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Our league is pretty quiet too. I tried to stir up things a little when some teams started doing the time-honored and sickening practice of listing players that they had bought less than two weeks earlier for three times or more what they paid for them. We had a small bit of conversation about one particular game where one of the teams felt done unfairly by the engine. Other than that, it's been very quiet.

I'm looking forward to interconference play and the last third of the season, since by then everyone should hopefully be done with the Cup and we can get a better idea of true team strength. Now that I was able to pick up a reasonable price, reasonable salary advanced trainer, I can see how long I can stay in the top two of my conference while economically breaking even before any arena income.

- The basic decision is whether to compete for promotion, to tank, or to grow organically (fiddle with arena, train initial roster etc.)

And unfortunately the tankers earn a lot of money. An example from my league: $164.126 arena income after 3 home games. He's ranked 9th in income. The best earning team earned only $23.500 more.

- Some have built massively unbalanced teams, assuming that it will be hard for opponents to assemble a really wholesome team quickly and cheaply that can survive some heavy pummeling from either inside or outside

Yes. I tried to stop a team (two old bigs) with full court press (they had bad handling). It only work on the defensive end. Unfortunately I wasn't able to score well against his guys. Other teams have one high scoring SF or C or whatever.

- To me it is an open question whether offense or defense is more important (cheaply affordable) at the moment

I would say Offense. Let's say at the beginning offense and defense were somehow balanced. No player had a better skill than 7. Did you try to play an outside tactic against such a defense (without some old guys)? It's ridicilous. It's almost if you're playing against a wall. So the current defense level is enough for stopping most of the guys. If you want to win your games you have to play with a high offense to be able to score. In a couple of weeks it could shift to defense.

- Cash flow is looking good for many teams, it will be interesting to see what this does to transfer prices for relevant player types as the crunch time of the season approaches

short term: prices for old guys are high
mid term: prices for players between 27 and 32 and well skillsets will rise
long term: we will go back to the time "seasons 10-13" where some players were sold for 5+ mio. First and second division of Utopia will need strong and well trained guys. And this desire will fuel the prices for young trained players.

Review of my strategy

Nice analysis. Glad to see others are trying to get a feel for the ripple effect of 1000+ teams on the economy and each other.

I've opted for a balanced old team. 5 starters that are carrying my team in the league without a ton of resistance (most teams seem to be saving, growing arena, or slowly buying specific players). In my opinion the perk to this quick start is that the old players are winning league games while carrying my team through the cup a little as well. This helps sell seats and earn the cup $. You figure that in Utopia 500ish teams (half) never received cup money, 250 only received 50k, and so on... Ultimately I am able to save money for a few weeks in the cup, field a decent team in comparison to the league, and encourage my Fan Survey for this and next season. My major weakness is the lack of youth anywhere on my team. I didnt have a player worth training, so I have found a bandaid for that. I will have to quickly revamp my team due to age.

At this point I feel comfortable hoping to get a playoff run of some kind and promoting. This should help supplement the money I spent on older players early in the season. Over these first couple of weeks its seems that my income is still in line with the league averages, but I have the cup bump up my pay as well.

I guess what I'm saying is that I have a hybrid of short term strategy (spent $ on old players, cup run, playoff run), hoping the long term will pay off (quicker promotion, happy fans, $ to spend later in the season as well). Money has still been easy to come by even with a higher than average roster salary.

My first goal is the playoffs. Then I see further. I'm out of the cup, but I have a few trainable player:-)

Good look to all!

Greetings from switzerland!

Personally, I think the game shape training and blank lineup issues have ruined the idea behind utopia slightly.

Overall I am content with it, I see gdp's, I see effort changes, there's a team in my league 4 of his 6 games have been decided by literal buzzer beaters at the buzzer (he's 3-1 on them). I feel the people whom chose to train Utopians and go that route will not promote over the guys whom bought vets and do game shape training, but in actuality everyone had that option.

My biggest disappointment though.... I watched 2 games on Tuesday and for 6 hours was the ONLY person in utopia chat watching games....

Gives me the vibe that utopia is as dead as most of the leagues.

Personally, I think the game shape training and blank lineup issues have ruined the idea behind utopia slightly.

I don't. I'm not saying either of those things are good for the game, and it'd probably be a net improvement if both disappeared, but I don't think the effect is going to have any significance at this point in Utopia's lifespan.

Where it would be a much bigger concern is once we get to having serious talent in the top leagues, and the differences between teams is such that the relatively small effects of those issues will be heavier in comparison to the delta between the teams. But currently, there's much more variation of rosters and skill levels of managers. Accordingly, factors like GS training or blank lineups or noobfarming their bank accounts or lucky/unlucky starting rosters or the like pale in comparison to managerial competence in building and managing their roster and lineups.

The long and short of it is that Utopia is just another reflection of the user. A user that knows how to build a team from the ground up will be able to do that again. A user who knows how to profit by transfer list shenanigans will be able to do that again. A user who knows how to buy higher salary players, expect higher ratings, and complains when he gets beat by better-built teams will be able to do that again. Utopia is whatever we make of it.

my strategy is to move on Utopian cup and promoted the upper league. My target is make happy my fans and earn much more money. In addition that ı prefer to buy old players for reach the target. I don't prefer to buy trainable player because it's very cost effective to train young player.(trainer cost,salary, doctor salary, to sacrifice matches which means low income from fans etc.)

We will see am ı right or not end of season:)

Good luck to all

From Turkey;)

The cup was my biggest disappointment so far for the season.

In part, I did not have a handle on my team and I did not have the roster setup yet. Otherwise, It's a huge cash influx for the winners.


I have liked dabbling in a bunch of different things. I've done a little daytrading and made some extra cash (not nearly as much as the Chinese guy in my league, I wish he would share some tips). I have some older guys with some different salary ranges that should be able to last a couple season. I have some trainees and plans to replace the older guys when they become too geriatric to play.

The future may be awkward. What is D4 going to look like once you take out the top 256 teams? In one year when everyones Utopia runs out...will all of the remaining D4 teams just disappear?