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samba23

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samba23 last won the day on June 19 2018

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    Man Utd fan, Barcelona admirer, Boston Utd sympathiser, Perth Glory & FH holiday romance.

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    Last seen in Greece - rumoured to have been released by Panetolikos

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  1. Yes. In advanced rules if you go onto the "League Settings" tab you can set the number of points for a win, penalties win and penalties loss. Then if you click "Match Rules" you can add penalties as an option.
  2. And now time for the final part of my Oregon State 22-23 season review. After winning the Mountain west Conference and getting promotion to the Pac-12, we could go into the final stage of the season in a relaxed state. As a DI-AA team we were guaranteed to be a #3 seed in the College World Series - Regionals, meaning that we were guaranteed to be drawn against two DI-A teams in our regional stage. We were drawn against Wisconsin in the opening round and with a well rested team we cruised to a 3-0 win. In the winner's bracket we won a tight game against Washington on Penalties, meaning we progressed straight to the regional final, playing the winner of the second elimination game. Washington were our opponents in the regional final and again we won a tight game on penalties to progress to the Super Regional Stage. The Super Regional opponent was TCU, a team we had already beaten in the First Round of the NCAA Tournament. In this tournament the result was no different, we won both games to win 3-1 on aggregate and progress to the final tournament of the season - the College World Series. In the College World Series we were drawn against Notre Dame in the opening round. After our exceptional run to qualify for the tournament our great form continued with a 2-0 win. We were then drawn against Ohio State in the Winner's Bracket. Another exceptional performance resulted in a 3-1 win and a bye to the Semi Final. Ohio State beat Notre Dame in the Second Elimination Game, meaning the Semi Final was a rematch against Ohio State. Our midweek bye was a huge determining factor as a tight game turned decisively in our favour in extra time as we outlasted Ohio State to win 3-1. The Final was against SEC champions Alabama. Unfortunately, we were outclassed in the final and were powerless to avoid a decisive 4-1 defeat. Despite this we had far exceeded expectations even by just qualifying for the College World Series. One bug I did notice that when we won in the Second Round of the College World Series the game thought that our season was over and sent the players on holiday. This was because the Semi Final wasn't drawn until the Second Elimination Game was played. This issue resolved itself once the semi Final draw was made and our players came back off holiday so no harm was actually done but I will have to look at how the tournament is formatted to see if I can fix this small issue for FM24.
  3. Now for part 3 or my Oregon State save game. Despite an excellent first 2/3rds of the conference schedule we were still not guaranteed to win the league and get promoted to the Pac-12 because Utah State's form was almost as good as ours. In the end though my worries were alleviated by a run of six straight wins and Utah State's form finally dropping off, meaning that we won the league with 3 games to spare. Therefore, I decided to rest most of my first team players and give opportunities to some of my youth players before the College World Series Regionals began. This meant that we lost our last 3 league games. However, we still won the league comfortably and were also top of the overall standings, meaning that we were a #3 seed for the College World Series Regionals. Curiously, our last 3 games were all away from home, which meant that we ended the season with a 100% winning record in our home games. As league champions it wasn't a big surprise that we had 7 players in the All-Conference team. It was a surprise though to see that we dominated the All America 2nd XI team (all DI-AA) with a remarkable 8 players selected. Special mention must go to my leading striker, Adam Clanton, who finished the season with 71 club goals in all competitions and 40 league goals. This was despite him missing several games due to being in the USA national team. This was especially frustrating when he missed the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 round game which we lost against Clemson.
  4. And now for part two of my Oregon State save game. As a second tier team, we had a high probability of getting a lower division team in the 1st preliminary round of the College Cup. However, we actually got a really tough draw, facing Pac-12 powerhouse Washington. A great performance resulted in a 4-0 win and an easier draw against Eastern Washington in the 2nd preliminary round, which was actually a very tough game and we needed extra time to win. The first round was against Washington State, which we won 1-0 but our cup run ended in the 2nd round with a disappointing away loss against North Carolina. In the league we won 7, drew 1 and lost 1 game to finish top of the conference standings and earn the #1 seed for the Mountain West Conference Tournament. As the #1 seed we received a 1st round bye. We coasted through the quarter final and semi final with wins over BYU and San Diego State. The final was a rematch of the Conference Championship Game and we got our revenge with a comprehensive 5-0 win. We were a #10 seed for the NCAA Tournament and were drawn into the East Region in Jacksonville, FL. The first round was against #7 TCU and we got the upset win 3-1 to set up a second round game vs #2 Florida. This was our best win of the season so far, pulling a huge upset to win 5-2. The upsets couldn't continue in the Sweet 16 where we lost to Clemson.
  5. Hi, thanks for the interest. I have considered shortening the season to 18 league games and ending the season after March Madness, but I really like having the College World Series, even though it does add a lot of extra games if you progress all the way to the final and extends the season to the end of June. Have not tried limiting the maximum age, but I do understand the desire to be more "College accurate"
  6. So having recently released by final version of this database for FM23. I thought it would be a good idea to share my personal experience playing the database. A stated aim of mine was to make every team equally playable, From Alabama in DI-A to William & Mary in DII-A. Therefore, for my save I decided to let the computer choose a team for me and it chose Oregon State in the Mountain West Conference in DI-AA. I was happy with this selection as Oregon State has recently been in the news because all of their present conference-mates are leaving for other conferences, leaving Oregon State and Washington State as the only teams left in the future Pac-2 conference. I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of my squad. My best two players were LW Daniel Kuri and ST Adam Clanton. Both players would during season 1 get selected for the USA national team, so I was very lucky to have two attacking players of high quality. The rest of the squad was decent but was lacking in depth at goalkeeper and in defence and central midfield. Therefore my season 1 transfers were all players would would add to the squad depth at these positions. As you can see below, I bought four players but didn't spend a lot of money on any of them. More Concerningly, in season 1 no AI controlled teams spent money on new players. I am very confident that teams will start spending money in future seasons so this is just an anomaly and not a wider concern. A possible concern is that I set a rule of "maximum 4 signings a season" but I was actually able to bring in five players, I also got a 16 year old LW from Ohio State on loan. This shouldn't have been possible so suggests that this "transfer rule" in the editor is broken. To start the season we were not selected for a early-season tournament and instead played 3 campus games. I won all 3 of this games against lower division competition. The main non-conference schedule was tougher. We had games against top division teams in LSU, Missouri and Colorado. We managed to win all seven of these games to give us a good head start for the conference season, having a six point lead over 2nd placed Boise State, meaning that we were already well placed to be selected for a good Bowl Game. In the first league round robin stage we won eight and drew one game. This meant that we finished top of the conference standings and qualified for the Conference Championship Game and had already secured our place in the top Bowl Game for our conference. Our opponents in the CCG only qualified by beating then-second placed Boise State in the final game. In the CCG we went into a 2-0 lead so I decided to make a few substitutions to rotate the squad. However, Utah State came back to draw 2-2 and despite furiously attacking in extra time we were unable to score and lost the game on penalties. We also underperformed in the LA Bowl and lost 2-1, conceding a late goal to lose 2-1.
  7. Hi all, the final update for FM23 is out now. The download link on the opening post has been updated for v1.2. This update is mainly a data update. There have been tweaks to club ratings, meaning some teams have moved up/down division levels. Manager CA/PAs have been tweaked as well. However, it should be noted that these ratings are for the start of the 2022 season so teams/managers that had a good 2022/start of 2023 may appear to be underrated (e.g. Florida State and Deion Sanders). Salaries are also accurate to the 2022 season. See below for a peek at the data for the top clubs/managers. As well as adding every College Football Head Coach I have added complete coaching staffs for all 130 FBS teams, plus the top FCS teams who are in DI-AAA in this database. This means that these clubs start with 11 coaches across the first team and u19 team. FCS teams have six coaches across the first team and u19 team. Salaries are accurate where data is available from the USA Today College Football salary database. Where not available for FBS teams (private universities such as Stanford, Duke etc) estimates have been made according to teams of similar reputations. For FCS teams I have used a separate database (Gov Salaries) for which most coaches salaries are available, again where no data is available estimates have been made. I should note that only coaches have been added. This database has no scouts/physios/other ancillary staff (except charman and DOF) so I would recommend de-selecting "do not add key staff" when starting a new game to ensure that each team has support staff populated at the start of the game. I could in theory add more u19 staff, physios, doctors, scouts, data analysts etc from each teams official staff lists but I've already added over 3,000 coaching staff so doing this would be too much work even for me. See below for Oregon's full 2022 staff list, of which I have only added coaches from the first page. The above coaches are in the database for Oregon. The below staff members are not. I have spent a long time tweaking CA/PA for particular staff types to make the database as realistic as possible. For example, If CA/PA was left blank, Head Of Youth Developments and U19 Managers would generally have a much higher CA/PA than Assistant Managers. This has been changed so that each clubs 2nd highest CA/PA staff member is the Assistant Manager, which seems much more realistic to me. I had previously tried to set "future transfers" for staff members so that the in-game 2023-24 season would accurately reflect the 2023 College Football Season (for example, Kenny Dillingham transferring from Oregon's Assistant Manager to Arizona State's Manager) however, in-game this would often not work as managers/coaches would often be given new contracts during the first season which would invalidate the future transfer I had set. Therefore, sadly this feature has had to be dropped. Other minor data updates includes things such as updated "future stadium moves" where new information has been provided, new stadium names, competition histories updated with 2021 season, etc. As far as I can recall there has been no major changes to competition rules in the Advanced Editor, except that all competitions now allow 5 subs from 12 and the College Football Playoff schedule has been tweaked to reflect the updated dates for the now-revealed real-life 12-team Playoff. I thought I had found a potentially game breaking bug during a recent play-through where if your team plays in the College World Series and wins in the Second Round (winners bracket) the game would think your season was over and would send your squad on end of season holiday (because the semi final had not been drawn yet). However, the game resolves this when the semi final is draw is made as your players come back from holiday after only a couple of days, so no harm is done. Other than this, I am very happy that every competition works fully as intended. This will be my final update for FM23. I do have some changes in mind for FM24 and beyond. I have been fiddling with rearranging each division, for example having 8-team or 16-team divisions or only having two regional divisions at each division level i.e. SEC and Big 10 in DI-A by merging the Big 10-Pac 12 and SEC/Big 12 therefore more accurately reflecting real-life realignments e.g. Washington &Oregon in the Big 10 and Texas & Oklahoma in the SEC. However, I really like my current 10-team conference structure and nothing else I have tried works as well in terms of accurate division levels and equality across regions. I still intend to go up to 240 teams in FM24 and will probably add a few more competitions e.g. DII College World Series. I also will intend to have a more realistic qualification method for lower level teams for the NCAA Tournament i.e. DI-AAA and DII qualifying teams will be chosen from the conference tournament winners (as in real life) and 1st place teams who do not win their conference tournament will qualify for the NIT (as in real life). However, this in particular will be tricky to make work in the Advanced Rules so I have not even tried to implement this in FM23. As always, if you do play this database, first of all - thank you. And secondly, any feedback is always appreciated.
  8. Hi, thanks for the very kind words. I started with the idea of creating a 20-40 team database in FM18 just to see what a College Football Super League would be like. Of course you can't stop arbitrarily at 20-40 teams so I had to add all P5 teams. But then I wanted Boise State, Houston, UCF etc too, so of course I had to do all 130 FBS teams. But then I wanted to add North Dakota State and FCS teams from States that don't have a FBS team, Montana, Delaware, etc. But why stop there? So I added all of the top FCS teams. I was also fascinated by the HBCU's so added the top HBCU teams. Then it just made sense to add the Ivy League teams as they are among the most famous Universities in the world. At this point I had a lot of FCS teams so expanded even further to the current 208 teams. But there's still a few top FCS teams I don't have. For example, Incarnate Word, Samford and Holy Cross all made the FCS Playoff quarter finals last season. So therefore, in FM24 I expect to add another 32 teams to take the total to 240 teams. This will include nearly all the FCS teams, just Pioneer, Patriot and a few Big South teams won't be included. This seems like a good cut off point, at least until I decide that I have to add some DII teams too!!! I am very happy with the current structure I have with 4 regions in each division, and 10 teams in each conference. I have fiddled with realigning things, for example 8-team conferences or only having two regions West-East and Central-South with 16-20 team conferences, but the competitive balance between regions is never as good and the cut-off point between division levels is always better in my current structure. I am also very happy with my tournaments, the College Football Playoff, Bowl Games, March Madness, NIT, Conference Tournaments and College World Series all work nearly perfectly and I don't think can be improved upon in the current editor. And I am a Texas fan. Although I have tried to be unbiased and not make Texas too good! I also want Texas Tech, UTSA, Texas State and Texas Southern to all be just as playable in FM so have tried to have the same attention to detail across all division levels.
  9. Hi, sorry for the extremely late reply. No, that won't be possible sorry. I used MLS as the base for NCAA Division I-A so it would cause a conflict.
  10. Glad to hear it. I mainly use Edge so wasn't aware of any download issues with Chrome.
  11. Do you mean other jobs (non NCAA) in America? I have removed the MLS and all other real life USA clubs so you can only manage a NCAA team in this database
  12. To illustrate the fix that this new database version has for the starting wages I have made the following graphs. These show the average annual wage for the teams in each DI division level, over the first 12 years of a save. This shows the average wage of the league winner of each DI-A conference every year. You can see that in the old database the 1st year champions average about a £2-3 million total wage bill but the new database has an average wage bill of over £20 million. Both the old and new databases have year-on-year wage bill increases but the increase is much less dramatic in the new database and is mostly explained by increasing squad numbers rather than individual wages increasing dramatically. The top club wages in the new database are generally higher but each club is still profitable so this not an issue. I have also added graphs below for the mid-table teams of DI-A, DI-AA and DI-AAA, which all show the same improvement in starting wages in the new database and the wages closely matching the old database wages in later years.
  13. On a personal note - I am going on holiday for a week from tomorrow so won't be available to answer any questions you may have, or reply to any feedback.
  14. Version 1.1 is out now. Updated download link in OP The biggest update is a fix that means that player wages are now much more realistic in the first few seasons (previously starting player wages were extremely low and took years to increase to a more realistic level). The only competition rules update is that the real-life College Football Playoff now has confirmed dates for the 2024 & 2025 seasons, these have been reflected in the database, with the exception that the Quarter Finals are on Friday-Saturday rather than the real life Thursday-Friday. Having it the same dates as in real life caused an issue with the 2029 season First Round and Quarter Final dates being too close together so they have been moved a day later to mitigate for this. Data updates include: Head Coaches accurate to the 2022 College Football Season FBS Strength and Conditioning coaches updated. Athletic Directors (Director of Football) updated. University Presidents (Chairperson) updated. Data updates still to be completed; All other coaches still to be updated (is a big data update so will take some time) Competition Rules updates to be completed (most likely for FM24); Total number of teams increased to 240 Five new conferences added, including DII-AAA NCAA Tournament teams from one-bid leagues to be conference tournament winners Conference leading teams from one-bid leagues who didn't win conference tournament to be placed in NIT NIT, CIT & CBI teams to be reorganised following NCAA Tournament qualifying rules update DII College World Series to be added Potential Change to 3rd round robin for conferences - would now be double round robin and 3rd part of season to be conferences split into promotion/relegation groups, meaning 4 games rather than 9 in this portion of the season. Depending on the above - change to round robin for MAC and CUSA - would be split into two regional groups (East-West or North/South) for first 2/3rds of season before splitting into promotion/relegation groups as per above, also Conference Championship Games added for these conferences.
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