Warrior General Games

I don't like anything about it. Does anyone have a realistic way to make it work?

The defense is extremely complicated and restricted where the offense is simple without restrictions. I'm spending way to much time just trying to align the stars and make it work. It is feeling too much like a job rather than fun. I don't want to spend a half hour every game just trying to figure out how to get plays called then ultimately having to just give up.

It would be nice to have a conversation about this. I like this game a lot but don't have a ton of free time to waste on this extremely funky AI/tag system.

my system has always been (no I'm not kidding):

- choose 2 plays for each formation (if needed - put one play at 5 priority and one play at 1 priority)
- leave tactics blank except for blitz %s
- hope your players make plays


I don't think it can get any simpler than that.

Yep...I have exactly 2 plays for each formation. I have a pass, run and hybrid defensive play book. Done.

I generally stick to the 2 play per formation rule, unless there's something I stumble upon that the offense tries to do, then I up it to 3 plays for the relevant formation.

An example might be where an offense reliably does the following:

Short yardage = inside runs
Middle yardage = screens/outside runs
Long yardage = passes

The plays in GLB2 aren't good enough to get beyond 3 plays per formation. Way too much overlap for Short yardage and not enough diversity for Medium blitzes and Long is just barren.

I look at the 2WR set. There are decent inside runs, outside runs, screen passes, medium passes and long passes. Yet I have just two similar plays to stop all of that? Maybe I want to blitz on 2nd and long out of the 3WR set, but it can't be done no matter what I try. There are a ton decent/good plays that are unusable due to their tags.

When I first started coordinating here I was like "Ok where is the rest of the AIs?". I thought they just didn't get around to finishing the system yet.Originally posted by Absolut Zero


An example might be where an offense reliably does the following:

Short yardage = inside runs
Middle yardage = screens/outside runs
Long yardage = passes

This is the issue. If they do not do this over every formation you can't call the defensive plays to counter this. You know the screen is coming but you have to call a medium run/pass or something instead because of something they do in an unrelated WR set.

With the current list of plays, it's about picking which things your opponent does that you want to stop. So you set playbooks/tactics to stop A, B, and C, while doing just so-so against D and E. It's hard to find an offense where you can call a perfect defense that'll shut down everything.

If you realize they don't run B and C enough to really hurt you, then focusing on stopping A, D, and E is what you set your playbooks/tactics for.

After that, it's about modifying depth charts to either accentuate what your plays are designed to stop, or lessen the damage from the plays you're not focusing on.

Ya you are never going to stop A, B, C, D, and E no matter what system you work out.

I learned after about 5 seasons that the simpler your defensive gameplan is, the better

if I tried to make it compliated, typically tactics out screw everything up and I'd be running plays I didn't mean to, or I'd overthink things

There are about 4 or 5 things I look at for every team I scout before I play them, and simply add specific plays I've found to stop those

I've got three defensive playbooks. The pass defense playbook is the simplest one...2 plays per formation.

The other two have 3-4 defensive plays each section though. Then you use tactics to be sure you're using the right play in the right situation.

Wow guys. It's not hard to build a custom D playbook for each opponent.

Defensive tactics seem hard in the beginning but really all you need is a short play and a medium play for each formation. Then scale Pass Short / Pass Medium based on down and distance.

Though what those 2 plays per formation are should be customized by opponent.

I don't think it is "hard" to do. But there is a lot of difficulty between the tags and how you want to handle each formation. You generally have to compromise yourself somewhere just so you can use a play in a certain situation. Which is something I dislike. Especially when it comes to the zone defenses.

Originally posted by bhall43
I don't think it is "hard" to do. But there is a lot of difficulty between the tags and how you want to handle each formation. You generally have to compromise yourself somewhere just so you can use a play in a certain situation. Which is something I dislike. Especially when it comes to the zone defenses.

What's hard is to use Outside Run plays effectively.

The "easy" way is to use:
Short plays for Run D
Med plays for Pass D
Inside Runs on 3rd and Short (omit them against a formation that doesn't use them)

The hardest grouping to use is Outside Runs because a team may run outside in 2WR but not 3WR so when your Tactics calls for the Outside run, that isn't in the playbook, you could easily get your Short play being used in a Medium situation.

That's how you get burned.

My main difficulty is that every decent zone play is medium.

Every decent man blitz play is short. Most good outside run plays aren't really a good outside run play. Then there are some really solid coverage plays that are short/medium for reasons I can't really understand.

The people calling it easy are using about 4-5 plays in the book. That isn't interesting at all. That is actually really stupid.

What I dislike is that good plays range very small between both offense and defense. A good system should support use of a wide variety of plays on both sides. We aren't anywhere close to that yet. So it is less Rock/Paper/Scissors and more rock vs rock on a daily basis.

Originally posted by bhall43
My main difficulty is that every decent zone play is medium.

Every decent man blitz play is short. Most good outside run plays aren't really a good outside run play. Then there are some really solid coverage plays that are short/medium for reasons I can't really understand.

The people calling it easy are using about 4-5 plays in the book. That isn't interesting at all. That is actually really stupid.

Totally agree in that Man Blitzes are overwhelmingly Pass Short and Zones are overwhelmingly Medium. That's what needs to be changed up. We need some new plays but we really need a better mix of distances across all formations.

I use a lot more than 4-5 plays throughout a season. But there are some games where I only use 4-5 plays. I don't think its stupid.

What's really happening is that most offenses are really easy to scout. It's their play calling mix that results in a DC only using a few plays to win the game,