Lachi wrote:
The game not only makes weekly backups, it also has an immediate backup, called xxx.cdb~ (xxx being the name of your career). To make it loadable in the game, just remove the ~.
Just finished the Giro with Astana, took Vinokourov as leader, but on stage 3 he crashed, continued, but he only finish 13th. Tiralongo became leader and finished 8th.
Finished the TDF with a good 5th for Rujano, behind Contador, Gesink, Evans and Anton. The goal was a top 5 so it'll do. Got our first Tour stage win aswell courtesy of, who else, Duque. Brenes just managed to win the white jersey, with a narrow margin of 66 minutes over Sagan!
Now I'm in the Vuelta with a young team trying to win the KoM and some stages. GC man is Henao, but he won't be able to compete with Contador, A Schleck, Nibali and Kreuziger as well as a couple of others.
Manager of Bunzl - Centrica
ICL's World Tour Champions and Talented Bottlers
I made a custom team... resurecting t-mobile with a lot of germans (and eisel and frank)
TDF was amazing...
Greipel won 3 stages and the points jersey by 98pts!!
Marting won the final TT by 1'30!!
Kloeden won 2 stages!!
Kloeden was 2'41 behind andy schleck with 4 stages to go, a mountains, a flat, a tt and paris...
Attacked on the mountains gained 58"...
Attacked on the flat gained 30"
Rode the best TT of my life gained 2'12...
Won the TDF!!
I'm halfway through the Vuelta and it hasn't been a particularly difficult half either, with only one mountain stage.
Yet there are only 150 riders left in the race! There's been three mass crashes and one stage where 25 people finished outside the time limit.
I lost one rider on stage 2 in a huge crash but despite a few of my riders being involved in other crashes, my other eight are all still going.
Rabobank have only 3 riders left and Quick step have 2 (Hermans and Stybar)!! Bearing in mind, there are still 10 stages to go, including loads in the mountains.
Has anyone else ever had anything like this in the FIRST HALF of a GT? (not in the final week, where there's always a few withdrawals)
Manager of Bunzl - Centrica
ICL's World Tour Champions and Talented Bottlers
Resurrected my Eurovsion save, just won the Giro for the 2nd year running (Cunego last year) left to go to Movistar. Nibali this year by more than 10 minutes, very weak field. Andy Schleck also won the Tour of California and just had Nibali 2nd to Contador at the Dauphine.
If you had Schleck and Nibali on your team, would you get Contador, Wiggins or Krueziger for next season too?
I am thinking about getting one of them along with Vanmarcke and Cancellara hopefully.
brewers90 wrote:
I'm halfway through the Vuelta and it hasn't been a particularly difficult half either, with only one mountain stage.
Yet there are only 150 riders left in the race! There's been three mass crashes and one stage where 25 people finished outside the time limit.
I lost one rider on stage 2 in a huge crash but despite a few of my riders being involved in other crashes, my other eight are all still going.
Rabobank have only 3 riders left and Quick step have 2 (Hermans and Stybar)!! Bearing in mind, there are still 10 stages to go, including loads in the mountains.
Has anyone else ever had anything like this in the FIRST HALF of a GT? (not in the final week, where there's always a few withdrawals)
Yep, I had it in the 2012 Giro. On two of the early flat stages there was a buttload of rain and there were two mass crashes, allowing me to win some time on the favourites with my leader De Gendt. In the end, I finished the Giro in 3rd place (normal difficulty). Like in your carreer OPQS had only like 2 or 3 riders left. I was the only team to have all 9 riders left after 17 stages or something until Westra dropped on one of the late mountain stages.
Anton was in third place up until the 20th stage, but we somehow managed to drop him on the second big hill before the finish. He never made it back, even with the help of his team. In the end, he lost over nine minutes, enough for Mollema to get onto the podium.
Just dropped Andy Schleck on the Agnel (2011)...
Fedrigo relaying on the front and Andy just dropped, never came close to returning, lost 16'00, falling from 3rd to 34th
Allowed Voeckler into the top10.
Also
I've been able to put 23'00 into Basso in the 2012 Giro on the stage to Stelvio, with Nibali...
I've been playing trough my extreme Sky career a bit.
At TdU, EBH got a stage win and 3rd overall. Then we moved to San Luis where Svistov won the GC and Henao took 3rd Overall, we took clean sweep of jerseys here.
We went to Mallorca with similar squad and got 3rd with Svistov and 10th with Henao in a stellar line up.
Cavendish got 2 stage wins and Top 10 in Qatar, while EBH got 1 stage victory and 2nd Overall in Oman. After that we went to Volta ao Algarve where Thomas won first stage from break and went to win the overall. Wiggins won the TT and got 7th in GC.
So overall quite nice results with great wins so early. Flecha/Thomas are ready for the cobbled week, and Wiggins is beginning to peak for Paris Nice/Cataluyna.
Edited by Alakagom on 02-04-2012 15:45
Well I scrapped my Eurovision career to start a fresh.
Started with FDJ as I really like Sandy Casar, Francis Mourey went away in the break on stage one and stayed away to take a solo win by more than 3 minutes. Great job by the team then throughout the race to keep Mourey in the leaders jersey and he won overall, Vichot won on Old Willunga hill to take 2nd in GC.Hutarovich featured in the top 10 on most sprints.
Geslin finished 2nd at GP Marseille, now at Etoile Des Besseges and Boucher is 6th overall and Demare's highest sprint finish so far is 4th.
Alakagom wrote:
I've been playing trough my extreme Sky career a bit.
At TdU, EBH got a stage win and 3rd overall. Then we moved to San Luis where Svistov won the GC and Henao took 3rd Overall, we took clean sweep of jerseys here.
We went to Mallorca with similar squad and got 3rd with Svistov and 10th with Henao in a stellar line up.
Cavendish got 2 stage wins and Top 10 in Qatar, while EBH got 1 stage victory and 2nd Overall in Oman. After that we went to Volta ao Algarve where Thomas won first stage from break and went to win the overall. Wiggins won the TT and got 7th in GC.
So overall quite nice results with great wins so early. Flecha/Thomas are ready for the cobbled week, and Wiggins is beginning to peak for Paris Nice/Cataluyna.
Nice start so far, i will also try Sky-extreme once i will find the solution to my pc problem, Sky should be fun.
In my second season with GreenEDGE and just finished the Tour of Romandie. 1st prolouge stage ended with Porte with a narrow lead over everyone else, the 2nd stage I sent Cameron Meyer in a break for The KOM, which was somewhat unsuccessfull. The 3rd stage I sent him out again, his lead group of 8 finished 2:30 in front of the Peloton, where he took the overall lead, white jersey and KOM jersey, he finished 6th I think. The 4th stage was an ITT, Meyer finished 1m1s behind Richie Porte, who moved into 3rd behind Stephen Cummings, still a minute down. The 5th stage, a very mountainous stage, Meyer couldn't make it up the penultimate climb 60km from the finish, so the new leader then became a joint-leadership between Pieter Weening and Fabio Duarte, who were both in incredible form ahead of the Giro. They obliterated the field on the final climb, about 20km from the finish, with Duarte 19th, 2minutees down on Meyer, setting an amazinly high pace eventually creating a grouip of 10-15 riders, including Rodriguez, Fuglsang, Contador, Scarponi, Gesink, Leipheimer and others. He followed the attacks of Contador and Rodriguez until the finish, losing no time to the 2. Niemic from Lampre and C.A. Sorenson fought it out for the stage win after a chasing mishap, Sorenson had enough time to take the leaders jersey.
The last stage, 112km with 3 large mountains, was won by Paul Martens in the lead group of 10-20 favourites, including Duarte and Weening, in which Sorenson took out the overall victory. Meyer took the KOM jersey, 2nd in the young rider rankings, and 22nd overall. Duarte finished 8th, with Scarponi 2nd, Niemec 3rd, and Rodriguez 4th. Our team was: C.Meyer, T.Meyer, S.Tuft, P.Weening, F.Duarte, G.Verdugo, T.Vaitkus, D.Impey. Duarte showing fantastic form ahead of the Giro.
Edit: Wow, that was long Edited by Eden95 on 03-04-2012 23:11
Here are some considerations about the cobbled classics gameplay - more specifically Paris-Roubaix - that I wanted to share with you guys, and maybe hear your opinion as well (it's a long read, sorry for that):
PCM 11
First, I played the race in PCM 11. It was quite boring.The cobbles were taken on hard, but probably not hard enough, since the group kept quite big all the way. The first attacks came with about 35 kms to go, but none of them got anything considerable except for a 3-rider leading group with Cancellara, Boonen and Hushovd, but which also was releed in. In the end, 8 riders were approacching the velodrome together when Cancellara attacked again. Pozzato, leading the group, either didn't have it or didn't want to chase, and Cancellara quickly built a gap as he Pozzato also delayed the sprint, eventually winning by 20 seconds to a flying Hushovd in second place. Boonen got 3rd.
PCM 09
Then, I played it again in PCM 09. One thing which I only realised after writing this, is that I choose the 'real' lineup of teams, but it wasn't really real (the DB is just a conversion and the creator didn't take care of this) meaning that Garmin, BMC and Vacansoleil all missed the race, and so did their riders
Anyway, the hard racing was on since the first cobblestone, and quickly the riders started to get dropped. With 112 kms left, the main group had only 27 riders, and that number would go down to 14 and eventually 5 in the next 25 kms. By that time, these 5 were chased by other 9, and more than one time the two groups got together and split again, until Cancellara set in a powerful acceleration with 37 kms left, followed only by Boonen and Flecha (these 3 were the best riders in the race, with Hushovd and Ballan not taking part and Pozzato having a puncture early on). Although they worked well I gave it a go again with Cancellara on almost every section, but was followed time after time.
It was only in the last cobble section, with 10 kms left, that Cancellara managed to leave the other 2 behind. The fact that Flecha would crash meters later didn't help the chase, and Cancellara didn't have much problems in making the gap bigger as he eventually won with 50 seconds ahead of Boonen. Flecha got back on his bike with plenty of time to finish 3rd, thanks to the fact that Breschel (who was 4th on the road when Flecha crashed) couldn't go round Flecha and fell too, despite having 30 seconds to do it
Conclusion
In the end, my conclusion is that the PCM 09 cobbles gameplay was better (not only based on this race, but also based on all the races I can remember). Although I can also blame the PCM 09 results of being faulty with the unnoticed lack of some teams and favorites But even if there were several attacks in PCM 11, they would just not create a gap, and nobody at any time seemed to have a shot at a win which wouldn't be in a small group sprint.
The attacks on PCM 11 completely burn your red bar, without opening any considerable gap, and so does riding in cobblestones - dot 60 with one of the favorites will easily counter an attack, and also burn the red bar, meaning attacks become useless. Another thing is that in PCM 09, when tired the riders really drop for real, while they hang in for much longer in PCM 11. I think the combination of solid rider model + narrow roads affects this considerably. The peloton/front group is much more spread over the road, and sometimes the tired rider doesn't really have the space to slide backwards and keeps riding with the group; both these effects end up in the group reaching the smooth tarmac again, the rider recovering a bit of yellow and keeping with the the others. To consider a race without 'human effect', the Man-Game managers have seen that the Paris Roubaix simulated in PCM 11 ended with an 11 rider sprint in the Velodrome - not exactly what you want on Paris - Roubaix.
I think that PR roads with normal roads would be better for gameplay, even if it's less realistic (this realism is in fact more of a graphical detail). The main 'selections' in PCM 11 happen with splits, rather than riders going off the back in tiredness. I can see how the narrow roads were good in PCM 10, with no solid rider model, but I'd like to try Paris Roubaix in PCM 11 with normal roads (are you reading this roturn? ) The PCM 09 P-R will still be better even then imo, because of the red bar comsuption in PCM 11, but the gameplay on 11 will be more enjoayble I guess.
Oh, this has got reeaally long. I'd be quite surprised if many people read it all, but oh well. I've already spent too much time summing it up, won't be doing it again
Btw, the PCM 11 Paris - Roubaix was also part of a small Season mode I played with all the Flanders classics. Iirc, no race ended with a solo win, with almost them all ending in a small group sprint - no wonder Hushovd won 4 out of 8 races.
I doubt P-R with wide roads would be more enjoyable to play, if anything, it'd probably lose even more realism, and you'd end up with a 20 men sprint in the velodrome (providing the usual late attack of Cancellara in Roubaix isn't successful.
Right now, many riders are dropped because they are stuck behind more tired ones in the narrow cobbled sections, which is pretty realistic, and which wouldn't happen anymore with normal roads. Anyway, I agree the gameplay was better in previous PCMs, especially 09. In 11, attacking is almost a suicide, so I usually use my team to reel in any attacks, and then I follow Cancellara's late attack (it always happens) with my strongets rider, and I've won two back to back P-R with Boonen doing that. It ends uo being a bit previsible.
thanks!
But even if there were several attacks in PCM 11, they would just not create a gap, and nobody at any time seemed to have a shot at a win which wouldn't be in a small group sprint.
