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How Are Clubs Promoted to Lowest Playable Leagues?


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I seem to remember some past discussion of club reputation as the only factor that determines which clubs get promoted from unplayable leagues to the lowest playable league in the game.

But the database also contains fields for the last division that a club played in and the place that it finished during that previous last season.

Does a club's last position in an unplayable league have any effect on its chances of being promoted into the lowest playable league after the first season in FM? What really determines who gets promoted into the lowest playable leagues?

I tried to test this by starting unemployed and playing a full season until June 17. Then I ran the transition to the new season during which clubs are promoted. I kept reloading the game and repeating this, and I tracked the results for promotion from the German Regionaliiga to the 3.Bundesliga.

Mostly it was the same clubs that were promoted again and again, although it wasn't always the same group. However, there was only one instance of a club with a reputation below 3000 being promoted, and its reputation in the database was something like 2850. That seemed to provide strong evidence for reputation being the primary or only factor.

Curiously, one club that had a reputation of 2000 but finished 2nd in its last real life season was never promoted. That led me to believe that a club's last league position has nothing to do with its chances of getting promoted after the first season in FM. Otherwise I would have expected that club to get promoted at least once out of the 15 to 20 times that I ran the test.

Does anyone have any insight on this?

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I'm pretty sure that reputation is the key factor, if not the only one. But it doesn't simply select the highest reputation clubs, but each club has a chance of promotion proportional to its reputation. Say, for example, that the total of all reputations in the league below the lowest playable one is 8000. 3000 times out of 8000 (3 out of 8) a club with a reputation of 3000 will get promoted. A club with a reputation of 1000 will get promoted 1 out of 8 times, and a club with a reputation of 600 will get promoted 600 out of 8000 times, or 3 out of 40.

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I'm pretty sure that reputation is the key factor, if not the only one. But it doesn't simply select the highest reputation clubs, but each club has a chance of promotion proportional to its reputation. Say, for example, that the total of all reputations in the league below the lowest playable one is 8000. 3000 times out of 8000 (3 out of 8) a club with a reputation of 3000 will get promoted. A club with a reputation of 1000 will get promoted 1 out of 8 times, and a club with a reputation of 600 will get promoted 600 out of 8000 times, or 3 out of 40.

This ratio cannot possibly be how promotion is determined. For example, in the German Regional Division North, the total reputation points for the division are 47,480. But Kiel has been promoted after the first season in 7 of my last 8 tests. Kiel's reputation is 3800, which is only 8% of the total 47,480 in the Regional Division North. So that would give it only an 8% chance of promotion. But the game clearly promotes the club at a ratio vastly greater than this.

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I think that kind of sum is a little deceiving. I can't offer any figures, but I believe the simple answer is something along the lines of:

1 - List all teams eligible to be promoted to the lowest playable division (the game does not factor any sort of movement between the "leagues" of unplayable teams, so this list will never change except for adding the clubs relegated from a playable league and removing those promoted from the list)

2 - Order list by club reputation, highest at the top

3 - The game arbitrarily assigns a percentage chance of a club being promoted according to this list. The higher you are, the better your chance. Those at the top probably have about a 30-40% chance, those at the bottom probably about 1%.

4 - ???

5 - Profit

So basically, the higher your rep, the better chance of getting promoted, end of story. This explains why teams relegated very often bounce straight back up, and it explains why Hitchin Town keep appearing in the Blue Square South, despite playing pretty direly the last few seasons...though now they've been relegated they're playing well... :\

(Couldn't resist adding the last two to the list, sorry. Too much internet humour for me).

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Bear in mind that three clubs get promoted, if that makes any difference.

My numbers were based solely on the division that Kiel plays in. So the 47,480 total reputation points is just for that one division, which will always produce one club that gets promoted. So if Kiel is getting promoted in 7 of the last 8 tries, then it's getting promoted almost every time compared to other clubs in the same division. But it doesn't even have the highest reputation in its division and there are a number of other clubs not far behind in reputation points.

I think Falastur might have the right info, but I'd be interested to hear SI's take.

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