Here's how you can dramatically speed up your Football Manager 2023 and have better game experience in all of your FM23 saves.
Here are some tips on how you can speed up your Football Manager 2023 by a reasonable amount.
This Football Manager guide will come in handy to all of you who want to run your game with a large database and more than three leagues but lack processing power with your machine.
You will NOT find any generic tips such as "go on Holiday" or "upgrade your computer". I'm bringing something that works, whether you have a monster PC or a slow laptop.
Customized Graphics
If you have any customised add-ons, like player profile pictures or club logos, you should set your Skin settings just like this:
This option does speed up Football Manager 2023 because it catches your custom graphics to the game and stores them for future use, so no additional loading time will be needed in the future. Each time you visit a screen, FM23 will cache the graphics from it, so the next time you visit the same screen again, it will load that screen much faster.
Always have this option enabled unless you are adding new graphics to your game. If you have this option enabled and try to load new graphics, they will not show, and the game will show old graphics cached during your playtime.
To enable this option go to 'Prefrances' > 'Advanced' > 'Interface' > 'Skin' > 'Enable Use Caching'
Bonus tip, storing your customised graphics on an SSD hard drive rather than on HDD hard drive will load them up in the game much faster. So if you have room on your SSD and that's where your 'graphics' folder is, opt for placing the files there for faster game speed. Obviously, installing your game on an SSD drive will make loading time much faster.
RELATED: Download Football Manager 2023 facepack and logopack
Change the Detail Level
One of the things FM 23 spends the most time on is simulating all the games you do not play, running in the background. While you cannot speed up the simulation time of a game, you can decrease the number of simulated games.
To do so, you have to:
- Click the FM icon
- Click detail level
- This will take you to the detail level shown in the screenshot below.
Here you can change "set international competition level" and "set club competition details levels to". I recommend changing these from default to a minimum, as shown.
Once you change these, hit the 'Confirm' button, and you're done.
Decrease the number of leagues/use a smaller database
One of the easiest ways to speed up the game is to reduce the number of leagues, or use a smaller database and/or set leagues you will not be managing into 'view only'. This is something you select when you start the game on 'Advanced Setup' mode.
In the screenshot below, you can see I have loaded the Big Five leagues in Europe and a custom player database with over 200K players. However, as indicated by the star rating, this will make the game run slow.
Now, I love to see how the other leagues are developing as much as the next guy, but it really slows the game. So what you can do is set the other league to 'view only'. This option will show you how the leagues have played out, and you will be able to see league tables, league and player stats etc., without processing power used on them.
So, if you want the game to run faster, aim for a +4 star in the estimated game speed.
In this game, I really want to play in England, and you can see the estimated game speed more than doubles if I only load this country and opt for a smaller custom database, which contains players with some national reputation.
My recommendation is to load the league you want to play in, and if you're going to go good old journeyman challenge on your FM 23 game later, you can always add the league you want to play in.
Bonus tip, this will also make it easier to get your scouting knowledge up, and scout for players as there will simply be fewer players in the game to scout.
Lower your 3D graphics
By default, FM 2023 will show matches in 3D, and if you have a newer, faster computer or a laptop, there shouldn't be any issues processing the games in 3D mode.
However, it can take a long time to load the 3D match engine on slower machines. You can significantly improve performance by lowering these or switching them to a recommended setup for your device.
The way to do this is to go to;
- Preferences and then the match tab
- From the dropdown menu, either select 'Recommended for this PC' or choose 'Low' or 'Very Low'
- Click Confirm
Bonus tip, old-school players prefer to watch the games in 2D, just like in the Championship Manager. For those of you who prefer to play with the 2D match view, FM23 has an added new feature to auto-adjust the zoom level based on the dimensions of the pitch.
Only watch key highlights.
By default, in Football Manager 2023, the highlight mode will be set to extended. This means that games can quickly take 10 minutes or even more.
One of the first things you should do on any Football Manager save if you want faster processing is to change this in preferences.
Go to preferences and then the match tab;
- Under Highlight Mode, change to "Key"
- Click Confirm
This will make the game show fewer highlights and only show the ones where there is a goal or clear-cut chance.
Bonus tip, from here, you can also change the match speed during and between highlights. I like to set the match speed between highlights to the maximum so the match processes much faster when there is no action.
Set up your staff responsibilities
If you do not want to waste your time on doing the press conferences or tunnel interviews or basically anything you do not enjoy and think is time-consuming, you can set these responsibilities to your Assistant Manager or someone else from your backroom staff.
Instead of doing every single thing, you can delegate the things that you do not enjoy and consume your time to your assistant manager or someone else from your backroom staff by;
- First, go to your 'Staff' window.
- From there, go to 'Responsibilities'
- Click on 'Staff'
- Delegate all the things you do not want to do to members of your staff
But be cautious when delegating responsibilities, as this does have a gameplay effect, and you should only delegate duties to someone who knows how to handle that specific task.
Enable Continue Game Timeout
I saved one of the best for last. And especially if you play in windowed mode and browse the web while FM23 processes, this trick will do wonders for your game, as it will make you go from one game to the next without the game stopping in between.
Continue game timeout basically clicks continue for you. And if you enable it, the game automatically goes forward unless you must make a decision.
The way to enable it is this:
- Go to preferences and then the interface tab
- Under processing, it says continue game timeout
- By default, it will say disabled. I have it set at 2 seconds, but you can also set instant, 5 seconds and 10 seconds
- Click confirm, and you are ready to enjoy the game even more
I can't state how much of a difference this makes, as it will basically take you from one game to the next.
A word of caution on continuing game timeout, do not use it when the transfer window is open. And the reason is very simple. If there is a week between two games, the game will likely simulate until it reaches a decision point. The most common decision point is the line-up before a game.
So, if another team bids for a player you might want to buy, you will not see this until you have to play the next game, and he might already be transferred to another team.
Summary
So to make speed up your Football Manager 2023, use caching to decrease page loading times, change the detail level of your save, reduce the number of leagues that you load, lower the 3D graphics in your matches, watch key highlights only, delegate responsibilities to your staff members and enable continue game timeout. Apply these ideas, and you'll have a much faster, more enjoyable experience with Football Manager 2023.
