Football, Tactics & Glory: Training the Player and the Players

Football, Tactics & Glory:

Football, Tactics & Glory: From Stardom to the Sidelines and Back

Football, Tactics & Glory: Training the Player and the Players

Football, Tactics, & Glory: Statistically Uncertain

Football, Tactics & Glory: A Team History

With their starting roster, the player attacks their schedule. A calendar dates all matches in the current season. Winning a game earns the player's team glory, fans, and money. Glory improves the club's trainers and scouts. The number of fans determines the club's income. Players spend money on contracts for characters. Successfully navigating the campaign requires signing contracts and making trades. Characters sign to one, two, or three year contracts. Unlike real life, the money is paid upfront. Oddly, longer contracts seem unusually expensive. Two year contracts cost significantly more than double a one year contract. Why does it cost 100,000 for a two year contract (50,000 a year), vs 40,000 for a single year contract. Perhaps Football, Tactics & Glory assumes a character's value increases rapidly, because their Attributes improve each year.

In the Amateur or Third League a player needs eleven characters. Purchasing a suitable substitute, in the case of injury, is cheap and easy. Entering the Second League, the player needs skillful backups in the event of debilitating injury. The First and Premier Leagues demand a second string of experienced characters. Even a third backup isn't unreasonable. The need for additional characters is based on the number of games. Amateur League teams play twenty-four games a season, and no Amateur League plans to advance in the Prestige Cup. Higher Leagues include more League and Cup games. At the top of the Premier League the player competes in one season and two cups. Injuries and exhaustion take their toll. More characters offers flexibility in strategy. A team with four skilled Forwards can switch their offensive schemes depending on the opponent's defense. More Defenders allows a wide range of defensive maneuvers.

Characters age, but this doesn't impact their ability. It doesn't slow their Experience of Specialization gain. Presumably character's improve as they grow older, not because they age, but because they learn during matches. Characters never decline in Football, Tactics & Glory. The best characters are the oldest, until they retire. At 34 age characters quit, unless the player spends an exorbitant amount of Glory to retain them for six more seasons. Because of their cost and inevitable retirement, selling older characters to fund the contracts for younger up and coming stars is a viable strategy. In Football, Tactics & Glory all trades are a single exchange of cash for a character. There is no swapping of characters. The only other aspect of the campaign is weather, which can be regular, hot, rainy, or snowy. Each of these offers a little variety. They impose a debilitating penalty on teams depending on their makeup.

Characters have no number to represent their resistance to injury. Either there is a secret number assigned to each character, or the chance is the same regardless. As previously mentioned, characters have four Attributes, which determine their effectiveness in most actions. The player starts with a team of characters. They already exist at different levels of experience. Each character displays a number representing their level. It can be as low as one, and as high as one hundred. After each match every participating character gains experience depending on the League the match was played in, whether they won, lost, or drew, and the effectiveness of team trainers. Characters sitting on the bench gain significantly less experience. Experience is not dependent on how many actions the character performs during the match. With enough experience the character gains a level (low level characters can gain more than one level in a game). Gaining a level rewards the character with three Attribute points. Every character gains three, always. Football, Tactics & Glory has no superstars in the conventional sense, because everyone in a match gains experience equally, levels up equally, and earns the same amount of Attribute points. All characters of the same level have the exact same amount of points. In a way, every high level character is a superstar. It's a chicken vs egg problem. Do good characters win games, or does winning games create good characters? I would argue the latter. What determines the best characters is how the attribute points are distributed, and how characters are employed. Attributes are distributed depending on the predisposition of the character. Some characters receive all three points in the same Attribute, while others receive one point in three different attributes.

Experience isn't the only earned aspect. Characters also earn Specialization. Unlike Experience, Specialization is earned by performing actions in a match. When a character performs an action Football, Tactics & Glory checks their location on the field. Depending on their spot, it awards them Specialization points for the relevant position. Earn enough Specialization points in a position, and unlock or level up that position.

Low level characters begin as Zero Class. They have no experience with any position, and no corresponding skills. After earning enough Specialization points they upgrade to a basic class; Amateur Goalkeeper, Amateur Defender, Amateur Midfielder, or Amateur Forward. After that, characters choose a universal or specialized position. These include:

Forwards:

Universal Forward, Left or Right Forward, and Center Forward.

Midfielders:

Universal Midfielder, Left or Right Midfielder, Attacking Midfielder, Central Midfielder, and Defending Midfielder.

Defenders:

Universal Defender, Left or Right Defender, Central Defender, or Sweeper.

A Universal character can't learn another position. A specialized character can learn three more (I never had any character with more than two specialized positions). Wingers, whether Forwards, Midfielders, or Defenders, are particularly useful to double Specialize, one for each side of the field. This needs to be done early in their career, rather than later, because for each level of Specialization costs more than the previous.

Below is a chart displaying every space, and the relevant specialized position. Each class offers abilities to compliment the character's Attributes and Skills. For example, Left or Right Forwards move two spaces with or without the ball, compared to the one space for other characters. They also gain the break-in ability.

			Opponent Goalie
LF	LF	CF	CF	CF	RF	RF
LF	LF	CF	CF	CF	RF	RF
LF	LF	CF	CF	CF	RF	RF
LM	LM	AM	AM	AM	RM	RM
LM	LM	AM	AM	AM	RM	RM
LM	LM	CM	CM	CM	RM	RM
LM	LM	DM	DM	DM	RM	RM
LD	DM	DM	DM	DM	DM	RD
LD	LD	CD	CD	CD	RD	RD
LD	LD	SW	SW	SW	RD	RD
			Goalie

Character's who participate earn Specialization. With enough Specialization characters learn Skills and Talents. Universal characters learn two, while all other positions only learn one. Skills are actions, while Talents are passive abilities, often defensive. Skills and Talents start at level one, increasing to level three with more Specialization. A Skill action is resolved using a different system than a regular action. Skills ignore Attributes, and assigns a potential of 10 to both. This value is modified by the characters' remaining energy. A character with 50% of their energy, has a potential value of 5. Football, Tactics & Glory generates a number for each participant. The higher value succeeds. This doesn't initially seem different than a normal contest. The second level of a Skill transforms the game. At second level, a contest isn't decided on the first roll. If the character using the Skill loses the initial roll, the game rolls a second time. With three levels in a Skill, the character performing the action has three chances to succeed. They only need one successful roll to complete the action. For this reason, characters with a level one Skill perform poorly. Any character with two levels in a Skill becomes a threat. A three Skill level character performs with god-like talent. Unfortunately, some Premier teams abuse level three Slide Tackle Skill, assigning it to four or more characters. This allows them to always steal the ball. Football, Tactics & Glory has no defense to Slide Tackle, except for keep away. On offense, the AI favors the Rainbow Feint Skill. This action, a fictionalized version of an unpopular gimmick maneuver in real football, is the most unbalanced scoring method. A character with the ball employs the Skill to maneuver past defending foes. This has some basis in reality, but Football, Tactics & Glory allows characters to use it against the goalkeeper and score. It's unfair, because a character with three levels of Rainbow Feint doesn't need any Attributes to score. It's absurd because when was the last time you saw someone walk the ball past the goalkeeper for a goal?

Football, Tactics & Glory mixes nuance with a complexity that is surprising for its simple appearance. It tries to teach the player. The game includes a help button and an introductory tutorial. In their first season, the player completes a series of tests, reminiscent of chess puzzles. But so much information is difficult to locate, or hard to parse. A review function, especially of quick moving plays with lots of parts (like crosses), would aid in the player's education. In a cross attempt, there's the crosser's kick, the cross comparison, characters fighting for positioning, characters trying to head the ball, and the goalkeeper's defense.

For some actions, the displayed numbers don't match the character's Attributes. For example, Defensive Midfielders seem to have an unusually higher number when intercepting a pass.

Next week on Football, Tactics & Glory – Stats and Tips.

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