Thanks Lordedaw, I'll think about that a little bit more perhaps, you are convincing.

In other news my save with the decent colt was ruined by a mod installation that wasn't happy. So back to searching. About 30-40 saves in again today and nothing better than 75% so far - eeeesh!

I think that trying to find a 90% stallion by re-starting games is a long shot.

What I did was start a new game with 3 years autorun, (5 years is better but it takes about 15-20 mins to start a new game), that way there are some AI stallions in the barn with some breeding pedigree, then buy every mare that came up for auction and send her to breed with the AI stallions with some pedigree.

I use a combined game and can usually find 20 decent mares, ( about 60-70% potential ), in that first season. I send 4 or 5 mares to each of the best stallions, that way you optimise your chances with each stallion.

You do need a few million to do this but that can be obtained by betting on races.


If you are playing a flat only game the same process will work but my best flat horses have come from a combined game and as has been mentioned before, it is easier to do well in the league on the NH side of things.

Look for a yearling with about 75-80% potential and by the time it is 7 years old it will probably have 100% potential as a NH horse.

Combined game is basically as close to league easy mod as you will find.

Thanks again everyone. I have honestly never played the NH side of Starters Orders, so the thought of learning that at the same time as learning the League is a bit daunting. Perhaps I should just do it though.

I've been messing with my flat game, about 3 seasons in (excluding the auto 5) and not seeing any improvement from available stallions just yet. I actually have a couple of 85% Mares which is nice, but no decent foals from them so far.

I have a question: Is there any reason to race (in game, not league) 2yo's you plan to breed from? As opposed to just sending them straight to the breeding barn?
This early on in my game I just want to get my potential up, focus on the stats I can see and once I feel like I have something that is worth running I will start entering things. Any reason to not do it that way?

The most popular theory is no, I would guess every league training is just dropping mares in at 2yo, usually where the unrealised potential is high but the realised potential is low. I certainly am.

They seem to breed to what they may become, so whilst potential etc improves with racing and declines with age, the way they look statistically makes no odds in what they breed. I have 20yo’s still producing the same horses they always have. Don’t expect the barn version to ever look like it would have if you raced it, mind, so you need to keep a mental note of the bloodline.

I would also be a little forgiving on the other stats, what you can see is not a direct reflection of what the bars are, race style, for example seems to be reflected in things like speed, I have had some top draw front running league horses who barely had more than 50% speed, why I don’t often look passed potential. And even that needs a little forgiveness from time to time, one of my best ever flat horses ‘Belladona’ never got passed 85% potential, yet she won three G1’s in her first league season.

First thing, when I start a new game I am looking for quick results. I don't want to grind out lots of seasons looking for a good starter stallion.

After the 5 years autorun, if I don't see see any decent foals in the first 2 seasons I abandon the game. I think the best and quickest results come from overseas stallions. If I play a UK game and there are no overseas stallions with good breeding pedigree after the autorun years, I would start a new game. If it's a US game, look for Canadian stallions etc..

If you continue with your current game, still look to breed with overseas stallions.

Thanks for the fast and solid advice! Very much appreciated Also the info about stats was great too. Thank you!



Hi Jim. Oof, okay, looks like I may need to poke around a new game. The best looking foreign stallion has 48% winners (I've got about 10 foals by him and nothing great), and the next is way down with 34%. When I view stallions by country there's only ever a couple in any other country, save a few extra in the UK. Hmm.

I'd love to see what your breeding lists (the top stallions) look like in your games and which you choose/which you have had success from. I'm looking for a new game after starting my 4th season with 98 Yearlings in the barn, all from mares over 60% Potential (most around 70% and group winners) and not one has given me potential over 80%. I've bred to all the stallions that look promising at least 4 times (usually more like 6) with no improvements on what I started with. Both foreign and USA horses. Mind you I do have foals with maxed out speed, stam and acceleration (not together haha), just not getting anywhere with potential. I'm assuming it's time to call it quits and try a new save?

You could and there is no harm in starting a second game, but since the league is your end objective there is more you need to wrap your head around.

1 - Horses have hidden stats, not just the bars you can no longer see but other aspects that make them good or bad for the league that are actually hidden. Have a look at the legend editor to see what I mean, there are a lot of other variables in play. And lurking somewhere where you cannot see it is something that determines whether or not a horse will run well in what we call trials, or the CK that was mentioned previously.

2 - Good in game does not equal good in league, it is an indicator at best. I am not a top league flat trainer, mostly I just muddle through but my best ever league flat horse to date did next to nothing in game, I think she won one G2. She also never really bred anything of note before she died. But she won 3x G1’s in the league last year and when I put her into the CK she was unbeatable. I have also had stacks of horses who won 15+ G1’s in game but are absolutely dreadful in the CK or if they are game horses what they breed is awful in the CK.

3 - So at some point you have to start exporting and you have to start trials and from here you will start to understand who you need to keep and breed from and who you need to bin. I can say with absolute certainty most league trainers have gotten rid of more good looking horses than they have kept. In the NH where I focus most of my efforts, I am breeding 350+ per season, getting rid of about 250 of those immediately, of the remaining 100 I likely lose another 40 by the time they are six and of the 60 that remain I may only get 2 or 3 who impress at trial.

You need to bite the bullet and dive into a system of breeding, training, racing, exporting and trialing, and then breeding on from those who are good only at the last part, or if they have something special you want to maintain, a running style or those full speed and acceleration stats you mention. So start as often as you want to and until you find a game your comfortable with, but perfect off the bat is hard to find and even then in CK terms it may not deliver what you expect. That 90% potential colt you had and posted would have been a game I played at least to season 10 and past a point where I trialled him and some of his offspring.

Sometimes the best breeding horse in your game or the one who unlocks something in your existing bloodlines might have never won a race. Trials are dull, but good trial practices are what drive league success in my view, there is a lot of trial and error in league training.

Thanks yet again for some more insight. I totally understand that many good league horses flop in game, but breeding mares to stallions that throw foals who win in game is still going to be my best bet of improving my potential, right? Or do you think I should stick at this save and work down the stallion list, even into those who throw rubbish to see if I can boost my potential? I definitely think the challenge of improving my lines to the point that the potential looks good enough to start trialing (at least 85%?) is going to be my favorite part of training for the league, but it's also sort of daunting. It sounds more and more like you just have to get lucky to find that really good stallion that can boost what you have, and there's no real tell-tale signs of what you should breed to. I do enjoy the mystery, but also see why it's so time consuming.

Yes, that 90% Colt couldn't be saved. He was in a .sav file that was messed up by my startit mod install attempt, and nothing I did fixed it (only two racecourses would show up). Sooo many hours spent finding that guy Oh well.

I am enjoying the breeding method to try and find good potential, it is less tedious than starting games over and over, but thought I would have seen more progress by season 4. Having played SO6 fairly extensively I somewhat understand the stats I can't see too, I just thought getting high potential would be a good starting point - since it seems the most important. It's a slow grind!

Lilly it's not all about finding that horse with a high potential, remember there will never be a super stallion in game. There are 3 important bars in game and even the best ever stallion will only have 1 or perhaps 2 good bars. So if u was to find a stallion with great potential then it will probably only have average to below average cruise-speed bars. The key is to find a good-great race horse and breed to at the start no matter what u think its bars are. If u just want to play 1 game and u at the start of u breeding then I would open the game up twice on u computer and skip u way through 7 or 8 seasons and see what horses are best in the breeding barn and write them down and then close that game and go back to the other game and breed to the good stallions.

I thought I'd give you guys a break, since I feel like I've been pestering you all with questions haha. I have so much to learn. Anyway, I've been playing another flat game. My first foal crop I saw an improvement of 5% on my potential, being 85% from a mare around 75%. So that's more than I had in 4 seasons of my least game, so I'm going to send a heap of mares to that boy and see how we go. He only has a Winners % of 50% however, so it could have been a fluke... we will see.

In other news I found this 6yo Mare in a weekly sale and grabbed her for around 200k. I didn't expect this. A shame that she never realised that potential. She only won one Handicap I think, otherwise ran mid field. Her injury history says she has 'Bucked Shins', is that something that would permanently affect her, or are all injuries temporary on SO7? Hopefully I can get some okay babies from her.

Be careful when naming her progeny, I understand horses with apostrophes (') in their names, are not allowed in the league for some technical reasons. Otherwise the horse looks good.

Nothing wrong with that as a breeding mare.