Fredrik

As I just replied I also think so. Lots of lower level US clubs have a city set but no stadium. These teams move around if I create regional groups for lower leagues once I set the stadium correctly.

I've created lower league pyramids in the US and it seems to me that the location of the stadium influence regionalisation of groups. It's not certain though. Some things just don't work and it seems multiple languages is one of them. US is set so most people speak Spanish which is obviously not true. Furthermore, it doesn't seem like newgens etc use the obvious naming convention and regional hotspots for such people. Then the problem of this thread doesn't seem to work in general. I am afraid the workaround with multiple cities doesn't work completely either but IMO if you have "ethnic" or similar clubs it will do it. Besides, some of this is the problem that there are several layers of organization of a country. Not just what the game calls local region but metropolitan areas are often absent if a higher level exist.

The weak point in the game logic is unfortunately bilingualism. I've tried to set bilingual cities but it never really works. I've resorted to creating new cities at times so that for example Montreal would exist as two cities in the database. One French-speaking and the other English-speaking. . It depends if the clubs are language dependent(which at least at times is clearly the case). On the other side my own projects haven't been conclusive whether languages really influence eg transfers.

I have tried similar things countless times. You can make it fairly good but the game can't handle multiple languages well in general. I also feel that a local/native speaker etc may not see the results as someone who isn't. Start by setting language to any city if it's monolingual. Then set percentages for the region (the part except the aforementioned cities) so that the total percentage is 100%. The big issue here is what to do with the national language. I would suggest English(or French) could work depending on which country you're actually thinking about. If it's an African country I think it can work due to name pool being national in character. If the country you're discussing is India I'm unsure what setting English to national language does with player names. Another note is that it can't hurt to make sure that your nation's players have their city of birth set. It won't mess up names and in the best case it may even help with assigning names to the correct regions. This should be particularly important if some names are distinctly regional. None of this is foolproof but IMO you should start around here.

Unfortunately starting division level has been there since FM22

It would be easier if we had the file itself but barring that I have a few questions. Did you start a new game? It may be obvious to some but changes are only applied to new games. Just in case. Did you make sure to include this editor file when you started the new game?

I see it a bit differently. Even the so called objective data is often wrong. Things like second nationalities, ethnicity, skin colour are often not right. Many researchers seem to think eg. skin colour is 5-14 instead of 1-20. Others just refuse to acknowledge languages spoken(eg. an average Swiss without known city of birth can IRL be assumed to speak German or maybe French but the game says Italian. Yes, I know this isn't really about game play but some if breaks immersion for me. I also understand that in some cases it's because both SI and head researchers know some of this is political/"historical" and don't want to ruffle the feathers of some people. Or they themselves are full of it. After that rambling point I just want to say that if researchers can't get objective stuff right, then I have no particular expectation they will get subjective things right. In the end I wonder what kind of tests SI run? Are they ever telling a head researcher eg. "your country has too high CA/PA" or "your country is too low on determination". My gut feeling is they rarely. Only if it's blatant and made certain teams or players overpowered enough to get lots of complaiints.

I presume you haven't touched kit colours? I think that may be the issue. Could you please check what the kit colours are for those teams? I think you need to set this too.

You could try to only use teams when needed. The option should be under U23 Teams Type and U19 Teams Type.

Of course it's relevant if you've changed something that can affect the nation rules. Did you add ar remove any Japanese teams?

You could perhaps use the nation transfer preferences the other way round and block "Maltese" transfers.?

I wonder too but I've wondered why the rule seems to work in some countries but not in others, particularly not in the Caribbean? Admittedly not in FM24. Could you compare the French non-EU rule applied on eg. Finnish or Dutch players? Additionally check if a non-EU rule would work in New Caledonia itself(and use eg. France). I hope it's not because something's hard coded. The non-foreign rule always works in my experience.

Aren't these territories set as Non-foreign in France? If not, do that change. Also, report it as a bug in the French database. These players are French for all intents and purposes.

DId you report it?

Have they revealed the ethnicity/2nd nationality tab yet? Asking for a friend.