Mana Games

[BennisTelbow]

On the mens tour has anyone gotten to #1 playing on level incredible for the whole game, because I am having a very hard time doing this, if anyone has done this I would like to know how they did, and is it easier to get to #1 on incredible playing the womens tour?

I have yet to win a tourney on the 250 or higher level, I don't think I've been to a final yet either, this is with my created starting player, he's 24 now I think, style is varied, 188CM tall, left handed, 2 handed backhand, I've got him very physically fit, mentally he's quite good too, his biggest weapons are his serve and his main strokes with an emphasis on power, probably better for a power baseliner, he's lacking a bit in the other shots though, special abilities are 1 star for early ball hit, the same for ball feeling, injury resistance, kick serve, slice mastery, chameleon and globe trotter, 2 stars for champion, I have 2 stars for all the coaching attributes, I don't have a ton of cash right now, so hiring and keeping staff has been an issue and surely has contributed to a lack of success.

[Rob4590]

Yes - got there with my main player (so far for around 3 years - although now I've just entered the 'Federer era' so not going to get back there again.) Also made it to number 1 with Costa, Kuerten, Federer (in 2001), Hewitt etc - so it isn't too difficult.

My advice would be to play as few events as possible - 4 slams, 9 Masters, around 5 500's and max 3 250's. Concentrate on the slams (use your mental experience points if you have ANY doubt whether you will win early rounds etc)
For your varied player, keep your top spin around 35 - no real need to keep changing it.
For other types - concentrate on winning on your good surfaces - eg if you have a volleyer or counter style - then don't worry about clay results (except the slam) - so play your 500s and 250s on fast surfaces.

Try and keep short term form around 90+ at the start of the slams and masters events.

My stats are around 75 for rally, serve and special skills, 72 for volleys, 85/86 for all physical and mental skills (relexes and tonicity at 90)

Trainers are very important - I have an assistant plus 2 trainers for my 'other 3' players, 3 trainers for the main, plus 2 specialised trainers who are left at the coach centre. Try and spread the coaches out so that you get at least 15% in all coaching areas (maybe with the exception of volleys)
This should then mean that when all your players are at the same event or at teh coach centre, you get the full 25% bonus in all areas. Cash to pay trainers is the money that the individual player has by the way

I keep a note of the skill levels that I can maintain for each player and train to maintain these levels - I no longer use sparring as it doesn't (in my opinion) give the best results once you get to nearly max skills - in your first 2 years use sparring a lot as it gives the biggest improvements for lower skilled players.

Hope this helps

[BennisTelbow]

Thank you, it is much appreciated.

I started my game in 2004, it is now 2010, so it is in the Federer/Nadal/Djokovic era, are you saying that it is basically impossible to be #1 when Federer is?

I haven't been able to get any good players to coach really, I am playing from the Netherlands, I am not sure if that matters, because I seem to have had different success in different countries, right now the only other player I am coaching is Raonic, which I thank Mautoo for adding in the game.

This is maybe a bit of a newb question, but I am not sure which styles suits which surfaces the best and which style works the best for every surface?

I always try to keep the form high, how I train is I will do 22 hours a week, then I will rest for the remainder of the week.

I always thought that having a high top spin was an advantage?

I have great difficulty in maintaining all of the skill levels, I think I should be concentrating on certain ones depending on the style of the player, with varied though it seems that they all should be high.

I don't have a sparring partner now, I only hit with others at tourneys and try and maintain a level of at least 80%, I suppose then that I should not spend my cash on new courts and just on staff.

[Rob4590]

Yeah unfortunately pretty much impossible to be no 1 from 2004-09 - however being no 2/3 should be fairly easy to achieve.

Make sure you have the full four players allowed at all times - remember you get a % of their winnings even if they are fairly rubbish. MOst players that you can hire ranked say 50-150 have skills which can be raised 15-20 points easily - and any player with skills in the 70's can win on the main tour - given the right events.

Styles:

Power base and defender - best surface is clay (and also synthetic - the ones in Australia) - keep your top spin high for these - 50-60% is enough though
Counter and volley - best surfaces are grass and indoor carpet - indoor hard and blue green cement are also ok. - keep top spin low for these - 10-20%
Puncher and varied - cement / blue green cement are probably best. - keep top spin around 35% for these.

My training goes something like this:

2 hours sprints, 2 hours body building, 1 hour footing. Then 4 hours yoga. Then 1/2 hours each on tactics, positioning and consistency (the other 2 mental skills should have gone up by doing the yoga). This should leave around 30 hours. Then do 5 hours of volleys (the button to do all of them together), then 5 special, then 5 serve then 5-7 rallys. This should leave 8-10 to rest and get you around 90% form.

The courts are bought by the coach, the trainers are paid for by the players - just assign 3 to each one. Make sure the coach goes to every tournament with the main player and each of the others has an assistant with them. Don't bother hiring a sparring partner - they are a waste.

By the way - this is just my way (with input in earlier topics on here from Curtis) - I'm sure there are other better ways.

[BennisTelbow]

I have checked out a couple of other threads for some more tips, these are quite useful though.

When you say keep the top spin at a certain level do you mean just on those surfaces, because I read that I think no matter what style of player you are, you should always have a high spin for clay and synthetic, and low spin for the other mid to fast surfaces?

I always wondered what exactly yoga did, all I thought I saw was a slight change in reflexes, but not much, not as much as sprinting.

Is the training regimen you said tailored for varied players?

You mentioned rallying, but said to not have a sparring partner, so when I'm at home I should rally with one of the other coached players, what happens when they are all away at a tourney?

[petrone_maxi]

Yes, I get the Nº1 in incredible.
I had play just once a full carreer in incredible, and it was really hard! I get the Nº1 for a couple of times, but i could never mantein it for more than a year (I never finished the season as Nº1).
I play a lot in Master, because i can enjoy it more. In Incredibe I suffer maintaining the skills. In Master, I´va managed to make the Top player of all times! Wining about 20 Slams (And all of them, incluidin the Grand Slam), all the Master 1000 and reaching Nº1 at the end of the season for 7 Years!

A few tips
- I personally recomend to train in periods of 6 hours. Every 6 hours of training, your player will recover a bit of energy (Because the training day is of that time). I try to practice 3 or 4 hours of a Skill, and the rest of the 6 hours day to rest. You´ll see it kind of slow at first, but you´ll see its the best after a while.
- Train Combos! It seems slow, but you got a great bonus! (And some Combos give you great improvement in other skils, like Special: if you train this as a combo you´ll get a 100% bonus, and a HUGE diference in Reflexes).
- Dedicate a lot of time to train; like it says Rob, play the 4 Slams, the 9 Master 1000, a few 500 and the 250 before Australia and Wimbledon (All this if you are a Top Player).
- Confidence is the MOST important skill; if you got a 80% overall player with 90% confidence, you´re ALMOS invencible. Especially at Slams. But do not train this Skill; you can train it, but the best way to improve it is by wining matches and tournaments. If you´re without confidence, try singing in 250 tournaments to win a litlle more confidence.
- Top Spin is a very special skill, read the full documentation for all the information you need. Personally, I recomend to leave it at 35%
- Don´t rush when you´re begining with ATP. Is better to reach well at the tournamets than reach only to enter. Play just a few events and train a lot. Don´t strugle because you have no money, you´ll end up having A LOT. I have managed to win the US Open at my second season this way! (After you win a big title you´ll never will be thinking about money)
- In Slams the best skill is Cold Blood; in the later rounds (QF, SF and F) the diference between your Cold Blood skill and your oponent makes the one with the lower Cold Blood more nervous. I try to keep it at 90% for the slams.
- A little trick during the slams; play a few training matchs against players you dont wanna met. They´ll get tired after this and will have more problems with their other matchs. In the later rounds would be useful to chose the players with less Cold Blood.

I Hope you find this information usefull. I played for a long time now, and if you need to know something dont doubt to ask!

[Rob4590]

I have checked out a couple of other threads for some more tips, these are quite useful though.

When you say keep the top spin at a certain level do you mean just on those surfaces, because I read that I think no matter what style of player you are, you should always have a high spin for clay and synthetic, and low spin for the other mid to fast surfaces?

I always wondered what exactly yoga did, all I thought I saw was a slight change in reflexes, but not much, not as much as sprinting.

Is the training regimen you said tailored for varied players?

You mentioned rallying, but said to not have a sparring partner, so when I'm at home I should rally with one of the other coached players, what happens when they are all away at a tourney?

Top spin - it HELPS to have your spin higher on the slow surfaces, and low on the fast - but isn't necessary. I've taken Hewitt (counter, top spin 20%) to the French Open Final, while I've won several hard court slams and Masters titles with players like Costa, Robredo, Kuerten etc - who all have top spin of 75+.

The training I said is based on a varied player - but with just very minor tweaks it works for all.
eg Defender - maybe reduce the volley training by 1/2 hours and add that to the rally training
Counter - add 1/2 hours to the special skills.

DOn't forget to look how far the current skills are from the potential - if they are really close then all you want to do is maintain them, if there is a gap, then you can try and improve them.

When I said rally training I meant do the combo at the top left of the screen - not sparring.

Interesting to see different techniques in training from petrone though - will have to test those in my next year or two!


A couple of other things to add: Once you get both your singles and doubles ranking into the top 50, cut down on the doubles events - I now just play 4 slams, Miami, Indian Wells, 1 clay masters, 1 of the 2 masters before US Open and 1 of the two at the end of the year - this also gives you more training time in tournament weeks.
Choose good doubles partners - aim for high / v high doubles spirit, or just another v good singles player - preferably one who has a similar style. (although I have found that a baseliner playing with a counter player works really well)

[petrone_maxi]

I strongly recomend it to you Rob!
Davis Cup is very important! It gives you a lot of Experience points, and can increase your motivation really high.
I try to make a National Teammate to be my doubles partner. I actually just play doubles to be more competitive in Davis Cup.

[rodgegui]

I think it's not difficult because I have made several careers at incredible level. In each of these careers I played at least 15 slams finals. On the WTA tour I won 16 slams in one career but it is harder on the ATP tour: never won more than 11 (with federer) and 8 (with my player). But each time I spent at least 200 weeks as the #1.
My training is generally:
8 hours ground strokes
5: serve
8: special shots
5: volley
16: rest

When you need it, you train your player mentally and physically and you can manage to be strong enough to win a lot of matches.

Something which is not negligible is to play doubles: If you partner a good single player it is really easy to win double matches and so your confidence level is boosted: it can help in singles.

[Serena Williams]

U know guys u can change the line in the tennis.ini that says: Incredible:0, something to 1.00000 and then u wont drop stats from week to week

[Rob4590]

U know guys u can change the line in the tennis.ini that says: Incredible:0, something to 1.00000 and then u wont drop stats from week to week

Why? Whats the point? The game isn't massively difficult at incredible - so why make it easier by cheating? If you wanted to do that, just play on one of the lower levels

[BennisTelbow]

I actually don't play doubles, should I, because my singles ranking is so high now that I won't be able to play doubles at the same tourney's, I always think that doubles takes away training time and makes your player more tired so I have been foregoing it lately, but I will do it if it helps my singles, though I don't see how.

[petrone_maxi]

I actually don't play doubles, should I, because my singles ranking is so high now that I won't be able to play doubles at the same tourney's, I always think that doubles takes away training time and makes your player more tired so I have been foregoing it lately, but I will do it if it helps my singles, though I don't see how.

The best way to start in doubles is to choose a player with great doubles rankin (if you´re a top level player, the offers will be a lot).
And start at the events that the couple ranking allows to enter directly (Ussually Slams or tournaments like Indian Wells or Miami). If the couple´s good, you´ll win a few matches. After you do this, your ranking will rise really fast, and then you can enter in all the tournaments you want.
I like to play a few tournaments doubles, like Slams or M1000 (But not everyone), and some 500. It can give you a great confidence boost (But can sunk your confidence as well)

[rodgegui]

It can give you a great confidence boost (But can sunk your confidence as well)

yeah but if your partner is a good one, the probability of losing a single match is really low: when you are a top 5 and partnering another one, you can lost 5 matches only during the whole season!

[petrone_maxi]

yeah but if your partner is a good one, the probability of losing a single match is really low: when you are a top 5 and partnering another one, you can lost 5 matches only during the whole season!

You are right, but if one of those matches is a Grand Slam Final, and if you reach both Singles and Doubles final it can sunk down a lot of confidence, jeje.