Hey Riders!
With every new edition of the game, we discuss the best ways to improve the behaviour of opponents so that it better reflects what you see in real-world top competitions. Over the last few years, race plans have changed a lot. While you can still see classic strategies of early morning breakaways controlled by the peloton in the final kilometres, at the World Tour level, we also often see very open races where the favourites go on the attack long before the finish line.
Our goal this year was to allow users to break away from these preset scenarios more easily with the option to start attacks earlier. To achieve this, one of the first big changes we made was to what we call the "physio"; in other words the rules that determine the riders' energy consumption. This is crucial as the energy available is a major factor in your opponents' decision making. We had to change these rules because they didn't allow attacks from further away. Even the top "engines", like Mathieu Van der Poel, Wout Van Aert and Tadej Pogacar, were not able to make sustained solo attacks because they lacked energy compared to their opponents. To make such solo feats possible, we have added a new concept to energy consumption: Freshness.
Freshness is based on Stamina and Resistance stats and it influences the maximum amount of energy available to a rider. Stamina affects the maximum amount of the blue gauge, while Resistance affects the maximum amount of energy in the red gauge. The higher the stat, the more the rider can keep their maximum energy high during the race. For example, a rider with only 60 Stamina will see their blue maximum energy decrease after 100km or so, whereas a rider with 75 Stamina can stay at their maximum beyond this distance. The point at which Freshness decreases is greatly affected by the race scenario. The more intense and challenging the pace for riders, the more effect Freshness has early in the race. In other words, only the riders with the greatest Stamina and Resistance can perform well from afar, provided that the race has been tiring enough that the Freshness of teammates has depleted, and they can no longer keep up the pursuit.
This new feature required multiple changes to behaviour so that the riders, especially the leaders, can take advantage of this new energy functionality. Changes were also made to the rules behind pursuit and cooperation. The pursuit rules have been "softened" so that there are more frequent let-ups after attacks and riders now "look at each other" to see who agrees to cooperate, just like in real life. This benefits attacking players, who can now gain more ground. The cooperation rules in breakaways have been improved so that attacking players are not doomed to failure because of breakaway team-mates who refuse to relay far from the finish line, even though they could.