New changes.... AGAIN!!!
 

This is, as I see it, the nail on the coffin of my hattrick carreer.... I wished we had some stability for a change.

Whilst it says the market price may fall i think for those that are currently training their main players past ET presumably prices for them would rise as they would be harder to achieve? though i guess combined with the increase in speed to get there that may be irrelevant.

Okay, I am confused. First they take action to slow down training and cool the economy, now they are speeding up training? It could be a step towards more multiskilled players.

I am going to let it sink in, but I truly hate the timing of this announcement. Granted, it would have been worse for me if this was done last season (when sold all my 19 y/20y old trainees at the end of the season), but only 7 weeks before the start of next season I now have to respond to the consequences.

I had a game plan with which I wanted to grow steadily towards a IIIrd division or more. Now this game plan has become obsolete.

The YA will become a joke when you can train your player faster in the senior team. Seems that I only should hire 15 yo players in the YA, regardless of their skills. Better to promote a multi pasable/inad 17 y 0 d old than an excellent 17 y 80 d old (with two inad side-skills). My excellent defender, inad passing prospect who can promote at the age of 17 y 80 d just became virtually worthless, compared to his former prospect.

I should decide fast. If I sell all my players asap I can get some money out of them, with the side-effect that I will not promote. If I wait longer I might lose more and more money on them, but I am then playing one level higher (with still a decent financial situation).

Quiting this game vs changing my strategy AGAIN is now at 70-30.

At least it doesn't get boring ;) I've quit planning this game when the market crashed some time after I bought my first magnificent PM for 3.6M. Considering that that still is my most expensive player (about to enter the hall of fame btw) says a lot about the effort I've put in the game before the market crashed. Since then it's more a social thing. I've figured that if I keep training wingers (pretty easy, good profit) for as long as I want I have enough money to win whatever league I want. Really, if I keep this up for 10 years I have enough money to win the masters. Or not. Either way, I don't really care. With all respect, I don't understand how you think you can plan your way to div. 3. The market has crashed, inflated and deflated (and seems to be inflating atm) since I started playing this game. Whether or not you have bought or sold the players at the right time is pure luck.

No mather howe much I hate doing this I have to agree with Shabba on this one. Just keep running your plan. May be tweek it a little but do not change plans for every whin they have, since they have had quite a few. This seeming to be a minor one. I t clearly benefits multiskill training, which I was doing anyway. So I do not really care one way or the other.

My second time around I play for fun only. Saves a lot of frustration :)

As almost always, I think, the changes are probably not as big as they may seem. For me, it is a good timing, as I wanted to switch to winger training soon anyway. I might think about producing more WTM or FTW than previously thought. Especially good about that: The spots with half a training are worth more IMO.

OTOH, I don't quite know here it is heading concerning wages etc. Will all players eventually look the same?

Change with specialists: Sounds nice. Instead of having static values for all your life, you need toc hose your way as they kind of exclude each other. That's a good idea for the game.

Hey, I have played this game for fun! If there were no fun it it I wouldn't play. But the fun I get from it is mainly from investing in it long term. That is the charme of the game for me.

And that's why I hate these changes all the time. Even considering that I'm in a perfect position to anticipate on the new situation (so in that sense Shabba is right that pure luck is all important).

The way I see it now I should probably stick to my old plan but change it a little. Swap some older players with some younger ones and also get a couple of multi-skilled very young players at the start of next season (wow, how expensive will these be then!) and see what happens. That being said, I hate even thinking about this.

What do you guys think about the impact on the YA?

I've read the thing three times, and my brains are stuck: I'm not really sure how this age thing will work out. To me it seems that it'll be worthwhile to have more older players (no skilldrops, very low wages, low prices), and that it's a good idea to train sideskills of older players (no age penalty). This could mean that training youngsters is obsolete indeed. However, it's hard to say if it works out that way: despite all the changes 3-5-2 is still the best lineup. I think that says enough...

Wages for oldies will increase. So that's a reason they would be less interesting. Also you can't train an oldie, while training other players remains interesting until 29 Y.O. In the long run current 30 Y.O.'s become less and less appealing compared to the many strong multi-skilled players HT will get.

I do think that it makes any YA essentially pointless as what is the point in waiting that long to pop a player at excellent if you can get it there faster in the senior squad (price wise)

So, does anyone have some valuable insight to share yet? I'm not too sure if I should change anything yet, but I'm coming to the point where I should buy another IM. Or not. Still training wingers btw.

Training times are faster. Don't know exact numbers, but personally I think tehre's not much to change so far. I think it is even worth more if you someone who has only 1 skill to train in the 2nd skill.

My specialist numbers:

Assistant trainers: 9
Psycho, Physio & PR: 6 of each
Therefore I have always space for 3 docs wihtout needing to fire someone else.

But I don't know whether this is really a good strategy.

At low levels training times are visibly faster for younger and older players. I've never missed a pop at step trading and I usually buy players that are one salary step before popping to achieve better prices at purchase.

I will consider training all my trainees to primary and secondary as well, but other than that, no much change.

So it might be worthwhile to train older IM's as wingers and play 4-4-2 or something?

Looking at the options for next season. Training general did give me a lot, but now I need to choose a training type. I will probably choose keeper. This will be the option that is the least dramatic for my cash-position and the strength of the team. Any other training type requires a huge investment OR a dramatic decrease of the team-strength.

Passing or set pieces should be doable without a big investment. OK, they are much more efficient with investments, but you can start with your uld players, in my opinion.
Besides that, Keepers shouldn't be too bad either. Buy a defender with high set pieces and train him in the goal and a few seasons later you have the best keeper in the world. Or kind of...

Well, you could consider training wingers. I'm not sure how much the age penalty is since the change (please tell me!), but you could even train your current players on these positions. The wing is where most teams are weak, so a strong wing attack can be valuable. Investment for secondary trainees are virtually non-existant, you can train even the worst crap to make huge profits. Look for passable to good wing with the quick specialty, and go no higher than inadequate PM.

That is a good one. Thanks!
True. I was thinking about winger training, but I want at least 3 strong defenders and 3 strong PM's on a training spot (with a cup run in mind). The other two spots may be for the young crappy players. I have 8 M to spend on the trainees (and on top of that the money I recieve from the 6 oldies I will replace with younger guys). Don't know if that is a feasible option. But you got me thinking Shabba. Thanks.

edit: well, my talk about the defender spot for winger-training is nonsense. Here wingers get only half the training, so all spots should be filled with strong defenders imvho.

edit2: considering both my cash position and my short term ambitions it might be best to go for older trainees (28 YO) and aim to train them for two seasons (should I NOT choose to train keeper). Remains to be seen what the profit will be after training two seasons, but I guess this also goes for any other training choice. The market will be flooded with multi-skilled players.

The thing about training wingers is that you don't really miss it if you sell a player, or just started training a new one. Sure, your wing attack will drop, but that's not the most important aspect of the team to begin with. You can keep all strong inner players (fc, im, cd, even defensive wb). Even if you want to have a strong player on the wing position you can just look for a IM with inad/passable winger and play a WTM.

I'm convinced now! Depending on the prices of players at the end of the season I will choose what age my trainees will be. Right now 28 YO's are affordable for me considering the team strategy.

I changed my mind.

In normal circumstances I would go for winger, but I am very afraid that prices will drop in the coming seasons (due to a flood of super-multiskilled players). It seems to me that a lot of people will lose money while training, unless you start with very young players.

Added to that the salary increases would be gigantic should I switch to winger training. I think this would be about 150K per week.

In short: I don't think I can afford winger training without abandoning the league and cup goals (meaning: I wouldn't choose 17 yo trainees).

Instead I will go for keeper training with 1 keeper and 1 defender on the training spot (thanks for the tip ynnek!). I will keep the rest of my team, replacing some weaker individuals with stronger oldies (> 29 yo).

I think that this way I will be able to compete in IV and get far (beyond round 5) in the cup.

The money I make will be from weekly profit (a positive balance between crowd income and player salary/player replacement).

After about 10 training games my 2nd keeper went from wretched to passable. His keeper star rating went from 3 to 5.5 (then being inad, now being solid). The first keeper has 5 stars while being inad!!!

Within a season the 2nd keeper will become outstanding. Within 5 seasons reach ET. By then he'll be an ET keeper and ET defender (and also brilliant SP).

All these developments made me decide to sell my first keeper (worth 5 M) and buy another 25 yo strong defender, SP taker (worth 3 M). It's far more fun to see so many pops and also I believe this will be more worthwhile than training keepers that are already strong. My first keeper had one pop (from SN to Tit) and is worth the same as last season.

One drawback of training these types of players is that you can't guess the current value with transfer compare. This TC can't make a selection of strong defenders with reasonable keeper abilities.

I should probably not be so hasty. I'd better wait one more season so that I have 2 strong keepers in an (so it seems) important next season.

I'm not sure I get what you were trying to do in the first place...

Saw this reply just now (a bit late I guess...). My plans are still the same.

I have two keeper trainees. Keeper A started as SN keeper and keeper B started as wretched keeper with ET defense. Naturally both also have strong SP.

I notice that my keeper A now has 7 stars with solid form. Keeper B has 6 stars with passable form. The progress of keeper B has been superb. From wretched to excellent in a season. Within now and very soon he should be stronger (on stars) than keeper A.

That's why I will sell keeper A after the next pop and buy back another wretched keeper with high defense and SP. I hope to get 5.5 to 6 M for my keeper A while the new keeper will only cost 3 M.

I am very interested to see how much I will get for keeper B as soon as he reaches ET keeper, ET defense and high SP (within 3 seasons).

Spell it out for me, apparently I'm retarded. You're training GK, I gather that much. But not at GK apparently. SP, def?

Having a deffensive keeper is better? I always thought GK (and SP) was the only important stat for a keeper.

Let’s see what I can do...

Ynnek suggested me to train a strong defender in the goal (see his post in this thread). So I bought myself a 25 yo ET defender with wretched GK. He played the wednesday matches every week and after 15 weeks of training him GK he went to excellent (almost formidable at this point). The rest of the previous posts speak for themselves, I hope….

Hattrick Wiki: "Regarding influence on ratings, a level of keeper is equivalent to about 3 levels of defending for a goalkeeper." This means that my excellent GK actually is as good as a worldclass GK (with his ET def).

Very good to know.

So to train a keeper for yourself this is good, because the wage is less than what is would normaly be.

But when you train a keeper to sell, this is not good, because most users not knowing this would not want to pay the extra-money.

I fear this is very true. In fact most of us are pretty fanatical about our games and even for us this is new.

Hmmmmmm....... I am not so fast, but when this was announced a couple of years ago I immediately noticed it. You got me thinking. Now I don't know WHAT to do.

edit: just checked and noticed that people pay millions more for an ET keeper with excellent or more def compared to a ET keeper without def. I'm relieved!

edit2: It is still the question if this really is a great way to go. Do I get enough cash out of this training to remain where I am or even get a step further?

Well maybe I should just wait until all other players end their HT carreer. I just read that Kemal with the Snaken will end the game.

barbu, I guess, you'd be surprised what people pay for players with two skills >= world class...

Wow will Kemal and the Snaken quit! That's a surprise. He's been pretty fanatical about it for years.

That's sad.

But I also hoped to just outlive all others...but now I am even a league further down myself...

I didn't even know kemal still played tbh. Yndy is still going though and he's won everything!

Haven't talked to Kemal in ages, but when I last talked to him Hattrick was his last gaming effort, he gave up on civ entirely. RL came in between.

What new changes?