then wait for a late hilly or mountain stage to join a break and you can find yourself gaining 10 or even 20 minutes at the end of the stage and a really good final GC position. You'll just have to wait until the time is right.
 
Avin Wargunnson
coolrex wrote: for example quintana can breakaway in tdf (pro cyclist) because everyone knows that he only is gonna go for the mountain jersey, at the finish he will be shitty tired.

Ehm...what?

I am actually having a same problems as OP, and that is because whole AI is racing against you much more then it is racing one team against each other. I can see top15 guys doing monster attacks during second and thrird week in TdF but when i want to try it, they chase me and chase me. I swear i can join the break like in 5% of my tries, no matter what type of rider that is, even when he is not a favourite...
I'll be back
 
Paul23
Avin Wargunnson wrote:
coolrex wrote: for example quintana can breakaway in tdf (pro cyclist) because everyone knows that he only is gonna go for the mountain jersey, at the finish he will be shitty tired.

Ehm...what?

I am actually having a same problems as OP, and that is because whole AI is racing against you much more then it is racing one team against each other. I can see top15 guys doing monster attacks during second and thrird week in TdF but when i want to try it, they chase me and chase me. I swear i can join the break like in 5% of my tries, no matter what type of rider that is, even when he is not a favourite...


Sadly this problem was already in the last PCMs. Cyanide didn't bother to fix it. Although I have to sayx, that I mostly get a guy in a break, to disturb the break(he doesn't relay) But f.e. in my career at the Vuelta I got a rider in 2 successful breaks, with him winning out of both. That only works if you have the GC leader I'm afraid, tho.
i.imgur.com/aJSlUNt.png
 
Thinair
My 1st season, the 3rd race of cyanide cup, i won by 12+ minutes. 22 year old stage racer on under 23 team. I do not recall all the details but i think i started sprinting right from the start, then putting effort on 75-85.... then letting another small breakway team of 3 get to me, then i put on 30-40 relay so i regain energy etc, while not doing any work for the group. And then i set 59-60 manual effort, so my heart beat was 139-140 and by that i was able to drop the 3 guys in our breakway group in hilly/mountain areas... maybe i was doing 75 there... and set back to 59-60 manual, and went solo for like 100km all the way to win by 12+ mins. Playing on normal difficulty.

edit: off topic, that 1st season i won 16 races, at one point i won 8 in a row... and i resigned with my under 23 team for 14000... which i never seen before, usually its 3000. But made a mistake because now in my 2nd season, i can not race in u23 races lol. But its crazy i'm already almost lvl 18, 76 avg... 80 mountain, 73 hills and its only 2nd season, around april-may.

Seems like sprinting right from the start line, or like putting manual effort on 80-85 for first few seconds and then attacking seem to work... attacking until around 5-10% of red is left, then manual effort at 75-80.... and then if succesfull going for 45-50 to regain yellow and red, and then putting on 59-60 manual so heart beat is 139-140. From there most likely will be alone until the peleton catches you when ~15-30km left, or all by yourself to the finish. Its a tactic if solo breakaway.

If there are few breakaway riders with you, then 30-35 relay to regain everything, and then 40-55 to ride together, or 55-75 to breakaway from them in areas where you are good at. I always played with stage racer... so not sure for other types of riders.
Edited by Thinair on 27-08-2015 08:08
 
juvilado
This issue makes this game a bad one.

As it is supossed to be a realistic simulator, that bad AI behaviour not only removes realism, breaking the game against player, but also makes it boring as player no longer can fight for anything except a decent overall time.

A patch solving this can't be so difficult to make...
 
Moldef
While it is indeed much more difficult to get into a breakaway as the player, it's by no means impossible.

The most important aspect I have found is how far behind you are. If you are within 0 to 5 minutes of the GC leader, yes, the pack will hunt you down every single time.

However, on the other hand, even at the Tour de France I have been easily let into breakaways with a 83 MO rider just because I was 22 minutes down on the leader.

Thus, if you want to break away in a stage race, make sure you lose time beforehand, and lots of it. In one day classics I generally have no problems getting into a breakaway.
 
FreireCyanide
Long time I didn't post something but here is a very interesting topic (not the other are not interesting, but this one is a killer IMHO).

First I'd like to ask some details with your problem. Would you have some concrete situations of where you think the AI should have let you go rather than working against you?
This could be very helpfull for us to understand the exact cases where you get a frustration about that (for instance: I should have attacked without a reaction from the peloton with this rider in this particular situation). give as many details as possible (rankings of your rider, # of the stages in the tour, at which km in the stage, attributes of the rider if it's a specific DB, etc... + if you have the save in attachment that could help a lot -of course we would have to reproduce the situation ourselves).

Now I think I can give you some explanations.
This is 100% sure, we have and never had (at least not since several years, i can't be 100% sure for the very first Cycling Manager's) a system based on what is doing the human or not. This is not a great way to work like this on a simulation where you have 25 teams in //
It's maybe something you do on other games when it's 1v1 or in some case with level of difficulties (if you have a big budget to afford you different levels of AI depending on the difficulty of the game) but definitely not in PCM!

However I can easily understand why you have this feelings. Here are my thoughts:
the AI rarely do things that activate the triggers and go against the rules (note: that would be probably a cool feature to add more case where the AI can do things which are a bit against the rules). For instance if an AI rider is dangerous for the GC, then he'll not even try to attack in the early breakaway.
so you rarely see AI working very hard against a particular AI attack (except the obvious main cases like closing the gap to the breakaway, pulling hard in the last climb to avoid the attacks, etc...).

you as a player do not know exactly the triggers that exist in the code. So if you attack with a rider which is "border-line" (at the limit between a non-dangerous rider and a little dangerous rider) some AI teams will work against the breakaway hardly because you are in the conditions that activated the trigger "don't let him go!".
there is also the "no big group allowed" which make some teams work no matter how dangerous you are. So if there are 4 riders ahead and you attack after that and the limite for big group is 4 riders max, then you make the AI works against the breakaway.
Of course this number evolves and can be far more big when you're in 2nd & 3rd week of the race but he's very low on the first part of the race (you rarely see more than 5 riders ahead on the first week of a major tour).
(note: i said 4 but it's a pure example, this is a value which can change with some other variables and even change from one team to another team).

For the future we'd like first to try to find the situations that are excessive (= the AI should let go the breakaway in this or this particular case), then giving maybe more feedback for the reasons why the AI is working (that would help understanding what's wrong) and finally the last thing would be to try to add some fantasy in the AI (but that is not something easy, too many fantasy and you'll say there are many bugs) so sometimes they could try things which are a bit crazy (like Quintana trying something early in the Pra Loup stage).

I'd also like to explain why we do not let the player the possibility to ask the AI to work with you.
This is because each time the AI won't work there is a solid reason for that (= a rule that say to the rider: don't work because you protect somebody else/because you do not have enough energy, etc...). If the AI were smart enough to be sometime trying to cheat you, then there would be a great interest to make this feature.
So If we would let this possibility it would mean that the player can ask the AI to go against his own rules...and so players would have to ask every time the help of the AI when they don't have to work...strange (and you just can't say that sometimes they would say Yes, sometimes No, it's not a casino here !).
 
juvilado
I can tell you, for instance, im in the third stage in down under's tour, being at 6'' from the leader and chased any time i try to break away or to get a scaped group (that is constantly increasing their gap as long as I and only I dont try to reduce it. If i could get to the escapees the entire peloton would come, then new escapees would go freely, with my wasted stamina). The escapees are im the very same position as me, at 6'' from the leader, so this looks unfair to me. Im not the leader of my team, im far away from points and 2nd in mountain, but i think it wouldnt matter if i hadnt mountain points at all...

Im neither favourite.
 
FreireCyanide
Juvilado, thanks for your feedback.
That's exactly why we need further details. here it's hard to debate over this particular case because i'm lacking imporant things.
Tour Down Under for instance is a stage race with lots of flat stages and some little hills. So being at 6" from the leader mean nothing after 3 stages (the same could apply on a 2nd or 3rd stage of a Tour de France, Paris-Nice or any other big race which are not located around Bilbao :lolSmile. you could have a young neo-pro or a dangerous rider each on the same 6" gap but the first could be in the early breakaway without strong reaction while the other would be a threat for the other GC riders.
Without name/attributes, it's hard to discuss about it and understand really what's the possible problem, you see?

And still, maybe your rider itself was not a dangerous one, but you were maybe in the case where you were the 1 that make the "big group threat" trigger activated

We have to be careful not mix the cases where it could happens that the AI reacts on you and the cases where it seems really unfair.

How would you rate if you got the feedback from the team why they are chasing on you ? (i'm not asking yourself only, but other players too).
For instance you see somewhere "Orica is pulling hard because they feel there are too many riders at the front of the race" or "Orica is pulling hard because there is Peter Sagan at the front of the race and they don't want to let him go".
Maybe it would help learning what you can do/cannot do and make the frustration less big?
 
Olback
I have won in th breakway
 
Evilste
FreireCyanide wrote:
Juvilado, thanks for your feedback.
That's exactly why we need further details. here it's hard to debate over this particular case because i'm lacking imporant things.
Tour Down Under for instance is a stage race with lots of flat stages and some little hills. So being at 6" from the leader mean nothing after 3 stages (the same could apply on a 2nd or 3rd stage of a Tour de France, Paris-Nice or any other big race which are not located around Bilbao :lolSmile. you could have a young neo-pro or a dangerous rider each on the same 6" gap but the first could be in the early breakaway without strong reaction while the other would be a threat for the other GC riders.
Without name/attributes, it's hard to discuss about it and understand really what's the possible problem, you see?

And still, maybe your rider itself was not a dangerous one, but you were maybe in the case where you were the 1 that make the "big group threat" trigger activated

We have to be careful not mix the cases where it could happens that the AI reacts on you and the cases where it seems really unfair.

How would you rate if you got the feedback from the team why they are chasing on you ? (i'm not asking yourself only, but other players too).
For instance you see somewhere "Orica is pulling hard because they feel there are too many riders at the front of the race" or "Orica is pulling hard because there is Peter Sagan at the front of the race and they don't want to let him go".
Maybe it would help learning what you can do/cannot do and make the frustration less big?


Feedback on why the pack are chasing hard would be very useful, that way you could save a lot of energy by stopping an attack that was hopeless before you started it. Basically the team director telling you to sit up because the pack won't let you go.
 
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