I completely agree on that last point. Because we are essentially only seeing the symptoms in testing, rather than the causes. Doing testing on an unfinished product can and will give a lot of false positives. Naturally there is difference in depth of the AI in different leagues, since they have different rules and some have/don't have drafts. My point is that we can't assume the AI in the NHL has coding to deal with the budget when other parts of the AI does not. It's probable that as much code is used between the different leagues as possible, because that's efficient. So my base assumption is thus that the AI in the NHL doesn't have that functionality, because if it did why wouldn't it be "copy pasted" as the base code for crafting the lower league AI? My knowledge of AI coding on the scale needed in a game as sprawling as this isn't good enough to say for sure that's the most probable way it works. But it seems like a reasonable starting point to test around, but I also have very little interest in testing. I prefer learning while playing, because that way I learn only the things that are actually applicable to winning in the game. There is a lot of stuff that's completely useless information to that end, but incredibly useful information from a db researcher's point of view since the end goals are two completely different things.nino33 wrote:Sounds like it's my error, as I thought Swe-2 was a "lower league" two levels below HockeyAllsvenskan (I thought it was one of the TBL added Leagues)Shindigs wrote:And nino, the default db has Swe-2 in it. So that point isn't valid. If Riz put a league in the base game without giving it proper AI support that's pretty bad.
I think I'm not assuming anything, and that includes drawing conclusions about the game AI from testing done in lower LeaguesShindigs wrote:Even the AI in huge budget AAA titles is lazy, simplistic and taking the easy way out. Why assume a small one man project's AI wouldn't take that same path?
I know there are differences in AI depth for different Leagues, and I know the game itself is NHL centric...I don't think lower level European Leagues are representative of the AI; I agree that the Financial/Roster Management AI needs improvement, but I suspect that non-Elite pro hockey Leagues are not high on the priority list
For myself, with things as complicated as AI, when it comes up as an issue in my discussions with Riz I try to just tell him #1 what is wanted/what I think would be best and #2 what I see happening via testing (and/or see many posting about); I do sometimes "guess" as to why, and make suggestions (and I've been wrong sometimes because I didn't understand how the coding worked, as it wasn't at all what was expected); I never start from a position that I think I know/understand, I never bring up other games and how I think they're done. When Riz tells me how things work on something, and I test it and validate it, I'm satisfied it's true; when the testing shows issues I point them out to Riz
I might look into testing the Financial AI a bit with my 1974 database when it's ready for the new EHM, but I doubt it, as my interest in testing has really waned; I think an entire database has to be "set up" before effective testing can be done (I believe effective/helpful testing needs to be aware of/deal with variables...there's a lot of editing that can be done to an EHM database that can change the effect of those variables IMO)
Regardless of all that we should probably stop derailing this thread.
In an effort to stay remotely on topic I'll just share the reason for moving on Öhman and Lilja in the off-season. I use the end of season review excel sheet I made to look at overall performance in a fair few fields. It feels a bit nostalgic to be using it in the EIHL again, because it was in my first save in this league I created the original version of this sheet:
The biggest pieces in me deciding whether to keep a player or not is Min/ESP which is how many minutes apart each point scored for that player during even strength is, in tandem with Min/GA which is the same but for goals conceded per minute of even strength played. I currently have it in descending order based on ESP/Min - GA/Min, and anyone with above 0 is putting up Top 6 performance on the Forward side, Dmen will almost always have a negative. I don't put a lot of stock in that specific metric, which is essentially a modified and simplified Corsi. But as you can see Öhman is bottom 3 despite his two 1st line partners being 3rd and 4th, which isn't exactly great. Lilja having next to no point production isn't that weird, but him having one of the worst Min/GA of the defencemen while also not producing points is why he won't be with us any longer. Hunt being as high as he is on the forward list as a young British player is quite impressive, especially since he played on the 3rd line. I've also decided to give the Captaincy to Urban Klingberg in no small part because of now well he fits on that first line, but also because of his incredible point production. He does a pretty good job of personifying the kind of hockey I want this team to play, his assistants will be Lukas Enkvist and Filip Hasa. I like having 1 assistant captain on the 2nd line and the other as a Dman to spread the love a bit. Hasa is the offensive defenceman with the most suitable mentals to be part of the leadership group, which is why I picked him over Dahlroth. But unless Hasa picks his play up next season we might look to make changes in that department for our 3rd season.
CHL draw just came through, we're certainly not in the toughest group. It will be interesting to see what we can get done this season.
I've had some interesting regen intakes in my time, but I think this one takes the cake:
Just where am I supposed to put all of these?
Cool, thanks to this intake I could also prove an old theory I had about players being able to generate with higher CA than PA and then having them lose all their excess attrbutes over night:
The upper one is him on the day he generated, and the lower one is the day after. I had about 4-5 players like this in that intake alone, this was just the guy that happened to generate one day after the others. So I remembered to look up his db entry to see what was going on as his attributes were clearly too high to be a "real" British newgen.
The CHL is quite the warm up for the new season. Our first game saw us face up against Sparta Praha away from home, it was an even affair as far as the shot totals were concerned with them outshooting us 25-24. Sadly their goalie completely walled us while Åhman had a bit of a collapse. The game ended with a scoreline of 4-1, which was a bit harsh. But the very next day we had the be in Krefeld for our 2nd game of the group stage. We ended up dominating the shot stats with 38-26, but again their goalie was just not having it. We eventually lost 2-3 in the Shootouts, but we did pick up our 1st point. Our next game was a week later at home to Krefeld, and now we at least knew not to target low against their goalie. We ended up dispatching them 4-1 while outshooting them 36-19, so it wasn't even close. After that we had another week off before facing Sparta Praha at home, because of results elsewhere we had actually already made it through because of Sparta winning their 2nd game against Krefeld. But I still wanted to give a good showing in our last game of the group stages. Sadly Lukas Haudum managed to get injured in practice the day before the game, so we were out a top 6 forward. We ended up dominating the play in the game with the shot stats being 43-26 in our favor, but again their goalie just proved too much for us as we lost the game 4-3 in the shootouts. But I'm quite pleased to have made it out of the group in our first year, since not knowing the goalies you come up against means anything could happen.
In the first playoff round we're going to be facing Klagenfurt out of Austria, but that isn't until the 19th of September. So for now we are going to shift our focus to the EIHL and the BCC.
The series against Klagenfurt ended up being a very tight affair, in the first game we started off on low shot targeting and after putting up 15 shots in the first period we hadn't managed to score and were down 2-0. For the last two periods we went with 5-hole targeting instead and were able to score 3 goals in the 18 shots we mustered over that time, leading to a 4-3 defeat at home. But since we were only trailing by the single goal we could still at the very least force OT/SO by beating Klagenfurt away from home even if only by the 1 goal margin. A week later, after some quite rocky league form, we were in Austria. The 2nd game we were going to target 5-hole since their goalie was very bad against that in the first tie. As it turned out that was a fluke and despite outshooting them by a fair amount we only just managed a 3-2 win. This meant that we were tied at 6-6 on aggregate, and heading into OT. Since this is EHM obviously no one scored in OT, so we went into the Shootouts where after 2 each. No one had actually managed to score, Klagenfurt took their 3rd shot and Åhman saved it. This put the game on the Stick of 17 year old rookie Linus Skager, of all people. To my great surprise he actually managed to score, giving us the series win 7-6 on aggregate! We're on to the next round of the playoffs, but I haven't had the draw yet so no idea who we'll face. Regardless we're further than I'd expect us to get this soon.
In typical EHM fashion 4+2=8 and 3+4=9, as can be seen in the news item.
Oh dear, just got drawn against Djugården. They are currently 1 point off topping the SHL. This probably won't end well.
The series against Djurgården ended up being a lot closer than I could've ever hoped. In game 1 at home we ended up losing 3-5, but the 5th goal was very late. About a week later we traveled to Sweden and played our hearts out to win the game 4-2 in regulation, which meant this series was going into OT. Sadly our hopes were short-lived as Juuso Ikonen scored only 1:42 into OT to give them the win 8-7 on aggregate. But for us to be able to give a SHL top team a scare this early, with a goalie who just turned 18 and a lineup with an average age of 17.63 years old was way beyond my highest hopes. Had their goalie not over-performed in our barn we would be heading into the Quarter Finals in our first year of Continental play.
](./images/smilies/wallbash.gif "Brick wall"){kind=small}
We still managed to win the serie in 7 games. On to the second we are against Columbus and we easily won that serie 4-2. On to the conference finale we are up against the powerful Sabres. We went down quickly 0-3 then made the epic comeback to win the serie 4-3. Stanley Cup finale here we come! (I still don't believe it what the hell) We are up against Calgary. Of course the impossible had to happen. We won the Cup in 5 games.....I dunno what to say. I was expecting to finish dead last and had NO expectations for this year. Me that wanted a reconstruction challenge LOL 
) So I guess the challenge will still be there.
. Last DG that got fired drafted most of those guys so he takes the credit despite being out! 
