FBCB House Rules

[QuikSand]

Yes, it's that time of year... since the actual college basketball season has just goten started, I'm once again in that mood, and have dusted off FBCB. Lovely game, really. Hope a new version does indeed come.

Anyway, most of my careers turn out more or less the same way -- start with tiny school, quickly turn it into being good enough to whip its tiny conference-mates, and from there it's up-up-up until I lose interest. I do like the game, but have yet to really get too deep into things... I have played maybe 6-8 careers, and they have all formed the same arc.


So, I just restarted, playing as Mt. St. Mary's, and have jot goten to year five -- when the roster is full of my own players. And, I expect, we will probably rout the Northeast conference, and never lok back from here. Not bad, but not that inteersting to me, been there, done that.


So, I'm thinking about more hosue rules -- maybe an even tougher challenge. I already forsake foreign players and those from AK and HI, the AI teams don't seem to pursue them enough, and there are too many bargains that way. In this career, I've decided to not redshirt anyone, which I know is ordinarily a great way to get slightly more developed players.

So... something else?

I was thinking that maybe each season I ought to allow myself only 20 total recruits... just one fill of the call list, that's it. I think that would curb my willingness to go out and spslurge on all sorts of optimistic guys (for my team now, that's basicallly guys from the 100-200 range overall) as I'd be sacrificing my efforts on more realistic players. Might be interesting.


Anyone else, veterans of the game, who have similar rules or challenge setups that have added some flavor for yet another time through this nice old game?

[st.cronin]

If you want a challenge, try recruiting ONLY junior college guys.

[RPI-Fan]

Funny, I was thinking of FBCB yesterday after not having it ever cross my mind since probably... last March.

Anyways, as far as house rules, the one fill of the call list thing is a good one, I think. I always kind of did this out of laziness, and did not see the massive recruiting success that has been documented by others.

Another one that may help would be requiring x % of your budget has to be spent on assistants (thereby limiting your recruiting budget). I'd love it if you could come up with a good "x" for that rule.

[Balldog]

One thing that I have done that makes the game more challenging is not creating a human coach from scratch. I'll typically sim 3-4 seasons prior to starting then either go through the top assistant coaches and change one to human or go advance through the head coach rounds and swith a first time head coach to human.

I've found it to easy if I created a head coach, but doing this makes it quite the challenge.

My only beef with this game is the amount of redshirts the CPU gives out, almost every year all the top freshman are redshirted. I'm trying to thinking of a work around, I might have to go through the editor.

[Dr. Sak]

Why not set an academic limit? For example only recruiting players that meet high GPA and SAT qualifications.

[RPI-Fan]

Originally Posted by bsak16

Why not set an academic limit? For example only recruiting players that meet high GPA and SAT qualifications.

There are inherent advantages in this type of strategy. I think that, in fact, limiting yourself to low-academic players would actually prove a good deal more challenging overall.

[sooner333]

I do the whole 20 person limit out of laziness too. It's not a hardfast rule in the sense that if I get shut out on a scholarship or two I'll try to scramble to get a late qualifier or something, but usually I get someone below my normal recruiting. Sometimes I'll just save the scholarship for the next season.

My career is following yours typical one, but I'm still having fun with it. I took over Florida A&M and have had some good years, but only one trip past the Sweet 16. I've moved up from the MEAC to the Colonial (with a year at another conference in between). My best year was my last in the MEAC where I went undefeated in the regular season and made an Elite Eight run. I had an absolute (foreign) stud at PG and he scored something like 30 ppg in my up-tempo, press and trap scheme.

[QuikSand]

Well, I think I will stick with MSM for now, until I get a particularly attractive offer. And at the new school, maybe I will try:

-hard limit of 20 contacts per season
-no foreign, AK, or HI recruits
-no withdrawing any scholarship offers

[Buccaneer]

Whwn playing a small school, like Colgate for example, I recruit locally like only in NY, NE, PA and NJ. This was a necessity starting with a small budget but as it grew, I still basically keep to the same strategy. But one of the key things that I make a decision on each season is the balance between coaching salaries and recruiting budget. Even as I become better and the AD raises the overall budget, I tend to put quite a bit of it into the coaches, which leaves me with a relative small recruiting budget; thus, sticking to the local states. I still find those 3-star (and rare 4-star) recruits that are good in fundamentals, which maintains the quality of my teams.

My FBCB career has gone on for 60+ years now and in my latest team, I went back to the America East Conference in choosing Maine but after Brian gave me patch 1.12a which instantly moved all of the teams back to their original alignment, while keeping their prestige. Every team that I coaches (typically from 6-12 years), I play it different to keep the career fresh and playable. When I coached Colgate, my goal was to move them from a prestige of 18 to 90 while turning full movements on. With Maine, I turned off movements but will try to win with them in NCAA despite their biased against teams from that conference. Using the same recruiting strategy, I am having trouble moving into the NCAA Regionals because I can't get a decent seed.

[Groundhog]

My house rules are:

*No foreign players.
*Must offer a scholarship to at least one player in my state.
*Limit on one 3/4/5 star player per class, depending on my prestige (3 star if under 50, 4 star if under 75, 5 star for 76+).
*Can only redshirt one player per recruit class, and only if they were 3 star or less.

Makes it pretty challenging. I generally take my conference title one out of every two or three seasons though I'm always top 4, and the limit of one 3 star player means that I really have to recruit a certain style of player. I usually go after 2 star guards with high steal ratings and press the entire game, and go after 3 star player forwards with high rebounding and inside scoring ratings.

Limiting myself to one 3 star player is a big disadvantage, because it means I can only offer one scholarship at a time to 3 star players, and often I end up missing out on my guy and then wind up having to take a 2 star player anyway. That's easily the most important of my house rules IMO.

[Buccaneer]

In looking back through my logs, it seems like just playing in the Big East is a house rule. I've coached Syracuse as well as taking Colgate to the BE and while I may have been a top 5-7 team, invariably 2-3 other BE teams would be better than me. But one of the many reasons this game is genius is that, like in real life, the NCAA tournament is truly a new season and anything can happen it.

[Groundhog]

Yeah, the tourney is a killer. I'm yet to win it all even once, and god knows how many countless season I've run in FBCB.

[Barkeep49]

Originally Posted by Groundhog

Yeah, the tourney is a killer. I'm yet to win it all even once, and god knows how many countless season I've run in FBCB.

"

[Buccaneer]

Yeah, it's funny how that works. In my career after hitting a plateau with Colgate in the BE, I switched over to SDSU so I could experience coaching a powerhouse. I had one season that was a killer - top 10 in offense/defense and tops in TO and FG% but lost in the Elite 8 as a #1 seed (a 2-pt lost to #3 seed UNC). The next season, I had lost three of my starters but this was the only team in my 60+ year career that I won the championship with (as a #3 seed). I wouldn't have thought this would have been the team but either of the two previous seasons instead.

[Buccaneer]

Anyway, most of my careers turn out more or less the same way -- start with tiny school, quickly turn it into being good enough to whip its tiny conference-mates, and from there it's up-up-up until I lose interest.

After how many NCAA championships won?

[cuervo72]

You know, you could have just asked Al and he'd have come up with a 20,000 word paper detailing suggestions.

[QuikSand]

My tendency is to lose interest long before my team becomes a national power... so mostly what I'm looking for is some set of rules that would keep me from easily advancing year after year. I really don't want to have my team just develop by leaps and bounds every season -- I rather like the challenge of finding the occasional 1-star guy with one usable skill, in years when my top targets spurn me for more worthy programs. To me, working with a team that has that kind of gap, and really needing to land certain players in recruiting just to be able to field a fair squad -- that is what I like most. Typically, by about season #10 in any career, I have dominated my tiny conference and either have been promoted once or twice, or else have gotten completely bored with my rivals.

I'd like to be able to play with a school like Colgate, or Mount St. Mary's, or UMBC, or whomever, and just have the sort of career that good college coaches do -- put together a team tha's often good enough to compete on tha level of our conference, occasionally even good enough to sneak into the tourney and win a game or two, but that's it... never even dreaming of becoming Syracuse or Maryland. Alas... when I play basically all-out, it's just another six or eight seasons until we get the school up competing with the big guys, recruiting top 100 players, and then the charm is lost to me.

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

You know, you could have just asked Al and he'd have come up with a 20,000 word paper detailing suggestions.

I never got the sense that Al was much about containing his FBCB gloriousness, but rather reveling in it. *shurg*

[Buccaneer]

QS, understood. That is probably the reason why I have coached 6-7 teams in my career. It seem like after 6-12 seasons, I reached some sort of plateau with the team and then I would coach another team, either by accepting a job offer or simply by making a switch. The reason to chose a certain team varied depending what I felt like I wanted to do in order to keep the career moving.

When I was offered the SU after coaching two years at AFA, that was motivation enough. After 14 years with them and hitting a wall, I switched over to Colgate with movements on. That lasted 16 seasons until I hit the same BE wall, which was then I decided to move up to SDSU. Now I am in the AE with Maine and movements off and while I am winning the conference, my goal is to get beyond the 2nd round in the NCAA.

[cuervo72]

Then pose the question as "Al, under what scenario would even you not be able to beat FBCB?"

[QuikSand]

That's going to head rapidly in the Superfans direction... with hypothetical teams made up of 18-inch little Als, versus full-sized AI teams from Florida and LSU and the like... and the winner is still Da' Alsss.

[LloydLungs]

Originally Posted by sooner333

I do the whole 20 person limit out of laziness too. It's not a hardfast rule in the sense that if I get shut out on a scholarship or two I'll try to scramble to get a late qualifier or something, but usually I get someone below my normal recruiting. Sometimes I'll just save the scholarship for the next season.

This is exactly what I do. Really I'm surprised that people re-visit the call list that much after July. Usually I get enough interest from the initial 20 contacts to fill out a recruiting class, though I do have to scramble now and then.

I'm never usually particularly good at these games, but the way I play has resulted in a wide variety of career paths. Usually I'm at least somewhat successful, but I've been fired three times. But I won a national title with Richmond in another career. It's a perfect balance. Which is why I'm still playing this 3 1/2 year old game WAY more than anything else.

[PineTar]

Revisiting this topic... as we discussed in the lounge last week, the key to getting a more realistic lower conference experience is limiting your target recruiting universe to one star players only. Combining this limitation with some of the others mentioned in this thread (distance limitations - I limit myself to a 400 mile radius around my school; call list limitations - I only add candidates at the beginning of the recruiting period, once recruiting starts, those are the only possibilities) has led to a very satisfying experience so far. The downside (and it isn't overly cumbersome in my eyes) is that there is no way to filter out the 2-5 star players, so as you formulate your initial call list, you will have to verify a player's star designation by opening up his player card (which is something I've done historically anyways to view all his HS stats).

[Dekanth]

I still play the game quite a bit, especially during basketball season. One thing I have done to provide a secondary challenge is to never start a new career. By this I mean, if I want to start a new dynasty, I just take over a new team from my last save. Currently I am in the year 2240. In addition to starting over with a very low prestige team and building them up, I also have career coaching records to strive for. I'll create a head coach around age 30-40 and usually retire before age 70 and see how high up the career wins, conference titles, NCAA title records I can achieve.

Not recruiting foreign players makes things tougher. Also, I never recruit out of my region if I want a tougher challenge. Finally, I will limit my recruiting budget by hiring more expensive coaches than my program should have.

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by PineTar

Revisiting this topic... as we discussed in the lounge last week, the key to getting a more realistic lower conference experience is limiting your target recruiting universe to one star players only. Combining this limitation with some of the others mentioned in this thread (distance limitations - I limit myself to a 400 mile radius around my school; call list limitations - I only add candidates at the beginning of the recruiting period, once recruiting starts, those are the only possibilities) has led to a very satisfying experience so far. The downside (and it isn't overly cumbersome in my eyes) is that there is no way to filter out the 2-5 star players, so as you formulate your initial call list, you will have to verify a player's star designation by opening up his player card (which is something I've done historically anyways to view all his HS stats).

If I ever catch the fever to play this game again, I'm following this recipe. Many thanks.

[sooner333]

Can't you filter the stars under the General View of searching for recruits???

[RPI-Fan]

Originally Posted by sooner333

Can't you filter the stars under the General View of searching for recruits???

you can sort but not filter.

[Buccaneer]

In my 60ish in my career, I have never had a recruiting class like this one, not even close. I don't recruit foreign and I make sure I get at least one local recruit. Fwiw:

 Team Recruiting: Committed Players
 Name                 Pos   Ht    Wt Rating  Interest  State                        
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Erik Powell         PF   6' 7"  241  *****  Committed Oregon              
 Caleb Peck          PF   6' 8"  218  *****  Committed Virginia                  
 Chris Enos          SF   6' 7"  217  *****  Committed New Jersey          
 Tony Workman        SG   6' 6"  189   ****  Committed Texas               
 Jason Covington     PG   6' 1"  174   ****  Committed Connecticut         
 Will Noel           PG   6' 0"  183   ****  Committed Oregon              
 Team Recruiting: Committed Players
 Name                  Pos  Ovl Reg  Pos R.Pos   AA   AS  MBB 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Erik Powell         PF      2    1    1      1  Yes  Yes  Yes 
 Caleb Peck          PF      7    1    2      1   No   No   No 
 Chris Enos          SF      6    3    3      2  Yes  Yes  Yes 
 Tony Workman        SG     21    6    3      2   No  Yes  Yes 
 Jason Covington     PG     14    5    4      1   No   No   No 
 Will Noel           PG     28    7    7      4   No  Yes   No 

[Groundhog]

Yowzers. Nice one.

[Izulde]

Beautiful! What was the rank out of curiosity?

[Buccaneer]

Don't know, haven't got done with the tourney yet. It'll be #1 for sure.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Groundhog

Yeah, the tourney is a killer. I'm yet to win it all even once, and god knows how many countless season I've run in FBCB.

http://fbcb-fofc.com/league/champs.htm

2009 - Utah
2010 - Utah
2012 - Utah

[Radii]

oh damn. Most of this is a year old, hah.

I think to make it a huge challenge you really have to put some artificial house rules that might make FOF house rules look like nothing.

My thinking goes along the lines of looking at what types of recruits are the most heavily coveted, and most rare, and force your team into a 'system' that works best with those players.

I'm thikning something along the lines of the princeton offense. Force yourself into a low pace, high motion, zero 3 point shooting offense, and build a team to work within it. Stick with the other house rules about recruiting foreigners etc, force yourself to ignore the steals column entirely in some fashion, and go from there. I don't know how hard that might end up being really, but the dominant strategies are all based around faced paced offenses generating the highest number of possessions possible.

I still assume that with the massive advantage in recruiting that comes with success that its still too easy in the end, perhaps limitations on coaching points or quality of assistants could balance that out(even if you make it to a level 15 coach, stop spending your points at level 10, etc).

[sooner333]

I still love this game. Yeah, in some respects it is way too easy...but the nice thing is that it is hard to really be dominant because there is no way to win the whole thing every year. But, it's just a game where I can play, think about it some, but not agonize over every little thing, and just watch the games play out and still feel somewhat of a connection with my team and success.

[st.cronin]

That's actually the way I usually play, minus the 0 3 point shooting.

[IMetTrentGreen]

The fun part of these games for me is trying to win it all every year. I feel like my season is a failure if I don't. It keeps me interested year after year, and I've run 150+ seasons of this game. The most I ever got in FOF was like 12.

[rjolley]

I just started a new career after reading Radii's dynasty.

And I'm back to running the Penn State squad in the FBCB-FOFC league.

Very enjoyable game, very easy to get into and run 10+ seasons in one sitting, if that's the way you like to play.

[wbatl1]

A house rule that I use (that mirrors actual NCAA rules) is that I only allow myself to offer 12 Campus Visits a year. This is the rule that real-life teams must follow, and it helps curb interest a bit in recruiting.

However, it is important to note that I often didn't even have ten visits early in careers with small schools, as the budgets just didn't have the room for the expense. Once you start to grow, though, it makes things a bit more challenging.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by wbatl1

A house rule that I use (that mirrors actual NCAA rules) is that I only allow myself to offer 12 Campus Visits a year. This is the rule that real-life teams must follow, and it helps curb interest a bit in recruiting.

However, it is important to note that I often didn't even have ten visits early in careers with small schools, as the budgets just didn't have the room for the expense. Once you start to grow, though, it makes things a bit more challenging.

In the class mentioned above, I only had 6 campus visits. In the how-can-FBCB-be-improved thread, it was brought up that recruiting can be formulaic. For example, with a VH/H recruit in August, do asst/head/campus in Sept, asst/head in Oct and you will more times than not, land the recruit in November. If a recruit is still VH but undecided in Nov, a asst/head will land him in December. It doesn't matter if it's a slate of 3-star recruits (for smaller programs) or 4-/5-star recruits (for bigger programs), it works the same. Even with my great classes, I still haven't won with my latest team and a look at the yearly top Final 4 teams have rosters full of 4-/5-star recruits. A house rule will likely be centered around, not on the number of recruits (or limiting thereof), but on the quality of recruits.

[Buccaneer]

 Erik Powell         PF   6' 7"  241  *****  Committed Oregon              
 Caleb Peck          PF   6' 8"  218  *****  Committed Virginia                  
 Chris Enos          SF   6' 7"  217  *****  Committed New Jersey          
 Tony Workman        SG   6' 6"  189   ****  Committed Texas               
 Jason Covington     PG   6' 1"  174   ****  Committed Connecticut         
 Will Noel           PG   6' 0"  183   ****  Committed Oregon         

Fwiw, I just finished a run with this class. Covington had left the year before but Noel, Enos and Peck were starters (Powell was a bit of a bust), with Workman as the SF/SG backup. All three have declared for the draft and along with two Sr starters, I knew this was my best chance. For only the second time in my 60-year career, I took a team to the title game, with a 36-1 record. I lost to my ACC rival, Wake Forest, whom I couldn't beat for the fourth time.

Btw, my 10-yr old son is now addictive to watching me play FBCB. He understands text sims very well since he plays his Gamecube NCAA Football and Madden sort of like a text sim. He watches me recruit, set up my schedule, all with great interest. He then follows each simmed game and becomes anxious as he follows the always-close ACC race. By the time we get to the tourneys, it gets emotional for both of us. You should have seen how ecstatic he got when we beat #2 Arkansas in the Final Four and conversely, the devastation when we lost to Wake, knowing this was our last best hope.

After 8 seasons at Virginia, it's time to take on a rebuilding effort. My son and I looked through the list and decided upon UCLA (prestige 50 against 4 powerful PAC 10 opponents). Until next year....thanks Brian.

[Buccaneer]

Well, boyz...next year is here! It's time to take over UCLA in continuing my 70+ years career. My son still talks about last year's devastating loss to Wake Forest in the finals, he even remembered the score and all. Now it's a little change of pace, going out West again, and trying to build UCLA back up while contending with 100-prestige Oregon State, 92-prestige Stanford and 88-prestige USC.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Well, boyz...next year is here! It's time to take over UCLA in continuing my 70+ years career. My son still talks about last year's devastating loss to Wake Forest in the finals, he even remembered the score and all. Now it's a little change of pace, going out West again, and trying to build UCLA back up while contending with 100-prestige Oregon State, 92-prestige Stanford and 88-prestige USC.

Bucc, I see you comment from time to time on how much you love FBCB and still play it today. What was the reason you got tired of playing multiplayer FBCB previously?

[Buccaneer]

Alan, I could not commit to a FBCB league, or any multiplayer league for that matter. As with all games that I play, I run hot and cold. SP mode seems to fit that style perfectly.

[Buccaneer]

I can't believe it, this is too exciting not to share. I took over a 53-prestige UCLA team and in 6 years, I built them up to something respectable

2037     23   7  13   5   34   39   75  Loss in NCAA Tourney Round 1
2036     24   9  11   7   32   33   71  Loss in NCAA Tourney Round 2
2035     26   9  10   8   27   41   69  NIT Champion
2034     21  10  10   8   45   58   65  Loss in NCAA Tourney Round 1
2033     24  11  10   8   28   34   61  NIT Champion
2032     19  13   8  10   56   60   55  Loss in NIT Round 3

And in the 2038, it came together as I decided to put a little more emphasis on defense, which had been the problem stat for the past few seasons. We barely won the Pac-10, then somehow won the Pac-10 tournament and entered the NCAA as a #3 seed. We got placed the same region as #1 Virginia and #2 Alabama and ended up beating them both to reach the Final Four. And then we beat #11 Marquette and #3 Purdue to win it all!

2038     35   3  15   3    5    5   87  NCAA Champion

You should have seen my son. He followed every game of the season in nervous anticipation but once we started the run in the NCAA, he was beyond excited and marginally out of control. He almost passed out when we won the finals and I was stunned. I knew this was a special team as we had finally got a good start in conference play but to surprisingly beat the top 3 teams, that was awesome. This was only my 2nd NCAA title in 69 years of playing and truly something special. I love this game.

[MizzouCowboy]

Very cool story Buc, especially that your son follows along in your career.

Although I haven't played FBCB in a long time, one of my favorite text sim memories came from it. I was coaching Arkansas-Pine Bluff and after a few seasons made them respectable. Somehow we won our conference tourney and got into the tourney as a 15 seed. My shooting guard went ballistic in the tourney, if I remember correctly he averaged 36 points in our run. The dream season ended with a loss to Duke or North Carolina in the Sweet 16, but to watch that run was just unbelievable. Still brings a smile to my face. One helluva game, that is for sure.

[Radii]

That's awesome Bucc. I have a lot of good memories from my childhood that involve playing computer games with my dad, so its very cool to hear that your son is involved in that kind of thing with you Links golf, Tony Larussa baseball and a couple infocom games my dad and I spent many, many hours goofing around with together.