yes we must try to work together. i appreciate all your hard work. the tackling and cpu decision making and the consistency and success rate at which they try to avoid you with the ball is the one thing that will get it sim.
in the last month i started to test some FM11 ai.ini's just to see how the CPU performed, and I noticed that a few of those gameplays had a really good CPU attack. In these a.i.'s, you couldn't just hold down the pressure buttons and steal the ball. when they received a pass, they didn't just turn a dribble forward. Instead they actually looked like a real team, moving left and right, passing, setting up passes, etc. It was really cool to see. But, in those a.i.'s, there were many other problems. bugs, glitches, it was missing some parameters from fifa 10's a.i. you know? and then the more stuff i added to it from my old ai.ini's, all of a sudden the CPU didn't move as good and it started to be easier to steal the ball again. So that's kind of like what you were talking about iron_dog when you said "removing them causes the game to be crappy". yeah this is the thing, we like to think everything works and just throw it in there. and as long as it doesn't have a syntax error, the game will start, but we never really know if it read the parameter. all we can do is test the game and see how it looks overall.
i'm glad you said "getting CPU to avoid tackles has become the hardest thing to accomplish in any given gameplay" because I agree 100%. This is the one thing that is left to solve. I know it is possible because I've seen it. i may even try to record some videos of what that gameplay is like with the cpu avoiding. but you'll notice in it the overall game speed is much faster. the thing to try to do is to get all the things in one a.i. :
-slow deliberate gameplay
-constantly moving cpu on offense, swift passing, dribble-move timing, etc
-hard to get automatic tackles every time from the cpu with the pressure buttons
-slower moving defenders, both for strafing and regular movement.
-less aggressive, more strategic CPU defending : you're gameplay kind of has this moving in the right direction, but i still think the CPU should be more unpredictable in how it defends. there is a difference when you put the CPU team's team style for zonal defense ON, but man-to-man or zone, i still think it can be smarter.
and finally, i don't know if this is possible, but it'd be nice if the CPU sometimes used pace control. it's not something that is needed because you can make them do many dribble moves. but if there is some way to make them use pace control, that'd be fun. Maybe you can set it for only the best players or something through DBM10, but maybe there's something in ai.ini.
My theory is that the game doesn't read all the parameters, or some parameters may override other parameters. it is clear that some of those added parameters do in fact work. some of those sets can make both the CPU and the user much better at defending than the original fifa 10 a.i. but i think if you max stuff out, then the defense starts moving really fast and tackles too easy. So it's a balancing act, and i think the cpu attack and the tackling are the final pieces to the puzzle. it'd be really cool if we could make it so that when you use the pressure buttons without thinking about where your defender is, he'll miss the tackle and the cpu will dribble around him and start moving upfield. stuff like that can be the norm. it will take work, but i think it's worth it. this game is so great with all the mods. it's really exciting especially with gameplay like yours.
you're establishing your rep tenfold by releasing your gameplay and trying to get this right. i'm here to help and you're helping everyone by releasing your gameplay and trying to refine it one version at a time. i want to release gameplay too. we may differ on goal keeping and dribble speed but the defense is something that can help both of our gameplays. you can PM me any time if you want to discuss parameters. or we can talk about it in the thread, whichever you prefer. i admire your work and you deserve all the credit in the world. Best of luck with the testing.