I still feel there are too many stallions on the game. And they all have a similar number of offspring.

On my game there are currently 242 stallions, and each year around 3400 yearlings. These yearlings are spread relatively equally through the stallions on the game, meaning that each stallion only has about 14 offspring per year. This is not very many at all, far less than top stallions would have in real life, which would be many many times this.

This means that on the game no stallion is having enough offspring to become a clear standout stallion and dominate as the likes of Galileo, Deep Impact etc have in real life.

I think the number of stallions on the game needs to be reduced so that each stallion can have a lot more offspring, and the spread of offspring numbers should be altered so that the best stallions are having a lot more offspring than lesser stallions. I feel this would make the breeding side of the game far more realistic.

Whilst I'm not too bothered by this, I do think it would add to any realism.

In real life Juddmonte currently have 7 stallions standing at stud, 5 EU and 2 US. In my current game they have 37, 33 UK, 3 IRE and 1 US.

Landawes Stud have 4 stallions at stud IRL and 17 in my game.

Lavington Stud have 2 stallions at stud IRL and 13 in game.

Highclere has 1 stallion IRL and 7 in my current game.

However I suppose on the flipside, Darley in my game have 28 (27 UK and 1 AUS (ignoring the 2 Dubai at Godolphin), whereas they have 36 IRL.

Looking at these alone there are 50-60 more stallions at stud in game just at these. I'm not sure it would be possible to change this...maybe amend the breeding length from 14 to 7-10 days?

I Agree there are to many stallions and most have had an average career or raced to much which is not realistic.the breeding side of the game has improved greatly but it would be much more fun for the game having a more select group of stallions competing for the top races.also I have noticed that the derby winners never go on to be great stallions.

Ive noticed a lot of the stallions dont have great form, in real life horses with the form of some of the stallions in the game would never retire to stud. So I think fewer colts/horses should be retired to stud, maybe only those that reached a certain level of form.

Mark, is this something that might be looked at? I think the breeding time can be significantly reduced from 14 days, as this actually only allows any stallion to only have around 25 offspring a year maximum. I think if this was reduced, really there is no reason it cant be 1 day, then this would allow less stallions to be retired to stud and those stallions to have more offspring, which I think would add to the realism.

Breeding session in game is 14 days while assuming no failures. So assuming a stallion immediately starts breeding at the start of a game and you have a full year schedule, a stallion will only produce 26 foals a year. It's a far cry from stallions being able to cover multiple mares in a day in real life and have 50-100+ foals in a season. That's ignoring that the breeding season in the northern hemisphere tends to run from January to June and in the southern hemisphere from June to December. Roughly anyway. Being able to breed a mare in October in the northern hemisphere who then has a foal the following January makes little sense, but that goes hand in hand with the 14 day breeding cycle in the game.

Reducing the breeding to 1 week would allow for 52 foals potentially which is a bit more typical. Would be easiest to just allow a stallion to cover maybe 4-5 mares at a time while keeping the 2 week breeding session which would allow for 100+ foals a season if you keep on top of it and let you use a stallion at the same time the NPC breeders might be using him.

Think you can edit how many stallions are in a stable, though. In the stud file, there's the Stud Name, a number just below it (might be 1-10 that goes there), and the map coordinates for that stud. The higher the 1-10 number is seems to be the higher the number of stallions they have. I modded my game to have Ashford Stud as a 6 and Taylor Made Farm as a 1. Ashford has 19 stallions at stud and Taylor has 3. Try reducing that number for stables you want fewer stallions for. That number seems to be a ratio or priority related. Probably have to do it for every country, but you still have the issue of the 26 foal limit per stallion per year. So keep in mind how many foals you want per new season because reduce it too much and you'll likely end up with more twins and triplets. Might have to add a few dummy stables that have high numbers of stallions while keeping the other stables with more realistic numbers.

Ok thanks guardian_titan, I will try changing these numbers, but you are right, reducing the number of stallions would seem a little bit pointless as long as there is a 14 day breeding session, as the high number of stallions that are in the game now are required in order to produce enough foals per season, particularly if wanting to avoid mares having multiple foals a season, which I most certainly do.

I think the 14 day session really needs reducing to reflect real life breeding and to have stallions siring 100+ foals a season as they do in real life.

Thank you for reducing the number of days for the breeding sessions Mark!

I think it could be reduced further without having any detrimental effects and this would allow for stallions to have even more offspring per season, getting closer to the numbers seen in real life.

Also, I think this reduction will only have the desired effects of increasing the number of offspring stallions have if the number of stallions is reduced. As currently on my game there are around 4200 new offspring per season, and around 295 stallions active in the game; with all of the stallions having a roughly similar number of offfspring, which they seem to, this means that each stallion has around 14 offspring per season. Going through a number of stallions to check this confirms this, that most stallions are having around this number. As this is below the maximum number that was possible with a 14 day breeding session of around 25 anyway, reducing the breeding session doesnt actually change anything whilst there is still this number of stallions in the game.

If the number of stallions was reduced to, for example, 75, dividing 4200 by 75 would mean each stallion was having around 56 offspring per year, which is a bit more realistic, and could be improved further by making better stallions have more offspring and worse stallions have fewer. However, with a 7 day breeding session the maximum number of offspring a stallion can have per season is only around 50.

So I think more realism can be added to the breeding side by reducing the number of days in a breeding session further, and reducing the number of stallions in the game quite significantly, and perhaps by making the number of offspring sired by each stallion less equal, with more being sired by the better stallions.

The game is great, and I for one am really grateful that some of the changes being suggested are being implemented! It is really getting more and more realistic and although I still think there are improvements that can be made, it is definitely the best version and still improving all the time. I really hope that my suggestions don't come across as criticisms or negative in any way, as I really do love the game, and really appreciate being listened to when it comes to suggestions that I feel can improve the game further.

Thanks

Well i disagree , there is over 250 stallions alone in Kentucky not including every others state so why should u dictate what goes on in the game . Just because u want it that way doesn't mean everyone else wants it like it.

There are over a 1000 stallions in the US.

One of the computer stallions just breed to 115 mares in my jumps game

I'm not trying to dictate what goes on in the game, I'm just making some suggestions I think would improve the breeding side. In the US in real life there are a lot more 2 year olds in racing than in the game.

My point is that at the moment the breeding side of the game is lacking slightly when it comes to stallions, as many stallions have relatively poor form and probably wouldn't ever be retired to stud in real life in the UK, this in the game is leading to a lot of stallions relative to the number of yearlings being born per season, and so stallions are having far fewer offspring per year than in real life, making it difficult for any stallions to dominate as they do, particularly in the UK, i grant you that its probably quite different in the US, although I still think the top stallions have far more offspring than they are currently in the game.

This is of course only my opinion for suggestions that I feel will improve the game, in no way am I trying to dictate anything. This forum is for suggestions, thats all I'm doing.

Im on patch 29 and I'd say a lot of the jump stallions are breeding 100 times , that's more than enough. In the US the very best stallions average around 100-120 .

I haven't has any stallions get anywhere near this on the flat game, I haven't seen any with more than about 25 actually. Have you tried the flat game? I'd be interested to see if others are getting anything different to what I am.

I think it's all about trying to get the balance right, but on a smaller scale than we see in real life, as obviously the SO7 world is smaller than real world racing. It's tricky to get it just right.

In real life, there is a very wide range of stallions currently standing, and the number of foals they produce each year also varies greatly, from top sires producing yearly crops of way over 100 to lower quality stallions producing far fewer than that. I do like to see that range of quality in the game as well, but I agree with others that there should be in-demand stallions (proven successful sires and recently-retired champions) producing far more foals than the lower quality stallions in the game. At the moment it's far too evenly spread. I think it's been mentioned in another thread as well about breeding AI needing to be improved, so that the game will be better at pairing up quality mares with top stallions, increasing the likelihood of great champions and encouraging the quality of AI-bred horses to gradually improve over time.

I think one of the things that the game gets spot on is that not every foal produced by a top sire will turn out to be good quality. The slightly random element is pretty realistic, as long as overall the top sires will still end up producing a higher percentage of better horses.

One of the things that is missing for me is seeing great champions being retired and that anticipation of how well they'll perform at stud. In real life this year there's a bit of buzz about the first crops of American Pharoah (sic) and Golden Horn, among others, but in the game, when great champions retire, they don't seem to be in any great demand at stud.

I just started a flat game and there was 1 with about 45.

We should be able to pick how many horses that are at stud , then it would be up to the player how many they want in game and u are right about the best horses going to stud , no one uses them and if they do they get crap mares . I think the AI needs to be massively improved because it doesn't have a clue what to do at stud . The worst horse at stud rated 95 and no group wins is breeding more than the best group 1 winners , that is totally wrong.