The FIFA franchise’s most popular mode returns in FIFA 18. Ultimate Team allows players to build up their dream team, however it’s not so simple as just choosing the best players available and going from there. Chemistry is an important component of the experience, and the more refined and rated your team’s chemistry is, the better the team will respond. Let’s take a look at Chemistry more broadly in FIFA 18 Ultimate Team, including why it’s important, and how to improve it.
The Basics
Chemistry is essentially the glue that holds your team together: it determines how individual players perform alongside other players, and how the team collectively responds to opponents and plays together.
Ultimately, if you want to succeed at Ultimate Team, your team is going to need to be at its peak Chemistry level, otherwise things can get really difficult, and the experience isn’t anywhere near as rewarding.
While the system is designed to seem complex, the reality is that you can work your team’s Chemistry up fairly naturally by simply playing the game as intended, and understanding the fundamentals of what it is that makes a good football team good.
The higher your team’s Chemistry rating, the better the team is at playing together.
Individual Chemistry
Individual Chemistry is, as you might expect, the chemistry an individual player has. Each player has a score out of 10, with the closer to 10 the player being, the better.
Team Chemistry
The team is also given a Chemistry rating as a whole out of 100.
Overall Chemistry
This is essentially the overall Chemistry rating of all Individual Chemistry ratings, and the total Team Chemistry rating.
Ideally, you want to ensure an Individual Chemistry rating is as close to 10 as possible: the more 10-rated players you have, the higher your Team Chemistry is, and the better your team will perform.
How To Increase Chemistry
Increasing the Chemistry of your team and players is certainly no secret, and it should come as no surprised just how exactly Chemistry affects rating. Let’s take a look.
Positioning
If a player is played out of position, this is going to hit their Chemistry rating. If they’re played in position, this will obviously help in optimising their total Chemistry rating.
If a player is marked red under their player card, this means they’re out of position and your Chemistry is taking a hit. Orange means the player can play in that position, but it’s not the ideal position for them, while Green is, as you probably know, the perfect position for the player.
If a player is ever Red, you need to find a way to move them into the appropriate position as quickly as possible, as they will have a huge hit to their Individual Chemistry bringing down the total Team Chemistry. The opposite is true for Green: boosts to Individual and Team Chemistry ratings.
Links
When you place a player on the field, you’ll notice that there is a line — or “link” — between them and corresponding teammates. As with positioning, this link is colour-coded as red, orange or green, with the same affect on overall Chemistry.
This colour is dictated by the number of links a player has with the teammates around him: the more links, the more likely they will have a green link, and the more likely Chemistry will be boosted as a result.
These “links” are defined as:
- Club
- League
- Nationality
So, if two players next to each other on the pitch are from the same Club, this means they’re from the same league. If they’re also from the same country, then you have a 100% link, and therefore, a green link. If both players are also in their ideal green position, then you’re maximising the total Chemistry rating for these players.
Manager and Player Link
Much like the above, if players have a league or nationality link with a manager, they will receive a green link and Chemistry boost.
Loyalty Link
If a player plays ten matches for your team, they will receive an automatic 1+ Individual Chemistry rating.
