Chelsea FM15 - very delayed update

Unfortunately I have pretty much stopped doing any kind of posting on all my blogs for a while. Me an my wife had a child a couple years ago and slowly I have stopped doing all kinds of things that I used to do. However, one of the things I have not stopped doing is playing video games including FM. I've played quite a bit of my Chelsea save even so I figured it would still be good to update the blog with where I am right now.

I'm currently on January 1st of 2018 and our Chelsea has been doing very well despite only having won the premier league one year in the 15/16 season. We got 2nd in the 16/17 season but I feel like we are on our way to winning this one as well. I've changed our tactics a little bit this season so I wanted to update you all on that as well. Inspired by Guido (https://strikerless.com/) I wanted to relive my FM live days of playing strikerless. I have not had success with a 4-6-0 since FML but with Chelseas budget and some inspiration/guidance from Guido I have managed to be doing quite well with this formation.

I'm using a 4-6-0 formation which is slightly different from my FML formation in that the deeper 3 midfielders are actually located more centrally while by attacking mids are playing a mode wide formation. I partly did it this way because of the players I already had in my squad using my previous 4-3-2-1 formation. This has been working well and it is a very aggressive formation although I have had some difficulties against some tough oppositions like Juventus and Manchester United. I think the key for this formation working so far was the addition of Pogba who really stepped up the quality of my midfield. Oscar playing as a Trequartista was originally something I considered a compromise but he has been amazing when playing with William to his right. As you can see I also bough Douglas Costa which has been just an outstanding player for my team, playing in any of my front 3 positions and doing great with set pieces. I also purchased the RWB Danilo from FCP for U$38M. In his first season his average rating was 7.21.

My other unusual formation is a 3-2-2-2-1 using 3 center backs while keeping one of them as a stopper. This tactic was something I wanted to try for a couple of reasons, I have a lot of high quality center backs, and Danilo has been amazing as a wing back when he plays that role. Additionally having Ramires, Pogba and Lucas Silva in the midfield means that I feel comfortable putting less players there and still not leaving the middle vulnerable. Lastly this formation has allowed me to continue playing a fairly wide style of football but with long passes. I haven't tried this formation against tough teams yet but once I finish tweaking it I will try it.

Kingdom - Sand gardening of video games

UNL: Conclusion of the 23/24 season

Once again we have finished the year victorious. I feel that the game is starting to get too easy, but really unless we are winning the Champion's league on a regular basis there is still room for improvement. Come to think of it, one issue with this extremely fun database I made is that at this point I wish the teams in the league had more money. Really only us and Minato have really been accumulating any money and that's because we are the only two teams winning.

I digress. Once again we won the League... here are the standings.

As the fixtures show, we ran a very tight campaign this season, losing only 3 games the whole season in the UNL. We have created a new record point count for the league with 95 points.

Chelsea FM15 - fruitful October

The month of October was another good one for my Chelsea team. We beat Southampton 2x1, followed by an exciting game against Leicester City. This game happened at King Power Stadium and they were actually the stronger team for the most part. They had more possession and twice as many shots. Fortunately for us we played the right cards and converted 5 shots on goal into 3 goals, winning us the game by 3x2.

We also played Swansea and Crystal Palace, both games we easily managed to win. This leaves us in 3rd place tied with Man United in points. Man City is first by only 3 points so things are still shaping up.

Lastly, we had another Champions League game. This time it was against Ajax and the game was in Holland. After a very good performance by our squad, we unfortunately came out of it with a 0x0 draw. This leaves us currently in 3rd place in group G, behind Juventus and Celtic. However, I do not feel very worried since we still have a lost of home games ahead and I am confident we will make it through this round.

October has been rough for injuries. Besides a 5 month injury to Strootman, we also have Ramire, John Terry, Matic, Felipe Luis, Willian and Gimber all injured this month. So I'm happy we're still getting results, I'm just starting to worry that our team is struggling with players getting tired right before we have some difficult games coming up against Man United, Juventus and Liverpool.

Cities: Skyline

As anyone that reads my blog or has known my gaming preferences would know, one of my favorite game genres is city builders/simulators. However, for the last 13 years, myself and any other city sim fan knows, we have been having to play the same game. Sim City 4 was the last good sim made for folks like me, and all the other garbage release since has been nothing but huge disappointments. I never understood why, I mean the formula for SC4 was already good, all it would take is a bit of a graphical overhaul and a few new tweaks and you could have another great title out. Somehow every developer has been focusing on the wrong things, not what players wanted. Until now...

Paradox is one of my most respected companies in the gaming industry, and in combination with a finish developer (Colossal Order) they produced the long awaited title for us city sim fans, Cities: Skylines. This is a modern take on what SC4 last did with a huge number of improvements. In particular, this title added a crazy amount of attention to traffic, to the point that I can't even imagine how it keeps track of so much data for each vehicle and their routes. The road system and traffic are some of the best improvements in this game.

Another great addition to this genre was the physics. This game has great water physics that makes it so much fun and so easy to cause irreparable problems to your city. Just to give you a sense, in one of my first cities I decided to put my waste water into this convenient pond located on top of a hill, that way the drinking water wouldn't come from the same source. Great idea no? Well turns out the game kept track of my waste water, which had no escape and as the city grew the pond started to fill up. Until the day I got a lot of chirps about flooding in my industrial zone. I took a look and the streets of my industrial area was covered in shitty water and the stuff was starting to rush all through my city. I lost about 6-7 hours of gametime building a city that was almost irreparable at that point... best gaming day I've had in a really long time. I was so happy to see that kind of attention to detail in a game like this.

This isn't really a review of this game, it's mostly just me saying what I like about it, from the perspective of a huge fan of the genre. So the last thing I wanted to bring up is the map maker and the asset editor which come with the game for free. Basically you can make awesome maps and make awesome buildings for your city with the tools that already come with the game. Below is my attempt at a map I've been working on. It's incredible, and what's more amazing is that because they are so integrated with steam, all this stuff can be shared with other players and downloaded seamlessly right inside the game.

So if you are a big fan of city sims, you must purchase this game. It is even available for Linux, so if you are a linux user, make sure to buy it from your linux client so it counts as coming from linux (which is good to indicate to developpers that linux people are buying games)

Chelsea FM15 - cruising in the EPL

 After some more games, my Chelsea is doing fairly well. We've been cruising in the premier league, although we have not met the hardest opposition so far. We faced Aston Villa, Hull , Everton and the newly promoted Bournemouth... here are some of the match summaries.

Beyond that, in the European stage things have not been as simple. We faced Juventus on our first match in the Champions league and had a very difficult first half. I think we were actually playing too defensively. We started the second period behind by two goals which really pushed us forward, we almost managed to tie the game with quite a few good chances, in the end Hazard's goal wasn't enough. We also played Celtic, which we easily managed to beat.

Chelsea save - start of season 2

Another season started and I'm setting our goals pretty high this time around. I convinced the board we are going to win the title this time around. With that they opened the wallets for me and I've spent a lot of money in the transfer window... maybe a bit too much even. I'll probably go into my transfers on a later data however.

Right now, we've played 3 matches. Our season opener was against Man City, a game we played well in my opinion, but still failed to get any points. This was also the first game I attempted a new tactic using a 4-6-0 formation with Oscar as a Trequartista playing in the AMC position. It's something new I am trying this season, but I think I pulled the trigger too early and probably should have tested the waters against an easier team first.

Anyway, second game we had the newly promoted Huddersfield, which we managed to beat very comfortably despite playing away. Costa was incredible and I hope this is his new norm, last season he had a few dry spells that really worried me about how much I can rely on him to win games.

My most recent game was against Tottenham at White Hart Lane. This was another tough match for us since last season they beat us when we played away and we fought fiercely for the 3rd position. Fortunately we managed to come out on top of a game where Spurs was certainly controlling. We played again with our 4-3-2-1 formation with the flat narrow midfield, Hazard on the left as an inside forward and Willian on the right as a winger.