FOF: Trading Down in the Draft

[CraigSca]

Anyone have any tips regarding this in SP? It seems like every time I try to do something like trade my current 1st pick so I can move down a few spots the AI's GM will say something to the effect: "The opposing GM will not make this deal because it adds no value" (my apologies for not having the correct wording).

Anyone have any idea how to find a team that's willing to trade up? I'll try to deal my pick for their #1 and a #2 the next year, but I continually get the "no value" reply. So...I try everything, even asking for just a #7 pick a couple of years down the road and I still get rebuffed.

What am I doing wrong?

[Chubby]

You're not doing anything wrong, some teams don't want to trade up others do. Sometimes you can get multiple 1sts for your 1st this year. I usually don't trade down just trade out of the 1st round if I trade so I go for future 1sts.

[stevew]

a lot of it depends on how good your #1 is. Usually if you want to get a #1 back, you gotta take one 2 years down the line, and hope to get a second or third in this draft. Sometimes you gotta live with trading your #1 for their #1, and upgrading your #3 or #4 into a 2nd the following year.

[QuikSand]

The "not enough value" message is just the polite way the game says that it calculated both sides of the deal, and decided not to do it.

I think that there is a sort of "slant" when teams consider draft pick trades -- that the computer wants to come out substantially ahead by its values in order to do the deal, not just even or slightly ahead.


I'm not sure about your final comment -- if you're offering a top pick for a future seventh and getting spurned, it sounds like there's a bug situation... but if you're just making somewhat balanced deals and not getting anywhere, you might find that it's a function of this "substantial gain" theory.

Example: You offer pick 2(1), and ask for pick 2(10) and 7(10)

To you, this sounds okay - you move down a few slots, and pick up a trivial extra selection. In the NFL, this woudl probably be accepted in a heartbeat.

In FOF, the computer is looking to gain substantially, otherwise it won't do a trade -- and it's possible that the increment between 2(10) and 2(1) just isn't substantial enough to pass that test, almost no matter what else you toss into the deal. Hel, you can make straight-up trade offers that benefit the othe team, and sometimes they decline.


It is, to be blunt, a somewhat unfair system -- but overall, I think the FOF AI does a pretty decent job with draft trades, and it's hard to find truly gaping holes in its thinking with regard to current-year picks. It's tough to get a lot of value trading down (unless you have a very, very high pick) and it's fairly costly to trade up. If our goal is pretty good realism and pretty good prevention of exploits -- then this gets decent marks from me. (Again, within the cirrent year - future year picks become hinky)

[Chubby]

QS - I think he's saying he's trying to do...

1(5) for 1(10) and 7(10) and getting shot down which doesn't surprise me too much.

[CraigSca]

Chubby has it right - that's an example of what I was trying to do.

Sometimes it's just annoying because there is just no dealing with some teams (they will shoot down most any offer). It would be nice if you had the option to throw your pick out there and be able to get responses back from teams that are below you (with their offers to swap picks), rather than getting bogged down finding just the right deal with a team that will actually make a trade.