Hello everyone. I will come out and say it. I am a complete newbie.
I've always found cycling an interesting sport, top rate athletes and very tactical and strategic. I however no very little about the actual sport. I know some basics, the fact that there are teams and riders have different roles etc. But beyond that, not much. I recognize a few names here and there, but not much beyond that,
I bought PCM 2011 as a challenge. i like sports games, and management games, and figured why not. I downloaded the PCM daily addon. But now what? I want to jump right into a career, but it's daunting. My idea was to start lower, and try to build my way up. Any idea for a good team to start with? Endura racing caught my eye.
I've read some in race strategy stuff, but still don't entirely "get it" Should I just try and learn from mistakes?
The way I did it was jump into a career, with my favourite team (whether that is a protour team/ a great team / a bad team etc), but also read the tips and tricks bit on here. they are very handy! look on youtube as well for tutorials. they are very good.
if you do not wanna start a career just yet, start random stages, and when you are ready, begin your career then!
Well maybe you've already seen the thread but this thread (General PCM 11 Guide) should cover most of your initial doubts. It's quite a long read, but says a lot of interesting stuff. Additionally, there's the Tips and Tricks section, which is found under the 'PCM Tools' menu on the left.
To get the hang of the actual racing, you could try playing some single races and classics. There's also the season mode, which is some steps lower than a career - you manage a team for some races during one season, where you'll have to manage their fitness and race inscription (who will take part in which race), but it's basically that, there are no contracts to be negotiated, no sponsors to satisfy, etc. And then comes the career mode, which is the most complete experience of the game.
Btw, it's good you find cycling interesting, and that you like sports games, because the management part of PCM is unfortunately very poor atm. In PCM 11, the sponsor system was introduced, but not in a very good way - for example, you can't renew with your sponsor, and your budget with it is fixed for the contract period, meaning that pleasing or not your sponsor doesn't matter. Also, contracts with riders are quite random, and it's not rare to see some of the big names without teams after a couple of seasons.
But despite all the bugs, I find the game addictive and fun (like most people here I think), I hope you enjoy it as well
It doesn't really matter which team you start with. Just pick any team you like. I started with career directly, and it worked out fine. In fact, if you choose a strong team, you might learn more than with a smaller team (you'll ride more finales of several stages).
Yes, I would recommend starting with a Pro Tour team, not only because of the better riders but also you are racing at the better (nicer looking) races. Also you shouldn't have money problems. And on top of it, you might have more good results.
