I didn't play PCM since PCM13. Now I am testing the PCM19.
I have seen that the issue of the age of decline has changed.
I have been reading several topics in the PMCdaily search engine and there seems to be some debate about it.
I want to share with you what seems like a possible solution. I don't know yet if it is completely reliable, or if someone had already found it. But as I didn't see anything about it here I leave it to you.
With the Fast editor, in the "Cyclists" table, I looked for the most veteran cyclists (likely to get worse). And I watched how its average quality fell. I looked at those brokers in the DYN_cyclist_progression table, and looked for the common factor. Indeed, the "value_i_season_bit" column looks like the differential factor.
There are three values ​​for this season bit: '0', '1' and '2'. '0 ', seems to correspond to cyclists who are stable, and do not improve or improve very little; '1', it seems to be for cyclists who have a faster evolution; '2' seems to correspond to the group of runners that have started their decline. By the name of the column, it seems that this value changes at the beginning of each season, and that the evolution of the cyclist will depend on it.
I took two self-saved games, one from January, and another from the end of April. I did an excel where I put the cyclists, their average quality in January, and in April, and the value of the season_bit. Indeed, almost all cyclists with value '1' had improved somewhat. Cyclists with '0' value had the same average quality, or had improved very little. And all the cyclists who had worsened had a season_bit equal to '2'.
In short, if you want to prevent a cyclist from getting worse, check that his season_bit is '2', and then change it to '0', and his decline will stop.