Hi

To start with, a few comments on how I started the save.

I created a combined schedule that was heavily weighted towards the NH. I have a few 2yo & 3yo flat races but most of the schedule contains NH races. There were not enough NH feature races at the correct level for my schedule so I altered about 18 of the original races to suit. I sarted the save with 5 seasons form so that there were enough stallions in the barn with a proven ability.

My first season, season 6 of the save. I bought every mare that came up at the sales, didn't matter how good\poor they were, just needed enough mares to breed with every stallion in the barn. When the first cop of foals came into the barn, I checked bars of every sire. I was slightly disapointed with the quality of the stallions in the barn but there was three stallions who would satisfy my needs, one looked like it would max it's potential at 7yo, another had 95% extra speed and the 3rd had 85% cruising burst.

Next it was time to have a big cleanout of the mares I had bought in the first season. I had bought 76 mares in the first season, about half had only 20% potential, they had to go. There were a few exciteable and a few with quirks, they went as well. I was left with 27 mares, none especially good, but they were a starting point for my breeding. The second season I still checked the sales for mares. I was much more selective and found about a dozen decent mares.

My second season, time to start serious breeding. I bred the three stallions I had found with the remaining mares, roughly split equally between the three stallions.

When I turned the season and checked the new foals, I wanted good colts, there were only a couple worth keeping so quit the save and turned the season again and again until I had found enough colts to form the basis of my future breeding program.

The picture below is what I settled for.






I raced the six colts at 2yo and 3yo, mostly to check how their potential progressed. During that time I kept searching the sales for good mares and using the original gamebreds in the barn to produce more foals. I especially wanted fillies with potential.

I retired the six colts to the barn and bred them with my mares. Again, I especially wanted colts who could improve my breeding. I found a few colts who were raced at 2yo & 3yo then retired to the barn. I didn't watch many races, just wanted to skip thru the early seasons.

It is now season 15 of the save, 9 seasons of serious breeding. During this time I was only concentrating on improving the bars of my horses. Up to this point I had very sparingly raced a few horses in the NH part of the schedule.

My first crop of horses with good looking bars are now 3yo. There are 2 x colts and 5 x fillies. The bars of the fillies are decent but not as good as the two colts. It is now time to start using the NH part of the schedule with these 7 horses. The main aim is to get them to 7yo with max potential and export to the CK. I don't expect them to be much good in the CK but they will be a benchmark, against the horses from my main save and future generations from this save.

This is the 3yo colt with the best bars.






Getting thru the seasons will now slow down, need to start watching races. When I get this first crop to max potential, I will post again.

Jim


Edit: This is the sequence of races I intend to use.

2yo & 3yo flat races
4yo novice hurdles
5yo novice chase
6yo group hurdles
7yo group chase

Horses will be exported to CK at end of 7yo season. If the horses still have full realised potential at end of 8yo season, I will export and trial again.

Awesome start, Jim. Thanks for the great description of how you began. Looking forward to seeing how this goes!

Hi

My first lot of horses have now reached 7yo, they have been exported to the CK and trialled against the horses I last uploaded to the league. All of the league horses I trialled against had won at least one graded race in the league. I exported 11 horses, all except one looked good on paper, 100% fullfilled potential and good green bars. The one exception was a horse that only fullfilled 81% potential but had the best green bars of all the horses I exported. He was one year in advance of the other horses.

I was not sure what kind of results I would achieve, some of the newly exported horses were monsters in the game but unfortuneatly that form doesn't transfer to the CK. I thought an acceptable result would be if a few of the new horses could get within 10 lengths of the league horses. I was very pleased with how well the 2 mile horses ran. For a first generation, the results look good.

I have included a few pictures of some of the results. The best results came over 2 miles, both hurdles and chase. The 2m 4f exports were very poor, I only exported one 3 mile horse and he did okay, on average 6 lengths behind the winning horse. In the pictures below, the horses with a handicap rating of 100 were uploaded to the league.

2 Mile Hurdles






2 Mile Chase







The Best Stallion was the one I exported with only 81% achieved potential. Wish I could see him run with full potential.





The Best Mare - a couple of the others that featured look very similiar.

Something for anyone new to SO7, the horses pictured above are all from a saved game that was only 15 seasons old.

Although I am trying to breed NH horses for the league, all the above horse won multiple times at 2yo & 3yo on the flat within the game.

I was able to breed multiple group winners on the flat and NH because I started with a few foals that had the correct building blocks, (potential, extra speed and cruising burst ), they were used to produce good all around horses.

If I was struggling with breeding good horses and winning races, I would look at my current stable, if the building blocks were not there, I would begin checking the bars of the gamebred stallions in the barn or start a new save and check gamebreds in the barn.

Jim

If anyone looks at the date on this post, you might wonder why it is dated 25th Dec. I am an old man who lives on his own and find I now require only 4 - 5 hours sleep. I have 9 hours to kill before heading round to join my family for xmas dinner. So I have put on a CD with xmas carols and opened up my laptop.

Next stage in my quest is to have a big cleanout of my stable, basing the cleanout on the results from the CK trials.

I had 76 mares in the barn, this has been cut down to 40. The majority of the 36 unwanted mares had good green bars but only average potential. They were all bought or bred in the very early years of the save. The 36 mares were returned to the main stable and put up for auction.

I had 14 stallions in the barn, the 5 that were kept had sired the horses that had done the best in the CK trials, the rest were auctioned off. Some of the auctioned stallions were specialists in a specific area, 95% extra speed or 85% cruising burst or 100% potential but lacking in other areas.

One of my objectives in auctioning some of these horses is the hope some of them will be used by the AI to breed better horses and thus provide me with more good options later in the save. Six of the auctioned stallions had won G1 races and 13 of the auctioned mares were G1 winners in the main game. Also, 4 of the stallions and 6 of the mares had 100% potential.

Happy Christmas Jim.

Yes! Merry Christmas!

Just been informed that clicking on the sire of a foal in a non league save has been disabled. You can't see a gamebred stallions bars.

Just had a thought, (might be considered cheating by some people). If you made a copy of your save, bred one mare with each stallion in the barn, saved the game just before the turn of the season.

Now turn the season and look at the foals, take a note of the sire of any foals who had better bars than the Dam. This would mean the gamebred sire had improved on the mare.

Now quit and re-load the save prior to the turn of the season, look at the foals again. I suspect if you repeated this 3 or 4 times you would find a few good gamebred stallions.

Every time you turn the year you would get different foals.

You could then re-load the original save before checking the sires and proceed from there.

On another forum I was asked

"With mares in the barn (and also stallions) do they breed to their full bars at which they were retired to the barn or the actual bars they had when they were bred? ie they were 100% at 4yo but at 20yo they’re only 60% - do they breed to the 100% or the 60% if you breed to them at 20yo?"


My answer

"All horses in the barn are capable of breeding to their maximum all thru their life, no matter their current age or their ability when retired to the barn.

Obviously, because of the randomness of breeding, it doesn't happen all the time."



I don't know if this will help explain but here is the history of a couple of my best stallions.

I think it was season 7 of my new NH save I found this horse, "Almost a Sensation". I don't have a picture of him at an early age but his current picture is below. A little history of this horse. He was bred from a 100% potential stallion and as a yearling I could tell from his potential he was capable of reaching 100% as well. He was given 4 races as a 2yo, then sent straight to the barn as a 2yo. I had deliberately kept four of my best mares for him to breed with. He sired the other horse below, "Sensation Unfullfilled".

When "Almost a Sensation" turned 3yo, I put him back into racing stable, gave him a few more races and then sent him back to the barn as a 3yo. You will see that "Almost a Sensation" never reached 100% potential because I didn't give him enough races throughout his life. I just wanted to breed him to as many mares as possible. The son, "Sensation Unfullfilled" was raced properly, 4\5 races per season, mostly in NH races. Had a great NH career, won multiple G1 races including Champion Hurdle and Queen Mother Chase. I knew "Sensation Unfullfilled" would never fullfill his true potential, as a yearling there was too big a gap between absolute and realised potential. His other bars were too good to ignore. "Sensation Unfullfilled" is now in the barn. He reached 100% potential as an 8yo.







Here is another example of "Almost a Sensation" offspring. He was kept in the racing stable and raced to maximise his abilities.

An update on my new NH save.

I have been quite busy over the festive period so didn't manage to get as much breeding done as I hoped. Managed a couple of seasons so save is now in season 20.

The only horses I have from my new save that are competetive with horses I previously uploaded to the league are 2 mile hurdlers. Every other distance, both hurdles and chase, the new horses are 10 lenghths behind. It may be, my old 2 mile hurdlers were just poor?

The best 2 mile hurdler from my new save beats my older save horese 2 out of 3 times in the CK trials. The horse below was sired by Sensation Unfullfilled, the horse who I posted about above who ran very well in the CK without fullfilling his potential. My only slight concern about the horse below is his stamina bar.




2 mile Hurdles - horses with a 100 rating have all been uploaded to the league at sometime




2 mile Chase

They look great, any possiblility of sharing your TFF so I can use in my personal NH game?

These horses came from a league save. You can't export horses to ttf from a league save.

I am not 100% sure about this next point as I only play league mode. I don't think you can import someone elses horses from ttf into your save. I think this facility was disabled.

Fair enough, it works as I’ve got a TFF saved on file that someone sent me which I regularly use for breeding purposes etc

I have just uploaded "Fort of the Future" (the horse shown above) to the league.

His first race is Race 12 -- Christmas Hurdle G1

I don't expect him to win the race but depending on how he performs will help me decide if it is worthwhile continuing with this save. While the save is only 20 seasons old, I have not managed to breed any other horses that look like they may be competetive in the league.