Well, I've been playing a lot of PCM12 lately and I started off with playing on "normal" but now that I am used to the game I end up getting 5 of my riders in the top 10 in sprints and that goes the same (or similar) for mountain stages as well.
So, I tried to play on hard and extreme but in both cases I have real trouble to win anything :/
So, are there any general gameplay tips for flats, mountains, cobbles when playing on hard/extreme
I don't want unrealistic results with me finishing with multiple riders in the top 10 when playing on normal :/
Edited by Londoner on 12-08-2012 09:54
Plan your season for each rider, or at least the leaders, carefully! That's by far the most important thing.
In sprints on extreme I often find leadout trains too slow, cause the other favourites will just sprint past your last leadout man. So what I often do, unless I have a badass team, is to just follow one of the other favourites, and hoping that he will position himself good.
Don't expect to win very much when playing on extreme, but the wins you get, are a great satisfaction, which I think is all worth the hard work. Just getting that edge by executing a well-thought strategy is SO satisfying.
As for hard, you should be able to win a fair amount of races, judging from your skills at normal. Wins just aren't getting thrown at you
Yes, I was not expecting to win every race hahah but getting beaten by a sprinter with 73 sprint vs a 78 sprint is frustrating but I just need to practice now lol
Londoner wrote:
thank you for the quick responses!!!
Yes, I was not expecting to win every race hahah but getting beaten by a sprinter with 73 sprint vs a 78 sprint is frustrating but I just need to practice now lol
Like in real life... sometimes a good sprinter beats a better one. It depends the end of the stage, if there's a hill before the last kilometers, the form of the riders, the profile of the stage.
You can win sprints, and mostly stages, in breakaways.
Londoner wrote:
btw so you guys play most races in career mode? or sim lower rated races?
I like to play every single one of them, just to say I've done it, and to not get some weird results, that I wasn't 'really' responsible for.
Some of them are played rather quickly, though.
Btw i won almost every WT race and clasic and not playing with the biggest favourites ON HARD but on extreme i cant win a mountan stage with Conta or a sprint with Cav. I think that the difference between them is way to big . They should make a intermediate difficuly between them (smth like World Class on FIFA )
So I applied the tactics explained in the tips & tricks section for mountain stages on hard level and it doesn't seem to be working for me in PCM 2012. With both Kruijswijk in the Giro and Gesink in the Tour, I seem to have trouble when the others accelerate. Following them will drain their red & yellow bars, while riding on the dot doesn't make them close any gaps and they will end somewhere between 11 and 20 in the stage result. Unless the finish is downhill, because then a peloton of 40/60 riders will sprint for the stage win...
Judging by my training schedules and the (better) results I'm getting with simulations, it seems like I must be doing something wrong. Can anyone tell me my mistake? I don't expect to win a lot of mountain stages with these riders, but I'd like to stop underachieving.
First of all, don't follow the attacks of the AI. As you have realised, your rider gets exhausted pretty quickly. Also, make every bit of energy count. This means you need to conserve the green bar since the very beginning of the stage. Move your main rider forward at the beginning of the stage, but not too forward (so the one who is protecting him doesn't have to deal with the wind). For at least the first half of the stage keep him in 50-60 effort. If the peloton is going too fast (which usually happens when chasing the first breakaways of the stage), your rider will slowly lose positions, but that's ok because you have quite margin since you were ahead in the peloton.
One gamey tactic, using the same principle, is to be ahead in the peloton and in each intermediate mountain put a rider to relay hard. Your main rider won't lose too much energy due to the effort cap, while the other GC contenders will try to keep their position, losing energy while doing that. I don't suggest you to use this tactic, tho, because it is a cheap and unrealistic way to drain energy from your contenders, due to the mechanism of the game and the poor AI.
In hard-extreme you can't win if you use the same tactics the AI uses. Get to the front, with your main rider protected, but try to use the minimum level of effort doing so. If you try to get to the front at the bottom of the climb using, for example, 70 effort, it is likely your teammate will have a heart rate of at least 180, so you will burn him too soon. Try to calculate the effort so your main rider won't get exhausted before the end of the stage. As a general rule, you can't expect more than 10 km uphill if the effort is more than 80, while you can safely last a lot more than that at 75. And try not to attack, but always use dot. If you can't drop a rider using dot, get on his wheel and attack when close to the finish line.
Finally, about your riders. Don't compare your results with those obtained simulating. Simulations seem to be too biased towards fit riders, while when you play the stages the stats are more important. Kruijswijk in extreme won't achieve more than top 10 in the Giro, unless you are very very skilled. You could get better results at La Vuelta because many GC riders will have more than 60 race days by then. Gesink, on the other hand, is a whole different story. By careful planning and managing energy during the stages you should arrive top 5 in any GC, so give it another try. You will soon achieve better results with practice.
Disclaimer: The above post reflects just the personal opinion of the author and not a fact. But if you read it, you must accept it as the ultimate truth.
