I've tried this out myself now and it does seem to make a big difference to the AI.
Played a game of Arsenal vs Aston Villa before with/without amending the Assisted Settings. When I hadn't amended them I won fairly comfortably 4-0. In the replay after changing the Assisted Settings, it was a much more challenging game, Villa actually moved out of their own half and attacked, I still won, but it was 3-2 and a much tougher game.
When the AI uses a mixture of form and ability to pick the team, for me it places too much emphasis on form, so can have some strange team selections, e.g. Blackburn starting with 3rd choice keeper in goal instead of Paul Robinson.
When the mixture is used, I would expect a replacement only if the two players were close on ability and the form of one is blue and the other orange and would expect where there is a larger ability gap, a replacement only if the 1st teamer was purple and the backup was orange/red (depending on size of the ability gap).
For personal preference, I would therefore set the Lineup to 3 in Assisted Settings, so that the AI picks the team based on ability alone.
Played a game of Arsenal vs Aston Villa before with/without amending the Assisted Settings. When I hadn't amended them I won fairly comfortably 4-0. In the replay after changing the Assisted Settings, it was a much more challenging game, Villa actually moved out of their own half and attacked, I still won, but it was 3-2 and a much tougher game.
When the AI uses a mixture of form and ability to pick the team, for me it places too much emphasis on form, so can have some strange team selections, e.g. Blackburn starting with 3rd choice keeper in goal instead of Paul Robinson.
When the mixture is used, I would expect a replacement only if the two players were close on ability and the form of one is blue and the other orange and would expect where there is a larger ability gap, a replacement only if the 1st teamer was purple and the backup was orange/red (depending on size of the ability gap).
For personal preference, I would therefore set the Lineup to 3 in Assisted Settings, so that the AI picks the team based on ability alone.