Hey CM4 Owners...Advice On Recommended Starting Leagues...

[Chief Rum]

Can anyone offer me a quick howto or guideline on what settings to use to set up my league.

I'm used to CM01/02 speed, which I had with all leagues, run on average probably a day per minute if I went straight through (rarely did, since I had to do stuff with my team, of course).

I have an Athlon XP 1500 with 256 DDR RAM. I figured I would have problems running the whole damn thing (which is what I want to do), but I was really surprised when I was being limited to just 9 (or 11, it switched once) leagues, at least by recommendation. That's just over 10% of the available leagues!

Can anyone tell me what appreciable difference I will see in both game speed and players available between Small, Medium and Large database?

How big of a difference does running things in High Detail for leagues matter against lesser detail?

What kind of simming is done if a league is just completely shut off (will it still be accurate, what things can I check out, do the players exist, etc.)?

Has anyone tried league settings that go beyond the recommended level and still had, in their opinion, good performance? If so, how much did you go over, what settings did you use, and what are the specs on your computer?

Any other recommendations for speeding the game up? And if the response to this is technical, get step-by-step technical. When it comes down to pure tech stuff, I'm a moron.

I'm torn between concern over the speed of the game and my simmers' desire for as much accuracy as possible.

Thanks in advance.

Chief Rum

[Easy Mac]

Well, this really wont help much, but I've got a K6-2 450 w/ 312 mb ram, integrated graphics and sound, and 1 gig free hd space.

I basically have most options turned off (background, sound...) except I have a large database and full details. Only have 1 nation and 2 leagues running (USA). It does about a day every 10 seconds or so, but its the offseason, so not much to compute right now. I'd say the max for me would be about 10 total leagues running w/o full detail.

In comparison to CM01/02, this version is a lot faster. It used to take a minute a day w/ only the MLS selected in the last version and with full details.

With your specs, I'd say you could have at the most 10 countries (probably 25-35 leagues running) w/ full detail and a large database.

Oh, and I almost have convinced my mom to get me a 2.0 ghz athlon w/ 384 mb ram, 80 gig hd, ATI-9000 AIW, SB Live for a little over $450 (already have a brand new monitor). Of course, I'll have to pay her back eventually.

[CAsterling]

I've tried various settings, and eventually settled on running 4 leagues.

All 5 English divsions.
Top 2 Italian Divs
Top 2 Spanish Divs
Top 1 Scottish Div.

My PC is a 1.3 Gig 760MB ram, it runs at an ok speed.

If you turn off sound and background changes, its a little faster not much.

I run a medium database option, I haven't noticed any players missing that I am aware of so far - but I'm not the worlds most observant person anyway.

One thing I did try, was removing everything that was running on my PC, virus checker, etc (went to Task manager and stopped everything but explorer and systray), that made it run faster.

Originally tried running about 22 divisions, but that was too slow, so cut down the number. I guess it depends a lot on your patience level - I tend to do chores and read books whilst playing anyway.

Good luck and remember no matter how much you curse your players they don't get any better - trust me I tried

[CAsterling]

Dola,

One thing I forgot, recommend you check the SIgames message board re the ARSE,BIG BALL and GROUND commands in the INIT.CFG file that you can add. Makes the game more fun when you get tempremental players at the start of the game.

[klayman]

CR,

I think you'll see the most speed difference between setting the database size. If you want to run 'the whole damn thing', it would probably be best to run a small database. You'd still get a lot of players (from all the leagues), and it might save you some processing time. I wouldn't suggest that though.

The full detail only allows you to view the 2d highlights of the leagues clicked, I believe. Hopefully, someone will correct me if I'm wrong. But I don't think there is a difference in the accuracy of the sim between having the league selected and having it selected with full detail.

I've also noticed on the si-boards, that a lot of AMD owners are having difficulty with the recommended settings. It could be that the game is optimized for Intel owners (which I have, so I can't confirm). The recommended fix, is just trial and error. Adjust your starting game until it feels comfortable for you. Personally, I am running 15 leagues in 11 nations I believe. That's on a P4 2.4Ghz, 512mb. My recommend settings are around 21 leagues I believe, but I really have no interest in the accuracy or inclusion of the Mexican or Japanese leagues for instance. I run the majors that I follow and have a slight interest in, and that is good for me. My opinion though.

The other ways to speed up the game are technical. It helps if you are running XP, of course. There are several fixes you can do. One thing you didn't mention, is if you are not satisfied with the speed it is currently running. I'd say to try to include as many leagues as you want, see how the speed is, and from there we can make other adjustments if it's not up to your expectations.

[andy m]

i have an AMD 1.4GHz PC, 512MB RAM and completed most of a season running 19 divisions (all background) in about 10 hours or so. this is with medium database. i got fired though, so probably after the next patch i will try this again with a small database.

when i click recommended, it only recommends i use 4 divisions!

[Tekneek]

Here is how I plan to do it... I am going to start at the max and if that is unbearable, or doesn't work at all, I'll drop one, and work my way down to what I can stand to go through. I'm totally addicted to running as many leagues as I possibly can because I want the most amount of realistic detail as I can get. I'm even willing to read during the downtime (got a few things here I need to read but never give myself the time because they are technical books).

[moriarty]

Chief,

I have similar specs (albeit Intel) and run on medium database. I have the the league I'm playing in (all divisions) on full and 7-8 other leagues on non-full detail.

Also, here is the official word from the CM folks on full detail vs. non-full:
Full Detail
===========
The full detail setting changes the simulation model used by the match engine slightly which speeds up the processing of matches in 'non-full detail' leagues considerably.

The only noticable difference in such leagues is that you will not be able to watch 2D replays of the vast majority past games from such leagues.

PS. If your MAIN league (ie. the one you're managing in) is set to non-full detail then any competitions you are active within will remain as 'Full Detail' and only those you are not present in will be simulated using the lesser detail setting.

Using these options can speed the game up considerably, I recommend playing around with them if you are dissatisfied with the game speed.
===========

[GrantDawg]

I'll run as many leagues as possible and be ready to wait. Of course waiting wouldn't be nearly as bad if you could easily use windowed mode.

[ColtCrazy]

I'm on a 2.5Ghz, 512MB Ram, so I've got some power. It still only suggested I run 26 divisions. That was too little because I wanted all of England and at least the top divisions of most of Europe running. So, I went bold and ran 33 divisions. Seems to be running fine to me. I think you can get away with a lot more if they aren't in full detail.

[QuikSand]

Unrelated question... can anyone point me to where I go to print things out from the game? I used to do lots of print dumps, but I cannot find any mention of this function anywhere in the game itself nor in the booklet. Am I just missing something obvious (probably)?

[RPI-Fan]

You can't do it at this current point in time (err, "now"). From the sounds of it, it's unlikely that it'll make it into any of the updates before the next full version (CM 03/04).

[3ric]

Really? Marc commented in a thread here that he hoped to see it in the third patch (as the second is in testing right now).

[QuikSand]

Wow. So, we've decided to move backward in at least some phases of the game, eh? Hmmm....

The ability to do printouts is a pretty meaningful component of my enjoyment of the game, and essential to doing a legitimate dynasty thread, in my opinion. I might end up just waiting for some future day after all...

Thanks for the responses.

[Bee]

You can't print? I haven't tried nor have I looked for it, but I assumed it was in there someplace. That's seems like a pretty major component that's missing.

[aquavit]

I have a 1900+ AMD Athlon with 1GB of RAM. With a max database I'd recommend around 10 leagues just make sure that only the one you are playing in has full detail.