Back to Hattrick after 16 years!

Hattrick is an online football management game, where you manage your football team and play against other human managers.

I had played it from about 2007 to 2009, when school got a lot busier and I no longer had time for Hattrick next to other hobbies. But it was a great game, and over the years I wondered a few times whether I should play it again.

On December 22nd, I created a new account and AS Saint Romain was born again after 16 years! The first iteration played between the 6th and the 9th French division. This one starts in the 5th level in Canada - check out glorious series V.6:

(wow, images look bad now, I’ll fix that later)

I started after match week 2, after the club has already scored 4 points without me. I’ve since won a match against a bot (the bottom 3 teams are bots) and one against a human player.

Here are some game basics before I dive into my first impressions of how the game has changed:

• The manager is responsible for choosing players, hiring staff, match lineups, training plans, youth scouting, stadium size, etc
• Each country has a league, whose top division (D1) has 8 teams
• Each level below is divided into several groups (“series”) of 8 teams. For example, in Canadian D5, there are 64 series.
• There is one league match a week, on Sunday at 23:00 Central European Time
• Each season is 16 weeks long
• You play twice against each team in your series (home and away), which takes 14 weeks
• On week 15, some teams play a promotion/relegation match and the others can schedule a friendly match
• On week 16, everyone plays a friendly match before the start of the new season
• Each country also has a national cup that is played on Wednesdays, in a knockout format
• Once you’re eliminated from the cup, you play friendly matches on Wednesdays
• There are National Teams (Senior and U21), with their own Continental and World Cup

And some practicalities:

• The game is played in a browser, but most actions can also be done via the mobile app
• It is text-based: you can follow matches in real time, but you won’t see the players kicking the ball around. It’s essentially a real-time written commentary.
• It is free to play! The game makes money by selling HT-Supporter, which is essentially a set of tools that makes your life easier. Paying doesn’t give you any in-game advantage (this is not a pay-to-win situation), but for example it allows you to book friendly matches automatically, so you don’t have to do it manually every week.

This is a good starting point!

If you’re interetested, go check out the game! If you use my referral link you can join my series!

Now, for some observations after that 16-year break.

The things I loved are still here

Real time

Hattrick is based on real time: your team plays a league match every Sunday. You can’t make the game go faster by playing more.

It’s more like a fun virtual world that runs side-by-side with the real one, and that you can escape into.

This is awesome, because it limits risks that I’ll get sucked into the game and spend unreasonable time on it.

Slow pace that doesn’t require constant attention

Related to the previous point: you don’t get significant advantages by playing constantly.

You can easily run your team by going online once a week. You can:

• log in on a Saturday
• read the results of the past week’s matches and training
• check out this week’s opponent
• make your line-up for the league match
• make your line-up for the following friendly match that was booked automatically because you are an HT-Supporter
• call your scouts and get a new young player

And then from time to time, you can do things that require a bit more long-term focus, like:

• buy players
• increase the stadium size
• hire staff (assistant coaches, etc)
• amend your training plan

You are also able to just go offline for several weeks if you want to! You can set default lineups for league, cup, and friendly matches separately. Your team will run your long-term plan without you. It won’t be optimal, but you won’t fall behind significantly.

Long-term based

The main strategy in Hattrick is to buy young players and train them. This improves your team, and you can also sell players for a big profit.

BUT it takes time to train players! For example, I have two 17-year old goalkeepers. I will train them, then keep one for my own team and sell the other. Here he is currently:

Given the staff that I have, the best time to sell him is about 8 months from now. Crazy, right?

Just like in life, patience is important in Hattrick. In order to build something great, you just need to do something small consistently over a long period of time.

Lots of depth

As I said above, you can manage your team on half an hour a week. But if you want, there are many things you can optimize.

For one thing, any individual match is a mini strategy game that you play against another human player. There are many different possible line-ups, with different formations (442, 352 etc), individual orders (offensive wingback, etc), use of specialties (technical players are better when it’s sunny), substitutions, man-marking, team attitude (play it cool, match of the season…), team tactics (counter-attacks, pressing, creative play…), use of indirect set pieces, and I’m probably forgetting things!

You can also spend time on long term plans:

• what will you do when your current training cycle is done?
• what type of player will you need then?
• how much will they cost?
• will you need a new coach?
• do you have an experienced player with good leadership skills that can become your next coach a few seasons from now?

Another way to optimize is to have a youth team. When you start the game, you have a scouting network with one scout that can recommend one young player (17 or 18 years old) each week:

You don’t control how good they are: you essentially play the lottery every week and hope to find a player good enough to join the senior team or to be sold.

If you open a youth team, then your scouts will look for players that are 15-16 years old, and you will be able to add them to a separate youth team. You then need to figure out what they are good at and how to train them. When they turn 17, you can promote them to the senior team.

In theory, the quality of the players you get is the same with either system, so having a youth team isn’t mandatory in order to be competitive. But it allows you to have some control over the type of 17-year-old player gets promoted to your senior team. And it’s a great game within the game!

Hattrick compared to 2009

It hasn’t changed that much!

The basics and game mechanics are still the same. The weekly cadence is the same (friendly or cup match on Wednesday, training on Friday, league match on Sunday), the player skills, training, stadium finances, they are all very similar.

Two things that have changed are the scouting network and the staff.

But it’s crazy how familiar everything feels after 16 years.

I supposed that was expected: the game is based on long-term strategy and has been online since 1997. 16 years is only about half its age.

Getting started feels easier

It might also be because this time I already knew how to play and what mistakes to avoid.

But onboarding certainly has changed.

In the first few weeks, every few days you essentially get a free upgrade to your team. Sometimes it’s a new player: you choose between a 17yo that you can train or a ~28yo that improves your team quite a bit. Once, you get a free skill upgrade for one of your original players.

It removes the temptation to spend money on the transfer market because all your players have “inadequate” (5/20) or “passable” (6/20) skills.

I know have a young goalkeeper to train, as well as reasonably competent players on the field, so at this time I don’t even feel the need to buy new ones.

Things are just more convenient

In 2009 I had different third-party programs to help manage my teams, and a fair number of spreadsheets. A lot of those features are just part of Hattrick now, which is amazing.

For example, there is now a training planner, where you can input which players you want to train and how, and it tells you when they will reach their target level. That used to be a spreadsheet.

Multi-skilled players are a lot more present

The first time, I mostly had players that were good at one thing. If you had a player that was “solid” (7/20) at Playmaking and “disastrous” (1/20) at everything else, he was a very competent midfielder in the lower divisions. If he was 17 years old (younger players train faster), he was out of budget for my D9 team.

Now, the same player you need some Passing and some Defense to be as desirable. Players with only one good skill are now a lot cheaper.

I assume that’s because training has been made faster, so players now have more time to be good at several things. That should make the game more interesting!

There are bonuses for keeping trained players

As opposed to selling them and buying replacements later.

+0.5 in every skill for players playing for their mother club, and up to +1 in every skill for players with divine (20/20) loyalty. Loyalty is maxed for players that play for their mother club, or who have been at the same club for at least 3 seasons.

This is also a welcome change! For one thing, it makes it a bit easier to keep players that are promoted out of the Scouting Network.

Plans for now?

My series is actually pretty weak! It was ranked 62nd out of the 64 D5 series when I joined (but 29th now). There are 3 bots (i.e. teams without human managers). They are not 100% pushovers but shouldn’t be difficult to beat (I beat one 5-0 in my first week). There is a team that’s even younger than mine, and one that I’ve managed to beat once. 2 other are under 6 months old.

The top 2 teams are promoted directly to D4, and the following 2 will play a knockout match against a team that finished 5th or 6th in D4. There is also a cash prize for finishing in the top 4.

My goal is to end in the top 4, to get a cash prize and an accession match. P3 seems realistic, and P2 (along with direct promotion) not entirely impossible:

TSI is Total Skill Index, an indicator of how good a player is overall.

I’m 4th in both the sum of TSI and the salaries, but I’ve also beaten Axcelhattrick who is 2nd in both. 1st place is definitely out of reach, but it will probably be pretty tight from 2nd to 5th.

I will try to end as high as possible but kind of hope to stay in D5 because my team would likely get slaughtered in D4 next season. I would much prefer to have another season in D5 before getting promoted.

The main goal, of course, is to have fun :)

I will probably post season retrospectives on this blog!