I have corrected the danish riders that was suggested, as I feel they are not really well played in terms of their prospected level.
Alexander Kamp is not a sprinter, but is a puncheur with a good kick. He is pretty poor on TT's but might be the biggest danish hill talent since Rasmus Guldhammer - Who unfortunately didn't end up where we hoped.
Søren Kragh is possibly the biggest danish talent, on multiple terrains, but is mainly very very quick on the line.
Mads Würtz is Junior and U23 TT world champion. He should definately have more than 78TT at his full potential. 81 or so IMO... Also he was really good in the GC of Post Danmark Rundt, and did extremely well in Tour de l'Avenir. I have adjusted his stats aswell.
The current danish talent pool is extraordinary, and the best I can remember since Bjarne Riis, Rolf Sørensen and Michael Rasmussen.
Avin Wargunnson wrote:
Special case is Anatoliy Budyak, who was caught doping, but before that looked like very promising upcoming stage racer. He is 1995 born, so maybe we should wait anyway...but i will list him, for future references at least.
Avin, has it ever occurred to you why he looked promising?
Heine wrote:
No riders from me, just want to say I hope we avoid the overrated riders. I would prefer if we have another off-season like last year
I agree. Talents don't need to be 82+ - Training can take care of that. I absolutely love picking up talents like Koretzky, Vasyliv and Paillot. Talents that are good, but not mindblowing. To make them win races I need to train them, and that is part of the game, so why not use it
Avin Wargunnson wrote:
Special case is Anatoliy Budyak, who was caught doping, but before that looked like very promising upcoming stage racer. He is 1995 born, so maybe we should wait anyway...but i will list him, for future references at least.
Avin, has it ever occurred to you why he looked promising?
I know, but he is probably only worse than majority in hiding it.
There is a problem with adding young guys from different regions, that some are very strong real life, like new Danish generation SotD adressed few posts above mine, but some are dreadful or does not take part in big races. That is the point, when we need to use "fantasy riders" for other regions that are not so strong IRL.
Heine wrote:
No riders from me, just want to say I hope we avoid the overrated riders. I would prefer if we have another off-season like last year
there is a good middle ground. The previous year saw too many talented young riders where last year saw almost none. Belgium didn't receive a single young rider last season for example. We can't go two seasons without adding in some big talents because otherwise a few seasons from now the quality of the riders will seriously drop and the same guys will dominate year after year.
How it will drop, when we have like dozens of 21-24 year old supertalents in the game, which will be on the top for next 6-10 years? With adding more and more top talents, it will only make some of them flops and stats will keep inflating. Inflation is clearly visible already when you compare averages of teams across the divisions, with averages five years back for example. Having two, three years without top talents (or max 2-3 per year) is what the game needs imo.
Another thing is "fair" distribution of talents and potential helpers. Why add 5-7 guys that will max in areas 77-79 from Norway (sorry Ember) or France, when there is shitload of these already in the database? While some countries lack 77+ talents or 73-75 helpers and thus it is extremely tough to build area or country specific teams if you are not from France, Netherlands, Spain or Norway...
So i think that more depth to lean countries is much bigger priority than Benoot, dutch Sagan, Latour or that Odd norwegian guy
But i am quite sure SN is aware about all of this and will make the great job adding guys with reason,like he always does.
But we also want to feel that the game has a hint of realism to it. And it would be extremely difficult to build a succesful team around Estonians, Greeks, Slovenians, Danes, Swedes and so on. I agree that Norway might be a bit over the top, but mainly because one team have them all. If there was 2-3 teams chasing them it wouldn't feel like too much imo.
Like France. The best riders are spread across. I only managed to get majority of them, because I decided to spend 700K or so on talents in one season. Normally that would make a team relegate, but luckily my base was strong enough.
Imo the biggest talents IRL should also be big talents here. And not just some random bloke that no one heard about, because we want all nations across the world to have a potential world class riderr.
I like the fact that more talents evolve in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Australia and so on than riders from Romania, Hungary and Iceland. Because that would also be the case IRL. And while this is just a game, it doesn't matter that it has a pinch of reality to it.
I respect your opinion SotD, but cant agree with it, at least not in full extent. Because that would make road to the top of PT (which could be seen as ultimate goal, next to having fun of course), extremely boring and only possible with certain focus.
There can be exceptions and Metinvest or Tinkoff are near the top of the game right now, but in my case at least that is thanks to luck a bit and absolute top rider from my prefered region being available in right time. And i cant see any replacements for the future, lets say five-six years future, that can fill the gap after Pluchkin or Trofimov. Only with massive training, while IRL succesful countries have variety of 80+ maxed talents to choose from.And that is just Eastern Europe which is very strong, there are areas that are 200% worse in terms of potential PT leaders, like Asia, Americas or Africa and you can hardly imagine team built around that focus coming close to winning PT (maybe except USA focused team, see Wikipedia).
And that wont change with your mentioned way, it would only make the difference bigger and being a top PT team would be only possible with focus on countries that are succesful IRL. Because of that, i dont have a problem with what you call a "random bloke" to become a top class rider in the MG. We have almost 80 (?) teams now and while of course everybody cant be a winner, everybody should have similar chance, if he is smart and dedicated enough, even with a unusual focus. (lets say Ayubowan).
With all that said, i have a deepest respect for what SN is doing year by year to balance the game, i just wanted to adress your opinion.
Edit: That is why i would like to rather see a Sri-Lankan fantasy Benoot added, instead of his real life counterpart (extreme example).
Edited by Avin Wargunnson on 11-11-2015 10:13
Heine wrote:
No riders from me, just want to say I hope we avoid the overrated riders. I would prefer if we have another off-season like last year
there is a good middle ground. The previous year saw too many talented young riders where last year saw almost none. Belgium didn't receive a single young rider last season for example. We can't go two seasons without adding in some big talents because otherwise a few seasons from now the quality of the riders will seriously drop and the same guys will dominate year after year.
How it will drop, when we have like dozens of 21-24 year old supertalents in the game, which will be on the top for next 6-10 years? With adding more and more top talents, it will only make some of them flops and stats will keep inflating. Inflation is clearly visible already when you compare averages of teams across the divisions, with averages five years back for example. Having two, three years without top talents (or max 2-3 per year) is what the game needs imo.
Another thing is "fair" distribution of talents and potential helpers. Why add 5-7 guys that will max in areas 77-79 from Norway (sorry Ember) or France, when there is shitload of these already in the database? While some countries lack 77+ talents or 73-75 helpers and thus it is extremely tough to build area or country specific teams if you are not from France, Netherlands, Spain or Norway...
So i think that more depth to lean countries is much bigger priority than Benoot, dutch Sagan, Latour or that Odd norwegian guy
But i am quite sure SN is aware about all of this and will make the great job adding guys with reason,like he always does.
I'm in the keep it as real as possible. If you choose a single country approach you hinder yourself, and that should be your choice. You can still be a good team with an Asian/African focus by having some other leaders.
If adding exotic riders for the sake of adding exotic riders I'm fine with making them strong domestiques, and at times co-leaders, but not top top riders if they are not close to that talented in real life. And we got many riders that fit into this category from both Asia and Africa.
Avin Wargunnson wrote:
I respect your opinion SotD, but cant agree with it, at least not in full extent. Because that would make road to the top of PT (which could be seen as ultimate goal, next to having fun of course), extremely boring and only possible with certain focus.
There can be exceptions and Metinvest or Tinkoff are near the top of the game right now, but in my case at least that is thanks to luck a bit and absolute top rider from my prefered region being available in right time. And i cant see any replacements for the future, lets say five-six years future, that can fill the gap after Pluchkin or Trofimov. Only with massive training, while IRL succesful countries have variety of 80+ maxed talents to choose from.And that is just Eastern Europe which is very strong, there are areas that are 200% worse in terms of potential PT leaders, like Asia, Americas or Africa and you can hardly imagine team built around that focus coming close to winning PT (maybe except USA focused team, see Wikipedia).
And that wont change with your mentioned way, it would only make the difference bigger and being a top PT team would be only possible with focus on countries that are succesful IRL. Because of that, i dont have a problem with what you call a "random bloke" to become a top class rider in the MG. We have almost 80 (?) teams now and while of course everybody cant be a winner, everybody should have similar chance, if he is smart and dedicated enough, even with a unusual focus. (lets say Ayubowan).
With all that said, i have a deepest respect for what SN is doing year by year to balance the game, i just wanted to adress your opinion.
Edit: That is why i would like to rather see a Sri-Lankan fantasy Benoot added, instead of his real life counterpart (extreme example).
Well, where do you think I would have been if it wasn't for riders out of my region? Spilak and Ricco are probably the two highest scorers of my team. And they are not French or Greek. You have to adapt to survive, both in reality and in this game. And I don't see any problem with that to be honest. Before that my dominant riders were Contador and Guerao. Why? Because there are no top top french riders. The best is Sicard, and he is clearly not strong enough to lead a PT team to the top level.
In the future there will be some strong french riders, but without training them they will never be top top riders. Lecuisinier, Demare, Coquard, Koretzky and so on are the top level frenchies in the next 5 years. None of them have true winning potential. So if you want to build purely on region, you have to accept that you are probably not going to win. If you want to win, then you can have a focus, but not go all out. Especially not if you decide to go for nations that are not a top cycling nation.
What Tinkoff are doing is incredible, what Aker is doing is incredible - Will they ever win the PT? I doubt it. But they are a top half team, while stille focusing almost 100% on a "below top level" nation. Norway can do so because of Boasson Hagen, while Tinkoff can do it because of Trofimov.
I could do so with Slovenia because of Spilak and so on.
But if I decided to create a team with a focus of Ukraine I couldn't expect talents that were able to win spraying out. I would either have to get leaders from abroad, or collect the best possible ukraineans, sell other riders and train my ukraineans.
I don't see any point in changing it. It is your choice how to play the game. And if you want a chinese team, then you have to live with that. But no one is forcing you to target only chinese riders and wait for a top talent to come from there. It is possible to train a certain rider into a winning one - It takes time, but it is doable. Otherwise you have to target outside focus top riders. We all do that.
Aker have Guldhammer and Martin, Vesuvio have Swift, Suaza and Kittel, I have Spilak and Ricco, Becherovka had to suppliment their focus with New Zealand riders, and the list of examples goes on.
It is possible to win the PT if your national focus is Italian, Spanish, American and British because they all happen to have more than one world class rider - But other than that, you have to supplement from more than one region.
And of course Southern/middle Europe will be the epicenter of top riders, like it is IRL, with America, South America and Eastern Europe chasing.
Then Africa, Asia and other places have been supplimented with better riders than they produce IRL, just to make it possible to make a low-end PT or top PCT team out of it. But I don't think it has ever been the plan, that an all-Asian team should be able to win the PT. Because that would never happen IRL either. To make that happen you would have to do one of two things 1)Train the asians or 2)Get some leaders from abroad.
I think the way we're doing now is completely fine. SN adds enough riders to build a team of local riders for new teams, best example before this season is Iceland. Then hand out a couple of talents to nations and/or regions who have shown a long term approach in the Man-Game.
I think it should stay that way. I agree we should concentrate on real life talents from their respective countries, and then spice it up with some second-tier leaders to nations that aren't really up there IRL but active in the MG universe.
I know I will never win the PT with a 100% Taiwanese team. Wouldn't even promote from CT, but the more you widen your focus, the more sucess you will have. This season I chose to go into the Australian market to help me promote and it seems like it worked. I don't have that many Taiwanese anymore, but that's what I chose to sacrifice. I still have an Asian core and I'm having fun. That's the most important thing for all managers I guess. And to see Meiji in PT gives great inspiration for Compal to continue building on the team and have a long-term approach to the game.
TL;DR: I agree we should keep the game quite realistic in terms of not over-powering the worst cycling nations like Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Indonesia, Taiwan etc.
I do think it makes sense adding riders from small nations with higher stats than IRL if they have a team focusing there. Not future world-beaters but a few PCT co-leaders would make sense to me.
Why? Realism. In real life you will see more talents being discovered, nurtured and staying in the sport if there is a team that has a focus there. As an example the number of strong Danish cyclists boomed after Riis formed his team back in the day and I have seen several of that generation saying that they would never have gone all-in for the sport had it not been for a Danish team.
I would expect the same scenario should a team decide to focus on Kenyan, Sri Lankan or Finnish talents IRL as a lot of young talents would then both get heelp devloping and giving the sport higher priority.
Anyway I'm sure SN & Co. will do what is right for the game. Looking at the DB I think they have generally done so in the past
Now to reconstruct my exstensive list of pretty much every yooung Finnish cyclist after it got lost in my PC crash...
I just have to say that I disagree with your opinion about Norway as a "over the top-country", Avin.
In reality you have EBH and now this season Kristoff.
Behind them you have Galta, who could be a PT-captain in smaller races, but probably PCT. The same goes for Sondre Holst Enger.
All the others are basically domestiques, or PCT-leaders on a good day.
There is 47 riders from Norway in the DB. Spread over three divisions, that is not much, especially considering that some 10+ of them are absolutely useless.
Don't have time to get in a fill discussion right now, but I like to play it that the MG team focus does affect it. There aren't any big teams in real life from many countries which do have them in MG - Ukraine, Norway, Japan, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Eritrea, Argentina etc So in real life riders from there don't get the opportunity that I like to think they would in MG world. Invest for long enough in a particular country and some talents may start to come through. Usually what I look at first will be domestiques from that country.
With Norway being mentioned as a country with 'too much' you musn't forget that it used to be quite bare, besides EBH. And when these talents were added there were plenty of teams interested in that area from the likes of Aker, Risa and Swedbank who are still around, to B&O who are not, as well as the fact that any other team could easily have signed them too. Its credit to ember that he has managed to sign a lot of them, but it's not like it was made easy for him. Galta was signed by Kenya Airways initially, for example. And to get in a position where he can have lots of Norwegians, a lot of Aker's successful results have been built off non-Norwegians, and still are.
SotD is right that you shouldnt be able to pick a country and just expect lots of top top riders to be added from there. You are going to have to sign riders from outside your area, if trying to make your team as strong as possible. But of course, there's a good chance that some strong riders could appear - just don't expect to get them without competition!
Edited by SportingNonsense on 11-11-2015 12:02
You raised some good points SotD and even make me think a bit different about some things i disagreed with. My motivation was to discuss it with others who are thinking about how the game is structured and i enjoyed that. I also see that there are others who prefer more realistic approach and in the end it is all about making the most people happy. So thanks for your time and opinions guys and some "chief" insight from SN.
But come on, Norway is so overpowered (in IRL comparsion).
I know that Ember did incredible job to secure almost all of them, but his stat increase post is simply ridiculous and you could probably build three PCT winning teams from that pool, when maxed. There were 21 guys from Norway prior to this season, who are 71,55 on average or better, but here comes the main thing, noone is older than 28 years and 10 of them were not maxed.
No offense, i just like to troll about that and you cant be serious about them not being over the top, try to compare these facts with similar IRL strong nations.
The problem with Norway is down to the evolution, in the meaning that the riders max out very quickly.
IRL Norway have been one of the best nations in the U23 in a decent amount of years now, with more coming up, and starting to get a decent amount of pros out there (will probably be 11 in WT, and 1 in PCT next season). I mean, yes, in a normal PCM DB a lot of the guys would have different (read: worse) stats, but then again, this is fantasy.
When you add from a potential, it's bound that some will turn out better than others. That being said, as I talked a lot with ember regarding the riders who could be added and their stats, I don't really see that big of a problem with the stats.
If you check the riders, you have a lot of interesting guys. The question is mainly if we all should wait till they're 25 before we add them. As long as we don't do that, some will turn out to have been rated to highly, while some not high enough. Some will have injuries that stop their career, a doping-ban that make them go quiet and so on.
But it's too easy to say that the riders are too good, when you have to wait a few seasons to really find out. It's only the Danes that peak at 22...
Avin Wargunnson wrote:
You raised some good points SotD and even make me think a bit different about some things i disagreed with. My motivation was to discuss it with others who are thinking about how the game is structured and i enjoyed that. I also see that there are others who prefer more realistic approach and in the end it is all about making the most people happy. So thanks for your time and opinions guys and some "chief" insight from SN.
Thank you too mate! I enjoy these debates as much as you, so I'm happy that we can have them in this tone
tastasol wrote:
IRL Norway have been one of the best nations in the U23 in a decent amount of years now, with more coming up, and starting to get a decent amount of pros out there (will probably be 11 in WT, and 1 in PCT next season). I mean, yes, in a normal PCM DB a lot of the guys would have different (read: worse) stats, but then again, this is fantasy.
This is basically the crux of the problem with regards to adding too many strong riders from the same country. The top 5 U23 nations on PCS have been, for the last 5 years, relatively similar each year. France have been in the Top 5 every year, Australia and Italy 4/5 times and the Netherlands and Belgium 3/5 times. In fact, the USA and Denmark are the only nations to have only appeared in the top 5 once - 9 nations have occupied 25 spots effectively. And that's before you look at the likes of Norway or Colombia, who are strong but don't always do amazingly in terms of rankings because of the races they ride not being as highly ranked.
Therefore, there is always going to be repeated strong talents from the same countries, so if we want to maintain realism then we need to accept that. I do think that we should also provide some useful talents to the smaller nations - as the manager of a Sri Lankan team, I'd love a Sri Lankan leader one day. But I don't think we should avoid adding strong talents, just because of where they are from. Sure, maybe weaken them a bit so no nation is overpowered, and stagger their introduction - France and Norway had a fantastic crop of talents in 2013, Germany in 2012 so could do without a massive influx - but at least try and find a happy balance.
