TCY Recruiting/Game Planning Questions

[lcjjdnh]

All the talk of the possibility of TCY2 and the college football season heating up caused me to get the itch to play TCY again. Unfortunantly I lost my CD quite a while ago so I had to repurchase it. I haven't played the game for a while so I'm just getting back into things. I just have some questions to ask that I have come across.

1)Any basic recruiting strategies that you guys use. In my current career with Army I basically send out offers the first 2 weeks of the season to guys from NY as well as a few other big time players that I hope to pull in. It's been working pretty well and I've turned Army into a Top 25 but I was just wondering what everybody else does when recruiting the first few weeks of the season.

2)Does anyone have a good spreadsheet that they use to keep track of their recruits that I could use? I'm sure I could make one up if need be but I figure I'll be lazy and just use someone elses if they have it and don't mind sending it to me.

3)As far as gameplanning do you typically set this yourself or let the CPU do it. Right now I'm letting the CPU handle the depth chart and time management while I handle the game planning. Some of the game planning is just really tedious though and although I love football, I don't know the sport as well as I know basketball and soccer.

That's about it, really only one true request in there. There other stuff is just to try and prompt some TCY talk on the board and get a general feeling of the way everybody plays the game.

[dawgfan]

I've gotten back into TCY recently as well. I'll try to remember to send you the spreadsheet I use for recruiting when I get home.

As for recruiting strategies, here are a few guidelines I use:

- First off, I use the "academics" strategy in playing TCY; i.e. I recruit guys with 3+ GPA's and 1000+ test scores from high schools with 50+ academic prep ratings. My goal is a team GPA around 3.30 or higher, and my time management settings reflect this. I use the TCY Helper, which is a must-have IMO, and have settings that will produce the academic results I want. What this buys in the long run is 2 things - the smart guys won't need as much study table time and can spend more time on weights and film study which will speed up their development, and as my school's academic ratings rise I will have better success in recruiting this kinds of players and generating an edge over my rivals in recruiting;

- Probably the most important factor when evaluating recruits is knowing their likelihood of choosing your school - after all, why waste resources going after guys that are highly unlikely to commit to your school? The biggest thing to look at is their "fit" score. This seems to be a mix of various factors, much of which is their preferences and how your school stacks up. Any guy with a fit score over 90 is a good bet - not a guarantee, but if you pursue them you'll probably get a visit and have a decent shot at getting the commitment. Guys in the high 80's are worth pursuing, but as you get into the low 80's and lower, you probably won't get them unless they aren't getting many/any other offers. However, even as a low prestige and/or academic school, I will take a flier or 2 on some great players that might appear out of my league - I will usually get 1 or 2 just from effort and persistence. Most of the guys I pursue will be realistic targets though;

- Before each season, I guage the talent level of my school and my ability to land recruits. If I'm at a school that's lacking in prestige and/or academic reputation, I scale back my ambitions on whom to pursue. On teams like this, I'll target guys rated in the 60's and 70's mostly, and I'll take some fliers on some higher-rated guys if their fit score is high enough, or if they're a local guy and it doesn't cost a lot in resources to go hard after them. If I'm a top-level program, I pretty much won't consider guys rated below 70, and I'll prioritize the guys from high schools with a high athletic prep rating - this translates into guys that are more ready to go when they get into school (i.e. higher red bars);

- Also before each season starts, I evaluate my roster and figure out which positions I need a commitment from. I try to balance my rosters such that I have a nice distribution of players from each class level. My goal is to have one guy at each class level at each position and to be able to redshirt my entire freshman class. Some positions I may skip a class, like FB, TE, C and ILB (I run a 4-3). For those positions, every 3-4 seasons I'll skip recruiting for that position. For C I recruit a guy every other season. Also, I only have more than 1 scholarship guy at P and K when I have a senior and a freshman that's redshirting the season - there's no good reason to waste scholarships here. Every once in a while I may skip getting a QB or RB if I'm loaded - this will help the next season in recruiting as the top guys won't give the "I'm concerned you have a freshman player at my position" response. Some positions like WR and CB I may recruit 2 guys every other season. Managing your rosters and your recruiting this way will allow you to weather the seasons where you have less than 16 scholarships available, and you should have a steady enough stream of guys at each position that you're never in a panic situation of needing to guys in order to field a full group and avoid crappy walk-ons;

- Once I've determined how many guys at each postion I need to recruit, I fill out my recruiting list, looking for at least 3 potential target for each position of need (6 guys if I need 2). I use the TCY Helper to help scout for the guys I want, filtering for guys with the requisite grade, test and rating scores to fit my wishes. I'll cross-check these lists with the recruiting page in TCY and further filter out guys from low academic prep high schools, guys with low fit scores and highly rated guys that idolize another school. Once I've finished my list in my recruiting spreadsheet, I'll look at each position and see if there's a particular guy I really like - good rating, high athletic prep, high fit score - and note them in a column in my sheet so I remember during recruiting to go after them first. When I get a commitment for that position, I usually revoke any outstanding offers to other guys at his position, unless I have some extra room in my recruiting class and/or the guys that have an offer and haven't decided yet are exceptional players and worth landing no matter what. When you revoke a scholarship offer, you will no longer be able to pursue that player, so be careful before you revoke an offer and make sure you're set at that position;

- Part of recruiting strategy is managing your resources. Depending on your school's budget and location will determine how important location of recruits is. If you're locked into a corner of the country, you have to be real careful about how you spend your budget. That and a low starting budget means I try and focus most of my efforts on local and neighboring regions where visits are cheapest. If I'm going to another region to recruit, I try and bunch up my visits to maximize my resources - If I'm in a school in Washington for example, if I decide to travel to California one week I'll try and see as many guys on my list as I can that I'm interested in that are in the SW region. If I have a few guys on my list from the Great Lakes region, I try and visit all of them in the same week;

- My experience is that visits count for more than phone calls. Depending on your team's prestige level and how highly the recruit thinks of themselves will determine how many calls and visits will prompt the message from the recruit's high school coach that you've maxed out your efforts and "further calls or visits won't improve your chances." If you're a good school, this limit is usually reached with 2 visits and 2 phone calls (sometimes 3 and 2). If there's a guy I really want, I'll want to have at least 2 visits to him, 3 if he's really good and there's a lot of top competition for him.

- I almost never offer a guy a scholarship unless I've visited him first - I want to know how off my scout's evaluation is first. There are exceptions to this, but never in the first few weeks of recruiting;

- I generally want to have 2 offers out at each position I'm recruiting by the 4th or 5th week. If it's a position where I'm looking for 2 guys, I'll try and have 3 offers out there. I don't want much more than that, since this risks having the recruit "express concern you've offered another player at his position". This can happen even with 2 offers at marquee positions like QB and RB. That said, I also think that having multiple offers out there can also spur guys into making decisions. Plus, you'll only get a visit (and a commitment) if you offer a scholarship* (*except for recruited walk-ons - I'll address them later). So there's a balancing act there - having enough scholarship offers to get a visit and spurring decisions, and having too many that start turning off your prospective recruits. One thing to note - guys in green text will never express concern about how many offers you have at their position to other players - keep this in mind;

- I start week 1 by looking for the guys on my list I've checked as being my top priorities and spending my visit budget on them. Depending on their locations, I may opt to hold off on some of them till the following week if it makes more sense budget-wise. If I'm with a lousy team, the guys I'm usually visiting week-1 are primarily local guys from within my region. If I have a bigger budget and/or I'm in a centralized location, I may be more liberal about my visits. I'll then make sure that the guys I've checked as top priorities and have not yet visited get a phone call in week 1. I will finish out my phone calls by trying to make sure I've contacted at least one guy at each position I'm recruiting. Any guys I've visited that I have prioritized that come in better or much better than scouted will get a request to visit and a scholarship offer; guys that come in lower than expected may still get a visit request if they're rating is high enough and their athletic prep rating high as well;

- Week 2 and beyond I try to visit all the remaining top priority guys I haven't already visited, and any other guys I may have called in week 1. Basically, I try to start my recruiting process focused on 1-2 guys per position and keep visiting and calling each week until I've maxed out my calls and visits - at that point I then start contacting other guys on my list and working on maxing them out as well. If one of my prioritized guys turns out to be worse or especially much worse than originally scouted, I essentially quit recruiting them and start looking at other guys on my list and targeting them;

- You should be aware of critical dates in the recruiting process. I'm working off the top of my head so I may be off a little bit, but I think they are as follows:

Week 2 - first week you'll see any recruits with visits
Week 5(?) - first week you'll see any commitments
Week 7(?) - first week any recruit will have filled his maximum allotment of 5 visits
Week 14(?) - generally the latest a good recruit will wait before making a decision

The biggest week to note there is week 7 (it might be week 8) - if there's a guy you want and he's being pursued my multiple schools, you'd better have a scholarship offer to him by this point our you may be out of luck as he could fill out his visit schedule with other schools, thereby becoming unavailable to you;

- I should note at this point that I use a house rule of not "blitzing" a recruit - i.e. I only contact each recruit once per week, i.e. 1 visit or 1 call, and I don't bribe;

- I should also note that with some positions I may place a lot of emphasis on their H.S. stats. I know that Jim has indicated this area is mainly for fun, but I think they do carry some weight. Things I look for: any RB with 2,000 yards rushing in his 9 games; any WR with close to 10 catches per game and 2,000 yards receiving in his 9 games; QB's with low interception totals, 60+ % completion rates, 10+ yards per completion average, 3,000+ yards passing in 9 games. For P's I think you can pretty much ignore their ratings and go by their punting yard average - any guy at 45+ is worth pursuing, any guy at 47+ is worth offering a scholarship sight-unseen. Other positions I pretty much ignore the stats, though I suppose if you really study them you might figure out results that are meaningful;

- Recruited walk-ons - you can still get commitments from guys without offering a scholarship by offering them a visit. If you have less than 16 scholarships to offer, you'll want to fill out your class with recruited walk-ons. Also, if I'm recruiting for a position and I'm having bad luck, I may stop looking for a scholarship guy and wait to pick up a recruited walk-on late. Even with a bad program, I don't want to waste a scholarship on a guy rated much below 60 - I'd rather save the scholarship for next season and get a recruited walk-on rated in the 40's or 50's. Don't bother looking for these guys until week 14 or so. The only guys that will commit off just a visit offer will be guys with no scholarship offers. Generally speaking, this will rule out most guys with ratings higher than 50. At this point in the recruiting process, if I'm looking for recruited walk-ons, I'll filter for the positions I'm looking for (these are areas where I'd like a little more depth) and then go to the academics page and start looking for guys with high academics and ratings in the 40's or 50's. After visiting these guys, if a guy is better or much better than scouted I'll offer them a visit. By week 15 or 16, you should get commitments from these guys provided they don't have any scholarship offers. Keep in mind that any player that had an outstanding scholarship offer after you've filled your allotment of available scholarships will be considered to have had his scholarship offer revoked, and thus unavailable to you to recruit further;

- Some positions are deeper than others. FB's and TE's seem to be thinner than others, as are quality DT's. Generally I find that DE's seem to be more readily available than just about any other position. There are usually a lot of decent RB's even if you can't get an elite one. Based on this, I have slightly higher standards for DE recruits and slightly lower standards for DT's, FB's and TE's;

That's about all I can think of for now. If others have further insights I'd be glad to hear them.

[lcjjdnh]

Wow quite a post, should be a lot of help. Thanks a lot. You mention TCY Helper in the post but I don't see in linked in the reference thread. I remember hearing about it but never took the time to look into it. What exactly does it do and where can I get it?

[McSweeny]

SkyDog,

this should be linked in the reference thread for sure, a very informative read

[dawgfan]

Wow quite a post, should be a lot of help. Thanks a lot. You mention TCY Helper in the post but I don't see in linked in the reference thread. I remember hearing about it but never took the time to look into it. What exactly does it do and where can I get it?

Hmm, I'm surprised it's not linked in the reference thread. It's a utility that was created by Fido. If you do a forum search for threads started by Fido or for thread titles containing TCY Helper you should find a link to where you can download it, unless Fido no longer has a website.

The utility does a lot of nice things - the best ones IMO are the time management screen, where you can input some preset preferences for time settings based on their position, academic ratings and whether or not they have a girlfriend. I'll post my settings if I can remember when I get home. Another nice feature is the aforementioned recruiting screen, which allows you to filter all recruits through a number of factors in a way you can't do within TCY itself. The 3rd feature I use is one that gives you a quick sorting of the best scouts and coordinators - this makes evaluating your staff and deciding whether to replace existing staffers much quicker and easier.

If you can't find a link, I think I still have the compressed .exe of the program and I can e-mail it to you. It was a free utility, so I doubt Fido would mind.

[dawgfan]

Dola - I should note that my style is just one way of playing the game. I've been very successful with it, but I'm sure there are other successful ways of approaching the game. I would suggest browsing the dynasty forum for TCY-related dynasties and seeing if you can glean other approaches.

[lcjjdnh]

Thanks again for the respone. Could you zip up TCY Helper and send it to me too. I went to Fido's site but the link is not working right now. Thanks in advance.

[lcjjdnh]

Dola-I got a copy of TCY Helper thanks to Soveriegn Star so don't worry about that.

[Alf]

dawgfan just wrote a TCY strategy guide : beautiful !

[Ben E Lou]

Good stuff. I'll link to this in the reference thread.

FYI, TCY Helper is not linked because the author requested that I remove the link.

[dawgfan]

OK, a few more things:

Time Management Settings for TCY Helper
Practice Time: 17
Study Hall: Int mult = 1, Asp mult = 1
200 = 14
190 = 15
180 = 16
175 = 17
170 = 18
160 = 19
150 = 20
145 = 21
140 = 22
130 = 23
120 = 24
110 = 25
100 = 26
90 = 28
80 = 30
70 = 32
60 = 33
50 = 34
40 = 36
30 = 38
20 = 40
10 = 45
0 = 50
Weight Room:
QB = 9
RB = 13
FB = 22
TE = 22
WR = 13
C = 25
G = 26
T = 27
P = 16
K = 15
DE = 23
DT = 24
ILB = 21
OLB = 19
CB = 14
S = 14
Film Study:
QB = 25
RB = 21
FB = 13
TE = 15
WR = 23
C = 12
G = 10
T = 10
P = 16
K = 21
DE = 14
DT = 13
ILB = 15
OLB = 18
CB = 21
S = 17
Relaxation: with gf = 27, w/o gf = 19

Notes on this:

- Practice time seems to have a bit of impact on your penalties, but the biggest factor for penalties is a hidden discipline rating for you as a coach generated when you start your career. If you don't emphasize academics as much, you can bump up your practice time some.

- Study table: As I mentioned, I play an 'academic' strategy. The above settings will get you a team GPA of around 3.30 or so - this will tend to boost your school's academic prestige up between 2-4 points each season until you reach the theoretical maximum for your school. These settings, combined with careful use of your coaching points during the season, should also help you avoid any players receiving an academic suspension. Unfortunately, mid-season injury-replacement walk-ons may screw this up for you - I generally have to spend a lot of my coaching blocks trying to keep these guys from flunking. It's my observation that academic suspensions may drop your academic prestige rating some, so it's worth it to try and avoid this. Also, if you get a mid-season injury-replacement walk-on that's a complete moron, check his popularity - if it's low, just drop him from the team and hope the AI gives you a smarter walk-on to replace him.

- Weight training/Film Study: I generally don't change these per class year of the player because I want to spend as little time actually setting these values within TCY as I can. If TCY Helper were somehow merged with TCY and changing the settings in the Helper changed them in TCY, I'd do it. If you really want to micromanage, you want the weight training to be emphasized more early and the film study later.

- Relaxation: If I have a guy that requires around 22+ study table based on my settings, I may drop his relaxation a little. The lowest I tend to go is 24 for guys with g/f if they're really stupid, and 17 w/o g/f. I do think a happier team plays better in TCY, so another thing you can do is for your 4th and 5th year guys that have maxed-out their development, you may want to boost their relaxation time some.
------------------------------------------------------

Game planning:

I didn't address this in my previous posts. Generally, I use a mix of the coaches suggestion with my own modifications.

- Offensive Game Plan:
I use the coaches suggestion for run blocking percentages. For the rest, I've settled on the following values:

Run Percentages
80 65 70 55
75 65 40 45
77 31 20 20
75 20 15 15
I run the I-formation, and this will generally get you a 1,000 yard RB and a QB with 2,500+ yards. The settings emphasize running on first and second down and in short yardage situations, passing in long situation, and a slight lean to passing in 2nd and long.

Pass distance:
15 43 22 14 6
You can tweak this a little depending on your QB's strengths, but if you have decent receivers that can gain YAC, this will produce very high QB efficiency numbers.

- Defensive game planning:
I generally start with the coaches suggestion. The run percentages part is strictly tied to the offensive formation your opponent runs. There are 3 sets of settings the coaches will suggest here - on 1st and 8-10 yards it will either be 94, 68 or 44. I'll modify all these numbers based off their season stats, i.e. how much and how effective they've been running and throwing. This is really a 'feel' kind of thing - I don't have a specific formula.

Under the tendencies part, I tend to leave this alone, unless I really want to bump up the nickel and dime tendencies against a strong passing team. The nickel and dime settings are based partly on your opponent and partly on the depth of your backup defensive backs. If you're particularly deep in this area, feel free to bump these numbers up a little.

For the blitz percentages and the pass coverage settings, I pretty much just use the coaches suggestions.

I should note that many others have come up with their own unique defensive strategies that involve quite a bit of custom settings - I encourage you to seek these out and experiment with them if you're so inclined.

- Run details:
I go strictly with the coaches suggestions on the finesse run percentages - I just haven't gotten that granular in trying to figure out and tweak this area. What I will modify is the distribution of carries per position. I'm not a huge fan of reverses, so I tend to drop my WR number to 1 - this still results in about 1 reverse per game to my WR. I sometimes bump up my FB percentages since I often have FB with high yards-per-carry ratings.

[dawgfan]

Dola -

Important note about all of this: None of these settings and strategies have been tested with the 1.3 patch just released for TCY

[bryce]

I'd love to nab a copy of the TCY Helper, too, if anyone has a working link, or as an email attachment or whatnot. Thanks ya.

[Alf]

Here is what I have : http://sidelinereporter.free.fr/fof/utils/tcyhelper/

Don't know if that's the latest version or not. Or if I am even authorized to host these files...

[MizzouRah]

Just read this... thanks dawgfan!


Todd

[cubboyroy1826]

Hey dawgfan any chance you can forward the spreadsheet to me. I have gotten TCY back up and running and would like try it out. You can email it to me at roy dot mortgage at comcast dot net. Thanks.