Still very few races that aren't objectives. I loaded up an old Amore&Vita save with just 16 riders and went into the Conti Pro season three times. Apart from the 15 objectives the game registered me for, around 30 additional races each time and about 100 racing days each time, so 50 per rider. I never felt the need to apply for (m)any additional races. At least you can get to that number by applying for more races. I don't think the team's nationality makes much of a difference, Amore&Vita is Ukrainian. Maybe the nationalities of the riders makes a difference, you know I always have a very international squad, the 16 riders in this case are from 13 nations.
My guess is the next "magic" number would be 24, I've never had that many before making the WT. But with 24 in the WT the game loves to register me for the Criterium International or Coppa e Bartoli, which run at the same time as the WT races Catalunya and E3/Gent-Wevelgem.
Ripley wrote:
The points table for the final results is correct, but not for mountains classification and wearing the jersey, the names are wrong. The 20, 10, 5, 3 is what the first 4 riders in each stage get. And 12, 7, 5, 3, 1 is what you get for the final mountain and sprint classification. And 6 points for every day you wear the leader's jersey and 2 points for wearing sprint or mountain.
So you got the 1 point for finishing 24th, you got 12 points for the mountain jersey and 2 points for every day the team wore the jersey. That's actually only 19 points. Maybe you were 3rd on one stage and 4th on another, that'd be 8 points. You can check all that by looking in your save game/database. STA_bonus_superprestige (or _CQ).
Follow up questions;
1. In the GC table for 2.1 races it says you get 38 points for 7th place, 33 for 8th and 39 (!) for 9th. Obviously a mistake here but is it just a typo in the Rules --> Scale information section that doesn't influence the points you're allocated or does the game actually use these tables to distribute points after a race and would therefore give whoever came 9th more points than whoever came 7th and 8th? If so, is it possible to change it in an editor?
2. Does the overall team CQ standings tally up every CQ point collected by all riders in your squad or is it limited to your top riders? My 9 riders have so far collected 168 CQ points in the Individual CQ rankings, but in the team rankings we only have 166. I have two riders who both have only 1 point each so wondering if it only counts the top 7.
1. That typo made it into the game. I just changed it in the editor to 29 and now it's displayed correctly in-game, too. So the numbers are taken directly from the table in the database, just the labels of some tables are messed up.
2. In the WT team rankings only your top 5 riders are counted, of that I'm sure. 7 sounds vaguely familiar for the CQ rankings, I just did what you did, added up the numbers for my riders to see where the cut-off is.
I did a few more experiments but eventually decided to do a fresh install of the game and database as it started to feel like the game was acting weird from all my experimenting. My last experiment was with the same setup (Norwegian continental team winning promotion in its first season) but this time I built a more international team, like your Amore&Vita team, Ripley.
I got the squad up to 19 riders, only 8 of which were Norwegians while the rest were from France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland. My thinking was that the riders' nationalities would yield more invitations than my Norwegians, especially since I signed riders from countries that have a lot of races in them.
Instead, the results were even worse than my previous experiments, and by a large margin. I could get up to 64 and 66 race days per rider in my previous experiments (only Norwegian riders + a few Danes) but with a more international squad the highest number of race days per rider I got was 45... Even with 19 riders we didn't get all 15 objectives (which we did with riders only from Nor/Den) and we got way less invitations as well.
That's when I started to suspect that my game might be borked so I'll do a fresh install before doing any more testing. I'm gonna test a new database as well (think I'm gonna try the pcmdaily expansion pack) in case its a problem with the database and not the game.
Don't forget I'm playing PCM 14. But I've recently switched to a slightly newer db and don't believe it made any difference. So just maybe something changed in PCM 15, though it seems unlikely. But otherwise I'm lost for an explanation. On the other hand, you want a challenge and the fewer races, the fewer points.
Picked up this game again with my own database and I'm having a lot of fun with my Bardiani career. First season was a major success with victories in Milano-Sanremo (Battaglin with a solo attack on the Poggio), two stage wins for Colbrelli in the Giro and a majorly surprising World Championship win with Moscon, who was signed as a trainee and just attacked where all the favourites were watching each other.
In the second season, we set our sights on promotion to the World Tour. Signed Formolo and Roglic, as well as some helpers and talents, to get more GC power into the team. Lost Battaglin though, who demanded too much money after his monumental victory. Colbrelli was on fire again with podium in Sanremo, four Giro stages and many good results in smaller Italian one day races, just like in 2015. On top of that, he outsprinted everyone in the World Championship, so we nailed that one again! Formolo proved to be a huge asset by taking top-5 in Tirreno, podium in Trentino and an amazing third place in the Giro, as well as success in Italian autumn classics (but not Lombardia, where he crashed out). With Roglic and Ruffoni dominating GCs and sprints in the Asia Tour, promotion was imminent.
Now I'm having the first World Tour season with the team. Ruffoni left, but we managed to sign some nice riders again, including Polanc and a potential grand tour winning talent from Poland. The team is still mostly Italian though with 19 out of 26 riders. Started off with an 8th place in the Tour Down Under with talent Radice (the new Purito Rodriguez?), who then got a little bit lucky and ended on the podium in Paris-Nice, while nailing a surprising stage win. Formolo got second in Tirreno, Colbrelli eight in Sanremo (can't always be lucky) and now I'm in the middle of the cobbled classics. Colbrelli finished off brilliant work by Moscon to win the E3 Prijs as a major surprise and then took fifth place in Gent-Wevelgem. Moscon just ended tenth in his first Ronde van Vlaanderen and is now ready to repeat that in Paris-Roubaix. For the grand tours, hoping to do well with Roglic (Giro/Vuelta) and Formolo (going to Tour de France for stage wins and polkadot jersey).
It's great to play with this team, ride aggressively and keep up their spirit of signing young riders with a good balance between talents and helpers. Hoping to expand the team to 30 riders after this season, develop guys like Moscon, Radice and Szyszko (our Polish GC talent) into world class riders and finally get Colbrelli his greatly desired Sanremo win.
Just to be sure, the value in the value_i_budget column in DYN_sponsor a yearly budget? Also, is it a good idea to edit these several years into a career in order to make the field more balanced without messing up the game too much?
Has anybody ever tried this? I agree, the value seems to be the yearly budget. Teams seem to spend about 90% of that value on riders, consistently. I checked the wage expenditures with PCMCE, they rank exactly the same as these values.
But at which point in the season would it make most sense to try and change them? If you changed them in December, would the AI teams all end up in the red? Is that even simulated? Change them in June, before the transfer season starts? That would be fastest to test, simulate until early August or so, see who they hire (ideally in comparision to unchanged values).
I'm indeed wondering if AI teams could end up in red as well. I don't want to lower anything drastically, I just don't want any team to have 5-6 riders that can win a GT. The difference between the two teams with the highest confirmed spendings for next year is 500,000 (!).
You could just swap around a few riders in the off season - including changing the budgets accordingly(?). It'd be easier and more elegant if only changing the budget works. But I have no clue if it works nor if there are any risks in doing so. It'd be neat if it works, then we could even consider a career where all 18 WT teams get the same budget every year.
Correct, though as you stated yourself, asigning riders to a different team than the one they signed for is a step I'd prefer to avoid if possible, unless I could somehow include the real life transfers a bit. And the thing is, I don't know what number to lower some teams' budget to.
Could it be a good idea to take a look at the column in a PCM19 save in January, you think?
I Honestly, I'd try my first suggestion: Take a weekly save from last season, maybe mid-June, maybe a little earlier, I don't know how or when AI teams decide who to hire. Change the budget of a few team drastically. Simulate till mid-August or so, put in your own offers again so your team does roughly the same as before. And compare new signings with what happened previously. If nothing changes it doesn't really help, it might mean that the budget needs to be changed in December instead. But if it does work, hooray! And it's the fastest way. Because my next suggestion would be to take a weekly save from the previous December and simulate through the whole season till mid-August.
If it really works either way, you can then think about what changes you'd actually like to see. A test run might be usefull for that, too.
