This site are losing people because it's IMPOSSIBLE to get out of lower leagues... unless you spend your friggin life on this site. It's too much time consuming. People that are on high league like III or II are IMPOSSIBLE to beat. This is my usual lifecycle.
Play the V league. Non manager is able to play or compete whatsoever, proceed to absolutely sweep the league and go to IV.
Play the IV league. Getting annihilated, I mean, can fight to not going back in V but what's the point in that? Go back to V.
Repeat every single season.
So FRUSTRATING. The only way to break the cycle is to draft some stud but is real difficult and even if you draft someone you have to just spend entire seasons developing players... too much time consuming.
I am sorry, but if you are not able to get out of IV division, then you are not good enough. Specially now that we have less users. And this law is the same for every competive game out there. There is only 16 teams in the top division and that means you need to be better than 99% of the italian managers to get there. And of course is going to be very time consuming:
- A lot of time to read the forums to really understand the game (check). Some users are incredible knowledgeable about the game.
- Proper use of different tactics (I don't really know most of them properly).
- Economy related stuff (check). A lot of teams are losing money every week or they make bad economic decisions and they dont even know.
- The trade market and training players (check). It's not essential, but can be very helpful.
This game is interesting because it is difficult to beat other humans with the same tools you have. Maybe you need to change your focus and try to enjoy improving your team and learning in the process. With time you may stop worrying about promoting and start to enjoy the game.