I wonder if I get the award for making SO5 the most complex and toughest to play! In my main game (Australia) I play all 6 players, so they are effectively 6 trainers who compete against each other- no favours given. It means that although the champs still rise to the top, they very rarely dominate. As an example, no horse has yet won the USA triple crown.

I use 3 of the trainers as my main breeding studs, with two focusing on stayers (10-16f) and milers, and the other on sprinters (although there is an overlap). However all of the new 2yos are distributed among all 6 trainers at the beginning of the season. If one of the trainers has a top mare they can retire (ie sell) it to one of the studs and take the offspring. This means the quality of the horses overall keeps improving.

I have played this way over several versions of SO and enjoy the challenge, although you do need to be well organised with spreadsheets, etc, and it is more time consuming when you are trying to fast track through race days.

Also on my laptop I have downloaded all the horses made available by the likes of pjrhodes, akhc, Sabella, victor, M Anderson, and run these horses in USA and UK game versions (Single player only), and transfer the best offspring to my main Aussie game. Thanks to these guys for making these horses available. It certainly adds to the enjoyment.

Wow playing six thats got to be hard, u brain must be working hard trying to keep up with that lot.

Do u know what i've never gave it thought to play two or more players. How many horses do u have in each barn???

Wow! It must take you days to get through a season at a time! phenominal dedication, hats off to you Alfamann.

With SO4 I was breeding up to 180 horses per season, which were then spread over the 6 trainers as 2yos. Each stable had a total of around 50-60 horses of all ages. However I found the time taken entering them all into races was killing the enjoyment a bit. With SO5 I limit breeding to 100 each year (16-17 per trainer), and am fairly ruthless at weeding out the under-performers. Ave stable size is now around 35 but falls to 20-25 by mid season. It generally takes me around 2 mths to play a season, but that includes the time I spend playing the UK and USA games on the laptop.

find it hard enough to manage 1 stable

does this make it harder to win races?

id say it would make it harder

It would make playing the game harder, let alone winning races.

but surely you would have more horses and so there would be less game horses so winning races would be easier

he prob runs them as 6 separate yards

yes but he still has more horses overall

true

The time it must take to enter races, train, breed etc.....just makes my brain bleed!

me too
i find it hard enough breeding training 20 a season at just 1 distance

The speed I play at, I wouldn't have got past the 2012 guineas by now!