Winning Hilly and Mountain Stages in Stage Races
In hilly stages and mountain stages, your best shot is definitely a breakaway. Put all of your riders in the first breakaway. The more riders with 70+ in hill/mountain ability the better. Rely on the other riders in the breakaway to take leads the first half of the stage, use your own riders in the rest. Most of the times, you'll have such a big gap to the peleton by the time the favourites begin attacking, that you can win with even riders with only 70-75 mountain ability.
If you're in a tough spot with weak riders, choose your strongest rider as a complete captain. Make the rest of the team work all day long without him moving a finger until the last 20km.
The key to winning a classics is to attack early, before the favourites. A lot of times, a breakaway from 60 km, 80 km, maybe even 100 km out, with a lot of the next-best riders in the peleton, will win the race. For example, if you're in Liege-Bastogne-Liege and your captain's J.Flecha (hill ability: 76), you won't stand a chance against a rider like P.Bettinni (hill ability: 85) when he starts attacking with aprox. 30 kms left. Therefore it's crucial to attack early out. Don't take any leads in your breakaway. Wait until he finish line's close enough till you can ride there on your own, and then break free of the group using 99%INDEPENDENT EFFORT.
Winning Flat Stages in Stage RacesAlmost every breakaway in the flat stages will be eliminated with between 20 and 50 km to go. So don't take your chances on them. Insted, wait until there's about 25 km left, then put your rider on 99%INDEPENDENT EFFORT (the dot), and he'll easily break loose of the peleton. This might only work with riders with 70+ flat ability.
General TipsDo a lot of training camps. A hill-training camp for 10 days will improve your riders hill ability with up to five points. Leisure training camps will give your rider up to +10 race points.
During the race, use your proviant wisely. If your green bar's almost full and your white bar's emptying out, using some of your food will make the white bar rise. Use this! You don't want to run out of the white bar.
If you manage a team with €4.000.000+, don't be afraid to buy riders in the start of the season. if you bid in on 100 riders, the teams will accept on about ten and about four will agree to a contract. Buying a rider only costs between $50.000-200.000, so it's a great way to improve your team.
I like to ride almost every race of the season. In most of them, I only have one, two or three riders in. This way, I'll make tons of money and gain a lot of points for various rankings but not run out of race points.
