Compatibility and teamwork

In this post (and I know it's been a while), I'd like to talk about compatibility, its effect on teamwork values and how that can impact the performance of individual players and the team as a whole. I'd also like to talk about how you can use knowledge of your players' compatibility values to your advantage, in terms of getting the best from your players and also helping them improve their teamwork values.

I'd like to refer people to Widzy's guide (which is, in turn, hosted on Terjekv's site), which is essential reading if you're not very familiar with compatibility.

Compatbility can be a little misleading in that the value you see on the player's page relates to how well they get on with the team, but the teamwork values (and the most direct effects on performance) are based on how well the player gets on with players in the same part of the team. What happens during a game is like this:

• The average teamwork value for the team parts are worked out
• All the players in each team part have performance adjusted based on how close their value is to the average
• The whole team's teamwork value is calculated by combining the three team parts
• The whole team has a performance adjustment based on the overall team value

The mechanism here means that one individual that gets on badly with the team will suffer the most directly, will have a slight effect on the rest of their team part, but the effect on the whole team should be a bit smaller. Unusual things can happen with lone strikers - the teamwork for the attack with a 5-4-1 or 4-5-1 is always 20, so the striker will never suffer directly, but they may have an effect on the whole team's value.

Another piece of information on the player page is the "works best / worst with" information. The thing to remember here is that "works worst with" does not mean "works badly with". The information is handy in that you can use the link to move from one player to the other to see just how close their values are.

Teamwork values are updated after each game and should generally converge over time (although divas will do what they want). The players adjust to the rest of their team part first (and this is the largest part of the adjustment), then the overall team value. Over time it is not uncommon for two team parts to move to slightly different values e.g. defenders may be all slightly left of centre while midfielders are all slightly right of centre. This can depend on the players that are used together and the signings that you make. The teamwork adjustments can be exploited by deliberately selecting players that may "drag" other players' teamwork values one way or another. Friendlies are also useful in the sense that they give a full teamwork adjustment, even though they give minimal match experience.

When buying players, the important thing to remember is that your older players - the ones that you need the performances out of straight away - are the ones that need to have the best teamwork. They should be all "good" at least, but keep an eye on the actual meter. If you're looking at two defenders with "good" compatibility, one left and one right of centre, then you may wish to check your defenders' values to see if they tend to converge slightly left or right of centre, as one of the two prospective signings might be a better fit. Younger players are less important as they will get many games to improve their compatibility before they become first team regulars, but try to sign players that are at least fair and be wary of signing too many players that may drag team parts in different directions.