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Top Eleven 2018 Tips & Strategy Guide for Intermediate to Advanced Managers

Top Eleven 2018 is a new football (or soccer) management game from Nordeus, that’s available for iOS and Android devices. As we explained in our beginner’s guide, this is a title that dares to be different from the average football management sim. The focus of this game is the involvement of “real players” in the mobile game marketing sense — you and your fellow managers whose teams will be facing off against each other in real-time action. All the players in the game may be generated, fictional ones, but you’ll still be able to manage them, keep them happy, and/or watch them grow into superstars. And if you’re looking for a casual game, or a slower-paced one where the game’s AI can handle a lot of the dirty work for you, you may want to look elsewhere — every tactic chosen, every lineup set, every upgrade to existing facilities or new facility built, it’s all on you as the leader of your own association football club.

We’ve already given you a beginner’s guide for the game that tried to keep things simple, while focusing on the fundamentals of this new title. We’re making things a bit longer and more detailed now, as our Top Eleven 2018 strategy guide for intermediate to advanced players includes ten tips and tricks that could help you win more games and further improve your team as you increase both your training level and your manager level, winning more games and conquering more leagues and tournaments in the process. Read on if you’re looking for more than just the standard advice for newbies!

1. Never Leave Your Team Untouched For More Than A Day!

Top Eleven 2018 is a game that takes place in real time. This is something we established in the beginner’s guide — unlike other soccer management games which you can play at your own pace, you cannot play games earlier or later than they should be played (unless you pay — more on that later), and you cannot take days off if you’re too busy to play. That’s right — commitment is one thing you should have when playing this game, as this isn’t one of those titles where you can simply “punch in,” then “punch out” a few seconds later. You need to give your team the whole nine yards when it comes to daily maintenance, and that means setting lineups, training them, and taking care of your sponsorships.

The consequences of leaving your team alone for even just a day are manifold. For one, an untrained team will suffer in terms of its form. Secondly, you’ll need to get new sponsors from scratch if your current one expires. Thirdly, you’ll need to manually adjust lineups and substitute fatigued or injured players with healthy ones. There’s a lot of micromanagement involved in this game, and if you’re a Top Eleven veteran, that’s something you should know from day one.

2. Collect Your Daily Rewards

You need not worry, however, as your patience in logging in daily won’t go unrewarded. Top Eleven 2018 allows you to redeem daily login rewards, with the quality of rewards progressively improving for each day in the week you sign in to the game, even for a few seconds. You will be asked to choose one of three potential rewards, and depending on the option you choose, you will randomly win anything from cash to Morale Boosters to Treatments to anything in between. But don’t go around thinking that Top Eleven 2018 is one of those games that have decided to loosen things up with regards to the definition of “daily login rewards” — missing a day will send you back to square one, so make sure you claim those rewards and more importantly, make sure you play on a daily basis!

3. How To Earn More Tokens For Free

Tokens are the game’s premium currency, and as we’ve noticed, they are rather hard to come by in Top Eleven 2018. So how do you get more of them for free?

Starting with the ways in which you can earn more Tokens, you will, of course, have the option to buy them in the in-game store with your real-life money. The more you spend, the more value you’ll be getting from your purchase — that means instead of paying $2 for 14 tokens, which is 7 tokens per dollar spent, you might want to pay $5 instead and get 37 tokens, or 7.4 tokens per dollar, or two tokens free if you assume each dollar will get you 7 tokens straight-up. You can also buy the Monthly Card, which is a starter pack of sorts that gets you 10 tokens for free on the day of purchase (for $5 USD or its local equivalent), and 3 tokens each for every daily login. Take note of the words “daily login” — just because you’re paying for a Monthly Card doesn’t mean you’ll earn Tokens for doing nothing!

Connecting your game to Facebook will get you five Tokens for free, and while we’ll be discussing the further benefits in a separate tip, we might as well get one of the main benefits out of the way — those five free Tokens could come in handy, you know? There are also offer walls — aside from the ubiquitous Tapjoy offer wall, Top Eleven 2018 has two other walls where you can complete simple tasks in exchange for a few free Tokens. Additionally, you can share your milestones to your Facebook friends, such as new players acquired via the transfer market, for instance — you don’t have to do this, but that’s five tokens easy if you decide to let your friends know via social media.

Definitely, you can earn those tokens organically, as you win more games, or in the beginning, simply log in every day — this would all boil down to the TV rights deals you sign. Your stock deal will have you earning one token a day regardless whether you sign into the game or not, which is, if it’s any consolation, an improvement over the OH2 TV rights contract from last year’s iteration, which only rewarded you tokens if you logged into the game.

4. How To Play The Transfer Market Smartly

The game will guide you in the tutorial stage by helping you bid for one player who’s substantially better than the rest of your lineup. His presence alone will make your club better and save it from the doldrums of the league you’re in (assuming you tend to your team on a daily basis), but you shouldn’t stop with that player alone. As long as you’ve got cash and tokens, as long as your team has some weak links, you should play the transfer market in hopes of landing some new talents who could truly make a difference and turn your club into a contender.

There are a few things you should be keeping your eyes on when looking for players to add via the transfer market. First off, are there many managers bidding for a player’s services? You might not know that at first glance, as bidding wars could result in an auction having far more rounds than expected. As such, you can make a bid for a player you’re interested in at the very last second; doing so will add 10 seconds to the auction clock, giving other managers a fair chance to up the ante and make a better offer. This will go on until nobody else contests the top bid in the 10 bonus seconds, with each succeeding bid adding one token and a few thousand dollars cash. Be careful you’re not overspending to make your team better, as those tokens can sure add up!

Of course, it wouldn’t be a transfer market unless you can sell your own players. Your first instinct may be to sell scrubs and older players, and while that won’t get you much cash back in return, you will, at the very least, be getting rid of dead weight on your lineup. You can also sell your better players for much more cash, assuming they no longer fit the plans based on the formation you prefer using. There’s also an option where you can sell to a player agent — we do not recommend using this method, as you will indeed be earning instant cash, but will only be getting a fraction of what you can normally earn if you sold that player in the transfer market.

5. Connect Your Game To Facebook

Why should you connect your game to Facebook, aside from the five tokens you can get as a bonus for harnessing the social elements of Top Eleven 2018? Simply put, it’s the social elements that truly stick out when talking about the advantages of connecting your game to Facebook. You can send or request for Boosters and Treatments from friends who also play the game, as you essentially help each other out in managing your teams. This will also allow you to save your progress and start off where you left off, in the event you need to change devices.

6. Join An Association Once You Reach Level 5

Once you reach training level 5 in Top Eleven 2018, the game will allow you to join an Association, which allows you to join forces with your friends, or basically any other manager playing the game, as you take part in weekend tournaments, earning 3 points for a win and a single point for a draw, just like in an actual football/soccer league. As the game explains it, your squad’s quality will be based not on your manager level, but rather on your players’ star ratings — that means a six-star player will always appear as a six-star player, regardless of your manager level at a given time.

Playing in this game mode is optional, but if you really want to explore the game’s social features, while winning even more rewards, you might as well join an association, and make sure it’s an active one, much like you would when joining a guild in an RPG.

7. You Can Reschedule Fixtures, But There’s A Price

Remember what we told you about being able to reschedule your fixtures at a price? It does happen to be possible, and this feature might not exactly jump right out at you — you will notice it when you see the pencil in between the date and the time on the Fixtures menu, on the left side of the screen. The game will let you reschedule your fixtures in such a way that you can actually be involved in the management of your squad, but you will have to pay two Tokens for each time you change the schedule. We recommend making use of this feature only if you’ve got an important match coming up and you know you won’t be available to make any real-time decisions as your club’s manager; otherwise, you’re better off holding on to those two Tokens.

8. Eventually, You’ll Need To Upgrade Your Facilities

Yes, we know. It’s probably the unsexiest part of every football/soccer management game out there. Few people are especially fond of taking care of stadium and facility upgrades, or building new facilities for the benefit of the fans. The appeal of these games lies in the management of players, lineups, tactics, and the like, but everyone will eventually have to do the dirty work and make some facility or stadium-related decisions.

When choosing which facilities to build first, we suggest building the training facility first, as you’ll need something that could help improve the performance of your players. Work on building medical facilities next, for faster healing of player injuries. Parking will only come into play once you’ve added more seats and upgraded to a better stadium. As such, you may even want to invest some cash in your Youth academy before that; this is going to allow you to groom your own teenage players without having to pay cash and tokens in the transfer market or take part in intense biding wars. The game will also allow you to sell youth players for large amounts of profit, so that’s something you may also want to look into!

Talking about the actual grounds, in order to safeguard against avoidable player injuries, you’ll need to upgrade your pitch first, then add some lighting. Upgrading to a better arena would only be advisable once you’ve dominated your current league, and once you’ve upgraded several other facilities. The game will also allow you to spend Tokens to speed up the action, though you’re going to be far better off playing the waiting game, rather than dropping 5 Tokens each time you’re getting impatient with the building/upgrading process.

9. More Advanced Tips For Choosing Match Tactics

In our beginner’s guide, we gave you some basic tips for choosing the right tactics and strategies. But for those who are looking for something more advanced, we’ve got just what you need, so keep reading on for some intermediate to advanced match tactic tips.

For starters, this is actually quite simple, but when you’re scouting your opponents, you may want to see which sides they’re weakest at, and adjust your strategy accordingly. For example, if they favor an offensive, all-out attacking style, you might want to switch to a formation/tactics that favor counterattacking, or have no less than four defensive backs in the starting lineup. If an opponent is defensively weak in the left side, you’ll want to attack that left flank and choose offensively gifted players who can play the right side.

You’ll also want to mix things up depending on whether you’re facing a stronger or weaker opponent. If your opponent is stronger, then High Pressing Style and Man to Man Marking will help bolster your defense, albeit at the cost of tiring out your players faster; that’s where having a deep bench rotation could come in handy. And if your opponent is weaker, you can start out with an all-out attacking tactic that could help you jump out to an early and big lead. You can then switch to a defensive strategy once you’re several minutes into the second half and comfortably in the lead.

10. How To Smartly Manage On The Fly And Make The Right Adjustments Within A Match

We don’t need to remind you how important it is to actually be available to play a match in Top Eleven 2018. The game’s AI is predictably simplistic when it comes to in-game management decisions, and oftentimes you’ll swear that it doesn’t give much thought to a player’s desired positions, fatigue, and other factors.

One thing you should do in the course of a match is to check everyone’s ratings on a regular basis to see if they’re in good form or not. If a player’s rating has gone below 6.0, then it might be time to trust your bench and do some damage control; you can also let that player, assuming he’s very good, stay in the game, as there’s always a chance he could catch up and make up for that bad early rating with some solid, inspired play.

As we said in the beginner’s guide, 85 to 90 percent fitness is a good enough sweet spot for your players; just make sure you’re subbing anyone whose condition bar turns orange, as that’s going to protect them from injuries.

Talking about your team’s actual tactics during a match, you can make changes to formations or tactics while a match is going on. As we said, going defensive and controlling possession to preserve a big lead is almost always good form on a manager’s part. But you can also switch to more offensive tactics if you’re playing catch-up (just be careful of possible counter-attacks from opponents who just won’t let up and take it easy), or if you’re deadlocked and simply not satisfied with settling for just one point in the standings. And if all else fails, go to the top of the screen and get some advice from your coaches! Again, it may likely be simplistic advice, but it’s certainly better than being stumped with no clue how to proceed, right?