Warrior General Games

Originally posted by Jethro Rice
If your 'slow building' i cant see the point in boosting until at least level 20.

Boosting is only available for a limited window of time. If you don't use it in that window, you lose it for the season. And since there's only a 10 season timeframe where you can improve your player, by not boosting for even one season will hurt you in the long run. However, you have to be smart about your boosting. You want to save your boosts until the end of the season to maximize your XP gain during the season.

Slow Building is ridiculously narrow minded. You should soft cap each major stat in succession, so you can maximize the level bonuses. You can train your un-buffed secondary stats, without trashing your level bonuses since you won't cap them anyway.

You want to cap a stat ASAP, so that you are getting more value out of your level ups for a longer time. Slow building is only good if you plan on having ONE stat high and don't EVER plan on putting points into another stat.

Lets say you have a DT, you need STR, TKL and VIS to be high, and AGI, SPD, and STA to be average.

So you can throw 5 p/l into STR until it caps, then do the same w/ TKL, and VIS. By the time you do this, you will have gotten 8ish points from level ups to STR, about 4 extra to TKL, and your vision will just be capped. While you were doing this, you were training AGI/SPD/STA and getting maximum gains there, since value isn't shifting until you cap them.

If you slow build, you are saving points in training, but you are forgoing value. If you slow build your main stats, you are going to cap them eventually anyway, and your overflown SP are just going into secondary and tertiary stats ANYWAY. You just sacrifice the point at which you get extra value per level up.

Unless you are slow building in the context of periodization, but that is just a wash.

SLOW BUILDING CAN NEVER BE MORE THAN A WASH AGAINST SMART TRAINING.

If you slow build your player, you can get to the soft caps at an earlier level than if you didn't slow build. This is especially true if you do it without joining a team. You can get to level 7 with your start up money and should have two skills soft capped after two full seasons.

You should be able to reach the first soft cap at level 3 and the second soft cap at level 7. You do this by holding the SP's until the natural# + SP's can equal 48. That way you maximize your training. Then you move on to the next one.

Depending on your position, you may only need to soft cap a couple of skills. After you reach that goal, you can distrbute all your training to balance out your player.

Finally, you'd want to save all of your remaining SP's until you join a human team. After all, who cares how you do in the D-leagues?

After 3 seasons, you'd be a kick ass level 13.
However, you'll probably also lose about 1.5 years on the length of your career and have a slightly lower ceiling for when you peak at max potential.

It's basically a swap of career time for better stats at lower levels.

Originally posted by Loco Moco
After 3 seasons, you'd be a kick ass level 13. You'll probably also lose about 1.5 years on your career. It's basically a swap of career time for better stats at lower levels.

Which is silly. I have a WR who in his last game (as a L15) went up against CB24, FS20, CB25, and a CB19 to go for 3 catches, 92.5 yards and 2 TD's. The team he played was a playoff team both of it's previous two seasons and was 4-1 to start this season, so they don't suck. My guy is a season and a half old.

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to slow build a guy to hold your level down so you can dominate. A player that has a well thought out plan and is built using smart training and capping can easily hold their own against anyone once they get up into their "power life" (which in my opinion, is finishing with your 4th cap around L16). At this point, a "PRO-BUILT" player can dominate a well built old style player in his mid 20's.

By refusing to compete, you simply acknowledge that your player can not, nor will they ever be "the best". So, you go ahead and dominate as a level 13 in a capped league in your fourth season. I'll try and dominate everyone else as a level 28-30 in my fourth season.

That's exactly right.

Like I've said before, to each their own.

Who cares what other people are doing with their own guys?

Originally posted by Loco Moco
That's exactly right.

Like I've said before, to each their own.

Who cares what other poeople are doing with their own guys?



Yep.

Slow building only really works if there is only one stat you want to pump. You can only train one stat at a time anyway, so if you put your SP into one stat and train another you end up with nearly the same result.

Originally posted by Loco Moco
Who cares what other people are doing with their own guys?

I don't care what folks do with their own players but I do care about folks giving bad advice promising n00bs a kingdom of fame and wealth and instead leading them down a dark alley where they are delivered into suckitude.

If someone is trying to dominate a level capped league, then sure, super slow building is the way to go...but beyond that it buys you absolutely nothing in terms of player ability.

I just want to make sure all the new players (or new to slow building) understand that. You aren't building a more powerful player, only a more powerful player for a level capped league.

I hear you.

I totally admit that you'll never reach your full potential by doing this, but I'll also admit that it can be fun to be a big fish in a small pond.

There could also be a benefit to having a team full of slow builds, if they stay together. But then again, all teams that stay together are better off.
I don't do this, but I know there are several teams out there trying it.
I'm sure it hasn't paid off yet, but that's a different discussion.

Originally posted by LostPeon
Originally posted by Jethro Rice

If your 'slow building' i cant see the point in boosting until at least level 20.

Boosting is only available for a limited window of time. If you don't use it in that window, you lose it for the season. And since there's only a 10 season timeframe where you can improve your player, by not boosting for even one season will hurt you in the long run. However, you have to be smart about your boosting. You want to save your boosts until the end of the season to maximize your XP gain during the season.

Although I see where your coming from, you kinda missed my point.

Boosting while slow building is like shooting your player in the foot. All you do while boosting early in your players career (for arguments sake lets say lvls 1 thru 20 are considered 'early') is rush to the point where it's harder to improve. Every time you boost - that's a levels worth of training out the window.

My ideas on 'slow building' are that you want to MINIMIZE your XP gain to MAXIMIZE training while you can still gain the maximum benefit from it... Early in your players career... By having low stamina, playing on hard and training on intense for as long as you can.

I don't care about XP. I care about SP.
I don't care about my players lvl. I care about his abilities.


As an aside, creating a player on the last day of the season allows you to get paid to train on intense for a long time (I got 12 days of training on intense for a FB of mine before he played his first game buy doing this, that was over 6 SP).

Also as an aside I'm not really in the 'traditional slow build' camp because I try to soft cap my main attributes as soon as possible.

Apology's on the rant. All just my honest opinion of course.

well i tried an experiment and here are the results

I made a fullback on day38 of season 3 and a fb in season 4. The fullback created in season 3 boosted in the offseason, and has not boosted yet in season 4. The Fullback created season 4 has not boosted at all.

FB created day 38 219.03 sp and is lvl 7

FB created day 0 201.52 sp and is lvl 5

take what you will from this data

Originally posted by Romeorr
well i tried an experiment and here are the results

I made a fullback on day38 of season 3 and a fb in the offseason. The fullback created in season 3 boosted in the offseason, and has not boosted yet in season 4. The Fullback created season 4 has not boosted at all.

FB created day 38 219.03 sp and is lvl 7

FB created day 0 201.52 sp and is lvl 5

take what you will from this data

Is that with or without equipment?

without EQ just bare stats

The team I GM is currently slow building, as well as my linebacker.

I ran some numbers (approximate of course) on the following three build styles through level 7 (I plan on running through level 20 but have only done through 7 so far) for an OT. He started as (only listing arguably the top 4 most important OT attributes)
Str 18
Blk 14
Agi 14
Vis 13

I started at the beginning of a season.

1. "Slow" Build where you do the following
a. Create your player (in this case an OT), do not assign 15 points, do not buy eq
b. Sign to a team and train on intense until you're out of money, then switch to normal, then relaxed
c. Do not spend SP right away; soft cap attributes (those you want that high) ONLY when you have enough SP

In this player's case I trained Strength while waiting on the points to soft-cap. I got enough at level 4, and switched to train blocking. At level 7 this player has roughly the following:
Str 49.93 Blk 20.24
Agi 15.98 Vis 14.98
And this player had 19 sp waiting to be spent to soft-cap blk, which for comparison's sake makes his blocking 39.24. This player reached level 7 the day of Game 10, or 20 days into season 1.

2. "Super Slow" build where you do the following:
a. Create your player (in this case an OT), do not assign 15 points, do not buy eq
b. Train on normal for the first level, then switch to relaxed until you're out of money then sign with a D team.
c. Do not spend SP right away; soft cap attributes (those you want that high) ONLY when you have enough SP

In this player's case I again trained Strength while waiting on the points to soft-cap. I got enough at level 3, and switched to train blocking. At level 7 I had enough to soft-cap blocking, so at level 7 this player has roughly the following:
Str 49.54 Blk 49.12
Agi 15.98 Vis 14.98

This player has 0 sp left over. This player reached level 7, 17 days into season 2.


3. "Normal" build
a. Create your player (in this case an OT), assign 15 points to a single skill you intend to softcap, buy eq, usually +stamina
b. Train on normal
c. Spend SP right away in your first primary attribute you intend to cap while training the second one.

In this player's case I trained Blocking while putting all points into strength including the initial 15. At level 4, he soft capped str and switched to train Agi while putting points into Block. At level 7 this player has roughly the following:
Str 49.98 Blk 36.23
Agi 18.84 Vis 14.98
And this player had 0 sp waiting to be spent. This player reached level 7 the day of Game 10, or 20 days into season 1.

I can provide the numbers in spreadsheet form if anyone's interested.



It's hard to say where the advantage lies. There's really no major advantage to "Slow" Build (120.13 - sp in the four attributes totaled) vs. "Normal" build (120.03), as long as normal build focuses on soft-capping initially - I think this is the key. If you assign your points evenly throughout your first few levels you lose a lot, especially a lot of the later leveling bonus to your primary skills.

And if you compare where the "Super Slow" builder is at the same point in their careers', the "Slow" and "Normal" builds have a huge advantage over them. On the other hand if you compare them by level it's a different story. A level 7 "Super Slow" build is almost 10% better (129.62) than either "Normal" (120.03) or "Slow" (120.13) level 7. But by the time the "Super Slow" hits level 7 the other two builds are far, far better due to playing time and experience.