Pro Cycling Manager 2014 Diary – Fitness, Rhythm and Form

Pro Cycling Manager 2014 has concentrated most of its major changes into the management side of the experience, with Cyanide clearly uninterested at the moment to deliver any significant improvements to the 3D engine that powers the actual real-time races.

I played more than three quarters of a season with my trusted Trek Factory Racing and I appreciate the bigger impact that decisions made by the manager between races can have on the performance of his riders.

I’ve previously talked about the importance of the first week, when schedules are set up, objectives are negotiated with sponsors and trainers are hired to improve those riders who are still under their potential.

But any plan created at the start of the season, however good it might be, tends to disappear almost completely by the time June comes around.

Pro Cycling Manager 2014 introduces more injuries to riders than any other title in the series, but most of them have a short-term impact, which means that, often, riders are unavailable for races that were scheduled for them or do not perform as well as they should.

At the same time, gamers need to be very careful when it comes to the balance between the fitness of the cyclist, which represents his basic physical level, his rhythm, only acquired by actually taking part in races, and his fatigue, which starts to accumulate after the first half of the season.

This might seem initially easy, but the most detail-oriented players often use third-party tools or even manual spreadsheets in order to make sure that they get it all right.

For me, a ten-day period during which Fabian Cancellara, my best rider, was unable to ride due to a previous back injury happened at the start of March, which meant that he was less prepared than he should have been for the cobbled spring classics that were his specialty.

Thus, he needed more support from the team, which diverted some powerful riders that I had earmarked for smaller races and meant that I took in less prize money than I had expected and failed to achieve one small sponsor objective.

There are some gamers for which situations like these are a perfect occasion to experiment and try out new approaches to Pro Cycling Manager 2014, but for me, it tends to serve as a perfect moment to quit my current game and then try a new season to do things better.