The database discussion

In all my days with various Football manager games the one thing I've always found myself wondering about was the setup of the database. As this is fundamental to your FM 'experience' it is a pretty important issue. Moreover as you cannot edit the database as such once you are in game, it is vital to get it right the first time.

So my question is, how do you set your database up? Is there a right way or a better way?

Due to the size of my advanced database I only run with two leagues, England and Scotland. But I have 101,000 players selected. This appears to be the best solution for me as I get a nice selection of players with a reasonable playing speed on my laptop. But if I add further leagues, it runs to a crawl. The bottom line is, I want the best playing experience, and I don't want to miss out on those cracking regens.

If I'm playing in Britain I load all players from the UK as well as all current international players and players with continental reputations from all six continents to ensure that continental and international football doesn't become too easy should I reach those levels.

That's interesting Rick, although I'm not sure I really understand. I've never really fully understood what the tick boxes mean, this is part of my problem. How does a continental rep prevent the game becoming too easy at higher levels?

They merely refer to the level of detail you wish to load up in each country/region/continent. If you load all players of a certain nationality, for example England, the game will load every single English player within the database, even those in non-league football or those playing abroad in far flung places for obscure teams. If you instead opt to select players with a national reputation it will load up all players from the playable leagues you have selected as well as the more famous free agents and the more talented non-league players to give you a decent selection to scout and sign.

When dealing with continents I advise you to select 'current international players' and 'players from clubs in continental competitions', It ensures that the countries outside of the ones you have loaded have a decent selection of players in which to chose from, if you don't load extra you often tend to come up against teams with a whole squad of 'greyed out' players, who it's really easy to get big scorelines against.

Of course how many players you load up will be dependent on what your computer can handle, the more you load the longer processing will take.

I load england, scotland, wales, france, italy, spain on large database. Its about 50,000 players, but i only need 11 out of 50,000 so its fine.

haha! That is true of course. But do you get all the regens and top quality players still? If you do, what's the point in having these options?