Manager vs. Team Strategy

[dcd111]

There is the team strategy page (and player-specific strategies), and then each Manager in the game has his own pre-set strategy preferences.

My question is, when Auto-playing games (or innings), how do the overlapping in-game strategy settings interact, and when does one take precedence over the other?

Do the Manager's in-game strategy preferences only come into play in the specific circumstance where you choose "Play Game", and then select the Manager for certain responsibilities on the Game Options page? Or do they come into play whenever you Auto-play innings or games in some combination with the more specific team and player strategies?

Finally, is there any difference in the relationship between these strategies in online leagues?

Thanks to anybody who can help clear this up.

- dcd111

[RchW]

I'm a little confused. If coaches are enabled then your managers strategies would be the team strategies, assuming you are the GM, right? If coaches are off then your strategies would be the team strategies.

For teams you don't control, coaches on, the manager personality controls strategy. When coaches are off, the AI controls strategy.

Correct me if this is way off.

Edit I meant to say there should be no overlapping strategies.

[dcd111]

Thanks for your quick response, but I do not think it is as straightforward as that.

I decided to do a little experiment. I setup a two-team fictional league, with coaching system enabled.

The two teams, for the sake of reference, are Indianapolis and Staten Island. I made myself the GM of Staten Island.

As commissioner, I changed the Indianapolis manager's strategy preferences to "Frequently", "Aggressive", or "Quick" for every category. I then changed their team strategy to the exact opposite for every situation.

Then, I changed the Staten Island manager's strategy preferences to "Never", "Conservative" and "Slow". And then I changed the team strategy to the exact opposite.

So, if the Manager's strategy preferences were to take precedence, we would expect Indianapolis to attempt more base stealing, use a lot of pinch hitters, do more bunting, intentionally walk more batters, and take their starters out earlier. And we would expect Staten Island to do the opposite.

I Auto-played a full month, and looked at the stats. Indianapolis had attempted 2 stolen bases in the entire month, had 3 sacrifice hits, 27 pinch-hit at-bats, and never issued a single intentional walk. Their starters had 184 IP. Staten Island had attempted 31 stolen bases, had 10 sacrifice hits, 37 pinch hit AB's, and issued 27 intentional walks. Staten Island starters had 140 IP.

I Auto-played another month, and had very similar results.

Then, to make sure these weren't being affected by each team's respective rosters, I switched the managers' strategies to the extreme opposite, and the team strategies to the extreme opposite, and auto-played another month. The results switched with the team strategy, (19 SB attempts for Indianapolis, and they issued 13 intentional walks, while Staten Island had 7 stolen base attempts and issued 0 intentional walks).

This would imply that the team strategy takes precedence, for both human controlled and computer-controlled teams, even when the coaching system is enabled. But if that is the case, then why do Managers have a strategy at all?

I started another league with a similar setup, and noticed that the default team strategy for both teams was the same as that team's Manager's preferred strategies, for all situations and innings (I forgot to check this before I messed with the settings in the first experimental league).

So I think the answer is that the Managers' strategy preferences are used to create the default Team Stategies, but a human player can change his team's Team Strategy to override even with Coaching enabled (and a commissioner can change it for any team). And whatever is on the Team Strategy page is the strategy that takes 100% precedence (at least in long-term Auto-playing, I didn't experiment with assigning the Manager to make decisions in play-by-play mode yet).

So I think I ended up answering my own question here, but hopefully other people find this little experiment helpful.

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by dcd111

So I think the answer is that the Managers' strategy preferences are used to create the default Team Stategies, but a human player can change his team's Team Strategy to override even with Coaching enabled (and a commissioner can change it for any team).

This is correct.

And whatever is on the Team Strategy page is the strategy that takes 100% precedence (at least in long-term Auto-playing

Any individual game in which you are not making the play-by-play decisions, then the AI is making those decisions, and those decisions are based on/influenced by the team strategy sliders.

Any roster related decisions that are made by the AI are based on/influenced by the roster-related sliders that are on the team strategy page.

I didn't experiment with assigning the Manager to make decisions in play-by-play mode yet.

When the manager is assigned to managing the play-by-play, instead of you, then it means the AI is making those decisions, and as noted above, that means the team strategy sliders come into play.

On an AI controlled team (not your team), when the manager is fired, and a new manager is hired, then the new manager's strategy preferences are used to modify the team strategy sliders for that team. When a GM is fired, and a new one hired, the new GM's roster-related strategy preferences are use to modify those strategy sliders for that team.

And, yes, you can modify all of those as commissioner. For example, if you think that all the teams in your league are using pinch runners too much, you can modify that slider for all the teams.

Hope that helps.

[dcd111]

Thanks!