I hadn't bought the game in a long while, so I decided to give it a try to PCM17. I started with Manzana Postobón. Given the low income, I decided to keep the budget under control, with quite inferior trainers and low Young team expenditures.
First season went ok. For some reason, unlike PCM09 or so (the last version I played), I simulated everything but the sponsor's objectives, which were decently achieved (although they keep asking unreasonable tasks, such as winning a lot of flat races/stages with the best sprinter being Molano at 73 SP and the best climber being Aguirre at 72 MO).
The budget was raised and this is when things started going downhill. The reputation by Molano kept going downwards, from Continental to National, which I guess it was fine given I simulated all the flat stages and he was barely able to get 5th-10th in continental races. However, the sponsor started getting upset by not having a reputated Colombian cyclist and despite a decent second season, the budget went down a bit.
Now, this is the part which started being annoying: I tried to hire every Colombian cyclist with higher reputation and every single time the cyclist wouldn't accept even the highest salary allowed by the sponsors: Pantano, Atapuma, Sergio Henao, among others (Urán, Quintana et al weren't realistic budget options).
Season after season it's the same story: they ask for more reputated drivers, so I get lowest sponsor satisfaction in those bars, but then they won't allow me to increase the salary offers for reputated drivers. Moreover, freaking Molano got 5th in Continental rankings, 53rd in Superprestige having won the National championships, several Continental stage races and several HC stages, whereas Aguirre, having won Langkawi and Poland and at 10th in Continental ranking, is still at local reputation.
To add salt to injury, I keep hiring young promising cyclists and once they end their contract, they won't renew, again because the sponsor won't allow higher salary. And it isn't as if money is a problem, since I have almost 1.5M in the bank because I managed to get steadily increasing sponsorship despite the reputation thing thanks to race results (and that being gamey, because for some reason there are only 30-40 cyclists registered at Poland, so getting 3 top 10 is quite easy there, plus late in the season gamey results thanks to destroyed fitness by AI cyclists).
TLDR:
- Training young drivers seems like a waste because every one of them is snatched by AI teams once they get better, plus the salary caps by the sponsor won't make things any easier
- Sponsors are quite unreasonable. They keep asking for reputated cyclists but they won't allow good enough offers to actually hire reputated cyclists even if there is money to spare. Also, sponsor's expectations are a bit too high. My team is full of cyclists in the 66 to 73 overall (and the higher end being sprinters whose OA looks a bit inflated for their actual race performance), yet they expect stage wins at Omán, Dubai, AndalucÃa, Österthingy, et cetera. I always drop that to top 10, and even that is hard to achieve unless racing the actual races and being quite gamey (top 10 in AndalucÃa with a 72 hill cyclist vs. 50 +75 hill cyclists there is unrealistic)
- Reputation seems too hard to get, at least for Pro continental teams
Any hints?
Disclaimer: The above post reflects just the personal opinion of the author and not a fact. But if you read it, you must accept it as the ultimate truth.
I have similar problems, in particular for signing high reputation riders, but I play 3d so somtime you can get some results that increase reputation of lower leveled cyclists, and also take some jerseys like tour KOM, that looks more important than a top10 finish in GC. btw I'm loosing every year my best youngster for big teams
How are your results in simulated races? You may be tempted to simulate all but sponsors objectives or your favorite races, but if you aren't consistent winning races, making podiums or gaining maillots, sponsor's confidence will keep falling and eventually you'll get fired, if you haven't abandoned yet.
Years ago I used to pay little attention to most races, I simulated most part of the season so I could advance faster, see youngsters' progression, etc. That didn't work very well, so I started to try to keep winning all over the year, and that way the sponsor's confidence is always high, your riders increase their reputation, your budget also rises, you can renew your youngsters' contracts, sign better riders, etc.
My results can be unrealistically good if I play the races (at least the hilly and mountain ones), plus I can get unrealistic KOM at World Tour and GT races as well, so it isn't as if I can't keep the sponsor happy. That's not actually my concern. The issue here is about realism. If I modulate my results in order to have a middle way sponsor bar (so no increase but no reduction of budget either), I need to actually get way better than reasonably expected results from a Pro Continental team. Actually, in one season I was ranked 3rd team in the Pro Continental rankings (with a budget that wasn't even top 10), and still I got a budget reduction. Once I started playing more races I could steer the boat, at the cost of a lot of breaking immersion.
I mean, in most rankings (Continental, Super prestige, Wins, et cetera) I would need better results than teams whose salary budget is 3-4 times mine. Doable? Of course. You can do gamey stuff for that. But I have the feeling if I raised the difficulty level to Extreme, so I was getting worse results but still maybe above the par of the field, the finances would get wrecked.
Disclaimer: The above post reflects just the personal opinion of the author and not a fact. But if you read it, you must accept it as the ultimate truth.
I wrote about rider popularity and sponsor satisfaction in the other thread you were also in. Your main complaint to me seems a positive, I like that the sponsor budget is tight and you can't spend all the money you have in the bank.
Yes, of course once young riders get too good you can't afford them anymore. My life saver in my current career (half simulated, half in 3D mode on automatic) started as an 18 year old and I was able to extend the contract once but after 4 years he was simply too good and too expensive to keep. But that doesn't mean they aren't worth it. You finalise a contract in July, paying a wage matching his current abilities, and by the time he joins your team he might already be better and he'll keep on improving but stays on his low wage.
While older riders - maybe with a higher reputation - usually don't improve any further and aren't as good a deal.
The objectives can be tough, but they are sort of the maximum. I have failed most of my objectives in all my careers and it has never really hurt me. Changing the objectives can help, I'm not sure in your example it's a good idea to change stage win into a top 10, as you said, that's tough to achieve. But you can hope for a stage win from a breakaway, deliberately losing time on an early stage to be able to join the breakaway with your best rider later. Look at the KoM points in a race, too, sometimes getting the KoM jersey isn't that difficult if a lot of points come early in the stages. Don't do it if most of the points are on a final mountaintop finish.
With the money you have in the bank you can cope with (a lot) less sponsor income and could reduce the objectives drastically, though I consider that a little gamey, I haven't tried that.
Here's a somewhat unrelated tip, but I have a career running on my previous PCM (14) which I might continue and there I'm restricting myself to paying very low wages, but using every other trick in the book. And I discovered that when you get the message that a rider wants to join your team you can pay him significantly less than he's asking for and even if he gets other, far better offers, he'll sign with you. I've had riders sign with less than half their asking wage. Thankfully, the riders who say they want to join you are usually not that interesting, otherwise this would be too powerful. But it's something you could keep in mind.
And I discovered that when you get the message that a rider wants to join your team you can pay him significantly less than he's asking for and even if he gets other, far better offers, he'll sign with you. I've had riders sign with less than half their asking wage. Thankfully, the riders who say they want to join you are usually not that interesting, otherwise this would be too powerful. But it's something you could keep in mind.
That happened to me in career with MTN-Qhubeka in PCM15, that both Matthews and Kristoff wanted to sign for my team, but i didn't, first, because i had already 30 riders in the team, and two, because i just had signed Sagan, so it would be like signing two riders that are like him And both Matthews and Kristoff end up as free agents at the end of the season
And both Matthews and Kristoff end up as free agents at the end of the season
