Trying to collate info from different threads.

There's the post below this that has some info.

CK times to aim for here - viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7951

Some questions about potential and maximising this as well as in offspring here

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=7410

There's a further post on what to do when you think your lines are going stale in this thread (link here)

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7962&p=82264#p82264

I'll post links to other relevant posts as well when I can find the time to do so.

PART 1

I've been getting a few emails from folk on here about breeding and rather than having to type individual replies and bearing in mind some of the questions are repetitive I'm just going to post on here a few pointers.

First off this isn't going to be didactic. It's about trying to give you some broad ideas as to how to create some breeding lines and also a glimpse of what's possible. There are a lot of little things I do which make the whole process unique to me and I'm sure you will find your own way too.

The commonest question I get is how do you breed good horses. Well the simplest answer is GIGO - garbage in, garbage out. The key to breeding good horses is by starting with good stock. So the million dollar question is how to find good stock and by this I mean good game bred horses.

One method that goes way back is to create a schedule with claiming races and buy these horses that win races. See this thread here on how to modify your own schedule.

viewtopic.php?p=65589#p65589

That way you potentially get good stock. The problem I have with this method is you never know how good the stock is and you end up having to run a lot of races and buy a lot of horses to find out. I find that too time consuming.

My way consists of starting the game on easy mode where you get 5 horses and checking the initial game ratings of those 5. Anything over 80 is worth looking at the detailed ratings. Just keep starting new games. You're looking for horses like these.



The key thing here is absolute potential is close to max but also the realised potential is also close to max. Run these horses for a few races. You'll find they are good enough to win G1s. That's your colt/stallion breeding stock sorted.

Finding good fillies is the other (much harder) key. If you breed horses like the one above without breeding them to good fillies, more often than not you end up with this.



Note the fall in absolute potential. The problem is fillies with close to absolute maximum potential is much harder to find/buy. If you find one great. I hope you've got that game backed up and the ttf.dat file saved. The other issue I have is even when you're breeding colts/fillies with absolute max potential sometimes you just don't get offspring that have the same max potential. So the problem is finding not only a filly that has max potential but also is a good breeder and that will produce offspring with max potential. Believe me there are not many around that I've found.

Start a random game and advance 1 year. Save the game to a back up directory before you do anything else (i.e. backup 1.sav, ext1.sav, ln1.idx, o1.idx and ns1.dat). Then transfer your colt with max potential into game. Get some cash and retire to breeding barn and breed with every single multiple G1 winning filly there. Then advance the game till you get to the crop of 2 year olds. Look for 2 year olds which have max absolute potential. None? Tough. Rinse and repeat with a new random game. When you do see a 2 year old with max absolute potential you've hit paydirt. That filly/mare that foaled that 2 year old is one you want to breed with over and over again.

You did save the game before you transferred your stallion in didn't you? Otherwise you've lost the opportunity to breed again with that filly/mare.

Here's what you're looking for.





Milly Fleur is one of these game mares that provides great offspring as discussed above which I found in the way described above.

And here's the offspring from the two.



I'm not saying every horse bred from Milly Fleur will have high max potential. What I am saying is she has the ability to provide you with that kind of offspring but you're still going to have to breed many horses to get that kind of max potential but the key is you now have good colt AND filly gamebred horses to breed from.

Having horses with max potential is a key principle of building great lines. Every horse I breed at present has nearly full absolute and realised potential.

Feel free to post questions, I'll try and answer them if I can. Not promising to give all my knowledge away but this will provide a good bump to a lot of folks stables I think.

PART 2

Once you have got good breeding stock with close to max potential you're partway to getting very good CK times.

The other part is finding what I call game changing horses. Again good luck trying to find them and finding ways to dig them out of the game. But I'll illustrate here what you're trying to do.

If you've read some of my posts in the past you'll realise 1m4f was a real headache for me. I had 1m4f horses with maximum absolute and realised potential. Doc and Matt were posting some really fast times and for a long while I just could not get close despite using every trick I knew.

This is what times looked like for me when Matt and Doc had posted breaking the 2:30 barrier at Epsom.



Nothing special. 2:30:3 at the very best and I'd really hit a brick wall. At that stage my homebreds were better than any gamebred I was running against. I'd almost given up breeding with gamebreds at this time (and certainly at every other distance times were continually falling).

And then this happened



And the resulting time



And another example



And the resulting time



And here's the second point. It really is about finding the one horse sometimes. Don't get stuck in a rut thinking your homebreds are better than any gamebred and there's no point breeding to game horses any longer. Find the right horse and it's a game changer. In retrospect I think I got lucky finding horses that were game changers for most of my lines at 5-1m and 14f and as such the times fell fairly quickly and easily. 12f (but also 10f) remained a struggle for awhile till I found these game changers.

I know.. you're asking how do you find that horse. Ah well the devil is in the detail but I've shown you the light .

Basically if you're able to do the things in these two posts then I guarantee your CK times will fall. Again feel free to ask questions you have.

Good work. Im sure it will help many improve their stables.

Are you using a particular schedule or the default one?

Mostly I use PJ's schedule (Thanks Paul). I also have a custom schedule for world record attempts but I've mentioned that previously.. I'd post it but it's buggy and I wouldn't recommend anyone use it . It just has a lot of Epsom weekends (i.e. 1 every month to increase my chances of hard going)

The bit I get stuck at and is always why I have a break from the game is when I find a game horse that produces horses like Nebo and Cocha, ie improving my lines, I then breed and breed with that stallion but he might not produce horses like that all the time. Do you think that is down to the mares and trying to concentrate on using the mares which more often than not produce good offspring?


And did you then breed Nebo with a lot of your mares and were the results good?

The files I've underlined. What are they? Do you have to backup all of these?

wow that is very nice post about breeding akhc..
So you keep restarting your game till you find 80+ rated horse with max potential then you save to gamepool right?then that will be your foundation colt for breeding..then look for that max potential filly in another game and transfer your colt in.
Im gonna try this for next season amazing mate

I think it's to do with the fact that I have a huge breeding pool of fillies and I just find some that breed well with Nebo. Remember Thunder said 1:20 breedings is good. I think he was optimistic there



I have no idea but seeing as they are unique to each save game slot I just backup them all. It may be that 1.sav is the only one you need to backup.



Yup but trying to find an 80+ rated filly at the start of the game with max potential is.. well I've never found one. You might do but I think it's quicker going down the breeding barn route and trying to find a filly in breeding barn to breed with that increases the max potential of your colts they are bred with.

The claiming races is something a lot of the veterans of the game used to do (I for one did it)

You may call it cheating but it's not. What it does is speed up your findings on good game breeding horses. This process doesn't take long to do at all.

Someone used to create a schedule for me with certain G1's changed to claiming races.

He's an example... Create a schedule with 15/20 claiming races, make sure you have different distances.

Do 15/20 seasons and buy the winners of these races, sounds a lot but it isn't. This will give you quiet a lot of horses for the CK to trail and see who is good and bad.

After you have done the trails and found your breeding stock, start a new game without claiming races and there you go.

This way pretty much guaranteed's very good baseline breeding and saves you a lot of time.

It's always worked for me and I've had a few winners in the past!!

I should learn to read.. the code for claiming races has been in this thread for awhile

viewtopic.php?p=65589#p65589

The flip side is running 15/20 season buying every horse and trialing them doesn't appeal to me either . There are certain tricks/efficiency methods I use with the general ideas I've posted above that allow me to generate a huge breeding pool more quickly. It's about trying to find better ways of doing things more quickly.

I've never done it myself tbh. I'm sure some of the guys who edit there own schedules will show people on here how to do it.

Basically it's just a quick way of getting good baseline game horses to start breeding with for the league.

Thanks for the info akhc. I lost most of my files a few months ago, and I haven't been motivated to try to improve my stock.



About how many attempts at starting new games does it take to get one near full potential and near full 'realized' potential? I've done over 100 startups so far and found a few with max potential, but realized potential was well off the mark.





So if I have that game saved with the one filly who delivered a 2yo with max absolute potential, you say that filly/mare that foaled the 2yo is one you want to breed over and over again. Does that mean you load the saved game and import in a stallion to breed to her, advance 2 years until the foal is born and check it out? Since the filly/mare is owned by the computer, you can only breed her the one time, correct? Just making sure I follow.

I have no idea.. quite a few? You don't need that many though. I think I have 3-4 colts I found this way that are in all my lines.



Essentially yes. This is the slowest part of building up breeding stock but it's one way of ensuring you have good colts AND fillies for breeding.

I start games like this to breed generally and for my league stable. I have found that you get ~1 for every 10-15 starts. Sometimes you get them straight off, other times you have to do it hundreds of times. Make sure you're on easy, as you're more likely to get that horse. Don't be swayed by almost max potential (unless it is a 2yo or 3yo, as this often increases at 4 and 5) because something with almost max potential just won't produce good enough horses.

I agree with AKHC about the fillies. The key to all the previous SO games was to find that broodmare who would produce great horses and then breed her every year to the best stallion available. That is no longer the case because not only is that broodmare almost impossible to find, but they are also quite likely to produce utter s**t completely randomly. I also find that once I find a good pairing that you have to breed and breed out of it, until the offspring aren't as good anymore, then you find another partner.

Another thing I have noticed is that the quality of horses that are produced declines with the parent's age. You'll see their potential go down too, so you need to bin them to prevent wasting that really good game mare.

Heh Cat I would never have pegged you for a grinder when it comes to breeding (but then again you're doing reasonably in the league which suggests that you work harder than it looks!). Actually the broodmare thing is still very valid today. They are very hard to find. I should know.. in all the time I've been looking I've found 8 or so at a variety of distances. As you say though they do produce a lot of crap to but still the great ones off these mares make up for it. And of course once the lines are going breeding is a lot easier.