How to increase realism in Football Manager | Setting up Saves Tips by Daveincid

How realistic Football Manager is, is one of the reasons why I play the game and got me ‘addicted’. Apart from the in-depth database containing real-life information about clubs, players and staff, the ability to download graphics, such as logos and facepacks, there are very few steps to take to improve the realism in Football Manager…

At least, that’s what you may believe?!

Today we’ll focus on one important aspect of how to increase realism in Football Manager by sharing these tips from Daveincid concerning how to set up an optimal database for a balanced savegame.

Continue reading to get some great tips for setting up your next Football Manager saves that will make transfers, statistics, and data more accurate and realistic. The goal with this piece is to help you to set up your save-game as balanced as possible for different strong PC/Laptop-Systems.

It should give you some information on how the whole setup-system works, what’s important to keep in mind and much more.

Let’s give the words to Daveincid.

Disclaimer
It’s impossible to show everyone’s way of playing. This is only a rough guideline for orientation. This is my view of FM, so if you are seeing it differently, that’s completely fine.

Please do not ask me in the comments what setup I recommend for System X or Y. Sometimes I answer them via PM, if the message is friendly and I have some free resources, which is very rare.

Every setup can be customized by yourself how it suits you the most.

Please note:

1. The downloadable setups might be larger as you played the game before. I know that this can be frustrating as the game can be very slow that way. Playing Football Manager “realistic” will let your CPU burn, always!

2. The setups and the guide is designed for the vanilla game. An extended version which covers over 200 Nations from all Continents is available on Patreon: You can get access to this extended version by subscribing to my Patreon.

The Difference Between Unloaded, Unplayable and Playable Nations

What’s the difference between unloaded nations, unplayable leagues or playable nations in Football Manager with full details activated?

A valid question to ask when setting up your FM saves. When working on the database, I realized that many people don’t really understand how the setup works exactly. to help you to make better decisions when setting up your next FM saves, let me explain the differences between unloaded, unplayable, playable nations and view-only divisions, that might be important to know in order for you to set up a balanced save that’s as realistic as possible.

There are differences between unloaded Nations, view-only, playable and playable with full details. In a Nation, you can select some leagues playable, view-only, or unloaded. The effect is roughly the same as for a whole Nation:

unloaded Nation

• No schedule, games are fully simulated in the background
• No visible league table
• No full squads (only if you load them via the advanced db)
• No staff (After the first sacking of the real manager, there will be in most cases no new head-coach and other staff members)
• Low transfer-activity
• “fictional” finances (no existingbank balance, only a “fictional” calculated one)
• Games will be simulated with the quick Match-Engine

View-Only Nation

• League-schedule
• League table
• No full squads (only if you load them via the advanced db)
• No staff (After the first sacking of the real manager, there will be in most cases no new head-coach and other staff members)
• Low to medium transfer-activity
• “fictional” finances (no existing bank balance, only a “fictional” calculated one)
• Games will be simulated with the quick Match-Engine

Nation playable

• League-schedule
• League table
• Full Squads
• Existing Staff
• Realistic transfer-activity
• Accurate simulation of the financial system
• Some games will be simulated with the Full Match Engine.

Nation playable + full detail

• League-schedule
• League table
• Full Squads
• Existing Staff
• Realistic transfer-activity
• Games will be fully simulated
• Accurate simulation of the financial system

The Effect?!

By selecting playable leagues you will not only increase the realism of the squads as they contain full squads and existing backroom staff members as in real-life, but also improve the realism of the transfer market and its activities within those selected nations and leagues.

Apart from that, you will get more realistic statistics and results. The player development takes more calculations into account (Development per average is similar but more diverse). If you simulate other leagues in Nations where you’re not currently managing with full detail, you will get a stronger AI, especially when you play against them.

This means that as a human manager you may have some “benefits” over the AI, especially against an AI Manager within an unloaded, unplayable or view-only nation.

For instance, you can be much better in transfers because you don’t have the same pressure or concerns regarding to bids from other competitors and teams with financial strength as they would have had in real life. The AI may not be that aggressive vs a human player fighting against a specific talent resulting in that you are able to buy a wonderkid for a ‘cheap’ price while managing a team that the player would never have moved to IRL.

NB! When using the term unloaded we mean when the players in that Nations are not selected via the advanced database option.

Managing the Detail level & Its Importance

In order to improve the realism in Football Manager, it’s not always enough to select nations or leagues as playable. By managing the detail level of certain regions, competitions, nations or divisions you can ensure that statistics and data are more accurate.

By using a Detail level of full you will ensure Football Manager simulates the matches in Full Detail as if the nation or division was playable. The detail level of the nation’s leagues, divisions and tournaments affect how games are simulated around you and basically impacts both the accuracy of statistics and data (e.g overall player performances) but also match results and league results.

A higher detail level will ensure all stages and matches are played out in full detail coming at expense of the overall game speed. As a result, by ensuring all competitive matches are played out in full detail, Football Manager will run slower but statistics will be more along the same lines as you were playing it yourself.

In Football Manager there are five Match detail levels. From none, where no competition st

ages are played out in full detail, to All Competitive Matches. To manage the Detail Level, head to:

FM > Detail Level

What is the benefit of simulating Leagues in full detail?

The short answer is that you will get more realistic match results, statistics and data. This is essential if you’re looking to scout for players using statistics and metrics. The average ratings and performance of players are more real-like as matches are simulated with the full match engine.

The player development takes more calculations into account. If you simulate other Leagues and Nations with full detail you will get a stronger AI, especially when you play against them. The AI Manager is much better at making tactical changes and more capable to combat your tactics as they have access to analyzing your matches.

Similarly, you will have the same opportunity to learn more about the AI manager and how his team plays when it’s in a playable nation compared to one from an unplayable league.

Recommended Settings to set Detail Level at?

There are different ways to ensure your database is as realistic as possible. In terms of the detail level, I recommend setting all national teams simulated in full detail as well as the continental club competitions.

If this slows down your game already too much, you can change this to only the Continent you are currently managing. I’ll show you how I set up the detail level for each setup (small, medium, large) on my youtube-video above.

Download Daveincid’s Recommended Game Setup

To help you setup a new save which increases the realism in Football Manager, Daveincid has created setups for the default game that you can apply to your own game. Link to download the file is available in the bottom of this chapter. Basically, it includes a specific database setup and five different game setups ranging from extremely small to large.

Available setups for the default game:

Every setup contains all players from existing leagues within the game. So even the small setup has over 200k players. As I mentioned already, my setups are quite demanding but especially the „small“ one might be faster as you think.

Small: 40 playable leagues in 35 Nations with 204k players

This setup adds the top division in 35/53 Nations as well as the 2nd division in England, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. All the other leagues are all „view“ only with players added via the advanced database. This setup already guarantees you a well-balanced transfer market, and strong competitors (see the benefit of the playable league over „view only“). This database is already very demanding. For those for who this is already way above their limit, I recommend setting the detail level completely to default. If it’s still too slow, see „additional setups“.

Medium: 64 playable leagues in 41 Nations with 212k players

This setup mainly goes down the league pyramid and adds 2nd and 3rd divisions of the bigger Nations but also some top divisions of smaller Nations. If you can’t choose between this or the small one, take the „medium“ setup ;)

Large: 97 playable leagues in 53 Nations with 220k players

The smell of a burning CPU can be quite romantic, right? Almost the same as being at a campfire with your partner ;) Jokes aside, this setup adds at least the top division of every Nation and a lot of 2nd and 3rd divisions as well. Just be aware: Once you had 1 long-term-save game with such a setup, there will be no way back anymore.

Additional setups:

In my guide for FM21, I wrote about much smaller setups but only 1 setup to download (recommended setup). This year I wanted to make a change. In this file, there are 2 smaller setups included. Those setups are meant to be for those who: 1. have a weak laptop/PC or 2. prefer playing FM as quick as possible but with a tiny bit of realism too.

Database setup:

This file is needed for every league setup. It adds players from all over the world for at least the top division. It’s also designed to add players for all „view-only“ leagues. So if you might have wondered why some leagues aren’t loaded as „view-only“, it’s because there aren’t enough players available in the database, so I don’t see a need to have them added, as they do not produce any players in the future.

If you don’t know if your PC/Laptop is low/mid/high-end you can check the following thread on the Sports Interactive forum which will help to determine your PC’s performance in Football Manager 2022.

6 Other tips for a balanced save game

1. As a human manager you have some “benefits” over the AI. You can be much better in transfers because you don’t “feel” pressure or concerns about which teams have IRL. I think that’s a reason why the AI is not that aggressive vs a human player fighting against a specific talent. It looks like a weak programmed AI, for me it is just insane programming skills by SI-devs.  With that in mind, you might not just buy a wonderkid for 20 million while managing a team that would never do that IRL, even if it would be possible. This gave me a much more immersive game experience.

2. Disable the first transfer window. The game starts (in most cases) in summer 2021. In real-life, transfers already happened, so if you enable that transfer window you’ll get much less accurate transfers, especially in the first year.

3. If you are struggling to choose the right setup for your Laptop/PC but wants to add more leagues, there’s no issue by adding up to 5 more leagues.

4. Stick to the setup you’ve chosen at the start during your save game. I wouldn’t add additional leagues or remove some. If your game becomes too slow I would first set some fully simulated competitions to default. This has a much bigger impact on the „day to day“-performance.

5. Ignore the performance stars when you choose a setup. They are only a rough orientation and can be misleading. Especially with the advanced database setup and custom detail levels.

6. As a general rule: In every Club, where you see existing players (not the greyed out ones), There will be newgens generated. If the whole Club has no existing players in 2021, there won’t be any in 2031.

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Additional resources to increase the realism of Football Manager?

To discuss realism in FM22 @Junkhead has created this wonderful thread. Sharing ideas, your own and all other stuff that can be linked in this area.

I have created a megapack to increase the realism of Football Manager 2022, you can find it here: (I recommend using it of course.

There is a great megapack from @davie77 which makes a lot of additional Nations playable in the game. I worked closely together with him and tested his files, so I know about the high quality-standard he provides.

I also recommend the data updates from @pr0

There are a lot of other files I recommend using to increase the realism in Football Manager 2022. A personal list of files I use is available on my Patreon:

What Affects the Speed of Football Manager?

One major question in all matters relating to how to improve the realism of Football Manager is game speed. Here’s a brief overview of which matters that slows down or affect the game processing speed of Football Manager the most:

• Setting leagues to simulate in full detail uses multicore pretty heavy.
• A lot of leagues are playable
• custom data in general slows down performance. There are big differences in what kind of custom data is used. As an orientation, you can go by file size. Larger files need more processing time. (not always, but especially lower-league-files do have quite a big impact.)
• An incredible amount of players loaded also affects performance. Down to my experience, if you don’t load 200k+ players, this effect is not that big compared to the others mentioned above
• All custom graphics loaded do not have any influence on the game speed at all. As far as I know, it has some influence in terms of RAM usage

Q&A

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I hope I was able to help you with one of the toughest decisions BEFORE you start your save-game:) In case I missed something or you think I’ve made a mistake, PM’s are open.

That’s it for now! I hope you’ve learned a bit about how unplayable or unloaded leagues can affect your save and how to set up a balanced Football Manager save that puts realism and competitiveness in focus. If you like to join a further discussion on how to improve realism in Football Manager, pop into this Sigames thread.

Credit & Social Medias

Passion4FM is hugely grateful to be given permission to re-distribute this magnificent piece on how to improve realism in Football Manager to our community. We like to give a warm thanks to Daveincid for sharing of his wisdom and the time spent researching the matter so we can learn a thing or two!

The original piece can be found on the Sigames forum.

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