Diablo Tactic Cm 03 04 Rapidshare
Hercules Montero
Cast your mind back to November 2003. Championship Manager 03/04 was released - the final game in the series produced prior to the Eidos - Sports Interactive split. Within these dark and tragic times appeared a tactic, one that would split and divide the community. The Diablo tactic was born.
You see, back in 2003, a tactic was created, titled Diablo. It sent shock waves throughout the community as it seemingly exploited the match engine, enabling you to obtain a high win percentage. The concept was simple - the central player of a three man midfield would rampage forward into the opponents box (a box to box midfielder I guess you could call it), scoring goals and gaining plenty of assists.
So to finalise - I am not making absurd claims that the tactic that will be available for download is the new Diablo for FM 2012. Many tactical creators for Football Manager have put the words 'Diablo' before their tactic name in an attempt to create more interest, but this is not true for me. I'm merely grabbing old Diablo screenshots in an attempt to bring it into the new Fm 2012 match engine.
It is my opinion that you couldn't conceivably create another Diablo tactic for the new FM game. The match engine has advanced at a considerable rate, in that it's not just what tactic you pick for any given match that will equate to a victory. As virtual managers we now have to look after player morale, teem meetings and private chats. Then there is the ever increasing amount of tactical sliders that can be tweaked and altered. I feel that the match engine is pretty well covered in terms of being exploitated. Sure a few tactics are created by the community that seem to perform well, granted, but a new Diablo?...not for me.
In order for the Diablo tactic to be converted from CM 03/04 to FM 2012, I needed to load up the old Championship Manager and take some screenshots of the Diablo tactical settings. What were the global team settings and what were the individual player settings?
Instead of cluttering the post up with hundreds of screenshots, I won't bother posting any more of the individual player instructions, but I will talk about and analyse them so that you can get more of a feel of the Diablo tactic.
Looking at the entire defence within the Diablo tactic, it looks as if they are all on the same wavelength mentality wise. Keeping their shape and acting as a unit. Giving them the settings to stand off before sliding in for hard challenges seems feasible within the FM 2012 match engine. The last thing you would want is for all your defensive players to rampage around the defensive half, leaving holes throughout the defensive structure.
The basic set up for most wingers in tactics made today. An attacking player, who runs with the ball, crossing and threading through balls past defenders. His closing down his much more advanced than the defenders within the Diablo tactic, which implies that the creative players attack and press, looking to get the ball at the earliest opportunity. The problem of 'how much of something' keeps raising it's head though. Yes they have closing down set as 'always', but how much closing down should we put on the sliders within FM 2012?
Often referred to as the 'looney midfielder' within the CM community at the time of Diablo, the central midfielder of the tactic makes incisive moves into the opposing box - like a mad man. His central position will keep him in touching distance of the defensive players when without the ball, but much further up field when his side have the ball. His mentality is set at maximum, so that he plays incredibly attacking, never looking for the safe option. Your Xavi or Iniesta type player giving you a threat in midfield when in possession.
So there we have it - that's the Diablo tactic. The strikers and central midfielder have their mentality set as 'gung-ho' so that they look to finish off attacking moves with a clinical edge. The safe option for them is no option at all. Extreme attacking.
As pointed out, much has changed throughout the eight years since Championship Manager 03/04. The tactical user interface has become more complicated and in turn gives us plenty more options to tweak our tactics. Simply grabbing hold of the Diablo tactic and placing it within FM 2012 is not an option. The settings above are set in stone with no indication of how far on the sliders within FM 2012 we need to place them.
Within the Diablo CM 03/04 player settings, the defenders were set with a defensive mentality. It is my assumption that they would be at the cut-off point between defensive and normal, marked above. If any player had normal mentality, then their slider would be dead centre, around ten on the scale of ten to twenty. On the other end of the scale we have the attacking mentality section. If a player within the Diablo tactic has an attacking mentality, we can start out guess work at the transition of normal to attacking.
Hopefully the theory behind my Diablo tactic recreation is understandable and that you know 'where I'm coming from.' It has been an interesting experience, dragging up dead and buried tactics from past versions of the CM / FM franchise. Of course I had no idea on how well it would do within FM 2012, but I wanted to try anyway.
Like I outlined above, this tactic has not been made by myself with claims of grandeur, comparing it to the old Diablo - a tactic that everyone should download right now, as it exploits the current match engine. No, what it is though is a recreation of the old Diablo tactic within the current Football Manager game. A test to see if the theory behind it will still hold up today.
Following on from the above post, which explored the team and player settings within the original Diablo tactic of CM 03/04, we need to test if it's any good within Football Manager 2012. Can the tactic do anything of merit in today's match engine.
First things first, let's look at the global team settings. We already know that the original CM 03/04 tactic gave us very little to work with. No sliders are visible - simply drop down menu's. Much has changed over the years, so converting the tactic and bringing it up to date would require a good bit of thinking. Tempo, defensive line and width would require guess work at the start, followed by tweaking until a possible 'sweet spot' is found.
One of the key aspects of the Diablo tactic is the role of the central midfielder. He has to be correct, otherwise the entire tactic could fall apart. The old tactic revolved around him and this needs to be the case in today's match engine.
Within Championship Manager 03/04, and more importantly the Diablo tactic within that game, the central midfielder caused havoc by rampaging forward, not being picked up by opposing players. Firstly, this will not be the case in FM 2012. Players can now specifically man mark certain / individual players. If you were playing a network game against someone who was using the Diablo tactic, you'd simply man mark their central midfielder out of the game with one or two players at a time. The AI in the game will also sometimes man mark your creative talent running through the centre, especially if you're using a player with a decent reputation - AI managers aren't stupid.
What we can achieve though is an advanced playmaker, who roams looking for space while staying centrally. Giving him the instruction to 'roam from position' might not be suitable in this instance, as he could venture into the channels and out wide - something I personally don't want. This player needs to remain centrally, offering a pass towards the centre if desired from the players around him. Combining this with a good amount of creative freedom should allow him to express himself and look for space anyway, so there really is no need for him to personally be told to roam from position. If you set up a Trequartista as a player role, then you'll see that he is allowed a great deal of creative freedom, which in turn helps him drift into space. This setting can be brought into this tactic, but within a deeper role.
Passing Style: Within the old Diablo tactic, most of the players passing is set to 'short', so I followed suit here. As I had no indication on just how short the players passing was within the old CM game, I set it conservatively, not wanting passing length to be too short. Again, like most of the slider settings, this had to be guess work, as the old tactic gave me no insight into this.
Tempo: This was a very hard slider to recreate, as I had absolutely no idea what the tempo was like in the old Diablo tactic. Not because I didn't look hard enough - it just didn't exist. I went by the theory that if the old CM match engine didn't give you options to adjust tempo, then it must have been around mid way on their 'invisible sliders' so all teams had equal tempo. This was adjusted within Football Manager to creep towards the right slightly.
Width: Again, another hard one to guess. Like above though I opted for around mid way down the slider, ending up nearer 'narrow' because of the shape of the tactic. The three midfield players are spaced out anyway, so I felt they had enough width as it is. I dragged back the width slider towards the lower end of the scale to keep defensive shape in the middle.
Closing Down: In the Diablo tactic of old, we're shown that the attacking players are told to close down quite often...but never by a certain amount. Remembering that sliders never existed back then. Therefore I chose the safe option of 'whole pitch', but not too aggressive. With the three midfielders spread out across the pitch, the last thing I wanted was for them to be running around like headless chickens. Some sort of defensive shape needed to be kept. Also, with no indication of defensive line (if I knew the line was advanced up the pitch, I would have probably had them pressing more aggressively) I felt this was a safe bet.
Time Wasting: Having looked at the mentality of the attacking players - most of them 'Gung-ho', it dawned on me that they wouldn't be wasting time anyway. With their high mentality, they'll be looking for the attacking ball at every opportunity. Why would they waste time? The CM 03/04 Diablo tactic was known to be an extremely attacking tactic almost a decade ago. That has not changed today.
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