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 Moderately Experienced Player Advice - With Pictures! :) 
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Post Moderately Experienced Player Advice - With Pictures! :)
Hi Chaps

I'm new on here. Have been reading around for the last year or so picking up bits of advice, but such is life, I dip in and out of Starters Orders 6.

I've had the game for around a year and have a relatively decent UK flat save on the go (30 odd seasons in), however I'm a bit "stuck".

I've added some pictures below of my breeding barn, and my current "best" horse.

So a couple of questions and advice needed...

1. Where do I go from here? What do I do to get better or continue longevity of the game?
2. Is my barn any good?
3. My current favourite hourse, Winston, is doing well and already has some good wins as a 4 year old. However how good actually is the horse?

I suppose what I'm after is some context. Am I actually producing great horses, or would I be an embarrassment compared to the league guys? Am I naively just plodding along in my save not really improving.

I generally find if I breed winners with other winners, I get winners; however I still don't think I've nailed the concepts behind breeding the elusive "perfect" horse. I see lots of different threads around the subject, but can't quite formulate in my head the theory behind top level breeding. Any advice?

Sorry for what is quite a vague post, but I can't help feeling i'm still dipping my toe as opposed to fully immersing myself in to the game.

Cheers

https://ibb.co/eXcAEc

https://ibb.co/bTze7x

https://ibb.co/d27o0H


Fri Mar 16, 2018 1:46 pm
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Post Re: Moderately Experienced Player Advice - With Pictures! :)
I am sure before the day is out you will get plenty of advice from people who are far better than me but i would say you are on the right lines.

Of course it all depends what you want to achieve. Are you just concentrating on your single game or are you interested in joining the league ? Personally i would advise joining it as you will learn more and enjoy more. The bars of your best horse are around the same as mine were when I joined and I managed a few winners in my first season (have only played 2 so far).

Bars wise you have some of the elusive cruising burst so that is good. I would say you need to get the potential up a bit though.

Barn wise I would say you need more mares. I apply the best to the best theory and see what happens. I try to get at least 40 or 50 foals a year and then cull that down keeping only the best. CB goes up between 2 and 3 so you can't do a full cull at 2 in a flat only game. In a combined game you get the foals at 1 and the CB at 3 is visible at 1 so I cull at 1

The league is fun and you can play it and be competitive in the handicaps without having to compromise your real game and applying all the chicanery and short cuts some use that for me take the realism and fun out of it.

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Fri Mar 16, 2018 2:21 pm
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Post Re: Moderately Experienced Player Advice - With Pictures! :)
Cheers for the reply, very kind of you.

I've seen much mention of the league, however I guess it's always appeared a bit daunting, with lots of mentions of saved horses, reloading breeds etc etc. All sounded more like a labour than a bit of fun. However if you can enter in the handicaps and still have a bit of fun, i'll certainly give it a go. Ultimately I guess the league is the next step and I'm always looking at how to get better.

Ahhh so it seems i'm massively underbreeding, I'm probably only breeding on average 5 foals a year. I'm guessing the "chuck enough s**t and some will stick" approach is the way to go. Cheers.

Just to confirm, potential, cruising burst and speed rating are the holy grail characteristics? I seem to have plenty of horses with great finish application but I just seem to have bred hardly any battling qualities in to any of my horses.


Fri Mar 16, 2018 2:52 pm
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Post Re: Moderately Experienced Player Advice - With Pictures! :)
Grumbers85 wrote:
Cheers for the reply, very kind of you.

I've seen much mention of the league, however I guess it's always appeared a bit daunting, with lots of mentions of saved horses, reloading breeds etc etc. All sounded more like a labour than a bit of fun. However if you can enter in the handicaps and still have a bit of fun, i'll certainly give it a go. Ultimately I guess the league is the next step and I'm always looking at how to get better.

Ahhh so it seems i'm massively underbreeding, I'm probably only breeding on average 5 foals a year. I'm guessing the "chuck enough s**t and some will stick" approach is the way to go. Cheers.

Just to confirm, potential, cruising burst and speed rating are the holy grail characteristics? I seem to have plenty of horses with great finish application but I just seem to have bred hardly any battling qualities in to any of my horses.


The league is really split in two. The powerhouse trainers win all the big races but plenty of chances for others. You would be competitive in the handicaps with CB like that, and that is where most of us are at, so if you come in with reasonable expectations you will enjoy it. That first winner is a buzz. to give you some idea i won the Cambridgeshire and a Royal ascot handicap in my first season with a horse with worse bars than the one you have shown.

Yes massively under breeding I would say. The barn will hold 100 so you certainly need more than 5. Once you get a good stallion breed it with everything that has won multiple G1s in the barn.

Spot on with the bars. BQ is very hard to get and harder to keep so i wouldn't worry about that too much as not many in league will have it either. I certainly haven't. For league purposes good Going and Distance bars are handy too.

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Fri Mar 16, 2018 6:47 pm
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Post Re: Moderately Experienced Player Advice - With Pictures! :)
Grumbers85 wrote:
Cheers for the reply, very kind of you.

I've seen much mention of the league, however I guess it's always appeared a bit daunting, with lots of mentions of saved horses, reloading breeds etc etc. All sounded more like a labour than a bit of fun. However if you can enter in the handicaps and still have a bit of fun, i'll certainly give it a go. Ultimately I guess the league is the next step and I'm always looking at how to get better.

Ahhh so it seems i'm massively underbreeding, I'm probably only breeding on average 5 foals a year. I'm guessing the "chuck enough s**t and some will stick" approach is the way to go. Cheers.

Just to confirm, potential, cruising burst and speed rating are the holy grail characteristics? I seem to have plenty of horses with great finish application but I just seem to have bred hardly any battling qualities in to any of my horses.


Hey Grum,

BQ is a tough one and I would not concern yourself about it. The top trainers do not appear to spend a great deal of time on it, although I could be wrong.

Potential at 80-100% along with Speed 80%+ and Cruise at anything from 50+ and you will have winners, I know this as my stable all fall more or less into this category, I do have a few that may have better stats but that's the excitement of the breeding barn.

I regularly enter GB (game bred) horses in the league so do not be frightened to use those, I have had GB winners most seasons, so your own breeding can then grow as you play in the league, its a great learning curve & those GB's will boost your lines. (Auctions the best place for these)

So join the league, most of us will help with any questions, but please don't get bogged down with some of the posts re breeding, schedules etc etc. you can win more or less at any level, as the schedules in the league have improved ten fold over the past few seasons to enable all to have a chance.


Fri Mar 16, 2018 7:14 pm
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Post Re: Moderately Experienced Player Advice - With Pictures! :)
Hi

I am probably one of the top trainers in the league and I am probably a little out of touch with the type of horses you need to compete at the entry level of the online league, but if I was you, I would concentrate on increasing the potential of you horses. The rest of your horses green bars look fine.

The best way to quickly increase the potential of your stable is to breed with gamebred horses, (these are horses produced by the AI in the game and not specifically bred by you).

You can go to auctions to find these gamebred horses but I find the best way is to start a new game on easy mode and look at the five horses the AI gives you, especially the stallions. If there is not a good horse, quit the game and start a new game and check the horses again. This is a very boring process but it can be very fruitfall. I started about 30 new games until I found the horse below.

The light green potential bar is 100%. If you could find a gamebred stallion like this or even a stallion with 90% potential and use the transfer pool to import it into you main game, it should improve your horses potential quit a bit. As a rule of thumb, if you breed a 60% potential horse with a 100% potential horse you should produce an 80% potential horse and sometimes a horse that is even better than 80%.


Image



A far as the size of your breeding barn is concerned, I would look to have at least 8 mares and 2 stallions for each of the different distances, (sprinters, millers, 1m 2f, 1m 4f and long distance horses).

I tend to find that stallions are the best horses in my game so I tend to have only a few good stallions but lots of mediocre mares and if you throw enough mares at the good stallions, you end up with something good.


Fri Mar 16, 2018 9:21 pm
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Post Re: Moderately Experienced Player Advice - With Pictures! :)
Howdy
Ive just had my first season in the League and my advice to you is to join.
The amount of support and encouragement you get is awesome.

The single player game can become boring pretty fast, this is where the League kicks in.
I would find myself spamming the refresh on the League YouTube channel each morning impatiently waiting for the days races to be posted.
Then i would be jumping out of my chair urging my horse home or pulling out my hair and cursing out loud, depending on the result. :lol:
The fun was back in the game for me.

So if you join the League with having fun in mind and not expecting that your best single player game horse will be competitive in the top end of the League, you will love it.

Wannabe gives good advice to quickly improving your stable, find good horses and use the game pool to bring them into your save.
Or you can go full ninja and grind through seasons and exploit the TTF files to try and breed monsters, either way there are races for all levels of horses.

Joining the League..
http://www.startersorders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=16901

League breeding...
http://www.startersorders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=17034

Cheers


Sat Mar 17, 2018 3:19 am
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Post Re: Moderately Experienced Player Advice - With Pictures! :)
Chaps.

Cheers for the great advice and certainly some great ideas to work through.

I really do need to get going on that breeding programme then! And the rule is give a horse until 3yo for the CB to show true? I'd guess you can still bin a horse off at 2y/o if it really does look to be a donkey across all the key stats?


Sat Mar 17, 2018 10:11 am
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Post Re: Moderately Experienced Player Advice - With Pictures! :)
So, had my first go at getting a game breed from a fresh game load.

Literally my first go, the below fella popped up. Ok the speed and potential aren't great, but that cruising burst looks very very strong.

https://ibb.co/gOEFFH

I take it there's no easy way to skip to season end when you want to hurry up and get him transferred? I had to click through 300 times....

Anyway, he's in my main game now, "sowing his oats". Fingers crossed.


Sat Mar 17, 2018 1:30 pm
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Post Re: Moderately Experienced Player Advice - With Pictures! :)
Grumbers85 wrote:
So, had my first go at getting a game breed from a fresh game load.

Literally my first go, the below fella popped up. Ok the speed and potential aren't great, but that cruising burst looks very very strong.

https://ibb.co/gOEFFH

I take it there's no easy way to skip to season end when you want to hurry up and get him transferred? I had to click through 300 times....

Anyway, he's in my main game now, "sowing his oats". Fingers crossed.


Ok thats just not fair, i must have spent weeks looking for cruising burst that high.... :lol:

I see you have lots of money so breed him with every half decent non player owned mare in the barn, as well as all your own mares.
Make sure you have purchased extra stable capacity for your farm to accommodate the new horses.
Look for a colt that has inherited all that cruising burst and some better stats than the original, then start breeding from the new colt.
Rinse and repeat.

The fastest way to get through a std season is to enter a horse in races well ahead and skip to the race and repeat.
Some trainers use custom shortened seasons for this reason.
Also make sure you give a horse you plan to transfer at least 4 races to realize its potential before you transfer it.
Good luck :)


Sat Mar 17, 2018 2:26 pm
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Post Re: Moderately Experienced Player Advice - With Pictures! :)
I must have been good in a previous life!

Suspect it's going to take a while to switch my "breeding" head on and my "racing" head off. At the moment, I want to give all my 2 y/o's a chance, even if they're rubbish. Call me soft!

Back to it...


Sat Mar 17, 2018 2:57 pm
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Post Re: Moderately Experienced Player Advice - With Pictures! :)
Grumbers85 wrote:
Cheers for the reply, very kind of you.

I've seen much mention of the league, however I guess it's always appeared a bit daunting, with lots of mentions of saved horses, reloading breeds etc etc. All sounded more like a labour than a bit of fun. However if you can enter in the handicaps and still have a bit of fun, i'll certainly give it a go. Ultimately I guess the league is the next step and I'm always looking at how to get better.

Ahhh so it seems i'm massively underbreeding, I'm probably only breeding on average 5 foals a year. I'm guessing the "chuck enough s**t and some will stick" approach is the way to go. Cheers.

Just to confirm, potential, cruising burst and speed rating are the holy grail characteristics? I seem to have plenty of horses with great finish application but I just seem to have bred hardly any battling qualities in to any of my horses.


Great to see you are enjoying the game :-)

If you intend to just play the single player then what you are doing is great. Keep breeding with your star horses and create a dynasty.
It will take a lot more seasons before you are breeding horses that win everything.

Now if you want to take the next step then it is the League.
As Martin mentioned above about the League, in all reality is split in half. If you want to have horses that are competitive in Group 1 races then you will have to follow links that Jango and Jim Murray (Wannabe) have posted. Both links can be found in the online league discussion forum. The way you are playing your game now means you have no hope in being competitive for G1s or any Group races - so you need to visit those links.

BUT

Your horses will be competitive in the handicap lower rated races 0-100 and below and you will pick up some winners. I'd say 60%+ of trainers in the League are handicap trainers.
Rest assured the handicap races are very competitive to say the least. Even if your first winner is in a lowest rated 0-65 - you'll be out of your chair and cheering it home. That is guarenteed and every trainer in the League will agree with that :-)

For the League - you will need to concentrate on getting full to near full bars of 'Potential Rating' and 'Extra Speed Rating' and i believe the same for 'Finish Application' and 'Consistency' although those two are not crucial. Do your best with 'Cruising Burst'.....you may need to keep topping that up along the way with a game bred horse or two.
You do not want a quirks bar - keep that clear or nearly clear.

When you start to upload horses for the League - put some of your horses that didn't make the cut into the Hunt League. The jumps work, in at times, 'mysterious ways' - Yes the big trainers still dominate the big jumps races but all it takes is a few fallers and some random pull ups and all of a sudden your donkey looks like Red Rum :-)

Doug


Sun Mar 18, 2018 3:48 am
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Post Re: Moderately Experienced Player Advice - With Pictures! :)
Cheers Doug

So when people first enter the league, how many horses do they throw in? I'd say i currently only have 1 if not 2 horses that i think are half decent. Is it worth just throwing them in and seeing how i get on?

Or is there a minimum sized stable that you need to be coming in with?

Sorry, I'm sure this can all be found within the forum. I need to go reading and get myself prepped for some league fun.


Sun Mar 18, 2018 11:07 am
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Post Re: Moderately Experienced Player Advice - With Pictures! :)
Grumbers85 wrote:
Cheers Doug

So when people first enter the league, how many horses do they throw in? I'd say i currently only have 1 if not 2 horses that i think are half decent. Is it worth just throwing them in and seeing how i get on?

Or is there a minimum sized stable that you need to be coming in with?

Sorry, I'm sure this can all be found within the forum. I need to go reading and get myself prepped for some league fun.



You can enter as few horses as you like in the league. There is a maximum of 25 horses on the flat and 30 horses over fences.

Even if you don't think all your horses are good horses, I would suggest uploading at least one horse per distance just to see how your horses compare to other trainers horses and this will give you an idea of the areas you need to improve.

The league has flat races for 2yo, 3yo and 4yo plus horses whereas the NH races are usually best for older horses, usually 5yo plus.

The new league season doesn't start for about 7 weeks, so there is plenty of time to produce better horses.

As has been mentioned above, look to the potential bar in the first instance and try to get it as high as possible by the time they are 5yo. Find a gamebred stallion with as high a potential as you can and breed it with every mare in the breeding barn.


Sun Mar 18, 2018 11:57 am
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Post Re: Moderately Experienced Player Advice - With Pictures! :)
Enter as many as you can over different distances.
The League does work a bit different and it would be of no surprise to anyone that a horse you thought was no good wins a race.
There is also another upload window between weeks 5 and 6 so if you don't like a few horses you can retire them and if you have been breeding during the first 5 weeks of the league then you can upload some new horses.
So enter horses that can run of 5/6f - a mile, 10f, 12f and 16f+ and have them in different age groups as well.
Low rated stayers have plenty of races through out the season to choose from and can be an easy way to find a winner.

Doug


Sun Mar 18, 2018 3:43 pm
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