Is there anyone that could possibly share (or write down) a detailed beginners tutorial for planning a season in PCM19 using a World Tour team (or any other team in fact)? I cannot find it anywhere.
How is it correctly done, how many days would a certain rider need in a season to feel well and rested, how to correctly set up a leaders and domestiques for a GT or an important race and all other important things?
I cannot seem to enjoy the game when my leader is extremely tired before Vuelta, even though i have not done anything (at least that I know of) to make him feel that way. It kinda feels random playing. Also, editing riders fitness before those races feel like cheating for me, so any help other than that would be extremely welcome.
I'll try a tutorial for season planning (at least the way I do it, it takes me about one hour per season).
A few introducing words
I build all the planning around 4 "teams" within the team (with 30 riders at World Tour), but it could be adopted for smaller teams (like 2 "teams" in Continental with 12 to 14 riders or 3 "teams" in Pro Continental with 20 to 23 riders). Each "team" consists of 7 or 8 riders, who share the same race schedule and fitness planning for the whole season (not very realistic, but makes everything easier to work out).
Choosing the targets
The 4 "teams" are usually build around the following targets:
- "Team 1" (8 riders): Paris-Nice or Tirreno-Adriatico; Tour de France; World Championships or Il Lombardia
- "Team 2" (8 riders): P-N or T-A; Giro d'Italia; La Vuelta
(These are obviously the teams build around the GC-Riders and/or Sprinters.)
- "Team 3" (7 riders): the cobbled classics; Tour de Suisse or National Championships; World Championships or Paris-Tours
(Those riders are good on cobbles and flat races, a good sprinter will fit here well.)
- "Team 4" (7 riders): the Ardennes classics; Criterium du Dauphiné; the Canadian races
(This team consists of good hill riders.)
I usually have 1 or 2 leaders per "team" that will be treated as the race captains, the other riders are assigned as domestiques (though they might as well be leaders in some races, but that's not important for the planning process).
Planning the race schedule
When I know the races I will focus on, I choose the races to build up form, earn some extra price money or gather some wins. This of course will depend on the exact targets, but I have attached a typical race schedule for a WT season (I mostly play French teams, so there is only little change for me). I usually sort the riders according to their “teams”, then I attach the relevant races to one of the riders of every “team”. Then I copy the schedules with drag and drop to the other riders of each “team”. In my experience the riders have no problems with 60 to 100 race days a year, depending on their distribution over the season.
Spoiler
Planning the rider fitness
I strongly recommend doing the race schedule before the fitness planning, as the planned races are included in the shown calculation of fitness and tiredness.
The planning of the rider fitness is mostly experience (for the general planning) and some try and error (for the details, especially the adjusting of tiredness and form peaks). I have attached a fitness plan for the entire season for two of my "teams". In general, it's easier to get the fitness (and tiredness) right if there are longer pauses (like 2 months or so) between races, so I chose the "teams" with shorter pauses as example.
Spoiler
Some hints from my experience:
- At first, plan only for one member of the "team". When you get it right, just copy the training for every week to the other riders of the team. If you have sorted the riders according to their “teams” (see above), this will work fine. This is some dull work, but it has to be done.
- Before facing a Grand Tour, the riders usually need only a couple of race days to get the form, even 8 or 10 race days could lead them to peak too early in the GT. Plus: Plan a "0" training week in the week the GT starts, as this will lead to less tired riders.
- Especially at the beginning of the season, the riders will need some time to get their first peak. It will usually start at the end of February or the beginning of March.
- It’s usually harder to get the peak right for the classics or shorter tours and when the targets of a rider follow each other closely (like 1 or 2 months).
- If a rider misses a race (because of injury or planned), it could be necessary to adjust his training, especially if his training for the respective week is lower than “3”.
- Don’t forget national championships and world championships, as those races are easily forgotten (the latter ones aren’t shown in the planner). I usually plan a week with training “3” the time those races are hold so I don’t get any bad surprises regarding tiredness.
- In general, try to keep the level of tiredness low. In the best case the red line hardly ever rises above the ground. But sometimes you just will have to juggle a bit to get it to an acceptable level.
I hope this will help you planning your seasons. You will surely have to adjust some things to make them work for you, but I am pretty happy with my approach by now, though it’s of course the least fun part of the game.
