I have entered the league for the first time and although I was not expecting to win races I thought my horses would do better.
I have spent about 500 hours breeding horses over the last 4 months, on average about 4 hours each evening, but have only bred about 40 generations of horses. ( 15 for sprinters and 25 for milers). This equates to 3 nights for 1 generation. I started breeding for the league from a game I had ran for about 30 seasons so although breeding had been a little hap-hazard the first generation of horses were pretty decent.

Let me explain what I am doing and perhaps someone can give a few hints on speeding things up.

This is a little long-winded, but here goes.
I trial horses in ck and take a note of best 2 stallions and best 5 mares. When I trial my horses in the ck, there is usually very little to choose between horses. I look at times and how horses place in races, usually about 15 trials.

First year - I import 1 stallion and 5 mares, breed them as fast as possible and skip forward a month at a time to end of year. (Use a horse the game provides to do this, don't watch races).

Seond year- I breed same 6 horses again and skip a month at a time to end of year.

Third year - I now have 5 yearlings and 5 two year olds. I breed 5 mares again. The 2yo are all given 4 races. I don't watch the races, just skip past them. I then look at the actual and achieved potental bars in the horse data screen and decide which 2yo to keep and which to sell. Usually only keep 2/3 horses which I export to the ck.

Fourth year - The new crop of 2yo get their 4 races and the 3yo get 4 races, a G3 and 3 G1 races, again I do not watch races. I then export 2yo to ck and 3yo to ck and game pool for possible future breeding. I crash so5 and reload the game so that the 3yo are still in the game.

Fifth year - I now have 2/3 4yo, 2/3 3yo and 5 2yo. I don't race the 4yo, but export them about May to the ck for trialling to determine next set of breeders. The 2yo and 3yo get their races etc..

Sixth year - I only have 3yo and 4yo, so repeat above.

By the end of this cycle, I have about 10 4yo in the game pool and exported to the ck.


I now repeat the above for the 2nd stallion and the same 5 mares. I now have about 20 horses to trial for the next generation.


Any suggestions on how to improve on the above would be greatly appreciated.

once you have good stock at several distances
mix and match between distances i will do an example below
this made a big difference for me and will give you whole new lines

say you have 5 good sprint mares
start a new game and bring them in
bring in your best 1m2 and 1m4 stallions
and cover the sprint mares with these

example
mare 1 5f x 1m4 stallion = will produce 1m to 1m2 progeny
mare 2 6f x 1m2 stallion = will produce 1m progeny
mare 3 5f x 1m4 stallion = will produce 1m to 1m2 progeny
mare 4 6f x 1m2 stallion =will produce 1m progeny
mare 5 5f x 1m4 stallion = will produce 1m to 1m2 progeny

doing this at all distances took lots of time of my best ck times
and it brings you whole new lines

I am trying something like this at the minute. I have been breeding my best 8f stallion with my best 6f mares. They produced 7f horses to start with, but I bred the 7f mares with 8f stallion to produce 8f horses. Just ran 1.38.0 over newmarket with 3yo colt. Beat my best time by 0.2 secs. Too late for the league though.

Hmm.. you're asking about two things really.

First is whether your way of breeding is efficient at producing good horses. I wouldn't use the way you've described for this reason. You're committing yourself to a minimum of 7 years from start to finish of process. And essentially you're breeding the same pairs for 3 years. Let's start with a premise Thunderspark postulated awhile back that breeding a good horse is dictated by the RNG and that I think he mentioned something like only 1:20 offspring are any good. So for each 7 years you breed 15 horses and what if all 15 are crap?

I breed 1 stallion to 5 mares. Save at the end of the 1st year. Back up the save. Then I run through the next year and have 5 two year olds to look at. If none of them are good IMO then I reload the backup save I made earlier. Run through the next year and have a look at the 5 two year olds again. You get the idea. I can breed the same pair over and over again and just check at the start of the two year old season if I want to run them through to their 3 year old season or not (in your case 4 year olds).

The second question you're asking is how to breed better horses. Let me ask. In all the time you have put in, have you formulated any ideas/hypothesis as to what might make your horses better. Have you then tested those ideas and checked to see if it works? Any good idea should cut .3s off your best times in CK within 4/5 generations IMO. If it doesn't then try something else. Don't be afraid to restart breeding from game horses. After all you do have your ttf.dat files backed up right?



Here's how my ttf.dat files look. 275 files containing 1-5 horses each. I can pull any horse I have bred from when I got the game.

Breeding from the start is the easiest way to test your breeding ideas. If something works you'll see a clear .5s drop from the earliest horses. Whereas if you're using horses you've already bred and have made some headway into cutting CK times, it can be more difficult to know if something works or not.

Breeding in SO5 is much more selective than SO4. Whereas SO4 was about how many generations you could breed once you had good lines, SO5 IMO is different.

Some things to consider.

1 Breeding across distances - what works/doesn't? Do you breed them between 2f differences i.e. 1m2f and 1m or do you breed them across huge differences e.g. 1m7f and 5f. Which works better?
2 Finding good game horses - good colts are easy to find. Good fillies are rarer than hen's teeth. How do you find good fillies?
3 How do you ensure you're finding the best horses to breed once you have good lines? Why do you test on one course and not another. Why good going? Which horses perform better - horses that like firm running on soft or horses that like soft running on firm. How does breeding a horse that likes soft ground with one that likes firm ground affect the offsprings choice off going. Do offspring run better on soft/firm if bred from soft/firm combinations instead of from parents that prefer good/good? Both combinations will give your offspring that like good going.

There are a lot of questions I have still. Some I have tested. Some I will get around to. But there are no easy answers . You'll have to find out for yourself.

and you said you only put little time into your team mate
you have put a fair but in id say Andy 275 ttf files wow and meticulously named
ha ha mine are called ttf sprint ttf mile ttf middle ttf stayer
i have about 9 with 60-100 in each prob 7-800 horses
but i do delete alot once i find they are no good

My brain hurts! Thank goodness I don't compete in the league. You guys are a breed apart!

Thanks for sharing this Andy this is brilliant especially for newbies
this will be a real help to them its great to pass stuff on its how i learnt to get started
it was the lge stalwarts like scatters and thunderspark who passed on there knowledge that got me started
the above information is priceless

wow you guys have put in some time playing so5..i only got 5 ttf files with about 5-6 horses each..

same as above, cant believe you can build the patience to do all those saves and continue seasons to find horses arent good enough!

But I didn't. Do the math . 275 ttf.dat. Each ttf.dat = 1 breeding cycle (1 stallion/5 mares). Game came out April last year. May to Jan (when I stopped really playing much) = 9 months = 30ish breeding cycles a month. Each takes me no more than 90 mins (assuming I have to reload cause I don't like the 2 year olds). If I like them then I can do it in less than 40 minutes. So something like an hour to hour half max on average a day some of which was lunch time at work etc. It's about finding a system that works.