14 DAY TRIAL // This stage looks pretty hard at first sight, but it actually only includes some small mountains in the Jura range that have gradients under 5 percent, which could mean that a powerful attacker who has not lost too much energy could take it, or that a sprinter team might choose to control it.
In Pro Cycling Manager 2014, the Artificial Intelligence is supposed to be more willing to chase down an escape group as long as it has a high number of riders and if some of them pose a threat when it comes to the General Classification.
Unfortunately, the computer seems to be far too willing to allow groups, even those who have more than 5 riders, to go because most of its cyclists are already pretty tired, and using them too soon in the stage could mean problems later on.
Cyanide could try and use one of the incoming patches to make the AI a little more willing to chase, because at the moment the player tends to be the one who needs to commit his team, which is not the best idea in the long term.
I am going to sit this stage back and try to preserve my already depleted force, which did not get any sort of big boost from the rest day, because more mountain battles are looming on the horizon.
Despite the fact that a strong breakaway managed to form, the favorites, starting with Contador, who is currently leading the race, chose to use the last mountain to launch an attack, and I put my men on the front to counter them.
Once again I assumed chasing duties even if I said I wouldn’t, and I am thinking about changing the tactic for the coming stages in order to be the one attacking and not the one defending his position.
For a short time, it seemed like they could be able to create a group and deliver a gap even on this seemingly unthreatening stage, but my work paid off, and at the end, all the peloton arrived at a distance of 1 minute and 5 seconds from winner Cunego from Lampre.
It will be interesting to see whether Contador has the team and the personal ability to continue to hold Chris Froome from Sky at bay in the coming stages.
Take a look at how the final kilometers of stage 11 happened in PCM 2014.
