Gaining Part 6: The Gaining Formula (29/05/2014 07:17)

"There are so many factors involved in this "gaining-bit", each of them alone has almost no impact."

- Spinner

A few months ago when I started this blog, I spent the first few posts discussing gains. After five posts of varying detail I moved onto some other things, some of them controversial. And I've spent much of my time focusing on match strategy, which I feel is the most interesting part of the game. But the most common thing I still get asked when people pm me out of the blue? "How do I get my players to gain!"

Some context now, which you can skip over if you're just looking for the raw numbers (next section). But I've been thinking around the whole gaining strategy idea for a good while now, and I think I've reached quite a different conclusion to the majority of managers on here, so if you'll indulge me: I believe a lot of the 'rules' for gaining that you read on the forums and help blogs are either outright false, or greatly exaggerated. Chief among these is the idea that you need to have 8 very old players on the pitch alongside 3 youths for them to gain properly. Generally, the advice is to have an average lineup age of over 30.

I don't do this. In my friendlies I have a range of ages - rookies, young players, first teamers, a couple of veterans, and an average lineup age around 24 - for the simple reason that I'm building a whole squad, not a handful of players for sale, and I don't want my 23 and 27 year olds to start declining because I'm dedicating all my friendlies to a mob of 38 year old goalkeepers (and also because that method of gaining feels too unrealistic to me, and makes the game less enjoyable). I went into this strategy with open eyes, figuring that I probably wouldn't gain quite so well on my younger players but hey-ho. Instead, I've gained 3300 attributes over 6-and-a-half seasons, with 131 additional friendlies that I could have taken along the way if I were a little more organised. The short story is, ignoring the prevailing wisdom here doesn't seem to have done me too much damage.

The longer story is that it's not simply a case of "lots of attributes, but spread too thinly to be worthwhile" either. I compared myself this season to another team of similar quality to me, regularly in the top-10 gainers for the season, who were very obviously adopting the lots-of-very-old-goalkeepers strategy. They've been raising players over the past few seasons, and in that time they paid $675m for ten players, and sold them (or have them currently valued at) $980m. The rest of their squad are worth next to nothing (and have to be replenished at a cost of $25m or so every season due to retirements). The team's youth players were sacked to make way for the bought players, some of whom went for big money, while others fizzled and made a loss. So that's an average profit of just over $30m per player, after an average training period of just over a season each - total $27m/player/season. Training 6 or 7 players at a time that equates to a benchmark of around $150-200m per season.

Just my top 7 purchases over the past few seasons cost me $167m and are now nudging $600m. At an average of around 2 seasons development each, that works out at $26m profit per player, per season: Comparable, in other words, to the rate a relatively successful youth farm team is getting. But there's a big difference: I've not just got those 7 players. I've also been training a whole bunch of other players too, in place of the large numbers of (otherwise useless) veterans. So my 8 youths since I began the game weren't sacked, and after an average 4 seasons development each are now worth another $620m. Plus there's a further $500m or so still locked up in the rest of my squad. That extra billion-and-a-bit is extra value that the youth farm has sacrificed in the pursuit of an extra attribute or two from their chosen ones. There's a very strong argument I think that the strategy is not as effective as people assume, once you really look at the numbers. Despite all those gains, the 6-youth strategy earns:

 

- Roughly an extra $1million a year on each of those youths (and maybe some credits in a gaining contest?).

 

And it sacrifices:

 

- Roughly $1billion on the rest of their squad over 6 seasons.

- Any chance of being competitive in the league, or in player cups, for the whole period they're building up cash.

- The flexibility to minimise tax by buying/selling just the right value of players per season.

- ALL of their teamstats. Buying twelve 40-year-olds every season will do that.

 

Pick your poison I guess. For certain the 6-youth strategy will work for some people, in some circumstances, but don't just pursue it blindly is all I'm saying. The sacrifices you're making may not be worth it after all.

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The Model

I know, I know! So far so anecdotal. I might have been lucky. The team I looked at might have been unlucky. Having said that, I don't think they consider themselves to be, and they're regularly in the top rankings for gains. I'm not naming them because I don't want to give the impression I'm spotlighting a 'failed' team; on the contrary they seem to have carried out the strategy very successfully. Which is entirely my point. 

So is this example just an outlier, or is there a general lesson we can draw? And if there is, why might the strategy not be as effective as people think? Time to look at the data. Previously I took a look at how player gains per match might be affected by surrounding your players with veterans. The conclusion, from examining 21 high-gaining teams with different strategies? It basically doesn't help at all, and the key thing is simply to play young players in as many games as possible. But that's based on just 21 teams. What if we expanded the analysis to 1500 teams? Perhaps then we could get a much clearer idea of what the most important factors are.

For this, I've got hold of every player's attribute gains this season - up to round 21 - for teams in either Div1, or Div2 of the top 16 leagues. After removing Bot teams, that means we're looking at over 36,000 players, and well over a quarter of a million attribute gains. Along with their gains, I've also gathered the publicly available info about these players' seasons: Their number of appearances (in league, CL, SC and friendly games), their starting attributes for the season, the team they're on etc. etc. The approach is going to be similar to our Player Attributes analysis from a while back, in that we have a dependent variable (Gains) and we're going to use multiple linear regression to establish what factors predict how many gains a player earns, and their relative importance. For those of you more statistically inclined, note that we'll be using standardized variables throughout, as the scales are very different for all the variables I'm going to use.

So, first off, what goes into the model? We're going to look at:

 

Dependent Variable (what we're trying to predict):

Number of Gains. Fairly self-explanatory, just the number of attributes earned by that player, by round 21.

 

Independent Variables (what we think might affect gains):

1. The age of the player. We'd expect younger players to gain better than older ones, so this should come out of the analysis as important.

2. The average age of the player's teammates next to him on the field. In other words, if he's a midfielder, the average age of the other midfielders on the pitch. If playing directly alongside a veteran helps specifically, we should see this improving gains.

3. The average age of the player's teammates in different positions. So for a midfielder, this looks at the average lineup age of defenders, attackers etc. If having a high average lineup age is important, this number should be high.

4. The player's Quality. Presumably, higher quality players will gain more slowly. If so, this should come out as important. We'll call it simply Quality.

5. Friendly Games. The number of friendlies played. Note that since Player Cups appearances are not recorded in player details, this variable probably accounts for them too (players who get loads of friendlies tend to also be played in custom cups a lot).

6. Competitive Games. These are league, champions league and super cup appearances. Similar to above, cup matches are not recorded in player details, so probably this variable also captures cup games (first team players are likely used in competitive games).

 

Dummy Variables (things I included to mop up various effects and improve the accuracy of the analysis, but aren't themselves interesting):

1. Division. This was included to account for the fact that division 2 players get more department cup and league cup games before round 21, neither of which are included above.

2. A constant, which accounts for the regular training and camps available to every player even if they've played no matches. In practice, because we're standardizing variables no explicit constant is required in the model - but it's effectively there.

 

Discarded Variables (things I looked at and found to be unrelated to gains, or that we just can't include):

1. Potential. I'm not scouting 36,000 players for you, I just don't have that kind of cash I'm afraid! Fortunately, potential should average out since it's unlikely to be strongly correlated with any of the variables we are including. But just remember that's another factor.

2. Teammate quality. I checked this actually, both the average quality of players in the same position and different positions. Neither affected gains at all so I won't be revisiting them.

3. Opposition quality. There's no way of telling how good opponents were in friendlies, but in any case, we've looked at this before and found little effect. And also, the average teammate quality is a pretty good indication of opponent quality too - but that had no effect, as mentioned above.

4. Cup and Player cup games. As noted above, these are captured instead by the friendly and competitive game counts, and also to a certain extent by division. Just remember when you see "Friendly Games" it probably represents all non-competitive matches, not just friendlies, and "Competitive Games" will probably also include cups.

 

I ran the regression analysis separately for each position. For goalkeepers, average age in the same position isn't included, since you don't have multiple goalkeepers on the pitch at the same time. Apart from that one variable, the others - Age, Average Lineup Age, Competitive Games, Friendly Games and Player Quality - were very similar across all four positions. That's a good sign, as it suggests the amount of noise is pretty low, and we're getting quite an accurate estimate for each variable. So I just average them together to produce a pie chart based on how important each factor was in determining gains. Here you go...

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The Data

 

 

The Gaining Pie. 

 

OK, let's step through each slice. By far the most important factor is the number of matches, which account for well over half of the variation in attribute gains across players. Because there are far more of them a season, friendlies are the most important, but competitive matches help a huge deal too (and remember, the effect of cups and players cups is incorporated into those slices too). If you want to see gains, get your players on the pitch at every opportunity. This means there's a HUGE cost associated with playing 8 old players in each game - you're effectively wasting around 30% of your gaining potential on those players.

The next biggest factor is player age. Pretty unsurprising, but younger players gain better than older ones. The interesting thing perhaps is that this is only half as important as the number of games played - so veterans playing lots of friendlies can end up earning a lot of attributes, while a 23-year-old left warming the bench might earn fewer. It also means that it's still worth trying to improve your mid-aged players, e.g. 25-30, if they're important for your first team. Play them in plenty of games and they should still rack up some attributes. Let's pause for a moment. Age and number of games account for almost 90% of gains in this analysis. Just remember that if you take nothing else from today: A young player, given plenty of matches in a season, will gain a lot of attributes regardless of the team around them.

The next few factors might help a bit at the margins. Player quality reduces gaining, and the importance is still fairly high, around 9%. Pretty unsurprising, but if you're taking part in a gaining contest on the forums, more important than your gaining strategy is the player you begin with. You want to look for as low quality a player as possible - and preferably one with low alternative stats too, like low keeping for an outfielder. Obviously it's unlikely the faster gaining will help them overcome the poor starting point, but if your aim is to win bag loads of credits on the forums, that's perhaps not so important. In a follow-up post I'll be going into much more detail about player Q and its effect on gaining.

Finally, age. The factor hailed as by far the most important thing to improve your gains - and in whose name billions of dollars worth of useful gains are sacrificed - comes in at a mealy 3.3% importance. And of that 3.3%, by far the most important aspect is the age of players in the same position. In other words: Make sure your young strikers are playing alongside a veteran attacker, but don't worry so much about the overall lineup age. In actual fact, this 0.6% may well actually be 0%, since players (especially in friendlies) are often played out of position - so the 0.6% could come from a midfielder benefitting from defender age because he's playing in defence or an attacker benefitting from a keeper playing alongside him in attack. This all matches the conclusions from the previous lineup age analysis too. Basically, it seems to make no difference. And of course, as always with age, remember the useful variable could be experience instead - so be wary of using old, inexperienced players to get the same effect.

So what about potential, where would that fit in? It will remain an open question how useful stars are - it's impossible to get a big enough sample size with known star ratings. So here's an idea: If you're a Div 1 team or a Div 2 team in one of the 16 biggest leagues (ranked by Q) during S114 you could send me your player's star ratings along with their id, and if we get enough we could run an estimate. Anyone who sends me this data before the end of the season will get the result of the analysis sent to them once I've run it. Any interesting results from the analysis will not be posted publicly to the blog until at least one season later - so S116 at the earliest. My best guess is that potential would be somewhere around 5% - less than player Q (even low star players gain fast) but maybe a touch higher than teammate age. Would be interesting to finally put a firm number on it though!

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The Advice

Long article, I know, so let's boil all this down into a few pieces of advice - my own alternative to the advice lists that are already out there.

 

1. This is the most important thing: Decide what your aims are. Are you trying to build a team? Maximise sales and build up cash? Win a gaining contest? The answer here will affect your whole approach so keep it in mind throughout the rest of the advice - and for any other advice you may read elsewhere.

2. The most important thing is matches. Now, obviously, the best thing to do is play 200 friendlies a season. But if you're not buying credits that's hard. Don't worry though: You'll get 100 open friendlies, and then just play as many sets as you have credits available (up to 50/season). Your 15 each season will probably be spent on training camps and stadium upgrades, but you may have some left over, especially if you win player awards in your department, get promoted, win a cup (including player cups), etc. etc. If you're trying to win a gaining contest there's no alternative to playing 200 friendlies. If you're just trying to get some decent gains and build a team up, don't worry about it so much. You can compensate by playing extra...

3. ...Cup matches. Both player cups and real cups are a great source of extra games. Just player cups account for 17+ games a season - if you can be competitive and push that close to 50, that extra 30 games or so is worth close to 50-60 extra friendlies. So I would never recommend blowing your teamstats by buying too many players at once - it just ruins your chances of competing and getting those extra games. The exception is if you're very credit-rich and can afford to host your own, uncompetitive cups. In that case you can get 48 games a season, though it will cost you 112 credits to do so. But otherwise, you'll want to focus your efforts on getting as far as possible in any cup contest you play in (prioritise it over the league!). Get your teamstats trained up, especially penalties. Often it will be worth paying a couple of credits to face teams of the same Q - you should sometimes win back your entry fee by winning the cup. And league/department cup wins are important too, as each one nets you an extra competitive game.

4. Keep a large, balanced squad. NOT A DOZEN GOALKEEPERS! If you want those extra cup games, you'll need to play people in position. And you'll need close to 30 players, so fitness doesn't kill you in later rounds. Finally, what I mean by 'balanced' here is a lot of players around the same Q, e.g. six strikers between Q80-Q85 for example, not two strikers of Q90 and 4 of Q72. This means if you're in a Q-limited cup, you have more capable players you can rotate in to help you win. No point beating your opponent in fitness if you're fielding Q72 in a Q90 cup. And remember - you don't have to sacrifice gains on your chosen few players here. So long as there's a veteran alongside them, the rest of the team can be adapted to maximise your chance of winning extra matches. And be sure to set up your events so that if the result is not in doubt after 60mins, you take the opportunity to bring off your best players and sub on your weakest, or the ones you want to gain.

5. Run a training camp every weekend, preferably extreme (but high is fine if you can't afford the extra $10m a year extreme costs). Stamina is great to focus on, but if you're selling, it's all about primary stats. Everyone suggests the opposite, but the Q of your player - and how much he gained the previous season - are much bigger selling points than the low level of a primary stat. A Q78, Sh79 striker who gained +6Q last season will fetch a higher price than a Q77, Sh77 striker gaining +5Q. The listed value ($89m v $63m) is a big anchor, and having two points lower shooting will not be valued at $25m, especially when that Q77 player gained less the previous season. Otherwise, get popular stats (e.g. perception) from 59/69/79 to 60/70/80. Your guys will turn up in searches more often that way (as well as just looking better when people scan them). 

6. Make sure there is 1 veteran in each outfield position (def, mid, att) at all times in all games. Then fill out the rest of your side with whoever you want to gain, whether that be first teamers, youths, or whatever. The 6 players you most want to gain should be on the wings, given things to do, and subbed on or off at half time, just like most people recommend. But you can still be gaining well on another 4 or 5 players, too.

7. If your aim is to maximise sales, think about how long you want to develop each player. A 17-year-old might not develop as quickly as you hoped in season 1, but have a great season at age 19 (in general players seem to gain faster or just as fast at 18-20 than at 17). If you want to maximise sales, you need to hang on to players when they're still developing, and sell them when their development is peaking. To have this flexibility, and still be able to sell 5 players a season to maximise your profit (4 purchases plus youth player) you can't only be developing 6 players. Developing 10 gives you the option of holding on to each one for an average of two seasons (which will vary depending on when you judge each player is going to maximise your income) and still leaves 4 slots in your lineup for veterans, one in each position. Finally, this also reduces risk. If a player is fizzling you can cut him loose for 70% (or even sack him) without torpedoing such a high proportion of the season's input. If I was looking to just raise money, this is the approach I'd take.

8. Train wherever possible. This is another reason to keep a big squad - you can't increase your friendlies, but you can decrease the number of times your players rest. If you're really trying to maximise gains, you should be taking individual training any time you're within Stamina/10 + 2 of 100% fitness, otherwise you're just throwing away fitness.

9. If (and ONLY if) your single aim is to raise one player above all others and win a gaining contest on the forums - it's going to all come down to stats and potential. Obviously you've found a 5* player, but is he low enough quality? Get the lowest total attributes you can (including keeping!), with the exception of stamina (and make sure that's 70/80, not 75/85). Train the lowest stat at camps, even if that's keeping. Only play friendlies when that player is available and put him alongside at least one veteran. Give him every task you can - all the free kicks, penalties and corners in the world. Play offside trap and long ball if his perception is low, play continental if he can gain passing instead. Forget goalkeepers - build a squad that can get you through every possible cup round, even while carrying this wretched creature. And good luck!

 

- Belizio

 

 

  

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