[Pelican]

I’l respectfully disagree on the issue of scouting. When I was a newbie, I was glad to have scouting on high accuracy, as it gave me some realistic insight into young players, including amateurs coming into the draft. With low accuracy, drafting and developing players is much harder, and more random.

I would not put trade difficulty on hardest. Better to start out with the slider in the middle. I usually have the Ai prefer veterans, so that I can get some younger players. But I usually take on weak teams and try to improve them with player development. Avoid hard mode, as ti draws out the trade transactions and will just confuse you at first. You can always try it later if you want. I personally don’t like it. I don’t think it’s realistic, and it’s a pain.

With relataively high TCR (over 100), you will get some unpredictable results; but so will everybody else. Remember that means the guys you recognize as future stars may not develop as in real life. Which I think is cool.

Finally I use Ai evaluation settings of 40/30/20/10, which seems balanced. But there is no “right way” to do that, and there are as many different formulas as there are posters.

My advice would be to try settings that make sense to you, and go ahead and create your sim. Make sure to save and back it up. The first time seems monumental, but soon you will have multiple sims, and will begin to try new combinations and approaches. The true magic of the game is the ability to customize and play it your way.