I've been playing a Movistar save for a bit now, first season i played on Hard and won I think 69 races, such as the Giro, WC and quite a few of the WT stage races. But now in the second season, after having upped the difficulty to extreme. I'm not even close to, winning my objectives with Quintana. Had Tirreno as a first objective, and got beaten. Fair enough i guess, all the big names were there. But then in Catalunya i bring a really good team with Landa as a super domestique, all riders above 90 in shape, (Quintana on 96)but my team just feels weak. I try to protect Quintana trough the first mountain stage, but he doesn't quite have, what i takes in the end. Then i try putting pressure on the last climb, of the second MO. But 50 guys can still hang on, despite me sacrificing almost my entire team. And at the end, I can only scrap together a fourth place on the stage, like the stage before. Quintana is easily top 3 MO in my save maybe, even the best, but i can't seem to make it happen on Extreme.
Also, how do you react, when the other favourites attack. I've found, that my rider burns to much energy, on steep inclines. When trying to follow, but at the same time, pacing will often not be enough too close the gap?
I just switched from Hard to Extreme and it is a whole other ball-game. I'm racing with a 25 year old in Pro Career. I have 79 MTN and 74 TT and just finished 3rd in the Giro about 2 mins behind Dumoulin and Thomas. So it's not impossible to do well and perform even better than your stats.
Every mountain stage seems to be the same. On the last climb, the pace is initially slow and then at some point with 7-10 kms to go, someone attacks from the front group of usually 30-40 guys, who then go almost all-out effort until they die one by one. If you don't follow the attack, you will at best be 5-10.
The key is to follow the attack, but trying to keep the effort around 85-90, so you don't burn too much red bar. You shouldn't count on having red bar for an attack, but it cannot ever run out totally. This is very hard and takes a lot of practice. If you can survive the acceleration and get to the last 3-4 kms with some red bar still going on, you are in good shape and will take a top result.
I haven't had a good enough team to try and control the race. I would imagine that you would need to ride very strongly (at least 80 effort) to set a stable pace that other guys won't attack from.
I'm personally looking into improving my ACC stat to have more red bar. It's simply crucial on these stages that you can follow the accelerations without dying.
Even though it's from a "be a pro" point of view i see no reason why your points wouldn't be useful in a normal career game. I guess I just gotta take the chance and go with the favourites when they attack, because pacing, doesn't seem to do the trick, when they attack 4-5 km from the finish.
