Football, Tactics & Glory News

When a player begins to understand how the game mechanics work, the Normal difficulty level starts to feel quite easy (though it remains strategic and interesting). Those players who want to "just beat the game," meaning to win all possible trophies, will do so and find enjoyment.

For those who now seek more challenges, there was a High difficulty level in the game. It allowed players to look at the mechanics from a new angle, realize their depth, and enjoy the struggle for survival in the lower leagues.

Those who have been following the game for a long time know that as a game designer, I dislike giving AI unfair advantages. Therefore, High difficulty does not affect the opponents' chances to score a goal or take the ball away. The difficulty is created naturally: through tougher initial conditions and higher prices for various upgrades. Such fair difficulty has its pros and cons.

• Pros - the sense of game fairness and the value of your tactical and strategic skills in achieving your team's successes.
  
• Cons - it's hard to make the game even more difficult while still maintaining the authenticity of the game world.
  

Still, in FTGW, we've prepared a few surprises for players who would like the game to be even harder (especially in the later stages of the game).


In the "Football Stars" DLC, a new mechanic was introduced: Giftedness, which is expressed in the number of stars a footballer has. The higher the Giftedness, the higher the footballer's skill potential in a match.

Assuming a footballer with zero Giftedness has a skill potential of 5, then

• a footballer with Talent 1 would have a potential of 6;
  
• a footballer with Talent 2 would have a potential of 7;
  
• a footballer with Talent 3 would have a potential of 8;
  
• etc.
  

For example, a footballer with Giftedness 3 could perform a Cannon Shot with a potential of 8. If the goalkeeper had Giftedness 5, he would attempt to intercept a shot with a potential of 10. Such a small difference in skill potentials made Talent an important characteristic, while also giving chances for less talented footballers to outplay more talented ones.



On High difficulty, with each level of Giftedness, the skill potential increased by 2. This made Talent a more important characteristic. And since the player starts the campaign with a team of untalented old footballers, climbing to the higher leagues became even more difficult. The screenshot shows a similar situation, but with High difficulty:



In FTGW, we decided to make the dependence of skill potential on Giftedness adjustable in the campaign settings. You can change this dependence within a range from +1 to +5. Choosing +3 or higher, you start to appreciate gifted footballers significantly more. Here's a screenshot of a similar situation but with the setting +5:



This setting also affects other mechanics related to skill potential. For example, if the setting +5 is chosen, when a footballer receives motivation, his potential temporarily increases by 5. When a footballer fully learns the "Talent" skill tree, his potential increases by 5. Pressuring an opponent, the footballer reduces his potential by 5.

Previously, if an experienced player in the First Division built a strong team, this team almost automatically became competitive in the Premier League. This was somewhat disappointing because, on High difficulty, you want more of a challenge.

However, setting this to +5, first, the path to the higher leagues will be longer, and second, the top teams of the Premier League will still pose a challenge for several seasons with their gifted footballers. And this is precisely what the game lacked - the difficulty slightly increases, and at the same time, the game world remains fair.

An additional plus of this setting is that you can use it on other difficulty levels. For example, if you like the economy of Normal difficulty, but you want Giftedness to have a stronger effect on the game, you can set this setting, for instance, to +3 and choose Normal difficulty.


The problem with the difficulty of strategic games lies in their very nature. A game feels strategic when a player can use planning, cleverness, and the ability to use the situation to their advantage to win against stronger opponents, having a weaker army or football team.

If the game allows winning against stronger opponents thanks to your intellect, there are three ways to make such a game harder:

1. Give AI opponents unfair advantages (stronger unit attacks, the opponent sees what the player does not, skewed randomness in favour of the opponent);
   
2. Worsen the player's starting conditions;
   
3. Reduce the influence of the player's intellect on the situation (i.e., make the outcome of the battle/match more dependent on the strength of the army/team than on the player's tactics).
   

Obviously, we will never use the first option, although it is used in many games (for example, in Civilization). Still, for us, it's important that the game world is perceived as authentic and fair.

Most current difficulties are the second point, i.e., various variations of worsening the player's starting conditions.

The new randomness option is the third variant. It reduces the effect of luck and increases the role of Giftedness of the footballers. The goal of this option is to make stronger footballers even stronger.

The game already has several RNG types. But personally, as a player, I do not like changing them. I enjoy the random nature of ordinary randomness. It can sometimes create completely wild stories, as happens in real football.

However, the new type of randomness "Reduced+" brings something interesting into the game. Before explaining its working principle, I will first describe how the "Reduced" RNG works:

• In default randomness, when performing an action, a random number from 1 to the footballer's potential is chosen. Thus, the lower boundary of the roll is always 1.
  
• In "Reduced" randomness, the lower boundary of the random number will always be 30% of the footballer's potential.
  
• So, if a footballer with Defence 60 tries to take the ball from an opponent with Control 45, the defender will roll a random number in the range of 20-60, and the opponent - in the range of 15-45.
  

This type of randomness does well in making strong footballers feel even stronger. And accordingly, as long as your team is weaker, it will be harder to play.

The new "Reduced+" randomness, in turn, makes more talented footballers even stronger. It works like this:

• A footballer with Giftedness 0 has a lower boundary of 1;
  
• A footballer with Giftedness 1 has a lower boundary of 10%;
  
• A footballer with Giftedness 2 has a lower boundary of 20%;
  
• A footballer with Giftedness 3 has a lower boundary of 30%;
  
• A footballer with Giftedness 4 has a lower boundary of 40%;
  
• A footballer with Giftedness 5 has a lower boundary of 60%;
  

If you've been paying attention, you'll see that with each step of Giftedness, the lower boundary increases by 10%, but for footballers with Giftedness 5, the lower boundary jumps by 20%.

Thus, the most gifted footballers will always roll high values, and it will be harder to play against them. Choosing this option, the player reduces the effect of their tactical and strategic decisions because the strength of the footballers and their Giftedness will have a significant impact on the team's results. Your ability to play will be tested because you will have to find ways to win against teams that have more talented footballers in their ranks.


These two settings were created to work in tandem. Thus, choosing "Reduced+" randomness and the dependency of skill potential on Giftedness +5 increases the game's difficulty, especially noticeable in the Premier League and games against stronger opponents.

However, at some point, you will still build a strong team, and the game will again become less challenging. But this moment will come much later than now.

In one of my latest test campaigns, I led an average Ukrainian team to the top of world football, playing on High difficulty, activating "Reduced+" randomness, and setting the dependency of skill potential on Giftedness to +5.

Playing became harder (and more interesting). When you first enter the European Cup, you physically feel how powerful the teams there are. Playing against them, you cannot expect random goals. If you score, it's only after a carefully thought-out tactic.

The greater effect of these settings was created in the national team games. When I took over the Ukrainian national team, where most footballers had Giftedness 3-4, playing against teams like France or Germany (Giftedness 4-5) was incredibly hard. Managing a draw felt like luck, and a victory felt like something incredible. Playing is possible, but you must understand the game mechanics at a very high level. The downside is that you will never win against an opponent who has an average Giftedness higher than yours on 2 or more. But it's a part of what makes these settings to be harder.

On the other hand, not everyone may like that the possibility of winning against stronger opponents is limited. So, you can ignore these settings. They are made for those who need extra difficulty.


For experienced players who want to make the game more challenging, we've created two new options that allow increasing the difficulty. One of these options increases the dependency of skills on Talent, and the other links Talent to the lower boundary of random numbers.

Regardless of the type of randomness you play with, we believe the first option (Dependency of skill potential on Talent) is very interesting. It's worth trying different values and seeing what you prefer. The game feels completely different with a setting of +1 compared to a setting of +3, and even more so with a setting of +5. None of the options is better - each may suit some players and not others. In any case, you have more opportunities to customize the game to your tastes.


First and foremost, visit the game's page and add it to your wishlist. This way, you will receive an email from Steam when the game goes into Early Access or Full Release.

Secondly, click "Follow" to be notified whenever we publish news on Steam.


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The main new feature in FTGW will be football cultures. In this post, I'll explain what they are and how they will work.


Historically, it has been customary in England to fight for every ball, while in Brazil, showing good ball handling technique is appreciated. These differences are determined by the history of football development in the country and national culture. Thus, these football peculiarities can be called the football cultures of countries.


In modern football, there are no longer such stark differences in how footballers play in different countries. But we still watch the World Cup to see how each national team expresses its uniqueness.

Besides, some (or all?) football fans notice that the Spanish La Liga is perceived quite differently from the German Bundesliga.

So, differences in playing style exist, it's just hard to articulate them.

We decided that football cultures will be certain game mechanics that are only available to footballers of a specific nationality. These should be mechanics that are easy to understand and use in a match.

Here's a list of some football cultures currently implemented in our development version and which we are actively testing:

• England (fighting for the ball) - all footballers additionally have a first-level Slide Tackle skill. If a footballer already has Slide Tackle, then the potential of their skills increases.
  
• Germany (ball possession) - when a footballer uses the Hold action, the Control attribute increases by 30, not 20. Also increases the skill potential (making it harder to take the ball away with a Slide Tackle).
  
• Spain (tiki-taka) - all footballers additionally have a first-level Layoff Pass skill. If a footballer already has Layoff Pass, then the potential of their skills increases.
  
• Italy (defence through preventing penetrating passes) - all footballers additionally have a first-level Interception talent (which blocks Long Pass and Layoff Pass). If a footballer already has this talent, then the potential of their skills increases.
  
• France (strong special classes) - all footballers of special classes have increased skill potential.
  
• Netherlands (universal football) - all footballers of universal classes (except goalkeepers) have their attributes increased by 30%.
  
• Belgium (fighting for the ball) - when performing the Tackle action, the footballer's Defense attribute increases by 30%.
  
• Ukraine (playing through the flanks) - when performing an action from the flank, the footballer's attributes increase by 25%.
  
• Austria (playing through Lofted passes) - when performing Lofted pass, distance coefficients are reduced, making Lofted passes easier (standard values 25, 35, 60, 110, Austrian values: 15, 25, 50, 95).
  
• Switzerland (total pressing) - when performing the Pressing action, the opponent's Control is reduced by 25 (instead of 15), and the potential of defence from the skill (Slide Tackle) is reduced twice as much.
  
• Portugal (long passes) - all footballers additionally have a first-level Long Pass skill. If a footballer already has this skill, then the potential of their skills increases.
  
• Brazil (all footballers love to feint) - all footballers additionally have a first-level Rainbow Feint skill. If a footballer already has this skill, then the potential of their skills increases.
  
• Argentina (all footballers love to feint with speed) - all footballers additionally have a first-level Nutmeg skill. If a footballer already has this skill, then the potential of their skills increases.
  

This screenshot shows which countries currently have football cultures in the development version (countries with the "i" icon). The tooltip for Germany's football culture is shown at the top. Additionally, the screenshot reveals some additional new features that I haven't officially announced yet ;)

These football cultures may still change before the game's release; they are currently in the testing process. But I like the vast majority of them.

We have ideas for other countries that are still waiting their turn. But if you have any ideas for specific countries, we would love to hear them. We are especially interested in less well-known football countries.

I'm not sure if all countries will have their own football cultures in the final version of the game. Possibly, several countries might share one common culture. And some, the least popular in terms of football, might not have their own culture at all. However, the majority of countries will still have something to delight players with.


Football cultures change the game in three important aspects:

1. They diversify the game in each country.
   
2. They make transfers more interesting.
   
3. They diversify the game with national teams.
   

[h3]1. Playing in different countries[/h3]
In the original game, the difference between Ukraine and England was only felt in that teams in Ukraine's Premier League were a bit weaker. And in England, rainy weather was more common. If you started the game in the Amateur League, there was no difference between England and Ukraine.

Later in the expansions, we added dependency of the cost and Giftedness of footballers on the country's rating. Also, the strength of teams in different countries became even more dependent on the rating. So in the higher leagues, a player could feel they were playing in a weaker country. But overall, there was no difference in gameplay between different countries. If you, as a coach, moved to work in another country, the scenery changed, but the approach to matches remained the same.

Now, starting the game in a particular country, you will feel a completely different gameplay. In England, the game will be fast-paced because everyone has Slide Tackle skill, so it's impossible to keep the ball. In Germany, on the other hand, progress to the enemy's goal will be built through ball control. In Spain, thanks to Layoff Pass, the ball will quickly move to different areas of the field. And in Brazil, even a defender will be able to slightly improve their position by dribbling past an opponent.

Even such a situational bonus as in Ukraine (+25% to all attributes if a footballer is on the flank) significantly affects the gameplay. Especially in the lower leagues. Because now you think about whether to try to take the ball directly or move one square, get a boost to attributes and try to tackle from there. I was personally pleasantly surprised by how this variety feels.

This screenshot shows Ukraine's football culture in an Amateur League match. The footballer in the yellow shirt is tackling from the flank. Pressing the Ctrl key will bring up a tooltip that shows the effects influencing the footballer's attributes.

For experienced players, it might be interesting to try to raise a team from the Amateur League, starting the game in hard mode. You are guaranteed to have a new exciting experience in each country.

Moreover, players who change clubs every season, moving to work in other countries, are guaranteed an interesting experience.

[h3]2. More interesting transfers[/h3]
Previously, a footballer's nationality did not matter. If you needed a midfielder with a third-level Long Pass, it didn't matter what country they were from.

Now you will think twice before sending a scout to another country. Because now you have an interesting choice.

For example, in the same situation with a midfielder with a Long Pass. If you find such a footballer in Portugal, he will be more effective in giving Long Passes. If you find one in Spain, in addition to the Long Pass, he will also have a Layoff Pass. If you find one in Austria, in addition, he will be more effective in performing Lofted Passes.

The number of interesting combinations and possibilities in team building has significantly increased.

In my team (on the left) - many footballers are from other countries. Some footballers I bought just for their Giftedness, attributes, age, and skills. But some I bought because, in addition to their characteristics, their football culture suited me. For example, I have CD Croux from Belgium. He gets +30% when performing the Tackling action. RD Bushell from England already knows Sliding Tackle, so his skill potential is increased. In this campaign, I play with yet-to-be-announced new settings that increase the difficulty of the game for experienced players. With these settings, increasing skill potential is critically important.

[h3]3. National Teams[/h3]
When we first implemented the management of national teams, it was somewhat interesting, but there was a slight disappointment that, for example, the Ukrainian team was different from the English team in terms of footballer levels and the number of 5-star talents. Overall, if you relied on tactics like Long Passes and runs into the penalty area, there wasn't much difference between the teams.

However, when we introduced the first iteration of football cultures, the differences between the teams became much more noticeable and interesting. For instance, Portugal would be more effective in using Long Pass tactics. But Italy would fairly counter this strategy, so against this country, you would have to use a different approach.

Playing against each national team, you can prepare differently for the match. Additionally, football cultures can be used situationally, at unexpected moments, sometimes leading to the creation of your own unique football stories that happened only in your game. This makes the World Cup and Continental Championships (Europe, America, etc.) an intriguing spectacle.



We hope to add the ability to watch matches of national teams. So you will not only manage but also watch how the teams use their strengths.


Football cultures fundamentally change FTGW. It will still be the good old FTG, but much more diverse and with enormous additional depth created by each individual culture.

If you get tired of playing in England, you can always start playing, for example, in Spain or Ukraine, and get a completely new gaming experience. If you could easily play 1000+ hours before, now the game becomes even more variable and interesting.

We are open to ideas for football cultures that could be added to teams from Asia, Africa, America, and the lower part of the European ranking. We have our own ideas, but if someone suggests something better than what we have, we would be happy to listen.


First and foremost, visit the game's page and add it to your wishlist. This way, you will receive an email from Steam when the game goes into Early Access or Full Release.

Secondly, click "Follow" to be notified whenever we publish news on Steam.


The great place to get notified about news and discuss them is our Discord.
Also, to follow our news, you can subscribe to our mailing list: Email subscription.

Some of you have been playing FTG since Early Access (2015-2018), some discovered FTG in its release year (2018), while others heard about it in the last 5 years.

Throughout this time, we've listened to your wishes, comments, and feedback. And all this time, we've been improving the game, adding both major and minor enhancements. We've released a large number of free updates, as well as 2 DLCs that significantly changed the gaming experience.

FTG for us is not just a game. It's our dream game.

It's a football manager that truly entertains, that allows you to make important decisions and see clear consequences, that respects the player and their time, and at the same time, offers the opportunity to play for hundreds or thousands of hours, creating your own stories that happened only in your football world.

And if we survive this damn war, we will continue to delight and surprise you with new and interesting gaming experiences in the world of Football, Tactics & Glory.



Although a niche game can't compete with games in more popular genres, you still vote for it in the category 'Labour of Love'.

Also, if you haven't written a review yet, please do so, as it really helps us. And if you have time, write reviews for those DLCs you've played too.

Sometimes, if you skipped the screens too quickly after the match, the game could crash and it was impossible to continue the campaign after that.

Fixed a bug and updated the game.

One of the features of the new game will be national teams. In this article, I would like to explain how competitions between national teams will be organized.

I want to make it clear from the outset that I will not be describing how you can become the coach of a national team here. That's quite a large topic, which I will cover in another article. Here, I will describe how tournaments with national teams will work in our game.


From now on, footballers will have their nationality displayed. Young footballers will have the nationality of the country where their youth academy is located.

At the beginning of the campaign in Premier League clubs, a certain percentage of footballers from other nationalities will be generated (percentages taken from real statistics). However, if you see a Brazilian footballer in a European club later on, it means the footballer was born in Brazil and was bought by a European club.

For example, here is the footballing journey of a talented footballer from India, who was noticed in Europe, where he spent most of his career. However, he chose to finish his football journey in Colombia. That is, he was able to play on three continents.



Nationalities work as the basis for creating national teams. They also will be linked to football cultures, which I will discuss in another article.

For now, we do not plan to impose restrictions on foreign players. We want to see first whether this complication is really necessary for the game.


When we were developing continental tournaments like the European Cup and EFA Cup, we encountered the challenge that players can have a vastly different number of countries. Therefore, we had to develop universal tournament generation algorithms that take into account all situations while allowing the tournaments to look realistic.

These algorithms turned out to be a solid foundation for developing tournaments for national teams. Players can freely change the number of simulated countries on each continent. For example, someone might play with a large number of countries in Europe but a smaller number on other continents. And someone else might simulate up to 8 countries on each continent.

We had to develop a new and rather complex system for generating national tournaments that adapt to the number of generated countries and at the same time strive to maintain the realism of the tournaments.

Additionally, new rules for determining which teams can advance from a group have been introduced into the game. A team that finishes third in a group may be able to advance depending on their performance compared to other teams that finish in the same position in other groups. For instance, if the rules specify that the top two teams automatically advance from the group, while the third-place team can advance based on their results (goals scored/conceded, victories, etc.), we will show the player what affects these results and continuously display which of the third-place teams will advance from the group:



Overall, considering that we do not know in advance the configuration of countries each player will have, we are confident that our algorithms can handle any situation. And yet, national team tournaments will be as close to reality as possible within the framework of our game's conventions.


Every 4 years, the World Cup will take place. The tournament will be held in the same years as the corresponding real-world tournament.

The World Cup consists of two parts:

• Qualification Stage
  
• Final Stage
  

If a player starts the game during the year of the final stage, we will simulate the qualification stage that occurred before the start of the game. So, some of the matches will already have been played.

[h3]Qualification Stage[/h3]
Two years before the start of the final stage, the game generates a qualification stage calendar.

To generate the qualification stage, the system needs to know how many teams from each continent will play in the final stage. For this, we primarily consider the strength of the continents (remember that you can change the strength of continents before starting your campaign in Manager's Journey).

However, it might be the case that a continent is strong, but the player simulates a small number of countries there. For example, a player might be playing in America but simulating only 4 countries in Europe. In that case, the generation system will need to primarily consider the number of countries being simulated on different continents.

Ultimately, once the number of teams is determined, the system calculates how to structure the qualification stage, taking into account the number of national teams on that continent, the number of teams that should qualify for the final tournament, country rankings, and realistic group distribution.

Therefore, the qualification stage can look entirely different on each continent. For example, here's how the qualification stages in Europe (groups of 5 teams) and America (league of 10 teams) look:





[h3]National team camp[/h3]
Three days before national team matches, footballers are invited to their national team camps. At the same time, the club cannot have less than a certain number of footballers so that it can continue to play in club tournaments.

The calendar will mark the dates when footballers are invited to the national team camps. So, if you have such footballers in your team, you can prepare for this moment.

Of course, top clubs may find it challenging to cope without their best performers. Additionally, national team footballers may return fatigued or injured.

On the other hand, they gain more experience, and your club will earn Glory for your footballers' participation in national team matches.

You will be able to go to the screen of any national team and see from which clubs its footballers came. If there is no one in the camp of the national team, then you will see the team from the previous call up. For example, here's the England national team:



[h3]Final stage[/h3]
The best national teams from all continents gather for the final stage of the tournament to determine the world champion.

Depending on the number of countries in the game world, the final stage can consist of 32, 16, or 8 teams.

The teams are then divided into groups of 4 teams each. Just like in the real world, the system will strive to place teams from different continents in the same group.


Every 4 years, each continent will hold its own Continent Championship: the European Championship, the American Championship, the Asian and Oceanian Championship, and the African Championship.

Each continent will have its unique way of organizing this tournament. Additionally, we've created unique cups to emphasize the distinctiveness of these tournaments.



Similar to the WC, the CC consists of both a qualification stage and a final stage.

[h3]Qualification Stage[/h3]
If fewer than 13 countries are being simulated on a continent, there won't be a qualification stage. All simulated countries on that continent will directly enter the final stage.

However, if there are 13 or more countries, the teams will be divided into groups of 4, 5, or 6 teams, depending on their number. The distribution in groups is based on the country ranking, meaning each group will have very strong, average, and very weak national teams.

We use the overall country ranking rather than the national team ranking because, at present, we don't see a need to introduce an additional ranking.

The qualification stage begins after the conclusion of the World Cup, two years before the CC final.

Since the game is built around the Autumn-Spring calendar and European tournaments, the CC will have a calendar more similar to the European Championship. However, if we can introduce uniqueness and realism to the CC for other continents, we strive to do so.

[h3]Final Stage[/h3]
The structure of the CC final stage depends on the number of participating teams. If there are fewer than 13 countries on a continent, they will all be distributed into groups of 3, 4, or 5 teams.

If there are more countries, the final stage can have 8, 16, or 24 teams.


Storing and displaying statistics has been quite a challenge for us. The important time unit for tracking statistics is the season. However, for national teams, one game cycle consists of one and a half years of qualification and a one-month final stage. We had to carefully consider how to align our statistical display format with the formats of national tournaments.

Here's an example of one of the screens:



In the qualification stages of the European Championship, the England national team finished second both times. This allowed them to advance to the final stage. There, in the first case, they finished third, and four years later, they reached the quarter-finals (QF).

On the other hand, during the World Cup qualification stages, the team secured the first position. However, in the first final stage, the national team only finished third in the group. But four years later, they made it to the semi-finals (and lost in the match for third place).

And here's another chart, this time for the Brazil national team:



In the America Cup, there were no qualification stages (because there are less than 13 countries). In the final stage, the national team finished third and second respectively. In the World Cup, the team made it to the final stage both times but was stopped in the quarter-finals in both cases.


Some players expressed a desire to watch national team matches. Within our team, we are also interested in implementing this feature. Therefore, we plan to implement this mechanic.

In the calendar, you will be able to select which match you want to watch, and when the time comes for that match, you can start watching it in viewing mode.

In the future, if enough players show interest, we will consider allowing you to watch matches from continental tournaments or any matches happening in the game world.


Our game is built on the premise that just by looking at a footballer, you understand their strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, friendly matches don't make sense in the game. Because of this, there won't be friendly matches for national teams either.


Overall, national teams are more like end-game content. In lower leagues, the only way to interact with national teams will be the ability to watch your favourite team's match and track statistics.

But when you manage a successful Premier League club, national teams will be part of your football life. You will periodically lose your best footballers for a week or two. In return, you will gain Glory and a sense of pride for your club, which produced such outstanding footballers.

At the same time, you will know that the entire system of national tournaments works quite realistically (at least in Europe).

I've described the general mechanics of how national tournaments work. But we will also allow you to become a national team coach. More details about this will be covered in one of the future articles.


First and foremost, visit the game's page and add it to your wishlist. This way, you will receive an email from Steam when the game goes into Early Access or Full Release.

Secondly, click "Follow" to be notified whenever we publish news on Steam.


The great place to get notified about news and discuss them is our Discord.
Also, to follow our news, you can subscribe to our mailing list: Email subscription.