UNL: Conclusion of the 17/18 campaign

After a bit of a small blogging hiatus, here is an update on my current FM13 save. I just finished season 6 with Heidelberg (2017/2018) and despite some struggles along the way I think we are establishing ourselves as a real challenge in the UN League. In the previous season we ended up not doing as well as I would like, but this time we managed to end in 6th place after spending months stuck in 7th. Although I secretly hoped for a better position, I admit the competition was fierce, and we also focused a lot in our international efforts, in particular the EURO Cup, which we managed to get to the semi final, only to lose to Liverpool by 3x2 in aggregate. Not a bad performance, which brought in some money and respect from the board. Next season I would definitely want to make it to the top 4 if I can, but that is to be seen.

I think overall I finally got the squad to find its weapon, a 41221 formation, with a fairly attacking mentality. We had a strong period when Arrua was really causing some damage to the opposition with his goals. This young player really was an asset to the team up until he asked to be traded. I was pretty upset about the prospect of losing one of my best current players and one of the players I had invested a lot into for future seasons. The one positive is the fact I managed to get over 11M for him which should help me get some new talent in the following season.

Once Arrua was out, our new Chinese youngster, Zhao Zhengbin, was given a lot more responsibility, and I have to say he delivered wonderfully despite his young age and inexperience. I have great hopes for him and unless he asks to be traded I feel he will eventually be one of our historical players, part of the team that raises the UNL trophy, or so I hope.

There were a few players I would like to highlight from this season. Starting with our top player this season, Zelimir Busic. Once again this great player managed to shine despite not looking terribly impressive when you look at his stats. Somehow he seems to always manage to deliver good performances, getting him a record number of player of the match titles, an extremely high average rating and a place in the top 3 defenders of the league this season. All of this from a seemingly mediocre 27 year old that gets paid less than 6K per week. Just shows that stats will only tell you part of the story.

Jose Goncalves once again deserves attention. This is our reliable and experienced center back, often playing with Busic. While Busic is the man in the air, Goncalves is the one I tend to rely on for most defensive needs.

Zdenek Svoboda, our right winger has also shown to be a valiable player to our club. I will say he is not as consistent as the two center backs, but when he plays well he can have a major impact on our performance. He boasts great speed and a strong crossing ability. He is still young and I have high hopes for this player in the next couple of seasons, when I expect him to really shine.

I've already mentiond Zhengbin, but he really is right now my most exciting player. This is because he is only 19 years old and he has already taken our starting target man position. While Arrua will be missed, Zhengbin really suits the lone striker role I have in my tactics better. He has great overall attributes, but his strength and aerial ability really make him a great player to have up front. This will certainly not be the last time I mention him here.

Lastly, here are some more stats I've collected from this last season... If I have the will I will analyze and post a few more number on later posts.

Short Review: Sim City Societies

Title - Sim City Societies
Genre - Strategy
Platform - PC
Rating - F
Comments - I just noticed how few bad reviews I have given, and let me explain that the reason for that is the fact I usually do my research before I start to waste my time on any particular game. Despite reading many reviews on this one, I went ahead and got it anyway. I have always been a fan of the Maxis games, and Sim City specially has always been one of my favorite games as I have stated before. I have owned every single Sim City ever released. This version however, has been severely modified to suit a different audience. Developpers claimed that they attempted to keep old fans happy and get a new crowd to play it, well they FAILED. As an old fan of the series, I must say this game has nothing to do with the original versions, and insted of improving on something that had already been working for over a decade, they changed the game to suit different players, retarded ones or infants. The game is extremely simple and the new building system is extremely slow and unrewarding. The beauty of the old games, was the freedom to not only have fun building a city the way you wanted to look, but the fact that it was a science to keep the city running smoothly. I loved how they allowed me to decide on what buildings would be on my city through an indirect method of giving incentives to cater to certain types. On this game instead of allowing an indirect control over the buildings, you simply place them yourself, which takes away all the fun of creating a balance. The graphics on this new game are only marginally better. Overall this game was a waste of time,and a big disappointment on a series that was built by Will Wright, and completely destroyed by EA.

Short Review: World of Warcraft - Burning Crusade

Title - WoW - Burning Crusade
Genre - MMORPG expansion
Platform - PC
Rating - A
Comments - What was great just got better. Two new races were added to the game, and more importantly a whole new continent with things for level 60-70 players to enjoy. A lot of new places to go and the end game stuff now does not require 40 players, only 25 players which makes it a lot more accessible than before. Really nice change for those that try to maintain a social life.

Steam Crusader Kings 2: Elder Kings runtime error

This will be a brief post, but I just wanted to share an issue I had last night installing Elder Kings on my CK2 install on Steam. For those that don't know Elder Kings is a mod that changes the game so you can play in the fantasy world of Elder Scrolls in CK2. As a big fan of the TES series I felt I needed to try this one. The mod is great, but my post is about a runtime error I got when trying to play the mod.

Basically the game would crash as soon as I started it with the mod activated. Turns out the solution was to install all options when you run the .exe, don't leave the selection on default. I learned this from http://steamcommunity.com/app/203770/discussions/0/810921274049313559/

So if you are having your game crash just reinstall the mod and this time select all the available options, ie. run the full installation not the default one. This solved the issue for me and I hope I help a few folks running into the same problem.

For thoroughness, I'm running it on steam on my Windows 7 machine. I'll try to post a bit more on this mod later once I get to play it a bit more. I will say though, great job to developpers, this is a solid, polished and through mod... well done

Short Review: World of Warcraft (Vanilla)

Title - World of Warcraft
Genre - MMORPG
Platform - PC
Rating - A+
Comments - As you can read above I got into RPG, and now I got into MMORPG, if you don't want another addiction in your life, don't pick this game up. It is just too much fun. It does not look nearly as good as most of the games now a days, but it is amazing, once you get into doing instances and getting the end game gear, there is no way back. The game is just too addictive. I really enjoy the profession you can pick for your characters, and the way that all the characters are balanced. Overall great, I can't really explain.