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Option 2 would be ok, if you didn't have as many 30+ players. Since you have to rebuild soon anyway, it's better to do it in DIII, getting a high pick as a bonus.

I'll say a hybrid of 1 and 2. Right now, you're better served in the long run by spending on the arena, not on players to push you over the top. If you can promote with what you have, of course, go for it, but don't spend extra to do so yet.

And I'll say that if you do promote, you may well find yourself more competitive in a III than you think. I went through a very similar start as you did, and I didn't expect to be competitive at IV or III and it's turned out fine so far. The age of your players is somewhat of a concern, but only one of them is 33, so at least the others aren't losing skill yet, just value.

So, you might be inclined to ignore this since I'm in your league (and conference). But I offer it with no ulterior motives (except perhaps to keep our league as competitive as possible so that when we do promote, we kick @$$ in D3). I think you'd be best served to keep winning as much as possible with what you got and try to build your arena up at least to something like 8000/750/200/10 while saving about 1 mil to buy a good trainee or two when they flood the market after the next draft. Once your trainees are ready to promote, do it. And fill in with cheap older players around them.

I think this game is built to reward long term strategies. You can see this by looking at teams that are in D2. Most have spent a long time in lower leagues building their arena and training players around whom they can build successful squads. If you want to jump up to D3 and then demote, you'll get a good draft pick, but a season of empty arenas after you demote (no matter if you're winning or not). I think you'll be better off making deep playoff runs for a few seasons before you promote (while earning lots of dough), than you would be bouncing to D3, back to D4, and then trying to promote right after demotion. Part of this is the merchandise bonus you get for giving more minutes to people you've drafted or developed or who are from your country.

So, long story short... I think option 2 is your best. Good luck (except on July 24th)!

Thanks to everyone for the advice, much appreciated, especially from Mr. Simon

After hearing what people have to say I am leaning towards a hybrid between options 1 and 2. I tentatively plan on spending another ~300k on my stadium as soon as current expansion finishes and then spending the rest to get me some efficient age 25-29 players to help these playoffs. This way I give myself a shot at promotion (I will be an underdog) while putting myself in a good spot to compete in S21.

Still interested in more opinions of course.

I think your one of the teams i have seen in a long time that has done best in such a short time. Keep it up and your sure to promote soon. The best thing is that you seem to understand the importance of a well built stadium.
In my series i have a salary, staff and scouting at average. Merch is above average as i have own developed players and also a NT player that i drafted and trained. But then my arena is what makes the big difference and the thing that keeps me 120k above league average for net income every week.

Absolutely spot on. It's always easier to put money into the arena while you're able to compete with relatively lower expenses than it is to try to add it when you're scraping against higher competition. Likewise, the sooner a seat is constructed, the sooner you can get money from fans buying it - and whether you build it today or ten seasons from now (assuming no BB rule changes), it costs you the same price. There are far too many people focusing on buying/training expensive players to get out of the lower levels and far too few who are ensuring that their club has the infrastructure needed to compete as they move up. Building up the arena and winning, though, is a very good sign indeed.

Last edited by GM-hrudey at 6/27/2012 3:52:26 PM

*update*

At first I proceeded along like I said a couple posts up, making some upgrades at the perimeter and keeping a large weekly surplus. But then over the course of a couple weeks a number of things happened:

-I realized I was very unlikely to win my league with a slightly upgraded version of my roster.
-I decided to list some of my other players for prices that I though higher than replacing them. To my surprise I made a number of sales which netted me a good profit over buying prices some months previous.
-I realized my biggest strength so far in this game has been finding good value on the transfer list and making money on reselling players, and the more often I bought/sold the more often I would be utilizing this.

Combine these with the fact that the top teams in my league were all very outside oriented on both sides of the ball, and I decided to completely remake my team into a look inside team before the playoffs.

I ended up turning over my whole roster about 1.5 times because of some indecision at the start, and I also made some mistakes selling a few players with no minimum price, but besides that I think it worked out. I went from being ~10 point underdogs to the two best teams to beating both by 35+ in the playoffs. I also was able to spend an extra ~450k on my stadium.

I am curious how people think my new roster would perform at D3? Here is an example game: (49328891) (played at high gs/enthus/effort).