Equilibrium Database (all teams equal)

I'm currently working on a DB, but I've run into a problem... but first I'll explain what I'm doing:

The DB itself is called "Equilibrium", and my plans are to make each team in each main division/league, well.. equal. I've started on the English Premiership;

All teams rep is set at 7500.

All teams have an identical balance and budgets.

No teams have any debt, nor have they any other income and/or outgoings financially.

All stadia are 60000 (sixty thousand) all-seater in identical condition.

All training set-ups and youth set-ups are identical.

All 4 fan 'attributes' (patience, affluence etc) are 15, 15, 15 and 15 for every team.

There are no 'Sugar Daddys'.

All tickets are £40 per match/£800 season ticket.

All teams have the same attendance, and the same number of season ticket holders.

Basically everything that can be equal, IS. I've also removed all players & staff from each team for obvious reasons.

Now the problem:

When I started a new game to test if it was working, the media predictions for the EPL were almost as I had expected/hoped for:

Arsenal 2nd

Aston Villa 3rd

Blackburn 4th

Bolton 5th

Chelsea 6th

Everton 7th

Fulham 8th

Liverpool 9th

Man Utd 10th

Man City 1st

Newcastle 11th

Norwich 12th

Q.P.R 13th

Stoke 14th

Sunderland 15th

Swansea 16th

Spurs 17th

West Brom 18th

Wigan 19th

Wolves 20th

I did imagine that the media prediction would literally be based on alphabetical order seeing as they have no reputation/finance differences to go by, so why are Man City expected to finish first?

I selected Man City to manage out of curiosity, and sure enough I had no choice in pre-season expectations. The minimum is "win the league"

Man City are identical to Wolves in every way except name! Why on Earth are the expectations different? I even changed their chairman and made his ambition the same as the Wolves chairman's, to no avail.

I'm really interested in this DB and plan to carry on down the leagues in England, then do the same with Spain, Italy, France, Germany etc etc and so on, but this Man City issue is baffling me.

Test DB here with top 8 leagues equalized:

http://www.mediafire.com/?5o5ayexosa2qv76

(England, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Holland, Portugal and Scotland)

It could be the chairmans stats? you may have to go to all the board level staff in the database and make their stats equal

I already tried that - didn't make a difference.

I have sort of solved the issue. I set their rep to 6500 (after trying 7400, 7200 and 7000), and now the media prediction is 20th. Thankfully the board just expect a safe mid-table position at least (which is what every club's board expect).

I hope the rep of 6500 won't have an unfair affect on Man City's chances but I'm inexperienced in these things so only time will tell. I guess signing players will be the main problem? I don't know what else to do, I just find it strange that only Man City's board were insistent despite being equal in every way to all other Premiership teams.

Although 6500 is rather low, it won't be too low when you consider I am going to also alter the rep of all the main clubs, meaning the Liga BBVA will include clubs of the same rep as the EPL (7500). This will be the highest rep of any team in-game in this DB, so Barcelona, Real Madrid, A.C Milan, Inter, Bayern Munich, Juventus etc etc will all have a reputation of 7500.

Serie B, Liga Adelante, English Championship, Lique 2 etc will all be set at 5500

4000 for the next league down.

3000 below that.

2000

1200... etc

(something like that anyway, I haven't fully made up my mind)

Anyway, now to sort out the Championship....

Sounds good, you planning on releasing this when its complete?

Absolutely. If people want it I wouldn't keep it to myself

And anyway, I'm barely patient enough to play the game so I'd be excited to see how others get on in a career.

I decided to set all top clubs' reputation to 8000 (Continental), seeing as many of them will be taking part in tournaments like the Champions League, so it makes sense.

Still having trouble with Man City though - In order to bring their chairman expectations into line with the rest of the EPL teams, I've had to set their reputation to 7500 and I can't figure out exactly why :confused:

Man City also get a much bigger wage budget at game start despite having the same finances as all other teams. I can't for the life of me work it out.

Note - all Premiership chairmen have IDENTICAL attributes, in fact everything about all teams is identical (I've triple checked), so the expectations must be hard-coded into the game.

This DB (when finished), will definitely be an interesting challenge. I've run a few quick tests and it seems ALL teams are expected to reach the semi-final of the FA cup, and reach a safe mid-table position in the league (minimum), so there will be sackings a-plenty

I did a couple of holiday games until October to see what would happen:

First time round Liverpool were rock bottom without a single point, and Q.P.R were top with a 100% record.

Second time, Liverpool were joint top with Wolves and Man United were rock bottom.

Third game, Spurs were top, Chelsea were bottom, and both Liverpool and Man United were mid-table.

It is so much more fun than seeing the usual suspects in the top 6 year-in and year-out. This is a DB I'm definitely going to work hard on.

I decided to set all top clubs' reputation to 8000 (Continental), seeing as many of them will be taking part in tournaments like the Champions League, so it makes sense.

Still having trouble with Man City though - In order to bring their chairman expectations into line with the rest of the EPL teams, I've had to set their reputation to 7500 and I can't figure out exactly why :confused:

Man City also get a much bigger wage budget at game start despite having the same finances as all other teams. I can't for the life of me work it out.

Note - all Premiership chairmen have IDENTICAL attributes, in fact everything about all teams is identical (I've triple checked), so the expectations must be hard-coded into the game.

This DB (when finished), will definitely be an interesting challenge. I've run a few quick tests and it seems ALL teams are expected to reach the semi-final of the FA cup, and reach a safe mid-table position in the league (minimum), so there will be sackings a-plenty

I did a couple of holiday games until October to see what would happen:

First time round Liverpool were rock bottom without a single point, and Q.P.R were top with a 100% record.

Second time, Liverpool were joint top with Wolves and Man United were rock bottom.

Third game, Spurs were top, Chelsea were bottom, and both Liverpool and Man United were mid-table.

It is so much more fun than seeing the usual suspects in the top 6 year-in and year-out. This is a DB I'm definitely going to work hard on.

Check you edt files.. there is one called "sugardaddy.edt" in football manager 2012/data/db/1200/edt, i think could be that one... It assigns a sugardaddy to man city and chelsea with two flags (front end & underwriter), and this alter finances etc.

Do you know yet if the clubs attendances in the lower english leagues (league 1 & 2 for example) are greatly affected by the stock £40 per match/£800 season ticket.

Do you know yet if the clubs attendances in the lower english leagues (league 1 & 2 for example) are greatly affected by the stock £40 per match/£800 season ticket.

The prices of £40 per match and £800 season tickets are for teams in the top leagues only (EPL, Liga BBVA, Serie A, Lique 1 etc), where reputation is 8000.

In the English Championship, Lique 2, Liga Adelante, Serie B etc the rep will be lower (I'm thinking 6500 or 6000 for all teams), as will ticket prices (perhaps £20 & £400?).

Then in English League 1, Serie C etc the rep and ticket prices will be lower again, but all teams in the same league will be equal (maybe £15 and £300?).

Reducing with each active level in rep and prices.

Hope that makes sense

PS - I've just finished EPL and Liga BBVA and am going to run a quick test for a few months to see what happens.

Check you edt files.. there is one called "sugardaddy.edt" in football manager 2012/data/db/1200/edt, i think could be that one... It assigns a sugardaddy to man city and chelsea with two flags (front end & underwriter), and this alter finances etc.

Although it makes sense what you are saying, I can't find that file anywhere

Although it makes sense what you are saying, I can't find that file anywhere

Have you looked in your Program Files>Steam>Steamapps>Common>Football Manager 2012>data>db>1200>edt folder?

Ok, found it! So do I just delete this (sugardaddy.edt) file?

EDIT: Sorted. Both EPL and Liga BBVA list media predictions in alphabetical order, and all teams expectations are mid-table finishes at least.

Time to get back to work.

EDIT (again): I holidayed until October 31st there. Chelsea and Q.P.R were joint top of the EPL, Man Utd & Liverpool were 10th and 11th respectively, and Spurs were bottom

Strangely enough, Real Madrid and Barcelona were flying high in La Liga. They just happened to snap up a lot of players very quickly I guess.

Have now completed Serie A, EPL and La Liga.

All teams have:

No players or staff (Entire DB is a 'freebie').

Rep 8000.

Balance/Transfer budget £100M/£50M (set like so as I imagine loads of players & agents will demand large fees when joining a club).

No income (sponsors etc removed), debt (loans removed), or expenditure (obviously no players so no monthly fees/appearance money).

All Stadia are 60,000 all-seater with under-soil heating; condition very good, pitch: grass/perfect @ 114 x 74yrds.

Top training facilities and state of the art Youth academy (the four fields are edited as 19, 16, 19, 16)

Fans attributes set to 15's across the board.

All chairman have NO attributes (0's across the board), with board and fan confidence set to 180/180.

No Sugar Daddies.

Match price: £40

Season Ticket: £800

Season ticket holders: 40,000

A few more settings that I can't quite remember :o

Is there a limit to the amount of changes I can make to the DB? Because currently it stands @ close to 400,000

Liking the sound of this matey. Will you be doing the SPL?

I would say so, yes. I'm going to do as many leagues as possible, although they won't all be the same. It'll be tiered.

I'm thinking all teams in the top leagues of England, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Portugal and Holland will be as described in post #13

I did think long and hard about not including Holland and Portugal in the top tier, but because they have some massive teams (Ajax, PSV, Benfica, Porto etc) I'll just bring every other team in those leagues into line.

Then SPL, Brazilian 1st, Argentinian 1st, Ukrainian 1st, Russian 1st, (possibly English Championship and a few more?) will be the next tier down - they will still be rich with big stadia, but slightly less so than the 'top' Leagues.

I may only go 3 tiers down, because not many playable countries go lower than that anyway. England have 7 leagues but they are the only one that go anywhere near that far down.

Not to mention the fact editing such vast amount of data is so unutterably monotonous. I have over 394,500 changes to the database so far

So far I have edited England, Spain, Italy, France and Germany (top leagues only), then run a few holiday games with those 5 leagues active (usually for 4 or 5 years each time).

Here's a few anecdotes about what I've witnessed so far...

Blackburn and Spurs always seem to sign basically the entire England first team between them, and then do really well, including the odd league and FA cup double!

Swansea won the odd title on each save.

Man Utd, Arsenal and Man City hang about mid-table each season, with Chelsea the also-rans finishing in and around the top 4.

Liverpool always do really bad, and actually get relegated in each save within 2 or 3 seasons

Barcelona became a mid-table team in each save, finishing 6th at best. Cristiano Ronaldo signed for them on one save and when they were 7th he stated he was "Proud of the club's league position" :o

Real Madrid went from 2nd to 16th to 1st over three seasons.

Marseilles seem to do really well each save, although Valenciennes have just won the 2014/15 League whilst St Ettiene were relegated.

The Italian league has been the most interesting and unpredictable, with a different champion each season (none of which have been AC Milan, Inter, Juve or Roma)

Dortmund dominate the German league almost every time, and in the most recent save won the league title 5 years running.

None of the usual suspects have ever made the Champions League final!

Baring in mind that all players start the game unattached -

Steven Garrard has never been signed by a team in any save and always retires by the end of the 1st season.

Lionel Messi has never had a contract worth more than £80k per week (his current contract is £275k at Barcelona in the unedited DB), for teams including Blackburn (lol?), Racing Santander and Novara.

Wayne Rooney signed for Fulham on £75k per week and fired them to a league title (also Fulham became far and away the richest club on Earth in the most recent save).

There's so much more I could write, it's hilarious to watch but I'm nowhere near finished.

ive been keeping an eye on this thread for a while now, loving the idea behind this DB and will happily play it when you release it!

I'm off tomorrow so will get stuck in and edit a load of leagues. When I really put in the effort, I can fully edit (equalize) all teams in a particular league in under 1 hour.

The only thing that is holding me back is an annoying problem in the editor - numbers being entered in double with single key presses. Happens at least 50% of the time.

If I'm not careful (not looking), sometimes I enter "45000" (for a stadium capacity), but it comes up as 4455000000

Happens constantly when entering any digits. And probably why I only do a single league and then leave it for a few hours.

Keep up the good work F_Serpico.

It's stuff like this that makes me consider getting FM12. Great work.

I have been dreaming about something like this scenario, only with all clubs in all leagues being equal, e.g. no gaps in team reputation etc. between the leagues, so the signing of players/strength of teams would be totally random. Probably hard to do though

g00n - Do you mean all 'top flight' leagues, or literally every single league? So teams from EPL down to to Blue Square North and South (or conference or whatever moniker they've given it) would all have the same rep?

If it was every single team, then all leagues would have to be increased in rep as well so players would be just as willing to join Hayes and Yeading as they would Internazionale. But then I think continental participation would sway many players.

I do think a tiered system will keep the game balanced, but I'm seriously considering making all top flight teams equal.

I have made all teams in EPL, La Liga, German 1st, Ligue 1, Serie A the same (rep 8000 etc)

Then all teams in Eredivisie are 7500, but I might just go and put that up to 8000 and do all top flight teams the same - so even Scottish Premiership and lowly Northern Ireland Premiership teams will be on a par in every way with the English Premiership, Liga BBVA etc.

I may also have to edit prize money for league titles to make that equal as well.

EDIT: how do I increase prize money for competitions? I know I've read on here about people creating leagues and adding prize money but I don't see the option :/

g00n - Do you mean all 'top flight' leagues, or literally every single league? So teams from EPL down to to Blue Square North and South (or conference or whatever moniker they've given it) would all have the same rep?

If it was every single team, then all leagues would have to be increased in rep as well so players would be just as willing to join Hayes and Yeading as they would Internazionale. But then I think continental participation would sway many players.

I do think a tiered system will keep the game balanced, but I'm seriously considering making all top flight teams equal.

I did actually mean every single team, as well as league reputations. So, in theory, Lionel Messi might just as well end up in Hayes and Yeading. There would probably be many factors weighing in though, like continental competitions as you mentioned.

OK I'm going with my idea of making all top flight teams equal, regardless of their stature in the real world. As well as making all top flight leagues as reputable as the EPL (185).

Have equalized all from: EPL, Ligue 1, German 1st, Liga BBVA, Serie A and Eredivisie. Currently loading up a test game to run a few seasons and see how it goes.

PS - currently stands at 396,681 changes to the database

EDIT: Feb 1st in first season, Blackburn leading the EPL with, again, basically the entire English International squad on their books. No real surprises beyond that though, current leaders of each league:

Holland: Ajax

Germany: Dortmund (they always do for some reason)

France: Stade Rennais FC, with O.M 2 points behind.

Spain: Barcelona

Italy: Internazionale

There are no 'outright leaders' in each league, they are all close races so far but I'm slightly disappointed to not see the smaller teams (in real life) leading the leagues. I do believe Continental participation is playing it's part.

An interesting idea, I'll be following and looking forward to the release of this db.

I'm very intrigued to see how it would work with my World League, it could be awesome.

Almost at the end of season 3, and some very interesting results coming up...

Some results for the first 3 seasons:

England (Premiership only for now)

Season 1 - Top four: Man City, Blackburn, Man Utd, Arsenal. Relegated: Sunderland, Everton, Bolton. FAC: Aston Villa LC: Derby

Season 2 - Top four: Arsenal, QPR, Swansea, Wigan. Relegated: West Ham, Wolves, Derby. FAC: Newcastle LC: Man City

Season 3 - Top four: Swansea, QPR, Aston Villa, Liverpool. Relegated: Everton, Bolton, Birmingham. FAC: Brighton (beat Arsenal 3-0)! LC: Man City

France (Ditto)

Season 1 - Top four: Stade Rennais, O.M, Lille, PSG. Relegated: Nice, Caen, Dijon.

Season 2 - Top four: Valenciennes, Nancy, Lorient, Monpellier. Relegated: Nantes, Sochaux, Evian.

Season 3 - Top four: Valenciennes, AC Ajaccio, Stade Rennais, Stade Brestois. Relegated: Lille, Nice, Lens

Germany

Season 1 - Top four: Dortmund, FC Bayern, Leverkusen, Schalke. Relegated: Augsburg, Werder Bremen, Hoffenheim.

Season 2 - Top four: Wolfsburg, FC Bayern, Mainz, Koln. Relegated: Kaiserslautern, St Pauli, Aachen.

Season 3 - Top four: HSV, Wolfsburg, Hertha, Mainz. Relegated: Frankfurt, Werder Bremen.

Holland

Season 1 - Top four: Ajax, PSV, AZ, FC Twente. Relegated: sc Heerenveen, Utrecht, RKC.

Season 2 - Top four: Excelsior, ADO Den Haag, Ajax, Groningen. Relegated: MVV, Volendam.

Season 3 - Top four: Ajax, Roda JC, ADO Den Haag, Groningen. Relegated: Sparta.

Italy

Season 1 - Top four: Inter, A.C Milan, Napoli, Udinese. Relegated: Lecce, Atalanta, Cagliari.

Season 2 - Top four: Napoli, Palermo, A.C Milan, Lazio. Relegated: Siena, Genoa, Torino.

Season 3 - Top four: Juventus, Cesena, Udinese, Napoli. Relegated: Brescia, Lecce, Cagliari.

Spain

Season 1 - Top four: Valencia, Villareal, R. Madrid, Athletic. Relegated: Racing, Espanyol, Getafe.

Season 2 - Top four: Sevilla, Barcelona, Villareal, Rayo. Relegated: Zaragoza, Almeria, Valladolid.

Season 3 - Top four: Barcelona, Valencia, Granada, Malaga. Relegated: R. Madrid! (hehe) Deportivo, Recreativo.

Champions League

Season 1 - Result: Zenit 1-2 Barcelona.

Season 2 - Result: Sporting (Portugal) 1-0 FC Porto

Season 3 - Result: SLB 3-0 Lokomotiv Moscow

Euro Cup

Season 1 - Result: Athletic 1-2 PSV

Season 2 - Result: Wolfsburg 4-2 Aston Villa

Season 3 - Result: Stade Rennais 2-0 Palermo

Richest Clubs, top 10

Fulham (top again, and by some distance too).

Ajax

Barcelona

Arsenal

Q.P.R

Chelsea

Valencia

At. Madrid

Tottenham

O.M

Club Reputations, Top 10

Barcelona

SLB

Sporting (POR)

Excelsior

Napoli

Arsenal

Wolfsburg

Swansea

Stade Rennais

Valenciennes

(no team is "Worldwide" yet)

...........................................................................................................................

So definitely a mixed bag of results in all the leagues, including Everton finally being relegated from the top flight of English football for the first time in their history. Although Real Madrid being relegated is definitely the highlight for me

I like that there appear to be no leagues where it's always the same top 4. So refreshing.

Right, I've had a good look around, and made some decisions.

There are, at a quick count, 51 playable nations (give or take - I did count quickly) - many of which have several leagues, which means literally thousands of teams to edit if I was going to do them all. So I'm not. Sorry

I simply don't have enough (probably hundreds of) hours to put into this kind of project.

The nations I will edit are (leagues in italics are already edited):

England: Prem, Championship, League 1 and 2?,

France: Ligue 1 and 2,

Germany: 1st and 2nd Division,

Italy: Serie A and Serie B,

Holland: Eredivisie and Jupiler League,

Spain: Liga BBVA and Liga Adelante,

Scotland: Premiership (and really trying to convince myself the other 3 are worth doing),

Portugal: Premier League and Second League.

There's just so much work involved it would take forever to do the whole lot

I still think that with al those leagues edited there will be some really interesting games had with this DB. You can literally pick a team at random and have as much chance winning that particular league as being relegated.

Fantastic work on this - will definitely look to use this.

Whenever I've tried db's where all the players have been released and I've set all clubs reps to the same level I've had real problems where the clubs have basically not signed enough players for the team and had loads of grey players in the squad.

Have you experienced this problem? If so, what did you do if anything to get around it?

Also have you changed the clubs managers and the managers stats?

Fantastic work on this - will definitely look to use this.

Whenever I've tried db's where all the players have been released and I've set all clubs reps to the same level I've had real problems where the clubs have basically not signed enough players for the team and had loads of grey players in the squad.

Have you experienced this problem? If so, what did you do if anything to get around it?

Also have you changed the clubs managers and the managers stats?

There are no players, managers or staff at any club - all that remain are chairmen and board members.

I've found that some teams don't sign enough players the first season, but by season 2 in each test I've run, almost all the teams have signed good sized squads. There are still a few clubs who only have about 10 to 15 1st-team members by the 2nd season, and they fill up the rest of the squad with youth regens, but within 3 or 4 seasons the squads all fill up nicely.

I quite like it to be honest - it's interesting to see how the game copes with such extreme circumstances.

For some reason (I've no idea why as they are identical to all other clubs aside from name), Blackburn and Dortmund always do well and have large squads of quality players right from the start.

Perhaps Dortmund and Blackburn are favorite clubs for a lot of players? Or they have massive fanbases?

If I may do a suggestion: could you also do something with the big leagues in the other continents, so that even the World Club Cup is played with teams like this?

Would be nice to see a WCC where Mazembe or Antlers are able to win.

This sounds like a hell of a lot of fun. Please PM once it's ready, don't want to forget it exists and not remember for ages!

Interesting that the richest clubs in England all come from London. Location must be important, maybe something else for you to edit there

I'm currently in 2023 on this latest test save but going to bed now as I'm working early tomorrow. I'll leave the game running though and report back when I can.

I'll just mention that Chelsea are continually winning the EPL, PSG are continually winning the French Ligue 1, and SLB have won every Portuguese Premier League so far.... I'm curious what drives such success in an equilibrium game, but I hazard a guess at initial continental participation.

PSG are mega-rich (richest club in the world) and are valued at over £1Billion so far...

I'll just mention that Chelsea are continually winning the EPL, PSG are continually winning the French Ligue 1, and SLB have won every Portuguese Premier League so far.... I'm curious what drives such success in an equilibrium game, but I hazard a guess at initial continental participation.

PSG are mega-rich (richest club in the world) and are valued at over £1Billion so far...

Chelsea - London, capital city

PSG - Paris, capital city

Benfica - Lisbon, capital city

Might be a coincidence, but if every team is exactly the same apart from location I'd guess that players would rather play in London than somewhere like Norwich.

Maybe try editting the cities to all have the same stats as well?

Chelsea - London, capital city

PSG - Paris, capital city

Benfica - Lisbon, capital city

Might be a coincidence, but if every team is exactly the same apart from location I'd guess that players would rather play in London than somewhere like Norwich.

You could certainly be on to something there, because I holidayed to 2036 overnight and found:

Chelsea, QPR, Arsenal and Spurs dominated the EPL. Capital city teams.

PSG likewise in the French Lique 1. Capital City.

Benfica won the league every single year (something like 24 years in a row). Capital City.

But then..

Celtic won virtually every single Scottish title (although Rangers were relegated!). Not the Scottish capital.

Dortmund were continually winning the German first division. Hertha Berlin only won a single title, and were relegated twice.

Excelsior were the main club in Holland (they and Ajax won almost every title between them). Amsterdam is the capital, but Excelsior are based in Rotterdam - maybe because it is a port city it is attractive?

In fact Excelsior became the richest and most reputable team in the world, having won the Champions League 8 times by 2036, including 4 titles in six years, plus a handful of finals lost.

The Spanish title was won by a different team almost every year, likewise in Italy.

I think there is an attribute for 'attraction' for towns and cities in the editor isn't there? I may look into that.

Man Utd and Liverpool both became mid-table teams, and Everton drifted off into oblivion.

Steven Gerrard again failed to sign for a team and retired by the end of the first season. I actually took over a load of teams (out of curiosity) and tried to sign him but he was never interested in negotiations.

Did you try to sign Gerrard as Liverpool - possibly a factor that he'll only sign for his favoured club?

don't teh cities have an attractiveness rating assigned to tehm? if so then this will scew your results as the top players would choose teams from the most attractive cities meaning that they will do better then others.

were you able to sign John Terry or David Beckham? i have a free transfer DB and have never been able to sign either of them for any club (even with FMRTE!) and the point above me by sammyt93 is a very good one!

I've not got the editor so I can't check but I do remember in past editors that the cities had some rating to them. Also the cities must have some stats because occasionally you'll get a player who mentions "moving to a more metropolitan area" when he signs.

Celtic won virtually every single Scottish title (although Rangers were relegated!). Not the Scottish capital.

I think that's the only one from your list I can explain, because Glasgow is certainly a bigger city than Edinburgh, and probably more attractive to a footballer.

Dortmund is also a fairly big 'attractive' city.

It seems like in Spain and Italy your experiment has definitely worked. Hope your aren't taking my posts as having a dig at you, it seems like a really interesting idea that I'd like to try out. Hopefully after a couple more tests you might be able to see if it's just a coincidence or if city stats have a noticeable effect.

Yeah there is an "attraction" attribute in the editor, and Paris, Benfica, London, Rotterdam etc (all those where teams were very successful in my test games) were rated either 19 or 20, so definitely a factor.

Still doesn't explain Blackburn's much greater success over teams like Liverpool + Everton or Man Utd. Blackburn has low attraction compared to Liverpool and Manchester.

I may just edit the cities where all equalized clubs are based all to be the same, including population and attraction. Won't take too long as there appear to be only 2 attributes that could have an affect.

Yeah there is an "attraction" attribute in the editor, and Paris, Benfica, London, Rotterdam etc (all those where teams were very successful in my test games) were rated either 19 or 20, so definitely a factor.

Still doesn't explain Blackburn's much greater success over teams like Liverpool + Everton or Man Utd. Blackburn has low attraction compared to Liverpool and Manchester.

I may just edit the cities where all equalized clubs are based all to be the same, including population and attraction. Won't take too long as there appear to be only 2 attributes that could have an affect.

the only things i can think of for blackburn is maybe it's got somethign to do with manager targets or something to do with favoured club/ the club having alot of staff taht players have as favoured personnel

the only things i can think of for blackburn is maybe it's got somethign to do with manager targets or something to do with favoured club/ the club having alot of staff taht players have as favoured personnel

No club in the entire game have any staff whatsoever, aside from a Chairman and the odd director (who players never have listed as favoured personnel).

I will edit the cities for English Premiership teams, then run a test and see how it goes. I will put all attraction to 20, plus make the population equal as well. Will report back.

All chairman have NO attributes (0's across the board), with board and fan confidence set to 180/180.

Doesn't 0 mean random rather than 0 or does random stats not apply to non players?

Doesn't 0 mean random rather than 0 or does random stats not apply to non players?

Probably, I'm not 100% sure, but it was a lot easier than assigning numbers due to the infuriating double digit problem. All I had to do was highlight and delete. Perhaps I should just remove all chairmen as well? Or would the game still assign a random chairman to each club at game start?

I did a quick season there after equalizing all cities - the EPL top 4 were Chelsea, Stoke, Spurs and Norwich. I noticed too that at the game start, the London clubs were valued at 3 times that of the other clubs. I guess because London is the capital then clubs will be more valuable there. Would removing London's status as England's capital have an effect on the game in a bad way - like would the game not run/crash? I guess I would have to assign capital status to a town/city where there are no playable football clubs. Not easy to do in England

Probably, I'm not 100% sure, but it was a lot easier than assigning numbers due to the infuriating double digit problem. All I had to do was highlight and delete. Perhaps I should just remove all chairmen as well? Or would the game still assign a random chairman to each club at game start?

I did a quick season there after equalizing all cities - the EPL top 4 were Chelsea, Stoke, Spurs and Norwich. I noticed too that at the game start, the London clubs were valued at 3 times that of the other clubs. I guess because London is the capital then clubs will be more valuable there. Would removing London's status as England's capital have an effect on the game in a bad way - like would the game not run/crash? I guess I would have to assign capital status to a town/city where there are no playable football clubs. Not easy to do in England

Just add a new city and make it the capital. Simples.

Stupid question alert!... Will that definitely work? :o

EDIT: Seems ok so far. The London-based clubs are now valued the same as all the others (£191M), because I added a new capital city simply called "Laadon"

It takes about 20 minutes to process a season on my PC so will report back soon.

Top 4:

Man City (93 points, champions)

Newcastle

Chelsea

Blackburn

Relegated:

Everton

Liverpool

Wolves

Although there is still a London club in the top 4, that is statistically guaranteed seeing as there are 5 London-based clubs out of 20 in the EPL. Gonna process another season to see what happens this time, but I'm encouraged by that result.

Season 2012/13, top 4:

Spurs (74 points, champions)

Wigan

Arsenal

West Brom

Relegated:

Birmingham

Leicester

West Ham

Definitely much more varied now. Will create extra capital cities for all the leagues I'm editing...

Another season processed, and here are the results, top four:

Arsenal (66 points, champions!)

Swansea

Man Utd (they escaped relegation by a single place last season)

Man City

Relegated:

Aston Villa

Everton

Fulham (they were 7th two years running so that's quite a drop!)

Have now equalized the cities in the following four leagues: EPL, Liga BBVA, Eredivisie and Ligue 1 - plus added a new capital for each country, as follows:

(they're quite humorous)

England - Capital is now Laandon. Citizens are known as "Laandoners"

Spain - Capital is now Magrid. Citizens are known as "Magridenos"

Holland - Capial is now Hamsterplan. Citizens are known as "Hamsters"

France - Capital is now L'eau d'Issey. Citizens are known as "Miyakes"

Currently running a test season, and if all goes well I can continue with the rest of the leagues, including those lower than the top flight.