Thanks for the advice panther, I have made a schedule for so5 with ireland, france and germany which includes maidens for 2 yo and 3yo and races that are not group races, and have actually found that it works very well, the maidens are full with horses from them countries, and the horses have very good form as well as realistic form as they all start in maidens, its very unrealistic when you have foreign horses whose form starts off with group races. In my schedule its great to see a french horse that has form up from a maiden to winning group ones in france then coming to england for the QEII, so I really do believe that with more control over the horse database as well as having a larger database can mean this is possible for more countries to have a more realistic international schedule where horses can have full form from each country.

In SO5, I also had full schedules for Ireland and France as part of my UK schedule (without maidens though), and it also worked extremely well. If you start adding full schedules for the US, Canada, Japan and Hong Kong to that as well, you might start encountering a few problems (not least the fact that you can only have three meetings per day, which might create a lot of congestion at weekends!), but at the end of the day it will depend on the level of realism you're looking for - I must admit, when I'm creating my own schedules I'm always looking at the tiniest details, and even very slight misplacement of horses by the game's AI frustrates me and leads to seemingly endless tweaks in search of perfection, so I guess I'm difficult to please in that way!

In the context of the game, it's not unrealistic to have the overseas horses going straight to Listed or Group level, as the game is basically designed to be a UK schedule that also includes the top overseas races that UK horses might occasionally target. It's not designed specifically have several countries' horse racing seasons running simultaneously, although you can obviously create that if you wish. My preference would be to have simulated background form for these horses, rather than having to include overseas maidens, as it's very unrealistic to see maidens appear in a horse's feature race wins summary. When it comes to France and Ireland though, there are more than enough Listed and Group races to eliminate the need for maidens.

Panther, how would you go about sorting errors with AI placement that occurs in the standard schedule, namely 1m4 horses eg arc winners running in races like the diamond jubilee and vice versa?

AI placement should generally be improved in SO6.

In terms of what else can be done, it can sometimes be improved with careful use of prep races, but overuse of preps can sometimes have a negative effect and lead to some horses running too often. The Arc is one of the races that should be fairly heavily prepped though, as it should be one of the highest-quality fields of the season, if not the highest. If it's well-prepped, there won't be any sprinters in it!

How Many prep races would u have for the big races like the arc, I never tried it in so 5 but I want to do it in the new game.

When I made my own schedule I basically used all the big races(over 1m4)

You could have anything up to seven or eight prep races for the Arc, spread throughout the season. This should ensure a very high quality field. In terms of UK preps for the Arc, I'd say the Derby and the King George are the two that should definitely be used, but the St Leger is also a possibility, as Leger winners often run in the Arc. You might also want to add the Irish Derby and Irish Champion Stakes to ensure Irish representation. Obviously a couple of French races need to be in there. As for others to consider, the Japan Cup (preps across the close season will work in SO6), Dubai Sheema Classic, Grosser Preis von Baden etc. might be others to consider. It depends on your own preferences, really.

I honestly find that using maidens makes it a whole lot more realistic, and dont really mind about these showing up on the feature race wins as this is a very minor part for me. As i have said how well this schedule can work depends on the database and this will need to be a fair bit larger than s05, with a larger enough allocation to each country included so as the races will be full with horses from these countries, in so5 i have found that using prep races and such makes for very few misplacements and most are fairly realistic such as the odd uk horse in french G3's or G2's, which you see in real life from time to time, as for the us, canada and japan, this is an experiment and i really dont know how well it will work, but from all that i have created in so5, i do believe it can work and be very realistic if the horse database can be increased sufficiently. I have 10 preps for most major races and find this works well in getting a very high quality field.

I hope it work's for u, it sounds like u put a lot of time into it. I'm sure a few of us will be hoping the prep we've put in before the game works otherwise I'm sure we will be pulling our hair out.

My main game is the US version and I want the best horses in the triple crown races and the breeders cup. My game will be set up for my taste and will only have twenty odd race courses.

Close season preps work in SO6, so you can use the juvenile races at the Breeders' Cup as preps for the Triple Crown races, in addition to the 3yo trial races.

Did they not work in so5? I used the dewhurst/ rp trophy for early season classics

I believe they worked in so5 too, or at least they always seemed to work

They didn't seem to work when I was creating the default schedules for SO5 before it was released, but it's very possible that this was improved in a subsequent patch. Once I'd settled on my SO5 schedule, I didn't really change it again after that, I must admit, and it was always just the case that the top 2yos went for the classics as 3yos anyway. Close season preps do work very well in SO6 though.

Sounds great, it's good to know that now. I think it's great that u can change so much to cater for what u want, most games are so closed that's why this series is so great.