Stephen >> friday september 13 - 19:29

You’d probably have been better off going up at least one tier - the quality is generally poor in England until you hit level 3 and even then the opposition is still far from invincible. Sacrificing (potentially) a little popularity for higher revenue from filling your stadium more regularly is worth it in my opinion.

Mustafa >> friday september 13 - 19:46

I agree with you stephen :)

Numpty >> friday september 13 - 20:19, Edited friday september 13 - 20:43

Stephen, I can see why you would think that - and I have thought about it.

However, it wouldn't really increase my stadium revenue. Level 4 is still mostly bot teams, and there is on average only one team in each division that would increase my attendance. The rest are still below 40%. 

It's hardly worth doing that for 1 match. With the current stadium I might earn an extra 250k per season from league matches. Depending on the division I may not get any matches at all with increased attendance. 

The downside would be having a few home matches that might be a bit tricky.

Easier matches also makes it easier to give 1st team xp to the  best youngsters.

I also get guaranteed home draws against level 4 clubs in the cup and a 50/50 chance of home draws against level 5 clubs. So the probability is that I will actually earn more stadium revenue from the cup than from playing in level 4. 

Personally, I wish the game was coded differently, where promotion was better rewarded. But as the game is currently, there are so many positives about being patient that it's a no-brainer.

Stephen >> friday september 13 - 20:44

You overestimate the quality of the league. You could have done all this in league 3, easily survived and probably even pushed for a promotion spot. Things get tougher in League 2, so you’d need some serious investment there, I grant you that.

Numpty >> friday september 13 - 20:54, Edited friday september 13 - 22:01

It's true there's not too much difference between level 4 and 5. Level 4 tends to have a few teams that yo-yo with level 3 and these wouldn't necessarily be easy home wins for me. 

As for level 3. That would certainly give me greater income. But as I explained in an earlier post I would have to spend a lot more on players to be competitive. I'm fairly sure that would cost more than the increased income. 

And you're probably right, most likely I could survive in level 3.  But "survival" is exactly what I'm avoiding. The cost of survival is a big hit on popularity.  

Just to be clear. I most definitely could not have done the same thing in level 3. My popularity would be nowhere near being over 2 million if I'd followed that path. 

Take your second club, for instance, which you started a month after mine.

You're an experienced manager and I was a complete novice. Yet even taking the extra month into account your facilities are slightly down on mine and my club popularity is 50% higher than yours - 50% is a massive difference. As for the stadium that you're building, I finished the level 8 stadium during the starters' bonus.

So how can you say "I could have done all this in level 3" when you haven't got anywhere near doing the same thing yourself in a similar timescale?  

Popularity is much like a pension fund or an endowment policy - it's a non-liquid financial asset that pays huge dividends in the future. It's rarely worth doing anything that sacrifices popularity growth if you're trying to grow the club. 

davo >> saturday september 14 - 02:13

The flaw with the plan is that popularity is essentially a disadvantage. Money is everything and, while popularity increases your income when you are playing botteams or new teams, it may be a huge disadvantage later on. The ideal situation is to be in a division where you have less than 40% of the popularity of everyone else.

Numpty >> saturday september 14 - 09:54, Edited saturday september 14 - 10:23

I can also see why you would think that Davo, but I've previously run a number of different scenarios with the attendance calculator that show the opposite is true. So I would respectfully ask you to provide some evidence for your claim.

But rather than put the onus back on you I will save you the trouble and provide some figures myself. (See below).

The only situation where you would benefit from having a much lower popularity than everyone else is to be in a division where all the opponents have a near identical popularity - which is a contrived situation and probably very rare. (Unless, of course, you mean to change your own popularity for each match to suit the opponent, which is not possible!) 

Take your division, for instance, the popularity currently ranges from 1,854,985 to 9,087,135, with a mean average of around 5.8 million. (The exact figures are 8,685,098 7,988,622 6,837,797 9,087,135 6,273,532 6,919,230 2,220,921 4,640,349 3,520,331 and 1,854,985)

So, as an example, let's consider what would be the ideal popularity in your division. I'm using yours as a random example to show that I haven't cherry-picked one to prove my point.

Firstly, let's consider your proposal. 

(I'm not entirely clear if you mean less than 40% because that doesn't coincide with a step-up point on the attendance calculator - as the opponent would have more than 250% of your popularity. The maximum multiplier comes when you have less than 33% of the popularity of the opponent.)

Since the lowest popularity is currently 1,854,985, in order to be less than everyone else would require a maximum popularity of c. 740k at 40% and c. 610k at 33%.

Using the attendance calculator - with my current staff - and assuming 20% for live attendance I get the following:

At less than 33% (610k) - which gives the maximum multiplier - I would get a typical attendance of around 39,000 against every opponent. 

At less than 40% (740k), I would get 35,000 against 1 opponent and around 47,000 against the other 9 clubs.

Now let's consider what happens if popularity continues to increase.

(Which according to you is a disadvantage.) 

• At 1 million popularity. The typical attendance against 2 opponents would be 48,000 and around 63,000 against the other 8 clubs.
• At 2 million popularity, the figures are c. 57,000 (x2), 96,000 (x2) and 125,000 (x6). 
• At 3 million popularity, the figures are c. 86,000 (x2), 143,000 (x7) and 188,000 (x1). 
• At 4 million popularity, the figures are c. 115,000 (x3) and 191,000 (x7). 
• At 5 million popularity, the figures are c. 117,000 (x1), 144,000 (x3) and 200,000 (239,000) (x6).
• At 6 million popularity, the figures are c. 140,000 (x2), 172,000 (x4) and 200,000 (287,000) (x4).
• At 7 million popularity, the figures are c. 164,000 (x2), 200,000 (x6) and 200,000 (335,000) (x2).
• At 8 million popularity, the figures are c. 187,000 (x2) and 200,000 (230,000) (x8).
• At 9 million popularity you are very likely to get an attendance of 200,000 regardless of the opponent. 

[Figures will vary slightly depending on the mixture of fan types. You will also get fewer in the cup.]

As you can see from the above figure, the higher the popularity the better the attendance will be, given a range of different opponents.

At every stage increasing popularity brings better attendances -  and massively more than your proposed 40% figure. 

Stephen(Seaburn Beach)'s Wicked(Fuck fake Friends) >> saturday september 14 - 11:45, Edited saturday september 14 - 11:54

I always thought how you make up your time to figure this out... Good write up @Numpty 

It's rare to see a surviving team in a lowest level of a league,  you can find such teams in china precisely.  And also rare for some users to take such steps you do mate,  I suggest that after upgradIng your stadium to level 9 plan to move higher to the level.  There are more advantages being in in a higher level. @Numpty 

davo >> saturday september 14 - 12:14

Hmm. That is quite a reply.

The suggestion was more aimed at the idea that there is a reasonable consistency of popularity within the division. I mean, for example, if there were a botteam in the division with a popularity of 0, I would not be suggesting that it would be ideal to have a popularity of 0.

What I mean is that the quicker you increase your popularity in relation to other teams, the quicker you jump out of a bracket where you get a significant advantage for having less popularity.

When I first got my 120,000 seater stadium there were 5 teams that I would sell out without attending. My accelerated popularity meant that I caught up to less than 15% difference with 3 of them and my income suffered massively. 

Numpty >> saturday september 14 - 12:33, Edited saturday september 14 - 12:47

I agree with that Davo.

Because of the way it's designed with steps at certain points, there will always be some anomalies. The biggest one, as you say, occurs at the 115% point. 

The "sweet spot" appears to be where the opponent has a little more than 115%. 

If I drew it as a graph that would be seen as a high point that gives a massive benefit - but it's impossible to stay there long term. It's perfectly natural to feel aggrieved when you increase popularity and find yourself getting worse attendance. But once you recognise it for what it is - a sweet spot that's not maintainable - then the apparent loss gradually gets clawed back with future growth.

In your circumstance you were previously benefitting from being in a division where you were rather lucky in being in the sweet spot against at least half of your opponents. That is to say, previous good fortune rather than suddenly being unfortunate. 

So, depending on the division, you may have a season or two where the income does drop for a while. That's just unfortunate where you fall outside the sweet spot with a few opponents while popularity continues to grow. 

If you look at the above figures closely you can see there's not too much difference between having 4m, 5m or 6m popularity in your division.  You lose on some and gain on others.

But as you can see from my figures, continuing to grow the popularity will result in a better outcome if you stick with it. 

When I started playing I looked at this in detail. There were a few posts complaining about situations like yours, and being a newbie I needed to be sure what was the best popularity level to aim for. Understanding this was crucial in planning my strategy. 

I'd always prefer to work with facts and evidence rather than opinion,  so I ran a number of different scenarios through the calculator.  The result was clear and striking.

Regardless of any short term anomalies the best popularity is as much as possible - until you get to around 9m or 10m, at which point it doesn't much matter. 

So for a starter club like mine the best way to play catch up was to concentrate on popularity growth - and obviously building stadium and fanshop to help with doing that.

Stephen >> saturday september 14 - 20:59

@numpty - sure, I could have done more with my second club, but that would have involved more time which I don’t have in finding more players to transfer in and out. I did though manage the league and Cup double last season and avoided defeat entirely during that time. I suppose I could have deliberately lost all my away games to increase popularity but this wouldn’t have sat right with me.

Numpty >> saturday september 14 - 22:17, Edited saturday september 14 - 22:20

Stephen, I've no issue with you or how you've managed your second team.

Given the circumstances of the relatively weak competition, the way you've played it certainly makes a lot of sense. You've gone for the straightforward route of being competitive at the earliest opportunity. I would probably have attempted to do the same thing in your league - and probably with less success. 

You're doing a great a job - and well done with the double last season. 

I've taken a different route of trying to grow the club as fast as possible, mostly because the league that I'm in is - in my opinion - too difficult to be competitive in any sensible time frame. 

My earlier point was essentially that you can't do both effectively at the same time. That is to grow the club as fast as possible while also trying trying to climb the league structure - and you were saying that I could.  If I had done that then I would have had lower popularity and probably been a bit behind on my construction as well. 

Comparing your second club with mine was just a way of trying to show that as an example. Your club is now competitive - in your league - but it's come at the expensive of a slower growth of your club. What you've done is simply different than my approach and not necessarily worse.  

Incidentally losing away matches doesn't increase popularity per se as it's not much different to winning them. It's the home matches that count. But if you want to stay in the same league then you do have to drop points somewhere. It doesn't sit right with me either, but unfortunately that's the way that Vincent has designed the game. I wish it was different.  

Don-x⭐Ⓜ dedicating s75 league&cup titles to hi >> sunday september 15 - 06:49

I was about to mention that winning home matches could be the reason Numtpy remain in the lowest league, but has confirmed it.

some managers has tried a lot of strategy, a Long shot defender as forward, so numpty taking advantage of Vincent design is a nice approach.

For instance am trying to stay up and at the same time winning home games is my main goal. I archive 85% every season, and am quite happy, making 300k plus popularity a season is ok for my club, just hoping to continue at that rate till I reach 9m

Numpty >> sunday september 15 - 08:23, Edited sunday september 15 - 09:11

Thank you Don.

There are some other advantages too, but the home matches are the main benefit. In fact we have a 100% home record since I started playing. 6 seasons and a bit.

Other benefits include:

• Buying and using cheap popular players without it significantly weakening the team.
• Potentially more cup matches. Home draws against stronger teams and early entry into the cup.
• Easier squad rotation to give xp to youngsters..
• Minimal 1st team squad so more potential profit in training youngsters.
• Next to nothing spent on buying 1st team players. (I've made a profit on these as well)

All those advantages compared to a potentially very small increase in revenue for promoting one level. And as I explained earlier revenue would probably be higher for not promoting due to the extra home cup matches. 

I was obviously a newbie starting out as well, so I could have done some things a bit better. Certainly I could have made more money, the lack of which has slowed me down a bit here and there.