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Tour of Qatar Discussion
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| jandal7 |
Posted on 07-11-2021 22:47
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World Champion
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Guess we need to begin every flat race with a huge mountain stage which is then taken away from the final GC 
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant."
[PT]  Xero Racing
5x  x5
1x  x1
2x  x2
2x  x2 |
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| Eden95 |
Posted on 08-11-2021 00:59
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Grand Tour Specialist
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God I hope this is an anomaly and isn’t indicative of how sprint races will go as the season progresses. I’m all for surprise winners and underdog victories, but there’s already been a few and we’re only like 5 races into the season. Maybe we should re-introduce crashes to make the game almost all luck based? 
Indosat - ANZ HQ
"This Schleck sandwich is going to cause serious indigestion for Evans" - Phil Liggett |
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| Roman |
Posted on 08-11-2021 12:42
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Grand Tour Specialist
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Baska doing the perfect lead-out job for me even though he is not racing in my colours anymore.
Oh wow! I thought one or two top 10 stage results would be a decent race, but even the most optimistic scenario from here did not include seeing Stepniak winning a stage, but here we go. Now also well inside the top 10 in the GC.
Looks like it may not be the worst tactics to just go after both sprints and time trials with multiple cheap riders - some good luck with a having great day for one of your riders may be the way to go in these newer versions of PCMs. A bad day for your expensive leader may be really costly and I believe it is probably what we are seeing here together with PCM AI not being able to handle all the teams having multiple 78+ sprinters in their teams.
Think what may could help is an inclusion of stronger winds in these flat stages. Harder stages would likely make the differences between riders bigger so it should allow the top sprinters to shine more and some luck element in echelon game may not even be worse than the luck already present in this current version of sprint lottery. I remember the wind mechanics on flat stages in PCM15 were quite fun.
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| roturn |
Posted on 08-11-2021 17:51
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Team Manager
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Being 2nd right now should hopefully mean top5 is possible or top10 minimum, which obviously is a much better position than many many other sprinters. Groenewegen seems to really like this race here. |
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| Croatia14 |
Posted on 08-11-2021 18:10
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Directeur Sportif
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Guess what, it happened EXACTLY what we've feared would happen. Feels great to loose a race when not trying to position for the last 3 stages and riding as a GC rider. Actually incredible strength by Gaviria to still finish the day in 9th, but I can't be anything other than pissed afterwards. |
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 06-12-2025 20:00
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| roturn |
Posted on 08-11-2021 18:18
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4th is a good result for me despite starting the day in 2nd. More annoyed to lose out on Erdenebat, who after a strong prologue missed the cut today and dropped like 40-50 spots.
Congrats to SotD for the GC. The final GC looks a lot more realistic than the dayly results really. Tough for Croatia obviously to lose it in the end.
Thanks for reporting. |
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| tastasol |
Posted on 08-11-2021 18:22
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Bah, bummer with that puncture. Still a good race for us with two stage wins, but a good amount of point lost for Kragh with that puncture. At least we managed to get three guys in the front group and take the win in the team classification.
Quite some changes in the GC at the end here. Congrats to SotD on snatching the win at the very end.
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| alexkr00 |
Posted on 08-11-2021 18:28
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World Champion
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Another consistent sprint by Grosu. Given he won the green jersey, I guess he was the most consistent sprinter in these weird-ish sprints so I'm very happy with his results and getting a podium overall.
Congrats, SotD!
Thanks for the reports!
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| jandal7 |
Posted on 08-11-2021 18:39
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World Champion
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Guess we’ve got a lottery (who’s currently high on GC) within a lottery (who’s been picked to be a good sprinter at all) at the flat races - if it was four stages then Gaviria and Rowe would have been on top, if it was nine maybe they would have come back up after falling down, if it was eleven it might have come back to Grosu and Coquard - all about timing your rise and fall up the GC Glad I’m not relying on my sprinters this year and just making it inside the outer lottery made it a positive surprise race for us.
Gutted to fall from 2nd on GC but 6th and 11th is still absolutely brilliant for us in one of our least likely races all year. Huge shoutout to one of the most hated men in the MG, Nils Schomber in just his first race at max already proving himself worth my development time.
As a team to survive we’ll need to keep up that level of overperforming for another 150RDs or whatever it is, but hopefully we’ve done enough that I can make a cringy “stop the count” joke when the rankings come out.
Thanks for the great reporting Nemo and congrats SotD, he came good in the end Sad for Anderberg and tasta, one downside of removing crashes is we can’t do the same for punctures and they start to stick out a lot 
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant."
[PT] Xero Racing
5x x5
1x x1
2x x2
2x x2 |
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| SotD |
Posted on 08-11-2021 18:44
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Well that was a crazy turn of events. I sure as hell didn’t see that coming. I was reading the report and just hoped Farantakis and Ioannidis wasn’t missed in the split and then accepting the fate that Coquard again went too soon in front and probably losing his top 10 spot.
This was just a domino of good things, and while Coquard have performed sub-par on 5 out of 6 stages he ends up winning the race and get 2nd in points. We kept 2nd Team and our relatively dominant backup results from Farantakis, Ioannidis and Vlatos was only enhanched by moving forward while the remaining riders also gained from the split.
I realize that with the combined luck of this result and the win that was awarded in Tasmania, I can’t expect to be on the receiving end again for a fair bit. I would be rolling my eyes in dispair to see another team be this lucky so I kinda am also doing that here. The broken gameplay really isn’t good for this sort of game, and unless we see significant improvements we need to move away from the version after this season - and while PCM 18 was also a mess it seemed less of a mess than this really!
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| Heine |
Posted on 08-11-2021 19:06
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I had about given up on Ahlstrand sprinting until that last stage, so close aswell.
Quite happy with my sprint train, should mean good things to come with a bit more luck (and trying on more stages...)
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| knockout |
Posted on 08-11-2021 19:16
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Grand Tour Champion
Posts: 8235
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Finally some sort of gaps appear eventhough i'm on the wrong side of it with nearly the entire team. So I'm down to one 32nd place and thats it. Seeing that someone like Kragh Andersen with his Grieg team as arguably the biggest casualty it seems like it was just down to random positioning which is not ideal either.
What a crap start - my planning ideas for this definitely didnt work at all and i probably would have been better off sending Eislers here as 99% of managers would have (rightfully?) done.
Congrats SotD!
Thanks Nemo, hope your motivation is not impacted too much by the complaints about the AI. Reports were great (as almost always) |
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| Fabianski |
Posted on 08-11-2021 19:42
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Ouch, I'm actually glad I couldn't get any points out of this one anyway, as losing the best riders in GC really is bad news.
Reinhardt was pretty consistent, although just on the lower end of the Top 10. Can't realistically expect more against this competition - but honestly, what about this race was realistic?
And one thing I retain is that sending Reinhardt and Boudat to the same races just means a waste of RDs for the latter - he didn't even try to sprint, whereas some guy not much better than him even won a stage... But those PT wildcards are exactly to try out such things, especially with a new game version.
Concerning game version, I agree with SotD. PCM18 wasn't great, but at least the two previous Qatar editions yielded more consistent results, with most of the top sprinters always participating, and with virtually no outsider wins. Barring OP Holloway last year, of course
Nonetheless, huge congrats to SotD - finally Coquard gets his deserved and long awaited win in Qatar! Although we'd all have preferred to see it happen in a more "normal" way, he's definitely a worthy winner. On the other hand, commiserations to Croatia for losing out on the GC just due to stupid AI.
Last but not least, thanks to Nemo for the reports! I know this race isn't easy to report, as the sprint AI really takes away a lot of the fun (at least when reading the comments ^^), but you did a great job, as always
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| cio93 |
Posted on 08-11-2021 20:38
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World Champion
Posts: 10616
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Oh man, such a bummer for Grieg on the final day!
Purely speaking for the team, this was obviously a great development for us, as Ganna did only drop to 10th instead of 11th and Aregger adds an unexpected massive amount of points in 13th as well. Sütterlin also moved up nicely despite a bad prologue.
With a clean sweep of the white jersey for Filippo and 15 points from a teams classification podium, we leave Qatar happier than ever!
Tasmania was a decent season opener with the lineup we've sent, and this race elevates our season start to fully satisfactory, and all without a Herklotz or Demare race day yet.
The TTT coming up has been kind to us in the past and it would be awesome to continue our stretch of top efforts there, and then the famous triple header will bring decent scoring opportunities to us.
It will be necessary to score well early on though with Isostar and Festina being this successful already.
Although if we keep our expectations low in the Top 5 area anyway, that's quite irrelevant to us and removes the only issue I could have so far.
On that note, congrats SotD and (mostly) commiserations to Croatia, it's been a weird one with an ultimately solid GC look, but certainly only if we act like the single stages didn't play out the way they did.
Thank you Nemolito for quality reports, as can be expected (and yet still greatly appreciated) by you lately!
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| Ulrich Ulriksen |
Posted on 09-11-2021 03:16
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Directeur Sportif
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SotD wrote:
The broken gameplay really isn’t good for this sort of game, and unless we see significant improvements we need to move away from the version after this season - and while PCM 18 was also a mess it seemed less of a mess than this really!
I am 100% confident the GC issue exists in PCM18, going back does not fix that. It didn't come up a lot in PT but was a major point of discussion in CT races. I think it can be fixed by adding a mountain stage at the end of races but that needs to be test.
The issue of PCM20 introducing a lot more randomness in who sprints and who gets lead outs is new. Going back would eliminate that, although I am in the camp that believes you can never go back. As someone pointed out the huge number of quality sprinters in the mangame DB doesn't help.
My biggest problem with PCM20 so far is that lead outs seem to be a kiss of death. But maybe there is a key someone will find. Ahlstrand finished 2nd with a lead out in the last stage so it is possible.
I also like the idea of upping the wind levels in Qatar, that can be done in the ZCTS.
Man Game: McCormick Pro Cycling |
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| AbhishekLFC |
Posted on 09-11-2021 05:38
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Coquard finally takes it out. Heartbreak for Gaviria though but a good start to life in the PT nonetheless! Also awesome to see Xero doing really well here but I'm sure the reporter missed another 1 in front of Schomber!
Great reports Nemo!
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| Nemolito |
Posted on 09-11-2021 09:58
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Classics Specialist
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First of all congratulations to all stage winners and GC winner Coquard. Grieg had such a great race until the last day, but that puncture really screwed them. Heartbreak for Gaviria for losing out on the GC win by a couple of centimeters, but I guess most of the reason for losing the jersey is of course because of not sprinting at all for the days before.
Which brings us to the AI, olé. I don't mind people being disappointed/mad about the results and venting here, as I completely understand. Even if I would try to frame the reports in such a way that everything looks as realistic as possible, it's simply impossible to make them look that way when you have stages with only five people sprinting, including most of them 80- sprinters. The final top-10 of the GC does look quite realistic though (excluding maybe Stepniak and Ganna), so I guess that's a good thing.
Comparing PCM18 sprint AI with PCM20 sprint AI is like comparing the plague with cholera. They're simply both shit imo. Qatar with many superb sprinters or Tachira with way fewer sprinters in general, it's just a lottery for the big part. In PCM18 the yellow jersey stayed around the twentieth position and maybe got a top-10 by starting his sprint as well from way behind, but in PCM20 this AI behaviour seems to have extended to the top-3 or 5 of the GC. For some reason Manninen, Gaviria and Keough all got a top-2 in the second stage after taking the yellow jersey though, which is interesting. Trains barely work, just as they barely did in PCM18. Ahlstrand got close twice though, after getting a lead-out. Maybe Mapei has found the key to the 'perfect' lead-out, who knows.
Like I said earlier, even though I know stuff like thus can be very demotivating, I hope people can still enjoy MG as much as possible and keep looking forward to the next report(s) as I/they have always done.
Concerning solutions to the problem, I don't think adding a mountain stage at the end will solve the GC problem and AI sprinting behaviour (who sprints and who doesn't), but feel free to test Adding a mountain stage in the beginning can be a bit hard to then figure out the sprinting GC. One thing I have proposed is to work with, for example, the F1 points system being given to the top 10/15 after a stage, and then just racing the 5 stages apart and adding the points to the rider's tally after every race. Time-wise this should be 'doable' for the reporters imo. There are still several problems that will emerge like the trains being terrible, hard to implement a KoM in sprint stage races (which might not be such a bad thing), etc. But yeah, the discussion on possible solutions will be held in the Changes thread later I guess 
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| Bikex |
Posted on 12-11-2021 11:27
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The race was already lost after the truly awful prologue but at least Hsu showed himself in the sprint stages!
Thanks for the reports and congrats SotD! |
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| OlegTinkov |
Posted on 14-01-2022 06:51
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Really bad prologue from Yatsevich and Samolenkov not showing up in the sprints is a bad sign for the rest of the season. Nice GC for Coquard/Festina only 1 second and great reports Nemolito.
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