Jimbokav1971

Now I am under no illusions. N.Ireland U21's do not have a brilliant record. What I am seiing inmy game though is nowhere near reality.

To be honest I realised there was a problem, but I didn't realise quite how big a problem it was until I listed the results like this.

I know there are issues with "grey" teams and I'm sure that this will be a contributing factor, but looking at these results it appears, (at least to me), that there is something else affecting it too.

I'm using a small databse, (and only running the N.Ireland structure), so lets be honest, whether it be San Marino, Estonia, Czech Republic or Bulgaria, they will all be full of "grey" players.

Because of that, I find it surprising that these is such a gulf in scorelines between similar teams, (indeed Bulgaria won 10-0 & 4-0 in 2015, but only managed a 0-0 in 2011) .

There seems little rhyme or reason to the results.

Originally I was just posting this to see if the res of you were encountering similar problems, but I am now also mentioning this in the bugs forum, (for what little good it will do at this late stage).

Thanks in advance for any of you who take the time to look at the U21 results in your game.

Amaroq

Doesn't that mean that "all" - maybe 90% of these teams - will be entirely composed of grey players?

My experience of the grey-players bug has been, in some games they achieve tremendous blowouts, scything through my defense with ease, and in other games the results are much more believable.

I don't know why that is, but I'd say its all part of the "grey" players bug.

For example, as a team at the bottom of the Scottish league structure, I played an all-grey team in a friendly, and lost 0-9. This no-name team looked like Brazil on a good day, and no substitution, tactical change, etc, seemed to slow them. I might as well have been fielding a team of kids! One striker, in particular, caught my eye with a double-hat-trick: six goals!

Curious about the grey-player phenomenon, I re-loaded to play the same game, and lost 0-1. The second game looked much much more realistic: the run of play was much more balanced, and I felt like either team could have won.

Comparing and contrasting the two, I noticed that the "6-goal" grey player from the 0-9 defeat looked much better than my players... probably several divisions better! .. but wasn't present in the 0-1 match. The players playing his position looked much more reasonable - of the talent level that I'd have expected for a non-league team. Flipping through the other positions, I found a couple similarly mis-matched players out of the list: a midfielder in the 0-9 game, a defender in the 0-1.

So, I think that's why the gulf in scorelines happens - and why there's little rhyme or reason in it.

Jimbokav1971

Cheers Amaroq :thup:.

Yeah, I think it means that only the likes of England, Spain, Italy and France U21's will have non "grey" players.

My point is that there seems to be little consistancy in the way that "grey" teams perform at International level, (which is NOT my experience at club level).

Not really sure what to make of your example where the AI "grey" manager doesn't select his strong players. I can't really comment on this in my game because I never reload a game even when I ship 11 goals against a "grey" team , and in any case I am not the manager of the N.Ireland U21's team.

I must admit that my "grey" problem has been pretty consistant all the way through my save, and it's only now in 2015 that I am getting to grips with them.

It may well be part of the "grey" bug, but this sort of example is not something that to my knowledge SI have been made aware of. I'm just tryng to work out if it's an isolated incident in my game or if it's a typical example.

NepentheZ

Yea, In my save, the U-21 results are similar to your's, Jimbo. Most notably are these...

N. Ireland 1 - 14 Azerbaijan
Poland 9 - 0 N. Ireland
Poland 6 - 0 N. Ireland
N. Ireland 0 - 11 Moldova
Malta 8 - 2 N. Ireland

All 5 results in the last 3 seasons.

Annihilator666

Here's the last 5 years in my game:

2031:

1-1 Belarus
0-2 Ireland
1-5 Liechtenstein
1-3 Bulgaria
1-0 Slovenia
1-2 Israel
2-3 Romania
0-3 Slovenia
3-1 Israel

2030:

1-3 Japan
0-3 Bulgaria
0-1 Finland
0-1 Turkey
0-6 Greece
0-6 Switzerland

2029:

0-6 Ivory Coast
0-6 Germany
1-6 Moldova
0-4 Azerbaijan
0-7 Finland
3-3 Bulgaria
0-2 Turkey
0-6 Moldova

2028:

0-2 Serbia
2-6 Cyprus
1-3 Romania
0-6 South Korea
0-0 Malta

2027:

0-1 Iceland
0-4 Croatia
0-1 England
0-1 Bosnia
0-4 Austria
1-3 Andorra
0-1 France
0-3 San Marino
0-4 Romania
1-1 Cyprus
0-2 Bosnia
0-4 France


Played: 40
Won: 2
Drawn: 4
Lost: 34

Jimbokav1971

You're in 2024/25 aren't you.

So at this early stage it would seem ro appear that the "grey" situation seems to get worse, (at International level at least).

Amaroq

It wasn't that he didn't select the strong players - they weren't even there. As in, not part of the squad list if I looked at the team itself, rather than 'not selected'. Which really surprised me - I'd expected that the same greys would be available to the same team!

Amaroq

That might be understandable, if the quality of grey player created for the sides is related to the reputation of the side, and the reputations are (slowly) improving thanks to the 6-0 victories over teams with real players.

NepentheZ

I'm in 25/26, but close enough. As we speak, N. Ireland just lost 5-0 to San Marino too...

endtime

In my Icelandic game, the u21 and u19 teams have been performing poorly - as perhaps it should be expected. The u21s have been particularly dire; their results in 2034 are 1:4 against Slovenia, 1:5 against Switzerland, 0:2 against Germany, 0:8 against Poland and 0:4 against Nigeria. Previous years were equally bad, including losses against Moldova, Luxembourg, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein and other teams of similar standing. The u19 have been doing a bit better, winning or drawing every once in a while. This playing with a large db.
Due to some bizzarre bug the senior team lose practically every game they play by a big margin (0:7 Estonia, 1:9 Cyprus, 0:7 Scotland, 0:7 Russia and 2:6 Austria in 2036 alone), but I think this is a freak occurence specific to my game, because I haven't seen anyone else reporting it.